Vet on the Loose (17 page)

A
nd then there were the glorious days; the days that you replayed over and over again in your mind to convince yourself that, one day, you just might become a worthy member of the veterinary profession, after all. The fact that the success was due to a combination of good fortune and being in the right place at the right time, became totally irrelevant.

It didn’t seem like it was shaping up to be one of those days when I stepped out of the shower that morning to find eleven missed calls on the phone. I pulled a towel around me before listening to a garbled message about a bleeding horse, collapsed in a stable. As is often the case in an emergency, the owner of the voice had neglected to leave me such vaguely useful information as his name or telephone number. I was briefly grateful to Eircom as I hit the last-caller button. The phone was answered on the first ring.

‘He’s down in the box and there’s blood everywhere and he’s in an awful bad way. How soon can you get here?’

I patiently extracted the relevant information as I wondered if I had by any chance missed the opening part of the conversation.

I felt out of breath myself by the time I hung up but I still wasn’t terribly concerned. A bleeding horse invariably looks worse than it really is to an owner and I felt confident enough about having to deal with a simple stitch-up job. I mentally prepared myself for the soothing talk with the client, the carefully administered sedative to the trembling horse, the thorough flushing of the injury, and I was almost congratulating myself on the neat row of sutures by the time I pulled into the yard. Stepping out of the jeep, I pulled on a warm jacket as, seemingly overnight, summer had given way to autumn and the ground was covered in a crisp frost.

Owen O’Malley was a hefty man and he looked all of his eighteen stone as he puffed down from the stables to meet me.

‘I thought you’d got lost,’ he said. ‘Archie is out of a Clover Hill mare. He won the heavy hunter class in the RDS this year and I’ve a good buyer waiting for him as soon as he passes the vet. No chance of that now – even if you can save him,’ he added ominously.

I tried not to look smug as I followed him up the uneven ground to the row of immaculate loose-boxes, anticipating how good I was going to look when Archie was sound and ready for sale in a week’s time. But my confidence quickly evaporated as the narrow ray of light that illuminated the dark box revealed a handsome hunter lying pathetically on the fresh bed of straw. Before I could stop him, Owen went in and grabbed hold of the head-collar.

‘Get up, Archie. Come on, get up,’ he implored the horse, pulling until the horse’s head and neck were up off the ground. As soon as he let the head-collar go, Archie slumped lifelessly back on to the straw.

An ice-cold shudder shot up my spine as I realised this was no ordinary cut horse. Without realising that I was holding my breath, I followed the fresh blood on the straw to the site of the wound and then stopped, perplexed. A ragged gash was visible, just above the fetlock, under a mass of blood-stained hair, but things just didn’t add up. The cut, while significant in its own way, could not possibly account for the animal’s collapsed state. For once, my old college lecturer’s much repeated addendum of ‘common things are common’ just didn’t ring true.

As is usual when I have absolutely no idea what to say, I busied myself with a careful examination of the heart and lungs to give me some time to think.

‘He must have bled all night,’ said Owen, interrupting my frenzied thought. ‘I found him up the top field and he was so weak that I only just about managed to get him down to the box before he collapsed on me. There can’t be any blood left in him, at all.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong, Owen,’ I replied, feeling as though my voice was coming from a long distance away. ‘It’s not a bad cut at all and that amount of blood loss shouldn’t worry a cat never mind a great big animal like him. And look at this!’ I exclaimed, as I pulled up Archie’s top lip to reveal a congested, mucky-looking mucous membrane. ‘There’s more going on here than just a simple cut, Owen. I just don’t know what to make of him. I really don’t know.’

‘Do you think you can stitch him then?’ he replied, completely missing the point. I carefully auscultated the abdomen, listening expectantly for the intermittent grumbling and trickling that would assure me all was well. I tapped carefully on the head of the stethoscope, thinking it wasn’t working right, as all I could hear was the dull, sluggish leaking of an unenthusiastic gut. Not your usual colic, I thought to myself, but a sure sign that something was amiss. I leaned up against the wall of the stable, with my hands to my head, wondering what on earth was going on, and stared blankly at the limp animal. His shallow, measured breathing was definitely not that of the typical colicky horse, which would be writhing and thrashing in pain.

