Vet on the Loose (12 page)

I
f I ever had to make a choice between all the domestic animals, what I would least like to be is a sheep. Although there are some notable exceptions, in
general
sheep tend to fare much less favourably than their bovine counterparts due to their considerably lesser
individual
value. And whenever market prices fall, things only get worse.

The first spring that I spent working in Riverdale
Veterinary
Clinic with Seamus and Arthur, things were
particularly
hard. Armed with an academic knowledge of sheep medicine and, to a lesser extent, of sheep surgery, I
prepared
myself for the onslaught of the lambing season – only to be disappointed. In a climate where the subsidy was worth more than the animal which, in turn, was worth less than the cost of a vet’s visit, I found that my sheep experience remained scanty. There has to be something wrong with any system where it is more economically viable to let an animal ‘take its chances’ rather than help it along the way. At times it was sickening, especially in some of the bigger yards, to see animals in need of
attention
that they were never going to get.

Generally speaking, vets were only called in for flock health problems. Even in these cases, the problem often related back to economic issues. Basic husbandry tasks which previously would have been diligently carried out by any self-respecting stockman, were now being ignored in the hope of saving a few cent from the ever-narrowing margins. The wet winter that accompanied my arrival on the agricultural scene only exacerbated the problem.

In one such case, I was faced with a flock of ewes which was due to lamb. The farmer had noticed that they were losing condition, but several had died before a visit was deemed necessary. As the farmer herded them in, I couldn’t help noticing what an unhealthy flock they were. Despite the short distance travelled, they were already quite out of breath by the time they made it to the holding pen. Even from my vantage point, I could clearly make out the classic jowl oedema in quite a few of them. I cornered one of the worst-looking ewes to examine the mucous membranes in her mouth which were pale, as I expected. The sunken eyes and the bony frame said it all.

‘They have fluke,’ I said to Brendan, the farmer, as he arrived with his last batch. ‘Have they been dosed for it this year?’

‘No, I didn’t do them at all, to be honest. With the bad prices last year, and the cost of the drenches, I let it go. I don’t see how it could be fluke all the same. My family are farming this spot for generations and we’ve never had an outbreak that I remember.’

I had to carry out a post-mortem examination on one of the ewes to convince him. The tracts in the liver were indisputable, as were the leaf-like adult fluke.

‘Well, I’m amazed!’ he said. ‘I’ve never come across the likes of it before.’

‘You’re not the only one to be caught out this year,’ I assured him. ‘The combination of the wet weather and farmers having to cut back on dosing has done a lot of damage.’

He gloomily reported to me the next time I saw him that he had lost a few more, despite the treatment. I wasn’t
surprised
– the advanced state of the disease in his flock was more than modern medicine could cure.

As a student, I had spent a few Easter holidays working on sheep farms in preparation for the years ahead. I think I lambed more ewes as a student than I have done to this day as a qualified vet. I had really enjoyed the work while still in college but once I qualified, it all changed. Most farmers were fairly handy at the job themselves, so the cases we saw were the real no-hopers; the ones when all else had failed.

After a while, it got so bad that I couldn’t face eating lamb anymore. The stench of dead, decomposing lambs has a tendency to cling to you no matter what attempts you make to remove it.

The other problem with sheep was that they were so unpredictable. With my limited experience, I found it hard to say which ones would live and which would die.
Obviously
, the farmers could not afford to pay for treatment for a hopeless case, but on more than one occasion, the sheep had me well fooled. The only thing that was certain about them was that, despite their outward tough appearance, they didn’t tolerate rough handling.

*  *  *

On the way home for dinner one evening, I wasn’t
overjoyed
to get a call to Paul Richardson’s yard to lamb a
pedigree
ewe. I had attended calls in Paul’s yard on a couple of occasions and knew instantly that there was trouble ahead.

When I arrived in the yard, one look at the collapsed, panting ewe in the corner confirmed my suspicion. I didn’t bother with the usual trivialities. I knew they would be wasted on this particular client.

‘How long had she been lambing, Paul?’ I asked, barely able to conceal my disgust.

‘Ah, not long now. Not long at all,’ he assured me.

‘Since early morning at least by the look of her,’ I retorted, cutting him off.

‘Ah, well now, I wouldn’t say that at all.’

