The Gift of Pets: Stories Only a Vet Could Tell (6 page)

The ride was enjoyed in silence, both of us breathing in the sweet fresh air from the windows we had left cracked to the icy air. I was still recovering from the olfactory onslaught, and frankly, Dr. Boyd was still pretty ripe. From the way he looked at me, I suspected he felt the same about me. As we neared our destination, he turned to address me.

“Just so you know, this farmer is a bit unique.”

“Oh yeah? In what way?”

“Well, among Minnesota Lutherans, he’s particularly devout. I always am careful to mind my P’s and Q’s when I’m on his farm. He’s one of the few farmers I know who calls cow manure, manure. So watch yourself here.”

“Dr. Boyd, have you ever heard me swear?”

“No, I haven’t, but this is not the place to start.”

Once on the farm, we loaded the ubiquitous stainless-steel bucket with supplies. Included among them were two or three of the brown glass bottles that I was accustomed to cleaning and sterilizing at the office. I had not known what their use was, and I was pleased to think I might find out. We then followed the farmer into the barn.

It was clear immediately which of the many cows in the barn was our patient. While most of them were standing in their stanchions, absentmindedly chewing on wisps of hay, one heifer was lying flat out on her side, her fanny hanging over the gutter. Her breathing was shallow and her sides intermittently quivered with involuntary spasms that shuddered from her nose to her tail. She was clearly very close to calving, her huge abdomen bloated beyond belief.

Dr. Boyd knelt beside her and listened to her heart with his stethoscope while at the same time feeling the pulse in her carotid artery. The cow’s eye followed him as he moved around her, though she was unable to move her neck to do so. He then turned his attention to her distended abdomen. Placing his clenched fist against her side, he pushed it deep into her belly, feeling the full-term calf bump up against it. I could see the cow’s side move as the calf responded to this insult. At least the calf was still alive, even if its mother appeared too far gone to save.

Dr. Boyd positioned me at the cow’s head and gave me a dose of liquid in a one-liter amber bottle to which he had attached a long section of sterile plastic tubing. I watched as he slipped a needle the size of a sixpenny nail into the cow’s jugular vein. He gave me instructions to hold the bottle up at shoulder height as the fluid flowed through the tubing and into the dying cow.

“That’s a calcium solution to replace this cow’s calcium deficits. It usually works pretty quickly and it’s almost a miracle. If it goes in too quickly, though, there can be some effects on the heart rhythm. So I’ll listen for a bit while it flows. If I tell you to slow it down, hold the bottle lower; hold it higher if I tell you to speed it up.”

I watched as he listened through the stethoscope to the cow’s heart, directing the speed of calcium flow by positioning the height of the bottle. I was the orchestra, he the maestro. But it was a symphony only he could hear. He and the cow—who appeared to be feeling better already—I presume. Abruptly, he got up from kneeling beside the cow and began to strip the clothing from his upper body, exposing a large but powerful pearly white Minnesota chest and belly.

“Milk fever completely paralyzes the muscles in a cow. It leaves both the voluntary muscles and the involuntary muscles useless. This cow is ready to calve, but she can have no contractions with her calcium so low. This is actually helpful for me now because I can feel the position of the calf and turn it if necessary without fighting against the labor contractions. Uterine contractions can squeeze the heck out of your arm.” I saw a look of horror cross his face, and he turned to the farmer.

“Pardon my French, Tom.” The farmer turned a cold, disapproving eye on him and nodded curtly.

Dr. Boyd then lubricated his right arm with a sterile lubricant and lay down on the floor behind the cow, inserting his arm up to the shoulder into her birth canal. It was an unbelievable sight for me as a junior in high school: a man with eight years of higher education stripped to the waist on the floor of a frigid Minnesota dairy barn, his body bridging the manure-filled gutter and his arm buried to the hilt inside a downed cow. The irony of it hit me as I held the calcium solution aloft.

If I still flirted with any temptations to become a dairy practitioner, that day had quashed it. This was the third in a series of career-defining calls. I resolved in my mind at that moment as I surveyed the scene before me that horse practice was my goal. What happened next, though, sealed the deal.