I stood there for God knows how long, gazing cluelessly into the horse’s glazed eye. As I watched, he carelessly stretched his neck and pulled out a wisp of hay from the pile that lay in the corner of the box. The silence was broken only by his methodical chomping. I was puzzled. How could an animal, so obviously ill, be interested in food? And that was when it started to come to me, like a light beginning to dawn on a far horizon. Somewhere in the recesses of my brain I recalled a similar situation – a lifeless horse but with the same wistful chewing of hay. And looking back to my patient, I could see there were other similarities. Archie was not in any pain. In fact, if I were to hazard a guess, I would go so far as to say he was quite relaxed. In fact, even a bit mellow. I stared at the vacant expression on the horse, noted again his regular, shallow breathing and looked back at the mucky colour of his membranes, and then in one fantastic instant, it all made sense.

‘Owen,’ I said, ‘the field you took him out of. Were there any wild mushrooms in it?’

Many years previously, while ‘seeing practice’, the vet I had been accompanying had come across a case on a frosty October morning where two horses were found stretched out in a field, unable to rise and obviously dying, but with no obvious cause. Although, at the time, I had no idea quite what was going on, I vividly remembered the day spent in vain, sending off samples for analysis and treating the horses symptomatically until the next morning when they both gave up the battle and died. As far as I knew, the real cause of death was never confirmed by any laboratory but a similar spate of cases had occurred within the same week, and all within a clearly defined area. The only logical explanation was that, following specific seasonal conditions, a certain type of mushroom had grown and, after the short spell of frost which always preceded these cases, the mushroom in question became palatable to horses. This then gave rise to multiple cases, over a couple of days, of what was assumed to be mushroom poisoning. All through my college years I tried to find out more about this condition, but not once did I come across a single reference to it. Now, here I was, working in the same area where those cases had occurred and I was fully convinced that what I was dealing with was indeed a case of mushroom poisoning.

Despite my enthusiasm at having stumbled across such an obscure case, Owen remained sceptical as I gave him a garbled explanation of my diagnosis.

‘And are you sure it’s not all the blood he lost from the cut that has him so weak in himself?’ he asked dubiously.

‘Absolutely sure!’ I replied. ‘I know it sounds crazy, but even though it’s years since I saw it, the look in his eyes is so characteristic that I’m sure this is what we’re dealing with. The cut is incidental. He probably did it staggering around the field.’

My heart missed a beat as Owen, sounding a lot happier than he had up to now, asked the next question.

‘Well, now that we know what we’re dealing with, how do we cure him?’

‘I’m afraid it’s not that simple at all,’ I replied slowly. ‘In the cases I heard about – eight in all – most of them died and, of the ones that recovered, one had to be put down a year later because of chronic kidney failure. There is no antidote and, even with intensive treatment, these cases seem to be fairly hopeless. I’m sorry, Owen, but it’s not looking good for him.’ I watched in silence as he tried to take in what I was saying.

I tried desperately to come up with a solution. ‘I’ll tell you what, if we get him into a box, I can refer him to one of the equine hospitals as he’s such a valuable horse, and see what they can do,’ I began, rapidly warming to the idea of washing my hands of a case that I knew was out of my league. However, that idea didn’t last long as I rang one after another of the top hospitals who all suggested euthanasia, although some were slightly sceptical about my diagnosis.

‘And have you treated horses at all yourself before, or is it just the small animals you’re used to?’ asked one of the specialists to whom I spoke.

I didn’t bother to reply.

‘Is there really nothing to be done?’ asked Owen as I relayed the messages back to him.

I stood looking at the powerful hunter, lying prostrate in the box, gazing stupidly into space and I, no more than Owen, could not stomach the idea of putting an end to him without a fight.

‘Well,’ I began hesitantly, ‘I don’t like to throw good money after bad, but if you really want, we can try to keep him going and see if he can clear the poison.’ My voice trailed off, knowing that what I was suggesting was ludicrous, but Owen instantly jumped at the idea.

‘That’s what I was hoping you would say. I don’t like pushing you into it but, to be honest, I’d rather you treat him than any of those hospitals. I reckon if you’re good enough to know what’s wrong with Archie, you’re good enough to save him.’