A quick feel inside the ewe confirmed it all: her cervix was tight, only just allowing me to place the tips of my
fingers
in through it. Ringwomb is a common condition where despite advanced labour the cervix doesn’t dilate, preventing any further progress. At the bottom of the cervix, I could feel the torn tissues where Paul had obviously forced a rough hand through the narrow
passageway
. Inside, the womb was dry and sticky, as all the fluids had long since drained away. By the look of the ewe, she had had about as much hardship as she could take. I knew that no matter what happened, Paul would blame me. It wouldn’t for one minute occur to him that his own fumbling around inside her, tearing her with his rough hands and leaving it until the last possible minute to call a vet, could have anything to do with it.

Sadly, caesarean sections, so commonplace in cattle, are less frequently carried out in sheep as the cost of the
surgery
would often be greater than the value of the
unfortunate
ewe, especially in a case like this where her breeding potential would now be compromised.

‘She’s in a bad way, Paul. She’s torn inside and the lamb is long dead. I don’t know if she’ll even pull through
herself
. Maybe it would be better to put her to sleep now.’

‘Ah, now,’ he said dismissively, ‘there’s not that much astray with her. Sure, ’tis only a small little lamb in her. I had a quick feel myself, you know, and I’d have had it out in no time only I’d to go off to get a puncture fixed on the tractor.’

‘Right so, that’s fine then,’ I replied coldly as I stood up, pulled off my long lambing gloves and climbed out over the pen. I’d had enough of treating his animals, only ever being called in when he had messed around with them so much that the case was hopeless.

‘Can I get you anything?’ he asked, sounding a little bewildered as I made my way back to the jeep. ‘I have the bucket of water ready for you.’

‘No thanks. I don’t need anything here.’

‘But where are you going?’ He was beginning to look anxious as I opened the jeep door.

‘Well,’ I replied, ‘as you said, you’d have got the lamb out yourself anyway so there’s not much point in your wasting good money on me doing it, is there?’

His face dropped in horror as I moved Slug off the driver’s seat to get in. ‘Ah, don’t be like that, Gillian. Sure, as you’re here now, you might as well finish the job off.’

‘Not at all. I’ll leave it in your capable hands. I’m off to get my dinner.’

‘Well, to be honest I’d rather you did it yourself, you know,’ he said lamely, trying to avoid eye contact.

‘Oh I’m sorry, I must have misunderstood you. I thought you said you could do it yourself.’

With the help of an epidural, I managed to remove the twin lambs through the cervix that Paul had already ripped open. The two lifeless forms were of no use to the ewe as she lay panting miserably in the straw bed. I administered the usual antibiotics and painkillers and left instructions for the next day.

‘You could have had two good pedigree lambs there and probably saved the ewe as well if you’d called us earlier,’ I reminded Paul as I left the yard, knowing that I was wasting my time.

*  *  *

My dinner never materialised that evening as I had to go straight back down to the small-animal surgery. A large queue had gathered by the time I arrived, comprising a selection of cats and dogs suffering from a variety of the usual ailments and a trailer with a ewe inside.

I got through the small animals as quickly as I could, but it was still a fair while before I was able to attend to the ewe. From the surgery door I could smell a putrid, rotting lamb. I was suddenly glad that I hadn’t made it for dinner.

‘Well, Freddie, you can smell this one a mile off.’

At least Freddie was one of our nicer farmers. ‘I know, I feel a bit bad about her. I was off spreading fertiliser for the day. I’d only one or two ewes left to lamb and I thought I’d get away with it but it looks like it’s too late for this one.’

Freddie was far from being a wealthy farmer but he would never skimp on veterinary attention, no matter how much it ate into his slender pocket. As I looked at the ewe, I knew that he was one of the few that would have brought her in to be treated. She looked like it might be a complete waste of time. My initial reaction was to put her down but, looking at Freddie’s concerned face, I decided that if he could make the effort, so could I.

I layered myself with a few gloves before putting a hand into her, knowing the smell would penetrate anyway. My stomach heaved as a trickle of putrid fluid was evacuated by my hand. I shook my head at him as I came up against yet another case of ringwomb. I could only get three
fingers
inside.

‘You’re out of luck, Freddie. It’s another ringwomb. You’ve been really plagued with them this year, haven’t you?’

‘You’re not wrong there. I think this is the seventh. Is there any chance you could do a caesarean on her?’

‘Not a hope! Those lambs are dead a long time and the infection from her womb would surely kill her.’

With my three fingers, I could just about feel a tiny jaw bone. It came away in my hand as I pulled at it. ‘That’s how rotten the lambs are.’

The ewe hung her head miserably as I stood up, ready to fill a syringe and put her out of her misery, but Freddie was reluctant. ‘She’s got this far. Is there nothing at all you can do?’

‘Well, I just might be able to remove the lambs in pieces as they’re so rotten, but she’s had a lot of hardship. Sheep really don’t tolerate too much.’

