Caroline lets him in and brings him right into the bedroom. ‘Thank you for coming so quickly. Look at how badly he’s still suffering!’

Wagner has a bag with him, which he puts down next to me. ‘Hmm, let’s have a look and see what we can do about this.’

He sits down on the floor beside me and grabs a kind of thick pen from his bag. He aims it directly at my eyes, and a bright beam of light blinds me.

‘Pupil reflexes are normal.’ He gets up again. ‘It doesn’t look as though Hercules has just had an epileptic seizure. If that were the case, his pupils would be dilated and would not contract when the light hits them. We could make sure with an EEG, but I don’t think that’s necessary. Whatever Hercules had, it seems to have been something else. But I have an idea.’

He rummages around in his bag again, then takes out a metal thing with two cords and a kind of pliers, and sits back down next to me. He sticks the pliers into his ears, and puts the metal thing on my chest. He seems to be listening for something.

‘Nope, his heart also sounds perfectly normal. His heart rhythm seems to be completely unaffected.’ He pulls the thing back out of his ears. ‘Irregular heartbeats can also bring on seizures. You see, an irregular heartbeat can lead to a drop in blood pressure in the brain and a loss of consciousness with convulsions can result.’ He strokes me. ‘I realize the seizure is already over, of course, but generally it takes a while until the rhythm is completely back to normal. Hercules, just what are you up to?’

Caroline studies me with a worried look on her face. ‘Maybe he has some other kind of bad disease?’

Caroline’s voice sounds so nervous that I decide to be totally healthy again. I don’t want to overdo this whole thing, so I stand up and shake myself off.

‘Ms Neumann, the way Hercules looks now, he seems completely healthy to me. Of course we can examine him from head to toe next week at my surgery, but something tells me that there is no health problem here. Call it my veterinarian instinct if you like, but I think Hercules is not doing as badly as we think. You’re probably worrying over nothing at all.’

Grrr, you traitor – stop talking like that! Caroline would certainly be angry if she realized that all this was only for show. I decide to put the seizure act on ice. I think Wagner is already too hot on my trail.

‘But didn’t you say you know the breeder Hercules came from? It would certainly ease my mind if you were to look into that.’