Instantly, I regretted my suggestion, but once Owen had got the idea into his head, there was no going back and, before I knew it, I was down on my knees infusing litre after litre of saline into the horse’s vein, hoping to dilute and flush out the toxin. Desperately, I sorted through the cases of drugs in my jeep, hoping to be inspired as to what to give the horse. I added a diuretic into the saline drip and then I injected him with some supplements that at least could do no harm.

The day passed in a blur as I revisited the patient hourly to adjust his fluids and check on his condition. He seemed to be totally oblivious to my presence but continued to chew dreamily on the sweet meadow hay without even lifting his head. Shortly after midday, a stream of red-tinted urine flowed from him as I sat by, helplessly wondering how an innocuous-looking mushroom could do such horrendous damage to six hundred kilos of well-made horse. To pass the time, I stitched and bandaged the cut that had caused Owen so much initial concern. At each visit, I reminded him of the hopelessness of the case but, each time I returned, a quick glance at his face assured me that we hadn’t lost yet.

The day ran into night and I carried on with no apparent change in Archie’s condition. Then, just as I was beginning to give up and when even Owen’s enthusiasm seemed to be waning, a miracle happened. Having gone into the house for a quick cup of tea and a sandwich, we returned to the box, and then I was sure that the condition was contagious and that I myself was hallucinating – because there before me stood Archie, staggering slightly, head drooped and totally oblivious to the twenty-four-hour emergency that he had caused.

It was late when I got home and Donal had already gone to bed. He must have thought he was dreaming as I filled him in on all the details, oblivious to the fact that he had been sleeping peacefully until my arrival.

I called into the yard early the next morning and, apart from the bandage on his left fore, Archie looked almost normal. The weeks and the months passed and still I waited for the inevitable kidney failure, but repeated blood tests showed perfectly healthy kidney and liver functions.

I can’t quite explain why or how he recovered and, to be honest, I can take absolutely no credit for it because the treatment I used was purely an imitation of what I had seen done before when all the horses died. I’ve given up trying to explain to Owen that the only reason Archie lived is either that he ate so little of the mushroom that it wasn’t enough to kill him, or that it was a slightly different type of mushroom from the one that had killed the other horses. I am, however, sure of my diagnosis because I heard that another case occurred, not five miles away, that same weekend.

I’ve seen Archie, or ‘Archibald’s Pride’ as he’s better known in showing circles, competing at shows a few times since and, although I know the credit is totally misplaced, I can’t help grinning to myself when I see Owen propping up the bar, relaying the usual story.

‘And all the others died!’ he exclaims, taking another swig of his pint before the enraptured audience. ‘And every equine hospital said to put Archie down, but no, my vet knew better than the rest of them!’

I
t had been a long day but for once I didn’t mind having to do an extra call on the way home. The Roches lived high up in the Wicklow mountains, near Glendalough. I had purposely left their call until now, so that when finished, instead of heading back down the mountain, I could continue my journey out over the Sally Gap towards home. At this time of year I might even catch a glimpse of the deer that came down from the high mountains, or hear the high-pitched, lonely whistle of a rutting stag.

The Roches were of a dying breed. Mrs Roche, now becoming increasingly blind, had married into the rough twenty-acre holding high up on the side of the Wicklow mountains. How she and her husband had managed to eke out a living from the rocky landscape, not only for themselves but also for their five sons, was beyond comprehension. Sitting in the crowded kitchen, drinking a cup of hot tea with them, you could get no sense of the hardship and sacrifices they must have undergone in their lifetime. In one way, it was a good thing that changing agricultural practices had eliminated a lot of the toil and slog of farming, but sad too to think that intensification had also wiped out an entire generation of these small hill farmers.

As I pulled into the driveway, I gazed lazily out the window at the mountain ewes grazing at ease alongside an assortment of crossbred Hereford cattle. Amongst them lumbered the old Saddleback sow. She earned her keep by using up the household waste and producing litters of shiny-coated black-and-white bonhams on a regular basis.

The sons, now well into middle age, had maintained the farm to keep their parents happy. Although in their eighties, both Mr and Mrs Roche had retained a strong interest in everything that went on in the farm and arguments broke out on a regular basis between father and sons about the ongoing management, giving rise to situations where I ended up acting as reluctant mediator. Of the two sons who still lived at home, one worked as a building contractor while the other worked late shifts in one of the large drug companies that employed most of the farmers’ sons in the area. There was no way that their meagre collection of animals could ever support such a large family.

