Commentary

Take the day off

August 27, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

One evening, quite some time ago, Patricia had a boyfriend named Rick. That year, they had recently brought a puppy into their lives, and they were keen to introduce her to me and my then-husband, Colin, who died in 2015. At the time, we had rather a large cross-breed, one way or another short-haired, brindled dog named Mickey.

Whenever anyone asked me his breed, I didn’t know because the person living in the little house on the property where Patrick, my horse, lived gave one of the puppies her dog unexpectedly birthed to Patricia, without asking me first. Well, she didn’t know their breeding background either, especially as she had no idea who was the father of the puppies.

Once he was pretty well grown, my answer was that Mickey was a Bengal Bangle, adding the fiction that they had been bred as guard dogs in India as far back as the mid-1800s. People would nod wisely and comment that they knew a guy who bred them. When I took Mickey one time for a checkup, the vet asked me his breed; I gave him my standard answer, and he wrote it down – made it official, and I never had to blush again as I told it to anyone else.

So, the new puppy, Chandler (yes, after the Friends character), came to visit and two things happened straight away: she rushed in to see what was in Mickey’s bowl. He would have been offended and possibly growled at her except that she had dragged the gravy-covered celery out of his bowl. He had left it after eating the meat an hour before.

Forgivingly, he watched her enthusiastic chomping on the celery with real puzzlement.

“Puppies eat everything,” Colin explained.

Mickey was all in all Patricia’s dog. He was living in Hockley Valley with me while she was living in Hamilton, teaching music, performing and going part-time to McMaster University.

One summer, the three of us decided that we would drive out to the Maritimes to see the ocean and enjoy the beauty of the land there. Just by Fundy Bay, friends of ours had a home in Parrsboro, where they were happy to let us stay while we were visiting the area.

Mickey went with us, of course. He enjoyed the trip, sharing the back seat with Patricia, his head on her lap for the most part and the take-away dinners we bought for him.

On our way going home, since we were invited via years of Christmas card exchanges, we stopped off in Moncton, New Brunswick for a visit to Colin’s cousin and his wife, both heads of Pediatrics in two separate hospitals in the town. Their home was splendid upstairs and down, where a fine wine cellar was the right temperature all the time, and our host was not stingy with his corkscrew.

They were a little doubtful about Mickey, who would not have done well spending the night in our van. It was decided – I insisted – that I would sleep in the main floor study with Mickey and tend to his needs, if any. They piled chairs against the room’s doors to keep Mickey in.

Patricia was given one of the beautifully dressed bedrooms upstairs, white linen, as fine as could be, and she was delighted with all that. Likewise, Colin was accommodated to the same level of comfort.

However…

I could not understand why Mickey was so restless, lying down on his blanket from the van, then getting up again, to whine and scratch softly at the door, but the chairs held.

I called him to come back and be comforted by me, which he did, but only as a duty and with no real enthusiasm.

Until..

I had not heard the early rumbles from outside, but Mickey had, and he was once more pushing at the study door but with more purpose.

Suddenly, as it often is, a tremendous crash of thunder and solid flash of lightning lit up the windows with enough threat to convince Mickey that he and Patricia were at risk. The chairs failed their purpose as Mickey, like a tank, pushed and with no need to be told where she was, he headed up the stairs for the pristine bed in which she was sleeping.

I – naturally – was close behind, shouting uselessly, “No! Mickey! Come back!” with the very small hope that I had not awakened our hosts.

On the scoreboard, if you like: our hosts surely did wake up to a fairly reasonable panic. Colin was quickly out of bed. Ready to save or serve as necessary.

Mickey was on the white linen, pressed up to Patricia, waking her by inches to let her know they were both safe and together.

The impulse, as I recall, was to haul him off and try the chairs and the study door again, but somehow, it didn’t work out that way.

Their hospitality did stretch to breakfast and an invitation to return, but Mickey’s welcome was not really promised.

Yet, in the future, they did continue to send us Christmas cards.

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