‘Don’t I know only too well. But can you try?’

The smell was overpowering as I painstakingly extracted the tiny corpses, piece by piece, through the narrow opening. My hands were numb as I carefully pulled out the tiny bones, trying not to tear the ewe’s
delicate
passage. Eventually, I could feel no more and I ran a tube into her womb to irrigate it with an antiseptic
solution
. Thanks to the epidural injection I had given her at the start, the ewe felt nothing throughout. I injected antibiotics and painkillers but despite my efforts, I didn’t hold out much hope for her.

The next morning, having slept with the windows open to try to dilute the noxious vapours, I woke, as usual, to the ringing of the phone.

‘Hope I didn’t get you out of bed,’ said a cocky voice that I instantly recognised.

‘Good morning, Paul. What’s the problem?’

‘Just thought you should know. That ewe died in the night. A good pedigree she was too.’

‘Well, if you remember, I told you she would die as you had left her so long before you called us. And, by the way, in future, please call the office number if you have to. My mobile is for emergencies only.’ I didn’t bother to wait for a reply.

Seconds later it rang again. The ignorance of him, I thought indignantly.

‘What’s the problem now?’ I demanded.

‘Oh … em … sorry, Gillian. I know it’s a bit early to ring you.’

‘No, not at all,’ I replied, embarrassed as I recognised Freddie’s contrite tone. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Oh, nothing at all, thanks. You’ve done enough already. It’s just that I thought you’d be interested to know that that ewe is up and looking bright as a button this morning. Cleared her bucket and everything. Thanks again for all your trouble.’

Oh well, I thought to myself. Sometimes it’s nice to be wrong.

I
had always vowed that I would never work with a hangover. This resolution stemmed from a morning ‘seeing practice’ as a student after a particularly rough night. I had gone down to the practice feeling absolutely fine, though a little bit tired. It was only about two hours later that the hangover really started to kick in. Being driven around in a car over the rough country roads was doing nothing for me and when the vet stopped off at a small shop and returned with two ‘thirty percent extra free’ bottles of Lucozade, I realised that I must have looked as green as I felt. The Lucozade was quickly soaked up by my parched body and I began to feel a bit more human as we pulled into a well-known racing yard to vet a horse. My job as dogsbody was to trot the horse up and down along the level surface to allow the vet to examine the horse for any signs of lameness. It was only when I started to run
alongside
the highly-bred animal that I noticed that my legs didn’t seem to be in any way connected to my brain. It wasn’t until my head hit the hard surface that I realised I had managed to stumble over one of the thoroughbred’s hooves. He trotted on gaily without me.

‘He must be crooked!’ I exclaimed, before dragging myself off the ground. I made my way back to the car
without
another word and refused to get out of it again until we returned to the practice that evening. If I got slagged by my colleague, his humour was wasted on me as I lay slumped in the passenger seat, vowing never to go to work with a hangover again.

However, despite sticking to this wise resolution, there came the day when I felt worse than I ever had with any hangover and without so much as a drink taken. In
college
, or while seeing practice, it was quite acceptable to miss the odd day if you were sick and crawl back in under the duvet until the world was a better place. However, when you were part of a busy mixed practice at the height of spring, that just wasn’t an option, except in the most extreme cases. The week had started with Seamus having a bad dose of flu. I felt sorry for him when he came into the surgery on the Monday morning, looking worse than any potential patient. The phones kept ringing though, and he slogged on through the day, only heading off to bed after seven that evening, when I offered to cover the night-calls for him. By Wednesday, it was Arthur’s turn and he coughed and spluttered but gallantly continued through the day too, treating sick calves and calving cows. By Thursday night, I was back on call again and feeling somewhat proud of myself that I had managed to avoid catching the dose.

I had to admit that I felt a little tired and drained, but that was just from trying to cover the extra workload as Seamus and Arthur, being sick, weren’t up to their normal pace. Usually it was I who was the slow one.

Donal poured me a hot whiskey going to bed and I felt quite sure that I would be fine in the morning. But nature had other plans for me.

Three-thirty am saw me heading back down the road in the direction of Jack Duggan’s yard: ‘An old suckler cow calving with a head stuck out and making no progress,’ he informed me in his dour monotone when he rang.

The case was hopeless. The calf was long dead and the only option was to cut up the calf inside the cow to remove it in pieces. Either that or put the cow down, there and then. Jack opted for the former: ‘Ye might as well do something useful now that ye’r here,’ he told me, as though I had nothing better to be doing at that hour of the night.