The first time I went up to them was in mid-February and heavy sleet accompanied my arrival. I was greeted by Mrs Roche who seemed to be permanently in the doorway, as though waiting. When I had introduced myself as the new assistant, she quickly ushered me into the cosy kitchen and pushed a mug of steaming tea into my hands.

‘Let the men carry on with the work out there,’ she began. ‘That rough yard is no place for a lady such as yourself on a day like this.’

‘Thanks very much, Mrs Roche, but I’d better go out and get on with the job as soon as I’ve had the tea. I’ve a good few places to get to yet.’

‘You’ll do no such thing! Sure, won’t Fergus call in for you when he’s ready to go.’

Yet again, I had to explain that, unbelievable and all as it apparently was, I genuinely was the vet.

‘Fergus left the practice after Christmas, Mrs Roche. He and his wife have moved to Kildare. I’m Seamus’s new assistant.’

The look of confusion on her face had nothing to do with her partial blindness, and she spent the next twenty minutes trying to convince me that I had made a drastic mistake.

‘You see, the boys have a bit of a rough job to do. Not a job a lady such as yourself could carry out.’

The call was to ‘squeeze’ or bloodlessly emasculate six bulls.

‘Don’t worry, Mrs Roche, I’ve done it many times before. It’s not such a hard job.’ As the minutes ticked away on the wooden clock perched on the shelf above the old range, I was beginning to get restless. Just then, Joe and Tony arrived in from the yard. They had heard the jeep pulling up and were wondering what the delay was. They both nodded respectfully at me as Joe declared, ‘We’re ready to start if Fergus is around.’ The explanations began all over again.

Joe was beginning to wonder if maybe the weather was turning a bit rough and, anyway, he didn’t think the bulls were really quite strong enough yet – sure, maybe he’d let them go another week or two. I decided enough was enough. Without another word, I made my way out the door and over to the crush, brandishing my gleaming burdizzo.

‘Now, if you could just get a good hold of the tail, please, we’ll be finished in no time,’ I instructed as authoritively as I could. Both sons shook their heads doubtfully but did as instructed. A few indignant bawls later and it was all over.

Over the few months that followed, I always seemed to be the one on duty when the Roches required attention. Gradually, they got used to the novel idea. While in the yard, I was usually accompanied by either Tony or Joe, as old Mr Roche was becoming increasingly arthritic and the bitter winter winds that swept around the hillside farm set him off into spasms of coughing whenever he did venture outside. After the sons’ initial embarrassment turned into gentle, good-humoured slagging, I began to enjoy the visits. I knew I had finally been accepted when Joe confided in me one day: ‘D’you know, Gillian, the animals always seem to get better when you treat them!’ I tried not to take offence at his surprise.

Mrs Roche insisted on thinking of me as a lady, despite occasionally witnessing situations where my behaviour hardly qualified as decorous. I was quite sure, too, that her sharp hearing had picked up some of my less than ladylike reactions to the antics of their unruly animals.

I was becoming accustomed to the hospitality of the country folk in the area, but it took me a while to figure out why the kindly mother was so attentive to my every need. A simple job could take over an hour as there was no way that it would ever be carried out without first sitting down to the copious dinner that had always been freshly cooked for my arrival. Equally, having finished whatever routine little task I had been called upon to perform, I would be escorted, despite my protestations, back into the kitchen to top up with a few mugs of hot tea and assorted platefuls of home-made biscuits. On staggering, bloated, back to the jeep, I would usually find Slug zealously guarding half a dozen eggs or a freshly baked tea brack.

One day, Mrs Roche casually mentioned that one of her neighbour’s sons had got married the previous week. ‘There’s no greater comfort to any mother than to see her sons well married,’ she stated.

It was then that it finally struck me: Mrs Roche was a woman with a mission.

The sons, obviously used to their mother’s methods, enjoyed encouraging her in her wild illusions and, from that day on, I couldn’t arrive into the kitchen without Joe or Tony casually dropping some ingenious comment like, ‘So, I heard you won the scone-making competition in the village festival last week, Gillian,’ or ‘How do you possibly find the time to run that local youth club as well as knitting for the Bosnian appeal?’