I could sense that as the fluid flowed into that cow’s veins, her strength was returning. At first, she was just able to lift her head and gaze behind her at the man lying in the gutter. She seemed to be as surprised as I was. Then I realized that the muscles of her tail had begun to work, and she was able finally to flick it around at the annoying occurrences at her posterior. Since it had been hanging uselessly in the manure trench for many hours, this was particularly unpleasant for Dr. Boyd, who was having his chest and back painted liberally with the stuff. I was impressed with his self-control, for he avoided using a few choice words when confronted with this indignity.

From the wincing that began to be apparent on his face, I knew that the uterus was now starting to contract, inflicting viselike squeezes on his arm. Suddenly, the cow took a particularly deep breath and bore down with a mighty grunt. Unfortunately, the uterus was not the only thing that had not contracted for a long time. The cascade of fecal matter that erupted from just below the cow’s tail was epic in proportion and force. Wave after wave of brown and green poured forth over Dr. Boyd’s shoulder and back as he lay there. It flowed down over his ear, filling it before continuing down his cheek and caking his beard. It filled the space between his glasses and his eyes, which he squinched tightly closed. His head looked like a bust over which chocolate had been poured, like a chocolate fountain at a wedding reception.

With some effort, he extracted his arm from the cow’s behind and stood, holding his breath to avoid inhaling the excreta that covered his face. First, he removed his glasses, and the dammed poo fell from his eyes to the floor. Then, using both hands, he squeegeed the poop from his face with his fingers and blew it from his nostrils with the force of a blast from a whale’s blowhole. Like a wet dog, he shook his head, sending manure in all directions, flecking my coveralls with it and leaving brown spots on the whitewashed walls of the barn some eight feet away.

I could see the color building on his torso, redness creeping toward his shoulders as he leaned down and grabbed a clean towel from the stainless-steel bucket. With it, he wiped his face clean enough so that I could appreciate the redness of the mounting fury burning on his cheeks. The frustration was intense, building second by second. I could sense it in his clenched teeth and the taut lines of his lips. With concern, I realized that his pent-up vitriol would soon erupt into a cosmic outburst, and I glanced furtively at the farmer. His cheeks were trembling and I could see mirth behind the cloak of his eyes.

Vibrations began emanating from somewhere in the neighborhood of Dr. Boyd’s liver. His great belly began to quiver with burgeoning anger, redder now than I could believe. A low, building groan started in his throat, his Adam’s apple pumping up and down like a piston. With difficulty, he kept his lips closed to prevent the predictable verbiage from spilling out. But the effort was just too much. The groan became a grunt, and the force within the human pressure cooker was reaching critical proportions. I knew he was about to let fly with an earth-shattering barrage.

“Ggggggaaa…” it began. Then I noticed his gaze turn to the farmer, whose face was set in a grimace born either of righteous indignation or overwhelming laughter. The distinction was not clear, but apparently at that moment, Dr. Boyd decided not to risk offending this longtime client. As the tectonic pressures finally overtook him, he let loose with the strongest oath he felt he could unleash in the presence of this devout Lutheran.

“Ggggg … GOLLY!”

The utter inadequacy of the expletive broke the dam of restraint in both the farmer and me, and we were rendered completely helpless by the laughter that erupted from us. We melted, weak and blathering onto our knees, roiling in belly-aching laughter. After a few seconds, I was relieved to see the lines on Dr. Boyd’s face softening, and before long he, too, was helpless with mirth. The three of us laughed for quite some time. Only a long grunt from the patient and the plopping of a healthy, squirming calf at our feet finally stopped us. It was a satisfying end to a farm call, and a typical morning in dairy practice. It was also the end of any thoughts on my part of spending my life as a cow doctor.

My Day with the Horse Vets

After the debacle with Dr. Boyd and the cattle calls, he realized that cow medicine was not in my future. Squelching his disappointment, he approached me one day during my senior year in high school with a suggestion.

“Say, Bruce, I was thinking,” he said. “I’m probably not going to get you pumped up for dairy practice, am I?”

“I just can’t see myself spending all my time with cows,” I replied.

“Your interest is in horse practice, right?”

