Today, I nearly broke into a patient’s house and stole his dog.
Okay, that sounds bad. Maybe I’d better start from the beginning.
The call came from the police, and read: “NEIGHBOURS CONCERNED FOR ELDERLY GENTLEMAN. HE HAS NOT BEEN SEEN FOR A FEW DAYS AND HIS DOG IS WHINING AT THE WINDOW.”
Calls like this are called “suspected collapse behind locked doors”. Half the time we go to them, we find a dead body on the other side of the locked door, the rest of the time we find a very angry person returning from a shopping trip to find their front door hanging off its hinges as the police search their house fruitlessly. This call, however, was neither. The elderly man had fallen and had been on the floor for an unspecified length of time. His house was in a revolting state; the crew had to step over a dead rat to get to him. The dog, a small, skinny creature of unspecified breed did not look as if it had been receiving the best of care. The owner admitted that he just couldn’t look after it any more — in fact, he couldn’t even look after himself. He begged them to find someone to look after it.
The crew were posed with a problem, because they needed to get the patient into hospital straight away, but didn’t want to leave the dog. In the end, they felt they had no option but to leave it to us to arrange something for the dog whilst they rushed the patient in. The police secured the house, leaving the dog alone inside. And then we began to play musical phone calls. We tried calling back the neighbour who had originally called, but the mobile was switched off. We rang the RSPCA, but they told us they could enter a property without permission and take away someone’s dog just like that. The Cinnamon Trust gave us the same story: they could arrange rehoming for the dog, but someone else would have to obtain the patient’s written permission and remove it from the property. We rang the hospital’s social work department, who weren’t able to do anything, and the local town hall. Each suggested we ring the next organisation on the list, until we were back to the RSPCA again. I’ve summed that up in a few sentences, but in fact it was nearly a whole day’s worth of on-hold music, being passed from pillar to post, and people quoting bits of the law at me, not forgetting the occasional interlude of having ambulances to dispatch.
It was getting towards the day and the thought of that little dog whining at the window was beginning to haunt me in a way that even the most horrific human calls fail to. I couldn’t sleep knowing it was slowing starving and dying a horrible, painful death in that rat infested house. Perhaps you can tell that I like animals more than I like people. The patient’s house was not very far from where I live, and I made the executive decision that if no one was going to rescue that poor little dog before the end of my shift, I was going round there to get it myself, even if it meant breaking and entering! The crew who originally attended were now back on station, off the road with a flat tyre, so I decided to give them a call and see if they had any suggestions. Fortunately, it seemed that burglary was not going to be necessary after all, because they provided me with an alternative number for the patient’s neighbour. I rang her and asked her if she was aware of the situation with the dog. She told me yes, and that she had been on to various organisations all day, meeting much the same obstacles that I had. Eventually, she had managed to arrange something, and someone had just been to collect the dog.
I like to think that it went happily to a new home, but even if it did have to be put down, at least it will have had a quick and painless death, unlike the one I was imagining. Thank god for that neighbour’s persistence, and thank god she noticed that there was a problem with her neighbour in the first place. All too often, people turn a blind eye to this. It’s nice to know there are still some good, kind people in the road. It’s also a relief that I am not going to have to resort to hustling canines in the dead of the night after all.