Mrs Roche positively glowed with the growing conviction that a match had been made in heaven.

My best attempts to put the record straight by casually alluding to my husband were to no avail as they were always greeted by the sons with guffaws of laughter. ‘Would you listen to her – pretending to be married! Sure, she’s only making that up in case some auld farmer might get fancy notions about himself!’ The winks and nudges went unnoticed by Mrs Roche with her failing sight.

When Donal and I happened to meet up with Joe and Tony and one of the other brothers, Michael, one night, I thought that things might improve. I introduced them to Donal amidst much merriment and good-natured slagging on both sides.

‘Well, sure, if you have a bit of land, lads, I’m sure we could come up with some sort of a deal,’ joked Donal, who was in on the story.

*  *  *

I was rudely awoken by Slug from my daydream as I sat looking at the Roche farmyard. She had suddenly been roused out of her cosy slumber by the indignant squeals of the latest litter of bonhams running around the yard. The noise had interrupted her dreams, in which, no doubt, she had been enjoying a hot-blooded chase. She hit the windscreen with a flurry of throaty barks.

I laughingly shouted at her: ‘Sit down and behave yourself! It’s not your dinner.’ Old habits die hard but she nonetheless reluctantly returned to her seat, aggrieved by my unsporting nature.

Tony appeared around the corner, having heard the racket and knowing exactly who had caused it. I cringed with embarrassment thinking of the time some months before when I had been busy scanning a mare in the yard. The noisy quacks of the yard ducks had failed to alert anyone’s attention. It wasn’t until Slug came around the corner proudly dragging the limp body of the biggest drake that I realised she had jumped out the car window.

‘She’s at it again! Would you ever go and feed that dog!’ called Tony as I got out of the car. ‘You’d better go in to Mother. She has your dinner ready,’ he added with a wink.

I grinned slightly shamefacedly as I replied, ‘You just go and get that cow in and have her ready for me. You couldn’t have a nice lady like me walking through mucky fields. I’ll be out to you as soon as we’ve finished swapping brown bread recipes.’

Washing out the cow with a mixture of antibiotics took much less time than it did to eat the dinner, and I found it equally difficult to do justice to the post-job feed. I thanked Mrs Roche as I was leaving and she took me warmly by both hands, ‘Sure, don’t you know you’re always as welcome as any of the family, Gillian.’

As she withdrew her hands from mine, she brushed gently off a narrow band of metal on the third finger of my left hand. I noticed the sharp intake of breath and wondered if she was having an attack of angina.

I was surprised not to hear from the Roches for a while but I put it down to the peaceful spell that hits every yard now and again and the mild spell of weather we were having in the late autumn. It must have been six weeks before I heard Joe’s voice on the other end of the phone.

‘Dolly, the old Shorthorn, is a bit wobbly on her pins after calving. Maybe you’d get a chance to drop up and have a look at her, Gillian.’

Excellent! I thought. A nice easy milk fever. I’d had an interrupted night, followed by a hectic day and the prospect of a good feed was tempting.

I was surprised when Mrs Roche didn’t meet me at the door as usual. I made my way straight to the shed where I found Joe waiting. There lay Dolly, head twisted to one side, eyes dilated. I hardly needed to listen to the booming heart to confirm my diagnosis. A classic case of milk fever. As I watched the bottle of calcium bubble into Dolly’s vein, Joe and I chatted away as usual. She was up before I had washed out the flutter valve. A contented belch assured me that all would be well.

‘Come on in for some tea,’ called Mrs Roche as she heard me washing my boots under the outdoor tap.

Although I enjoyed the freshly buttered tea brack, I noticed that the spread wasn’t quite up to the normal standard and, although Mrs Roche was as talkative as usual, I thought she was less enthusiastic than on other occasions. I hoped she wasn’t ill.

It was only after I had said my goodbyes and got back into the car that I noticed Slug was alone on the bare front seat. No half-dozen eggs, no scones, no tea-brack lest I grow weak on the fifteen-minute journey home. It was only then that I realised the damage that my wedding ring had done.