“Yeah, horses are really my first love,” I responded. “Why do you ask?”

“I have some colleagues over in Maple Plain who have a very busy and successful equine practice. I bet they would be willing to have you join them for a day to see what a horse practitioner does. Would you be interested in that?”

“Oh yeah! That would be amazing. I’d love that!” I exclaimed.

It was several weeks before he was able to schedule my day with the horse vets, and I was impatient. Finally, the day arrived and I drove the thirty-five miles from Hutchinson to Maple Plain and located the hospital. I walked into the lobby and introduced myself to the receptionist behind the counter, who surveyed me carefully, seeming strangely confused.

“The doctors are in rounds in the back room,” she said, nodding her head in the direction of the doors behind her. “Go on back. They’re expecting you.”

With eager anticipation, I made my way to the back, where I found four men in blue coveralls sitting in a darkened room and staring intently at the X-rays of a horse’s foot on the view box. I could make out the unmistakable outline of the hoof surrounding an array of unfamiliar bones standing out in stark contrast to the darkness on the rest of the film. My entrance distracted them and they turned in unison and stared at me, seeming, if not annoyed, at least a bit surprised. None of them spoke.

“Hello,” I said tentatively. “I’m Bruce.”

Still they stared at me silently, taking me in from my head to my leather boots. I was arrayed, as they were, in the blue coveralls that Dr. Boyd had purchased for me to go on farm calls. I thought I looked like quite the professional.

“Dr. Boyd worked it out for me to ride with one of you guys?”

“Oh yeah, now I remember,” the oldest of the men said, breaking into a smile and offering his hand for a firm shake. “I’m Dr. Evers, the senior partner in this practice. And this is Dr. Conner, Dr. Vick, and Dr. Carroll.”

I shook each man’s hand as he was introduced to me, honored beyond measure at their apparent pleasure to meet me. The pleasure, though, was all mine.

“Virgil said you are interested in horse practice,” Dr. Evers said. “Is that right?”

“Yes, sir, I am. I’ve wanted to be an equine vet for as long as I can remember.”

This seemed to resonate with the group. I was enormously impressed by the four professionals in the room, who were doing exactly what I envisioned myself doing one day. But that was still a long way off. A minimum of eight and a half years of additional schooling stretched interminably ahead of me before I would be qualified to sit in their seats. They turned back to the case they were discussing but took the time to bring me up to speed on the details.

“This is a five-year-old Thoroughbred gelding that has a non-weight-bearing lameness on the right front,” Dr. Evers said, recapping. He was obviously the attending clinician on this case. “This horse belongs to a woman who does dressage with him. He’s her best hope for the show circuit this season, so she’s pretty motivated to get this problem taken care of.”

“I see,” I responded with as much confidence as I could muster, surrounded as I was by men whom I so admired.

“What year are you in school, Bruce?”

“I’m a senior,” I replied proudly. “I graduate this year!”

Dr. Evers nodded his head and turned again to the X-rays. The room quieted and I could sense that a change had set in among the men.

“So take a look at the X-rays and tell me what’s causing the lameness in this horse.”

I felt my face begin to redden in the darkness. I wanted so badly to impress them with my prodigious horse knowledge, gained from years of reading outdated issues of
Western Horseman
magazine and my two summers as a camp wrangler. But nothing so far had prepared me for this grilling by four seasoned medical professionals.

“I don’t know,” I said flatly, embarrassed by my ignorance. I saw a wave of disbelief wash over the group. Looks of helplessness flashed on their faces as they exchanged glances. Dr. Evers raised his eyebrows and sighed heavily before continuing the questioning.

“We don’t mean to put you on the spot. But can you come up with a list of differentials for a non-weight-bearing lameness in a five-year-old horse?” The room went silent again. I could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall. The four men waited for my response.

“Well, I guess he could have a broken leg,” I offered weakly. The silence in the room was in stark contrast to the ringing in my ears. I was glad the lights were low, so they would not see the blushing of my face deepen.

“Anything else?”

“Maybe an abscess?” I added hesitantly. Dr. Evers nodded sternly. I continued: “Or he might have foundered. Or maybe there’s a nail or something that punctured the sole.”