“You’ve heard of Pavlov’s dogs,” the man said. He wore a blood-streaked apron and a crooked smile. “These fellows put them to shame.”
He dropped the pull-rope of the bell he’d been clanging, and turned to throw chunks of raw meat to the slavering, solemn-eyed hounds. Watching them tear into their meal, I agreed, though I’d not expected to see dogs in a hospital setting. We stood on the flagstone patio outside the patient’s lounge, the French doors open so I could hear the sporadic tap of a ping pong ball from inside.
It’s true that the standards of cleanliness need not apply as strenuously to a mental hospital as to one where the patients’ diseases are spread by germs, and their protective skins pierced by needle and scalpel. Still, it struck me as odd and that’s why I begin my story
