by John Hicks
‘You haven’t met her,’ replied Murray, with marked emphasis on the last pronoun. My feeble avoidance strategy was going out of the window. I faced a wrestling match with a rotten carcase on a bitterly cold winter’s day.
I have never been the sort of vet whose scientific curiosity can deflect the overwhelming olfactory assault of over-ripe carcases. Some vets love to guddle around with necrotic flesh and proclaim their fascination oblivious to the retching stench of mortification. Whilst I gasp for air and try to suppress the churning of my stomach, blither spirits gather round like vultures. I had seen colleagues avidly grope bubbling carcases and simultaneously hold full-blown discourses concerning the pathology revealed. How could they breathe and speak in the presence of such unmitigated sensory challenge? A routine post-mortem on the freshly dead is one thing, performing the exercise on a week-old carcase another. But there was an additional deterrent to my enjoyment of the morning.
Contrary to the opinion of those who live in the winterless north of New Zealand, snow at sea level is rare even in Southland, but this happened to be one of those days. Sleet was driving against the windows even as I made arrangements with Murray. He didn’t seem too keen about retrieving the carcase, but I couldn’t see that that was part of my brief. I suggested he place a noose around a back leg and haul the carcase out with the winch he claimed to possess.
Slowly, allowing Murray plenty of time to complete his task, I drove to my assignation with death. There was a tractor waiting at the gate. He had tactfully decided to feed me the bad news in bits. Rather than being able to drive my car to the site I was to be conveyed to the back of his farm on a tractor.
On arriving at the top of a ridge, frozen and numbed by my journey, I was greeted by the juicy back leg of a horse with gaseous bubbles adorning the ragged area where it had been torn from its body. A long rope was knotted round the fetlock. Murray had made an effort, but it wasn’t good enough. I noticed that we were on the edge of a cliff. I tried humour.
‘Couldn’t you just tell her that one of its back legs fell off?’
Murray ignored me. There was one more item of bad news he had yet to convey, but in our dramatic situation I was beginning to suspect what was coming next. Most farmers dispose of dead stock down an augur-drilled pit, sealed with a removable concrete lid. Murray had an unofficial ‘pit’. For many years he had tipped carcases down the limestone cliff in front of us. Growing out from this and at its base was a wilderness of concealing bush and elder scrub. Out of sight, out of mind.
‘So how do you propose that I do this post-mortem?’ I asked.
Minutes later I was on the end of the rope being lowered through a charnel-house littered with carcases. Body parts festooned tree branches and made ledges slippery. This was as surreal as it gets. This was one job I should have refused to do. Surely there are limits. Or are there? Farmers are used to seeing vets pull putrid calves and membranes from cows’ rear ends, lance abscesses containing litres of pus, or give enemas to constipated dogs. So what’s the difference?
For me, personally, it’s a matter of temperature. Dealing with something warm and smelly is infinitely preferable to a foetid, cold and clammy carcase. Warmth equals life: there is a purpose to your intervention and for your patient there may be a future. Death is singularly unpromising in this regard.
After about twenty metres of descent, a three-legged horse hove into view. It was teetering on a small ledge. Beyond, there was another drop into a veritable welter of sheep carcases. Gingerly, I examined the bloated body. Indeed, there was a gash where a waratah could have penetrated the jugular vein. I yelled above for a pull-up as I stepped off the gaseous carcase, and let it wheeze and slough further into the abyss.
It was all going to be an expensive exercise for Mrs J for relatively unimportant information—a test of Murray’s veracity. The horse wasn’t even insured. I was going to have to be very careful how I worded my certificate ‘…unable to complete a thorough autopsy … lesions consistent with death due to …’.
When I got to the top Murray asked my opinion. I wasn’t going to let him off easily.
‘It all looks rather suspicious to me,’ I said. ‘From the angle of the wound I deduce that someone snuck up on that pony in the middle of the night and tried to drive a stake through its heart. Such incidents are not unheard of. There was a full moon last week. What were you doing on Sunday night?’ I was rewarded with a wry look.
