Travels with my Donkey

going to do, shoulder all his bags and give him a piggyback? — but it still seemed a tough brief, defending myself against a charge of screaming at a laden animal.
    Clearly the refugio was no longer an option, and tying a slouched Shinto to a tree on the verge by a town-centre supermarket I cobbled together an alternative: stock up here with overnight supplies, and strike camp in that field over the road. That would do. Or rather it wouldn't, because when I came out with my arms stretched taut by carrier bags of tinned fish and ale, he was down. On his side, not this time in luxuriating repose but enfeebled collapse, one set of panniers pinned beneath him and the other rising and falling to quick and shallow breaths. Dragging my provisions I rushed over like Groucho Marx, yanked out the underside saddlebags and managed, with some effort, to heave that huge head off the grass and into my lap. He wheezed out a soul-rending gurgle, an awful, obstructed sniff through some matter-clotted life-pipe, and as I looked into his glassy, dimming eyes I felt my own sting and leak. Oh, Shinto, not like this, not here, half on the pavement outside a Super Spar.
    And what could I do? I had a phone, but taking my previous donkey-related exchanges with the people of Galicia as a guide, any SOS call would result in a visit from a twenty-four-hour mobile tobacconist. Two elderly ladies walked up, arm in arm, but allowed us a generous berth, flicking a rather-you-than-me look as if I was helping a stricken tramp to vomit. A bus driver slowed to allow his fare-paying vultures an enthralled gloat, and the supermarket manager stood in his threshold wearing an expression of commercial concern. 'Burro doctor?' I called out pleadingly, causing Shinto to lever himself effortfully erect. The manager's eyes dilated, and looking up I saw why: Shinto's entire flank was afoam with bubbling death-sweat, a thick, slick slather of heavy froth. 'Burro doctor!' A more urgent yelp, but the glass door was already swinging closed behind him. With a geriatric, grunting huff Shinto laid himself down beside me once more; my lap hurt, and so I inveigled his granite skull on to my shins. And as I did a burst of familiar yapping broke out, and there was Sativa, and her owner, and a lanky fellow of Mediterranean appearance.
    'My friend Ramon has a telephone,' said the woman I now knew to be Letje, appraising the situation succinctly. Ten minutes later a chubby, smoking vet pulled his Citroën up on to the grass, and by the time he'd trotted over, additional vehicles were disgorging supplementary vets on both sides of the street. The final tally was four.
    Like a child at the doctor's Shinto perked up immediately, jumping to his feet and rediscovering an interest in the newly turfed grass around. The terminal froth-bubbles were the only obvious symptom of his malaise; a svelte young lady vet palmed off a sample and rubbed it dubiously between her thumb and forefingers. A sniff, and a smile: it was my multipurpose washing-up liquid, fractured in Shinto's collapse. Her colleagues fussed about his head, and the one who spoke English asked a few questions before delivering a prognosis I had myself begun to suspect: that tick spray was completely inappropriate for equine use, and Shinto had in consequence suffered an asthmatic reaction.
    That beastly, chiding Frenchwoman had been more right than I'd wanted to think: like a cold-souled guard on the Burma railway, I had force-marched the sick to work. 'Just some little rest, maybe he is OK tomorrow,' he reassured me as his covets began to depart the scene with good-luck waves and toots. I held my money belt out helplessly, and he waved a mockingly reproachful finger at it. 'No, no. You come... I show you place to rest.' Ramon had gone, and as I led Shinto into line behind the Citroën pootling back up the hill I thanked Letje and asked her to thank him. 'He is on the path to wisdom,' she called out over her shoulder, ideally meaning 'Righty-ho', before ineffectively calling Sativa to heel.
    Fifteen minutes later we followed my lovely vet up a brief drive, and promptly found ourselves in the grassy forecourt of a modest but attractive detached home. He swung open the car door and slipped chirpily out. 'Here?' I said, uncertainly contemplating the fruit trees and garden furniture and imagining them respectively stripped bare and hosed in allergenic slurry. 'Sure, of course,' he said, stroking that shirt-stretching stomach