As she rides by

something, his name was; I knew he held evening clinics several nights a week and if tonight wasn’t one of those nights maybe there’d be a sign up on his door directing people to the nearest vet that was open and if he wasn’t open and there wasn’t a sign and I couldn’t get help in time, I’d kill someone and I had a pretty good idea who.
    Ian wasn’t open, but when I hammered on the door in desperation, it suddenly opened. Ian stood there, still in his hospital whites. He took one look at me, then one at King, then took the dog from me and hurried back through the waiting room to his examination or treatment or operating room or whatever you want to call it. After closing and bolting his front door, I followed him.
    “Any idea what it was?” he asked me, putting the working end of a stethescope to King’s chest.
    “No,” I said.
    “How long ago?“ he said. He opened one of King’s eyes and peered closely at it.
    “Twenty, twenty-five minutes?” I guessed.
    “Hold this,” he said. He passed me a plastic funnel, then a plastic, kidney-shaped basin. He then reached up on a shelf behind him and took down a bottle of distilled water, which he shook automatically, and then a piece of rubber tubing. Down into King went the tubing. Then Ian bent over and put one ear next to the free end, which I found slightly bizarre, because what in the world could he be listening for in there?
    “If it goes into a lung, you hear breathing,” he said before I had a chance to ask. “In the stomach, where we want the water, you don’t.”
    “Oh,” I said. “Why the tube at all?”
    “You don’t swallow so good when you’re unconscious,” he said.
    “Oh,” I said.
    “In,” he said, propping King’s head up on one arm. I started pouring. “More,” he said. I poured more. “Basin below the table.” I positioned the basin below the table, right next to it. Then he gave the tube a suck or two, then said, “Thar she blows,” and up the tube into the basin came a lot of yucky liquid, most of which I caught. When there was no more left to come, Ian wiped King’s mouth with a cloth, checked out his eyes and heart again, then gently laid his head back down on the table. Then he rinsed out his own mouth, then began poking around in the mess with a wooden tongue depressor.
    “What’s the verdict, doc?” I asked anxiously.
    “Oh, he’ll be all right as soon as he sleeps it off,” he said.
    “That’s my boy!” I said with great relief.
    “Here,” he- said. “Dig this.” He pointed to a couple of undissolved capsules that were bobbing around in the muck. “Looks like some kind soul slipped your animal a few downers in a Snickers bar.”
    “No shit,” I said.
    “No shit. Lucky they were in a candy bar, they took longer to start working. In an empty stomach, who knows.”
    “Would they have killed him?”
    He shrugged. “Probably not, but you should still teach that mutt not to take candy from strangers.”
    “Ah well,” I said, patting my boy’s head. “There’s a good chance that stranger was a girl so gorgeous that if she offered me a giant moose pat in a Snickers wrapper I’d have eaten it and gone back for seconds.”
    He gave me a grin, then yawned.
    “Now what?” I asked him.
    “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll take him upstairs with me for the night, I wasn’t going out anyway, that way I can keep an eye on him and when he wakes up there’ll be someone around who knows him and who he knows.”
    I started to thank him but he interrupted me by telling me to beat it, he was tired, and to come back tomorrow and bring a lot of money.
    “Ever tell you what I saw once in a vet’s down in Long Beach ?” I said to him as he walked me to the door.
    “I can’t guess,” he said.
    “A sign,” I said. “It said, ‘The doctor is in. Sit! Stay!’ ”
    “I heard it already,” he said. “Scram, will you?” I scrammed backed to my office because I remembered I hadn’t locked up properly, I’d just pulled the door to. On the way I tried to puzzle out what was so wrong with telling someone a humorous quip they’d heard before. So what? People eat chili dogs more than once in their lives, don’t they? Or see the same movie over again, or read the same book. So what’s wrong with using some of the classic old gags more than once? You tell me, Uncle Miltie.
    Luckily, I got back to my office before anything untoward happened to it or its contents. Or me, for that