Little was he to know that mine had been just a practice run. As I reached the roadside another vet’s car drew up. Mrs Jabcowski must have decided not to trust the word of Murray’s vet and had recruited the services of her own, albeit he’d had to drive over a hundred kilometres for this plum job. Dr X was typical of a certain type of horse vet, and I was treated with the disdain characteristic of this superior form of being. He grunted in surprise at my presence, or was it a greeting?
‘Fancy meeting you here, Geoff! Just follow my tracks till you get to Murray on his tractor over there,’ I told him. ‘You shouldn’t have too much trouble once he’s got you up to the ridge.’
Uncharitable pleasure can be drawn from the imagined discomfiture of certain individuals and, as far as I was concerned, Geoff was one of them. It had been an unpromising start, but I drove away from that job with a barely suppressed feeling of glee.
Chapter Fourteen
Highland Holiday
If you study a relief map of the British Isles and happen to be drawn to mountains you can’t fail to notice that the most rugged part and the highest peaks are in the Highlands of Scotland. The biggest concentration of high ground is slightly east of centre, the Cairngorm mountains, a dissected plateau around 4000 feet high. This is not great by world standards and the mountains are scarcely spectacular, but there are other compensations for the visitor.
The Highlands are saturated by a history of such poignancy that the ghosts of the past are closer than in most other areas of Britain, smothered as much of it is by a cloak of industry. Visiting the Highlands is a spiritual experience. Every glen has echoes of a vanished people and yet, tantalisingly, enough of a proud and distinctive culture remains to fire the imagination. The Clearances in the nineteenth century changed the face of the Highlands forever and left a void that can never be filled. The populace was dispersed, but it has stamped its culture around the world. There are now more pipe bands in New Zealand than there are in Scotland. The south of New Zealand in particular has a strong Scottish heritage focused particularly on Dunedin, a town with a distinctly Scottish feel.
A friend of ours in Southland traced his ancestors to a ruined bothy near the Ryvoan Pass, beneath the slopes of Cairngorm. It was a startling revelation in later life to find that he had stood in the very same spot of isolated and wild beauty that Viv and I had shared. From there we had gazed out, as his forbears had, to Airgiod-meall, Creag a’ Chalamain and the other hills that they, in their ancient tongue, had named. Names, sadly, that I cannot pretend to pronounce or understand. The Gaelic diaspora will ever seek to replenish its culture from its Highland source. If I had the privilege of Highland ancestry I, too, would be driven to explore further. We are all enriched by understanding our roots in the past, even as we look to the future.
By the time I had reached my third summer at university I felt that I had survived the worst that academia could throw at me. Viv and I had been married for almost a year and things were going well. We both passed our exams at the end of the year and, for the first time, I had evaded the dreaded re-sits that had blighted earlier summer vacations. Seeing practice near London had been professionally rewarding, but scarcely inspiring. I wasn’t training for a career in the ‘concrete jungle’ and Viv shared my love for wild places. It was time for us to head for the hills.
I was intrigued by letters written in The Veterinary Record by a vet who shared practical tips with his profession. George Rafferty, ran a mixed practice in Grantown-on Spey, within sight of the Cairngorms. Many years later he acquired fame
for his BBC television series The Vet.
Supervising students is a chore for many veterinarians. Explaining procedures and letting them try them out can be time-consuming. On the other hand, a motivated and questioning student can clarify your justifications, provide company during what can sometimes be a lonely career, open the gates, carry your equipment and bury your dogs: of which more later. I was pleased to receive a warm response to my request to see practice with Mr Rafferty and grateful that he inclined to pedagogy and enjoyed showing students the ropes. With his help, Viv and I were able to rent a caravan near to his clinic. We were based there for several weeks and while I did the rounds with Mr Rafferty (he was never George to me), or one of his assistants, Viv worked at a local riding school.
