A DOG’S BEST FRIEND

As told by Dr. John Erasmus to Jordan McPhee

June 2058

Approximately six months after “he” (I will call him that for reasons that should become clear) had started regular schooling, Lexie brought Manaia into the salutogenesis clinic for a behavioral assessment, having noticed disturbing changes in him. He was engaging in risky behavior: climbing trees, throwing balls, running recklessly across the school yard, wrestling with other students, and being disruptive rather than attentive during study times. This led me to the obvious conclusion that he had ADHD and would benefit from being on Ritalin. Neither the diagnosis nor the treatment seemed in doubt to me, and I did not expect to see either of them again for three months, provided his dosage was maintained.

 Some weeks later, I was surprised when Lexie brought Manaia back to the clinic, displaying new symptoms.

“M is complaining of having a creeping, tingling sensation,” she explained, “as if ants are crawling over the skin. But I can’t see anything, not even a rash. What could it be?”

My immediate response was that it must be a food allergy, and I placed them both on a dietary program designed to identify the offending allergen. Placing the entire family on such a plan has proven to be most effective in avoiding unconscious cheating. The list of forbidden foods included gluten, dairy, sugar, and the nightshade family. Meanwhile, it seemed that the Ritalin was working, for the boy’s hyperactivity was noticeably reduced, and during his time in my office, I would have described him as almost subdued.

Allergy identification and gut cleansing require patience and discipline, so I asked Lexie to keep notes on any changes and make an appointment to see me in four weeks’ time, confident that we would see an improvement.

Alarmingly, however, what I saw was a marked deterioration. The creeping, tingling sensation had now spread to Lexie and had grown worse in Manaia, despite their strict adherence to the program I had laid down. To make matters more serious, Manaia appeared to be suffering from an accumulation of Ritalin in one of his organs, leading to extreme lethargy and almost vegetative lability. He was an appealing child with dark eyes, olive skin, and shoulder-length black hair, but the energy he’d displayed at our first meeting was now completely absent. He was wearing a T-shirt with a political slogan on the front—something like Please don’t destroy my planet—but when I tried to engage him in conversation on it, he let his mother reply for him.

“Manaia is angry that adults are failing to address climate change,” she said, “and that, by the time M grows up, there may be no planet left to live on … aren’t you, sweetheart?”

Manaia didn’t reply, but leaned down and stroked the small dog that never seemed to leave his side. The dog wagged its tail lethargically.

I remember saying something like, “Good for you, Manaia. Maybe they’ll listen to you kids and do something about it.”

I cancelled the Ritalin and put him on a placebo that the homeopathic practitioner in our clinic recommends for young children. As for Lexie’s tingling skin complaint, well, I chalked that up to a sympathetic reaction, which I felt sure would abate as soon as she saw an improvement in Manaia.

“Kids go down quickly,” I explained, “but they go back up just as fast. There is nothing organically wrong with Manaia that I can detect, so let’s give him time. At least we know he has no allergies. Once the Ritalin is out of his system, we’ll monitor his ADHD and try him on a serotonin reuptake inhibitor.”

This seemed to reassure her, but it did not stop her from calling later to ask me if I thought she should put his name on the waiting list for bottom surgery. If his genitalia were altered to match his gender identity, she felt, his behavioral issues might be cured, and he would be much happier. Remembering his long black hair and dark eyes, not to mention the olive skin, I could very easily envisage Manaia as a transfem—but that was a big call for a five-year-old, and after all, it would always be an option in the future.

A few days later, I ran into the two of them going into the animal wellness department at our clinic. Lexie appeared tense and worried, and Manaia was clutching the dog to his chest and not speaking.

“We’re taking our dog in for an examination,” Lexie explained, “as he’s got no energy, and I want him checked for heavy metals. We took him to the anti-plastics Save the Turtles demonstration, and he couldn’t even walk.”

“Great idea,” I replied. “Heavy metals are a good place to start.”

Thinking on this later, I wondered whether heavy metals were something I should have checked for in Manaia myself, so I rang the veterinary office and asked them if they could copy me on the dog’s results. Heavy metal testing is done by analyzing hair samples, and this would be a simple thing for me to arrange for Lexie and Manaia. I knew Jan from the vet lab very well; she and I used to secretly play street football at night when we were at university. There were a lot of us students playing the game secretly in the years after the sport was banned, as you know—and as all members of underground societies do, we remained friends later in life.

“We didn’t find any heavy metals in that dog hair you were asking about,” she reported a few days later, “but we did find elevated levels of cortisol.”

“Cortisol!” I exclaimed. “I didn’t even know that dogs had adrenal cortexes. Are you saying they’re like humans when it comes to stress hormones?”

“Not only that, but there’s new research that shows dogs exactly mirror the emotions of their owners—and that includes chemically. Look it up.”

I thanked her and did exactly that. She was right; dogs really are humanity’s best friends. They feel everything that their owners do—maybe even more so—and they secrete it into their fur.

Now, I have to put my hand up and admit that I’d been leading us down the wrong track with my diagnosis of ADHD and food allergies. The description of the feeling of ants crawling over the skin should have alerted me. The Latin word for ant is formica, and ‘formication’ is a neurological condition that manifests as a tingling, creeping sensation in the skin. Cortisol (also known as hydrocortisone) is produced by the adrenal cortex in response to stress, anxiety, and depression. What I was dealing with was a form of neurasthenia.

But what was causing this stress and depression?