It was after five by the time I was back in the jeep, headed for home. Every joint in my body ached with the desperate tiredness that comes with unexpected,
unrewarding
physical labour at that hour of the night.

I shivered violently despite the car heater being on full blast, while Slug panted all the way home. I crept back into bed with my fleece over my pyjamas, hoping not to wake Donal as I knew he had an early start in the morning. Eventually, I nodded off to sleep, fully enveloped in two thick duvets.

It seemed like only minutes had passed when I was rudely interrupted by the shrill ringing of the alarm clock. Donal had left for work over an hour before and I hadn’t even realised it. I lay there for a while, my body a leaden weight. With great difficulty I got up. My hands shook as I fiddled with my shirt buttons and, despite the heaviest fleece, I still felt frozen to the core. I tried to swallow a few mouthfuls of hot tea but gave up with the sharp, rasping pains that ripped at my throat with every gulp. I added two Panadol to the next mouthful and chucked the remainder down the sink. As I made my way out to the car, a racking cough took over my body and I doubled over, gasping for breath. I had got a few miles down the road before I noticed the pounding in my head and the waves of nausea that washed over me. I pulled in to check the day book. It hadn’t even occurred to me to look at it to see where I was supposed to go.

‘McDonald’s: test 120 cattle (with blood test).’ The
figures
seemed to dance around the page as they mocked me. I started to sweat. My hand trembled as I dialled the office number. Niamh answered after the usual three rings.

‘McDonald’s. Herd test. Where is it?’ I asked her.

‘Oh, hi, Gillian!’ she answered, not seeming not to notice my unusually abrupt manner. ‘He’s in Knockabawn. Just go past the cemetery on the left-hand side, up the hill, turn left at the new buildings and he’s on the right-hand side, next door to the red cottage.’

It was some time before I realised I was still holding the phone to my ear.

‘Are you okay?’ asked a voice in the distance. ‘You sound a million miles away.’

‘I wish I was,’ I whispered forlornly as I hung up.

Much and all as I would love to ‘ring in sick’, there was just too much work to be done by too few vets at that time of year.

In a daze, I made my way to the farm. I stopped off briefly for a bottle of Lucozade but it was no good. My
jellied
hands couldn’t open the seal on the glowing bottle. I resolved again to write to the manufacturers to complain. Why are so many drinks so hard to open just when you need them most?

Jim McDonald, the stockman, seemed a friendly sort as I half-heartedly introduced myself.

‘You’re very welcome to the area!’ he roared, vigorously pumping my frail hand up and down. I was surprised it didn’t fall off.

‘I hope you’re feeling fit this morning,’ he continued enthusiastically. ‘I’m afraid Kevin that normally works with us is laid up with a bad bout of ’flu.’

I bet he didn’t feel as bad as I did; I didn’t even have the energy to explain.

‘But don’t worry,’ he continued, ‘I’ve set the crush up well. We won’t have any bother getting the cattle through it.’

Where had I heard those words before?

‘Which do you want to start with first?’ he enquired kindly. ‘The cows or the calves?’

He seemed a bit surprised by my subdued answer.

‘Whichever will be quieter.’

‘I suppose we’ll get the cows out of the way first so.’ He was beginning to look at me strangely but, in my weakened state, I was past caring.

He was true to his word when he said that he had set up the pens well. Instead of the usual single gate running the cattle into the crush, Jim had ingeniously fixed one gate on top of another. No beast, no matter how highly strung, would manage to scale that barrier. But there was only one problem – it meant that
I
would have to get over it.

As we ran each batch of six cows into the crush, I had to climb in and out over the double barrier. With shaking limbs, I hauled myself up over the swaying obstacle, head spinning, cattle roaring, my targets looming in and out of focus. Despite the physical nature of the work, shivering spasms wracked my body in contrast to the beads of sweat that broke out on my brow. After a while, Jim seemed to sense my reluctance to make conversation. He must have thought I was an unfriendly type.

It seemed to go on forever as I wrote down tag
numbers
, breed, age and skin measurements, and then
carefully
clipped and injected each animal. For the first time, a job that had hitherto seemed fairly effortless, now required immense concentration on my part in order to insert the needle into the thick skin and feel for the bleb of
tuberculin
after each injection. Every female over twelve months of age also had to be blood-tested. After I had made two or three laborious attempts at hauling up the swishing tails, Jim, obviously beginning to wonder at my choice of career, stepped in and wordlessly lifted each tail for me. With a fleeting glimpse of hope, I thought that perhaps I could put off doing the blood tests until the day of the reading, but then realised that I had another large herd test booked in for the Monday when I would have to read this test – I wouldn’t have time to do both. There was nothing for it but to carry on.