On our free weekends we explored remote corners of the ancient granite landscape of the Cairngorms. We tramped reverentially through the Scots pines (Pinus sylvestris) of the Rothiemurchus Forest. Sombre green needles set off their textured trunks; yet in the dying rays of a summer evening, the delicate and surprising reds of their upper branch tips glowed. At such times, these grizzled outliers, great in age and character, emanated an almost palpable aura of mystery. What trysts, what clash of arms occurred beneath their twisted limbs? I love most trees but these disappearing remnants of a once much vaster Caledonian forest echoed the dying of an archaic way of life.
We camped out on Braeriach and woke to a brilliant dawn above a sea of silver cloud. We traversed the defile of the Lairig Ghru: the droving route used by the clans. Our imaginations were fired by the romantic ruins of the thirteenth-century castle in Loch an Eilein—though the reality of the bloody history of the Highlands should ‘scotch’ any notions of romance.
Meanwhile I imbibed what I could from one of the great individualists of the veterinary profession. Perhaps more even than Mike Harkness, Mr Rafferty was a conscious servant of the public. He did not spare himself in this regard, to the point of asceticism. His idea of a holiday was to spend a few days a year cutting peat. This was but one example of his legendary Scottish thrift. There were others.
Disposal of deceased dogs and cats is always a problem in veterinary practice. Despite our best efforts, not all our patients live forever. When the sad day comes, the owners have to decide what they want to do with the bodies of their beloved pet. Many choose to bury them themselves in their own garden; the problem arises when they are unable or unwilling to do this. Mr Rafferty had the smartest solution. Adjacent to his clinic there was an area of rough ground. In fact it was not only rough, but positively rocky, as I, and no doubt many generations of students, could attest. Mr Rafferty broke from the usual refrain, such as: ‘What would you like to do with Fru-Fru, Mrs Sphengalis? I’m sure you’ve picked a lovely spot in that garden of yours.’ He was far more definite: ‘It would be no trouble for us to bury Jock for you, Mrs McPherson, if that is your wish.’
For the student bystander the client’s choice held some significance. If the dog was a Great Dane, or a big fat Labrador, you could not help but hope that the ‘kind’ offer would be declined. But, as often as not, you would soon be out there with pickaxe or crowbar. Mr Rafferty planned to turn the whole area into a rose garden when he retired and, for all I know, there could be one flourishing there now, in soil enriched by a thousand canine corpses.
If Mr Rafferty could save money for himself and his clients he would. Whenever there was a lull in the work, we would be set to work manufacturing metabolic solutions for cattle or preparing worm drenches from bulk ingredients. He was always occupied and could present an austere front to any employees he considered slacking. The moment his feet were heard scrunching on the gravel his two assistants, who may have been enjoying a moment of leisure after a hectic surgery, would leap up and pretend to busy themselves making calcium borogluconate solutions. They were scared of him! He was an opinionated man of immensely strong will and physical presence, and he exerted almost total control over his staff. His clients loved him.
As a student this did not directly affect me. I was there to learn, and I picked up many useful tips and saw conditions that were unusual elsewhere; and the dynamics of that workplace were, obviously, fascinating. But I realised that no matter how magic the area, I could never enjoy working under such claustrophobic control. I’d had enough of that at school.
I seemed to be getting along fine with him, but I dreaded putting a foot wrong. So far he had been very careful in his supervision as I mastered the basics of vaccinating sheep, castrating cattle, injecting dogs and so on, but, after a week or so, he gradually trusted me to do more. Then one day, as he was chatting with a client in his farmyard, he chucked his car keys to me.
‘Turn the car round for me please, John.’
My feelings of glee at gaining the trust of this dour, and slightly forbidding, man were tempered by a small inner voice. I had never driven a Volkswagen before. But how could I refuse? It would have seemed feeble to request a test-drive on the open road before tackling this tiny yard. Regrettably, I suppressed my fears:
‘Certainly, Mr Rafferty.’