Though our Erasmus Foundation Salutogenesis Clinic is a multidisciplinary practice, I had unconsciously chosen to veer away from the psychology side of things out of a desire to avoid unnecessary paperwork. The government had identified mental health as a target for big budgets and big awareness campaigns way back in the days when our leaders were chosen by all the people, rather than just by the well-informed. It was felt that spreading a wide net to catch as many mentally ill people as possible would make them feel included, eliminate stigmatization, and get them into the public record. As with all social policy, it was kind, well-intentioned, and beyond criticism. Of course, the fact that everyone going onto the Mental Health Register received five bonus Society Points meant there was a big take-up, so the workload involved in issuing certificates and cross-referencing everything with all the government departments became extremely burdensome. For these reasons, my colleagues and I tend to turn to psychological explanations for non-wellness as a very last resort.

But with Lexie, Manaia, and the dog, I was pretty sure we were dealing with anxiety. All the symptoms were there; I’d chosen to look past them. My challenge now was how to treat it without pulling out the mental health forms.

I decided to call Lexie and get her to bring Manaia and the dog into the clinic for a one-hour diagnostic session. She was to leave them there and come back when it was finished, as her presence might interfere with the results. At first, she was concerned that Manaia might not be able to cope with being left alone, but I assured her there would be a female monitor on hand at all times.

The day dawned clear and sunny with no wind and not a cloud in the sky. It reminded me of the summer days of my youth, only not as hot. Manaia and the dog showed up subdued, but anxious. I decided to try a positive approach.

“I have some good news, Manaia,” I began. “That climate change T-shirt you wore the other day has really worked! The government has decided to send thirty billion UniCoins to the people who can fix the problem, and now the earth is going to survive forever.”

He didn’t respond. The concept of thirty billion UniCoins seemed beyond him.

I tried another tack. “Hey, here’s a trick: how big is a turtle’s mouth?”

I held my thumb and forefinger together to create an opening. “This big,” I said.

He looked vaguely interested.

“And how big do you think a baby turtle’s mouth is?”

Ever so slowly, he put his own finger and thumb together to create a much smaller opening.

“That’s it exactly!” I exclaimed.

He looked at it and nodded.

Then I opened my bottom desk drawer, where I had stashed one of the banned plastic shopping bags from the old days. I shook it out for him to see.

“Well, here’s some more good news. Scientists have been trying to work out how to get a plastic bag through the mouth and into the stomach of a young turtle, but they say it’s impossible to do.”

He looked at the bag, and he looked at the opening between his thumb and forefinger. Then, before I had to say anything more, he put out his free hand. I passed the plastic bag to him. But no matter how hard he pushed and cheated, he couldn’t get even one tenth of it to pass through the opening. He heaved and grunted and gave it his best shot before giving up.

“There!” I clapped my hands. “Seems like the turtles are safe after all.”

From that same desk drawer, I retrieved a tennis ball, which I started bouncing up and down on the office floor. The dog pricked his ears and sat up. After ten or twelve bounces, I threw it to Manaia, who dropped it. The dog pounced on it eagerly.

“Let’s go outside,” I suggested.

At the back of the clinic is a small lawn surrounded by a concrete wall. Manaia seemed reluctant to go on the grass, so I took his hand and told him it was for playing on and Lexie would not be angry. The dog put the ball down at my feet, and I kicked it as hard as I could, so it hit the wall and bounced back at us. Both Manaia and the dog looked at me as if I were playing with a bomb. I kicked it again. This time the dog looked like he was itching to move, so I tried it once more, throwing it with all my might and shouting, “Get it! Get it!”

The dog sprang out of the blocks like a sprinter, barking excitedly—but before it could latch onto the ball, I kicked it away into Manaia’s legs.

“Kick it to me!” I cried.

He hesitated too long, and the dog got it. But the dog knew the game instinctively and dropped the ball at my feet. Now, I’m not the fittest person, but I do remember how to play ball, so I dribbled it around Manaia and the dog, describing how I was going to score a perfect goal against the back wall. Then, before I could get it lined up, Manaia came at me like a bat out of hell and booted it away.

Okay, game on!

The three of us chased that ball around the lawn until I thought my lungs would explode, and I collapsed on my back on the grass, gasping for air. Manaia then jumped on me. He was heavy for his age, and I pretended to try and wrestle him off, which prompted him to pound my chest with his fists and triumphantly chant sounds that would not have been out of place in a war dance. I had to tickle him to make him stop, then I feigned defeat and went limp.

This caused a curious reaction. He looked at me with a mixture of triumph and concern. Had he gone too far, perhaps? He reached out and ruffled my hair to “wake” me. Now, I have very short hair. It’s what we used to call a number 2, and it feels a bit like the bristles on a nailbrush. Clearly, Manaia was intrigued by it.

Once I’d regained my breath, we got up and went back inside. Both the boy and the dog were now what I would call “perky.” Manaia and I had a piece of chocolate and an apple juice while I wrote his name on the tennis ball and told him he should ask his mother if he could keep it at home—or, if he preferred, I would keep it in my desk drawer, and he could come and play with it any time he liked.

He said he’d like to keep it in the desk drawer.

When Lexie arrived, I told her we’d found the cause of his problems.

“It seems that the dog has an adrenal problem that produces an irritating skin infection,” I explained. “This irritant has been picked up by Manaia, but it will quickly clear up as the dog responds to the adrenal pills that we’ve given him. In the meantime, Manaia’s hair, like the dog’s hair, is the primary repository of the compound creating the problem, so I want you to arrange for Manaia to have his hair cut as soon as possible.”

Lexie’s hand flew to her mouth as she gasped in shock. “M’s hair?” she stammered. “How short must it be?”

“Very short,” I replied sternly. “At least as short as mine.”

“But that will make him look like a … a … b—”

She couldn’t even say the word.

I looked across at Manaia, who was busy joining his forefinger to his thumb, but I could swear he was smiling to himself.

“Just try it. You’ll be surprised how quickly the problem clears up,” I affirmed. “For both of you.”