Memoirs of a Cotswold Vet

by Ivor Smith

  For Angela

  CONTENTS

     Title

     Dedication

     Acknowledgements

     Introduction

  1.  Once Upon a Time in a Cotswold Village

  2.  A Vet on Route 66

  3.  In at the Deep End

  4.  ‘Take Me Home Country Roads’ – Via Cheltenham Spa

  5.  Pioneer Settlers

  6.  Life Begins at Forty

  7.  When the Phyllosan Stops Working

  8.  M99: The Anaesthetic from Hell

  9.  Never Work with Children or Animals

  10. In Sickness and in Health

  11. Criminal Cotswolds

  12. Closing Reflections

     Plates

     Copyright

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Not having written a book before, I find it difficult to know where to begin acknowledging the large number of wonderful people who have been part of my life and most of my story, for without them there would be no story. First and foremost thanks must go to the animals, most of whom were cooperative patients. Some, however, were outrageously uncooperative, and these were often the ones that made the most memorable stories. For better or for worse, most of the animals had owners, and without them some of the chapters in this book would be less lively.

  I was lucky enough to have had generous parents and an exceptional aunt who encouraged learning. Unfortunately, as a youngster I succumbed to a serious illness that resulted in my absence from school for almost a year. Ironically, in view of my later profession, the doctors believed that the infection had been passed to me via one of my menagerie of pets and ordered all of them to be destroyed, with the sole exception of my dog, Nellie. It was probably at this defining moment that I decided I wanted to know all there was to know about diseases of animals and how to put them right. I cannot remember a time when I did not want to be a vet.

  My family ensured that I would continue to be taught at home and no doubt this was an enormous help when I returned to my primary school, and eventually resulted in me progressing to grammar school.

  Life at the Crypt School in Gloucester was hard work and discipline was strict. I believe that most of the masters were truly dedicated and I appreciated what I achieved through them. There are two staff members I feel compelled to name. There have been occasions when I have been reminded that the purpose of my Crypt School education was not how to be taught to play rugby, this ridiculous game where at a very early age you walk from the field with a bloody nose and decades later your assailant is still a close friend. Our outstanding master of sport who put us through this agony was Horace Edwards. He taught me, and hundreds of other lads, that there is far more to life than scoring tries.

  Charles Lepper was our English master who, for many years, excelled in producing our school’s nationally famed Shakespearean dramas. If acting was not your forte his endless energy taught hundreds of lesser mortals like me how to enjoy literature and, possibly, how to write a book!

  The teaching staff at Liverpool University’s Faculty of Veterinary Science were mainly excellent, and some truly brilliant. We were of course at that age when we criticised everything and knew just how to resolve every problem in the world. In professional life I had only two bosses and I benefited from the company and professionalism of my Cheltenham principal, Peter Hull.

  In my thirty years as principal of The Brambles Veterinary Practice in Churchdown, it has been a privilege and pleasure to have enjoyed the company of so many dedicated people, including Sue, Angie and Claire among others, whose efforts over three decades I truly appreciated.

  Last, but by no means least, I must mention a dedicated member of staff without whom this story would be incomplete. I was indeed fortunate at an early time in my life to meet my wife Angela, someone who shared the same interests as me and without whom these Memoirs of a Cotswold Vet would have been very different.

  INTRODUCTION

  Writing a book relating to my veterinary career was something I had never considered until I was approached by Matilda Richards, a commissioning editor at a local publishing company, at the end of a talk I had given that mainly revolved around the village of Churchdown – where I had ‘put up my plate’ in 1972.

  While preparing for the talk I reflected on some of the events that led me to contemplate starting my own practice. I began to realise just how much had happened during my life and how much of it was a mix of success and failure. The more I thought about the past, the more recollections vividly returned to mind.

  I realised with amazement that in one ten-year period I had gone from being an eleven-year-old at junior school to a twenty-one-year-old on the brink of getting married. Not every decade was quite as eventful as that, but a life spent with animals made sure that there were few dull days.

  My life began in Birmingham at the height of the Second World War blitz and many hours of my earliest years were spent in the safety and indignity of an air-raid shelter. My family moved to Gloucester in 1945 and I became a pupil at Finlay Road School – at that time one of Gloucester’s best-performing schools. From there that I moved on to the Crypt School in the city, and eventually to the Faculty of Veterinary Science at Liverpool University. There I gained my Bachelor of Veterinary Science degree and became a veterinary surgeon.

  I have written here a little about undergraduate life at the university. It was a time when students were genuinely hard-up and under the continual stress of learning and taking exams that had to be passed. Fortunately you were not on your own and the pressures were shared in the company of a small group of students who were experiencing the same stress. It was amazing how a pint, a chat and a laugh in our local pub kept our spirits up.

  I was particularly fortunate in having a special mate to cheer me up. In the middle of what seemed a never-ending course, Angela, my longstanding Gloucestershire girlfriend, and I married at St Philip and St James’s Church, Hucclecote, in 1963.

  Not surprisingly most of my vet student year grew to become lifelong friends. I have written a little about a few of them but it would have been easy to have related something of interest of them all. At least I have spared their blushes.