It seemed to go on forever, but finally the last two cattle ran into the crush, anxious to follow their comrades.

‘I’ll just run the cows back into the field, but you sit down there. You don’t look the best, at all,’ said Jim
sympathetically
and he headed off with his noisy crew of cattle. I slumped down thankfully on a bale of straw.

If I had thought the cows were bad, the calves defeated me altogether – running up and down the crush in twos and threes, bawling, roaring, disappearing out under the bottom bars. I had to stop and hold on to the edges of the crush every now and again to stop my head spinning as I bent over the shaggy creatures. I laboured methodically to inject each calf, with long pauses in between as I waited for each bucking beast to stand still long enough for me to carry out the procedure effectively, knowing full well that I would not have the mental acumen to hit a moving target under the circumstances. The renewed physical exertion brought on fresh bouts of coughing which seemed like they would never end.

Twice, the testing gun fell out of my hand and I stood staring stupidly as it quickly disappeared into the muck. Each time Jim retrieved it, washed it thoroughly and
delicately
handed it back to me. Rows of figures, noting breed and tag number and skin measurements, merged into a blur. By now, I could no longer summon the energy to help Jim fill the crush: I knew that gate would defeat me. Between each batch, I returned to collapse on my bale and waited until Jim called out to me, ‘Ready for you now!’ When we had finished the last batch I didn’t even notice and I sat stupidly on my bale, too tired to care.

‘I’m sure we could find a few more for you to do if you wanted, but that’s all ours done anyway!’ Jim joked.

I smiled wanly back at him.

‘Come in for a cup of tea. You look like you could use one.’

In the warm kitchen, I eyed the cup of steaming tea
cautiously
, wondering if the razors in my throat would allow me to swallow it. Mrs McDonald, Jim’s elderly mother,
tut-tutted
in the corner as she eyed me solicitously.

‘Lord above, Jim! Can you not see the girl is sick? I always knew veterinary was no job for a woman. Look at the state of her. She’s just about worn out. Sure, she’s only a scrap of a thing!’

I towered at least a foot and a half over her hunched body but I was too weak to argue.

‘Eat up now and get your strength back,’ she said setting out a dish of sausages, rashers, eggs and fried bread before me. It was the sort of meal I would usually have devoured with relish but today I just couldn’t do it justice. Luckily, Jacko, the little brown and white house dog, had discreetly placed himself under the table beside me and silently took care of most of the sausages and rashers that I smuggled to him from my plate.

Jim saw me off. I tried to hold some sort of a
conversation
with him as he helped me to carry my blood boxes back to the car.

‘Sorry we were a bit slow getting started this morning. Hopefully I’ll have thrown off this dose by Monday for the reading. We’ll get through them in no time at all.’

‘Don’t you worry about it. I know it’s tough work on a lassie like yourself.’

I cringed inwardly but couldn’t dispute the fact that the procedure had taken over an hour longer than normal.

Somehow, I got through the rest of the day and was thankfully able to finish up early.

‘Don’t even think of going in tomorrow,’ Donal warned me when I dragged myself in the door that evening.

That night and the next, I sweated and shivered and ached and coughed, while Slug kept anxious watch over me from my bedside.

We had planned to go out for a meal with some friends on the Saturday night but, instead, ended up sitting by the fire while Donal squeezed bag after bag of oranges and lemons, adding in a generous measure of honey and
whiskey
each time.

By Monday morning, I was well on the road to recovery but slightly embarrassed about having to face Jim again. Hopefully, I would be able to convince him that I wasn’t totally anti-social and that, under normal circumstances, I was quite capable of carrying out my job.

But there was one problem. My day book reminded me: read McDonald’s test. But where on earth did they live? I had absolutely no recollection of how I had got there the first day. Hard as I tried, I just couldn’t recall any details of the journey. I tried to imagine myself driving around
various
parts of Wicklow, hoping to jog my memory, but it was useless. In desperation, I rang Donal to see if I had mentioned to him where I had been.

‘No, you didn’t,’ he replied. ‘Remember, you weren’t able to talk when you got home!’

I had two options: to ring Jim, who already must be thinking that I was a bit dim, or to call the office again. I thought about it for a while and then decided on Jim. I
figured
that he had already made his mind up that I was
useless
anyway and that I’d nothing more to lose.

‘Hi Jim. Gillian, the vet, here. Just ringing about this morning’s reading.’ I tried to sound professional.

‘Gillian, how are you? No problem at all here – we’re all set up for you and Kevin is back in action so you won’t have to do any of the heavy work.’