The Doctor comes home with a German Shorthaired Pointer puppy he’s already named Gretel. The Doctor’s wife is assured that the puppy will be the Doctor’s responsibility. The kids are thrilled about the new dog and immediately start to play with her. The Doctor’s Wife narrowly saves Gretel from being made to wear a doll’s dress.
A week after she has joined the family, Gretel is feverish, won’t eat, and her eye oozes with pus. She coughs, has a fever, and vomits in her cardboard box in the basement.
“Your puppy is sick,” the Doctor’s Wife says when she calls her husband’s office. Hazel Adelsheim is upstairs helping out with the kids. The Doctor’s Wife had planned on chairing a sewer meeting with Nancy.
“You’re going to have to pull double duty today,” she says to Nancy on the phone.
“What’s wrong?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Kid?”
“Dog,” the Doctor’s Wife says.
“It doesn’t look good,” the vet says. He’s a fishing buddy of the Doctor’s. “Such a pretty little dog too. She has diphtheria. Dogs don’t really ever get better from it. Even if they live, the encephalitis can cause bad trouble with the brain and the muscles. Any treatment would be only supportive. Want me to put her down?”
No, neither the Doctor nor the Doctor’s Wife want that.
Gretel pants heavily in a cardboard box in the kitchen, whimpering. It’s an awful noise, so full of suffering that the kids steer clear of the box, playing quietly upstairs. The Doctor is called away to Providence for an emergency, but she and the Doctor work as a team. She can’t just let that little dog die.
She uses an eyedropper to keep Gretel hydrated. She wipes pus from Gretel’s eyes, she cleans out the cardboard box as it becomes soiled, she puts cold clothes on the hot doggy body. This goes on for days until the Doctor’s Wife starts to think that maybe it would have been better to allow the vet to do as he suggested.
But Gretel lives.