Boosting Bruno
Bruno was a bundle of brindled fur when I chose him at the rescue centre, an abandoned birthday gift.
I carried him home in my shopping basket, up the stairs to my first floor flat. He peered over the edge of the basket with interest.
“I’m going to call you Bruno because you look like a real boxer.”
Bruno grew and grew. He put on weight and girth, his short-haired coat gleaming with good health.
He came to school with me in the car and the children loved him. Bruno was good with children.
“Oh, please, miss – let me take Bruno for a walk.”
There was always competition to take him for a lunchtime walk round the playing fields. He had morning and evening walks in the park.
Living in a flat was no hardship. He bounded up the stairs faster than I could climb them.
“Bruno is a fine boxer,” said Jack Connors, the vet, when I took Bruno for his annual check-up. “Stocky, broad-shouldered, square muzzle, good undershot bite, strong teeth, all perfect.
“They make great companions, loving and faithful to their owners.”
“Bruno’s my best friend,” I said.
“He’s exactly the right dog for you, Miss Patton. Bruno is an instinctive guardian.”
I knew that because although Bruno was good with children, he was distrustful of strangers. His growl was menacing and those jaws looked pretty powerful.
Bruno began to find the flight of stairs difficult. He wasn’t taking them with his usual bounds and leaps.
My flat over the estate agents was roomy with views of the surrounding park. I could watch the seasons, flowers bloom and fade, the leaves turn to russet.
“Come on, Bruno,” I said encouragingly. “Up the stairs now. Come on, you can do it.”
He looked at me with that mournful boxer look as if I was asking him to climb the last abutment of Everest.
He was not overweight, but he was stocky. I heaved him up as he manfully attempted the climb.
I took him to the vet.
“It’s hip dysplasia,” Jack Connors said. “Or hip arthritis. The ball and socket joints have become loose. Cartilage repair is slow.
“There’s not much I can do except painkillers and anti-inflammatories.
“They will help with the walking, but the stairs are another matter. You can hardly carry him.”
“He won’t fit into my shopping basket any more.”
“You’ll have to move, Miss Patton.”
I couldn’t afford to move. I couldn’t leave Bruno alone in the flat while I went to school. It would be cruel – he had to come with me.
So I had to carry him downstairs. Then in the evening, I had to carry him back upstairs.
It meant extra journeys because I also had a briefcase and school books.
I sat at the foot of the stairs, getting my breath back.
“I’m not Wonder Woman,” I told Bruno, stroking his head.
“There is an operation,” said Jack Connors on our next visit. “But it’s outrageously expensive.”
“I can’t do outrageously expensive,” I said regretfully.
It was the school holidays, a time when Bruno and I had always enjoyed outings, but I curtailed walks. Bruno pawed at the door, asking to go out for a walk. He loved the park.
One evening, reading my favourite magazine, I saw an advertisement.
The whole thing only took a phone call and three days to organise.
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am,” I said as the workmen left the flat. “You’ve taken a great weight off my mind,”
They were curious; I looked fairly active to them. Bruno growled at them, as always my instinctive guardian.
They’d taken a weight off my arms and back, too.
Bruno sat on the chair seat, safely strapped in, as the battery-operated chair took him down the stairs at the touch of a button.
I walked down beside him. He gazed at me in his usual trusting way.
Sometimes I sit on the chair lift and Bruno sits on my lap. He likes that, licking my face all the way up.
Better than a shopping basket.
Look out for a new series of spooky short stories from our archives, every Monday and Thursday throughout October!