This was a tiny yard, and the lock on the vehicle wasn’t as tight as I had thought. After successfully traversing an arc of about ten yards I connected with the tow-bar of a wagon thoughtlessly left there by the farmer. Why couldn’t he have anticipated the bridge wrecker from Norway would be let loose on his farm? I clutched my head in despair and shame. It would be a major understatement to say that it was embarrassing to step out of that car in front of the two witnesses, who had abruptly discontinued their conversation to watch me. Fortunately, the only damage was to a headlight and my self-esteem. One could be repaired for about five pounds, and a cuddle or two from Viv would help to restore the other. But how was the forbidding George Rafferty going to react to my clumsiness?
As we drove away I made arrangements to pay for the damage I had caused. Five pounds was quite a lot of money for a student. And then he really surprised me:
‘Never mind, John. I reckon that this is part of the price we pay for taking on students. It’s fine to make mistakes sometimes, as long as we learn from them.’
Such unexpected magnanimity restores one’s faith in human nature. Nevertheless, I thought it prudent not to relate any details of my Norwegian escapade to him at this stage in our relationship.
Mr Rafferty firmly refused all my subsequent offers of payment. I could only present him with a well-earned bottle of whisky when I departed. It was a small token for the rich experience I had gained over that memorable summer.
Chapter Fifteen
Antipodean Anticipation
For my fifth and final year as an undergraduate I was a kept man. While Viv set off for an uninspiring daily encounter with a desk at the local building society, my mind was being filled with enormous volumes of fascinating information. The dreaded finals loomed and failure was not to be countenanced. Fortunately, the course had taken a more practical direction and we were learning surgical techniques, reading radiographs, interpreting blood tests, assisting with anaesthetics, researching case histories and, in general, building on the theoretical knowledge we had painstakingly acquired over our five-year course. Finally, the prospects of becoming independent, making a career choice and deciding where we could live empowered us. The world would be our oyster if we could successfully negotiate the year ahead.
My only chance was to pace myself and I continued to be a diligent, if socially unexciting student. Not for me the caffeine-soaked sprint of some of my colleagues. For them the exams were an obstacle that could be hurdled from a standing start, and two weeks of agonising effort, working in the library till the wee small hours, sufficed. The competitive element was also a factor and for some it was important to be seen indulging this passion openly. Such players would endlessly discuss esoteric topics in the hope of attaining some psychological ascendancy over a poor unfortunate who was not privy to such vital information. This sparring was an important aspect of our training. Do you defer to pointless e
rudition, bullshit in defence (perfectly legitimate as long as you don’t suspend judgement on what passes your own lips), go away and worry about your ignorance (in which case they have won), or accept that you can’t know everything, acknowledge the fact, and find out more about it (the counsel of maturity)?
In a world where the sum total of veterinary knowledge is estimated to double every five years I think it is essential that veterinarians, and everyone else who derives a living from dispensing advice, give themselves permission to say ‘I don’t know’; as long as they then take the trouble to inform themselves. Unfortunately, some sectors of the public expect their vet to know everything. More unfortunately, some vets lead their clients to believe that they do, and, worst of all, some vets actually believe it. A certain type of client enjoys attempting to exploit these weaknesses. To illustrate this, I present a work of fiction: The Parable of the Chocolate-pointed Marquesan.
Mrs Catfancy breeds exotic cats. She wields the power to disrupt inter-professional relationships at her local veterinary clinic. She demands instant service. She has a favourite vet and only he has the ability to gratify her whims. But today he is unavailable. His replacement has stupidly failed her first test by not recognising the breed of exotic mutant she has placed before him. [He should have checked the breed entry on her pet’s records.]
‘I am surprised, Mr Cowvet. How could you not have known that this is a Chocolate-pointed Marquesan?’
Mr Cowvet ignores her and tries to bring the consultation onto a clinical plane: ‘Yes, but the point is he has a rather nasty abscess at the base of his tail. It looks as though he’s been in a fight and picked up an infection.’
‘Are you sure he hasn’t been poisoned?’ Ah! Paranoia is surfacing …