  I began my first job at a veterinary practice in Crudwell, Wiltshire, in 1966 – it was a fast learning curve being a young veterinary surgeon. My boss was unique and I have tried to describe what life with him was like. Although it is fair to say he would never get away with it today, he did provide some incredible memories. When I left his practice, I joked to friends at the time that if I ever wrote a book, half of it would be devoted to my first two years in the Crudwell practice. I have, however, resisted that temptation and restricted the telling of those days in order to include equally fascinating happenings at different times and in different places.

  From Crudwell we moved to Cheltenham. It was towards the end of the Swinging Sixties and there was just a short while to let our hair down before life became much more serious and demanding. For many years I had a superb boss. Peter Hull is greatly respected in the veterinary profession, his farming clients and the pet owners, and extensively throughout the horse world. I enjoyed his company and, from our good-humoured chats that sometimes resembled a lecture over a cup of coffee, I continued to learn a great deal about the art and science of veterinary practice. We parted company when I left his practice and, with his blessing, moved to Churchdown to start my own practice. However, he has remained a good friend to this day.

  We had bought The Brambles, a large, cold Victorian house into which Angela and I, our toddler son and our dog moved in January 1972. By the end of that first rewarding year, we had a daughter to
o, a surgery and a house with central heating. The practice continued to grow and the following thirty years whizzed by, but not without leaving behind many memorable tales.

  By the time I retired in 2001 it had become necessary to build new premises to accommodate the ever-increasing numbers of staff. It was also an opportunity to provide state-of-the-art facilities for the growing numbers of clients and their pets. So, in August 1999, The Brambles Veterinary Practice moved across the road to its new hospital-type home. Many dedicated people have worked for the practice over the years and life would not have been the same without their company. I have written about some and, if it was possible, I would have mentioned the contribution of many more, but they are all an essential part of my story. It has been a challenge to decide which of the often astonishing events in my life to include and which to leave out.

  Invariably while sitting around a dining table, the stories of the animals and day-to-day practice life have been related to friends who have always seemed eager to hear them. I am frequently surprised when they remind me of amusing events that happened years before, and I sometimes have difficulty recalling them myself. Some, of course, are remembered because they were especially sad.

  In places I have changed the names of certain people in order to protect their identity. It is not my intention to portray anyone in a misleading light and I apologise to those who may feel this is the case.

  I have tried to find a balance between the contrasting types of stories and I hope that I have succeeded. The leading players have, naturally, been my patients, and without them I would not have a story to tell.

  Ivor Smith, 2008

  CHAPTER ONE

  ONCE UPON A TIME IN A COTSWOLD VILLAGE

  The telephone rang in the old farmhouse. My wife, Angela, picked it up and a few moments later called to me in the garden.

  ‘Ive, can you have a word with Mr Pitt from Poole Keynes? He thinks he might need you to calve a cow.’

  ‘Okay. With you in a minute Ange’, I yelled back, and left my spade upright in the soggy soil. I was thinking that it never seemed to stop raining around here.

  This was the call I had been dreading. It was September 1966. I had been a qualified veterinary surgeon for eight weeks and the principal of the practice had decided that I could probably be trusted to run the place for a few hours on my own. Just in case there was a total catastrophe, he had given me several numbers where I might be able to get in touch with him. One was the local rugby club. One was a pub. One was a hotel/pub. I was uncertain about the fourth.

  I picked up the phone and said hello to Mr Pitt and sorry we hadn’t met before. He apologised for bothering me on a Saturday afternoon. The compliments exchanged, Farmer Pitt explained that the cow in question was due to calve: she had been straining for a couple of hours but was making no progress.

  ‘I’ve had a feel inside’, he volunteered, as farmers do on these occasions, ‘and I can only feel an ’ead.’

  ‘Lord, I hope I can feel a bit more than that’, I thought to myself. ‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can Mr Pitt’, I told the farmer. ‘I’ll be about twenty minutes.’

  Everything I could possibly need on this assignment was checked three times. I hoped my client would provide the soap and towel. Off I roared in the practice’s muddy blue Ford Cortina. Less than twenty minutes later I stood nobly in my rubber calving gown behind my patient; my arms and the rear end of the cow were swathed in soap. Now was the moment of bubbly truth. My hand explored the unknown.

  Like Farmer Pitt I too could feel a head, and what’s more I could also feel a foot, well, one foot anyway. With a bit more soap and a lot of slippery lubricant my hand slid around the calf and down to the missing backward-pointing leg. A slim clean rope was passed round the calf’s fetlock, and gentle traction, with my hand cupping the foot to protect the wall of the uterus, brought the limb to its proper position. After that it was plain sailing. With a rope round the other leg and a few hefty pulls, the calf slid into our world.

  As I scrubbed up in cold water, I glowed inside with satisfaction watching the little heifer calf suckling from her mum. Not bad for a first attempt. I believe the sentiments applied to both of us.

  ‘No, I won’t stop for a drink Mr Pitt, but thanks anyway.’

  Back in the car, with headlights and swishing windscreen wipers on, and heading for our Crudwell farmhouse home, my thoughts travelled back to the events of the last decade. So much had happened. I pondered upon the ups and downs that we had already experienced. ‘Well, the last ten years have been damned hard going but I think I’m going to enjoy this job’, I said out loud. I’m sure I’m not the only person in the world who talks to himself.

  Forty years on and I have rarely regretted that momentous decision to become a vet. In truth I don’t think there was ever a single momentous occasion. As a Gloucester youngster I grew up with animals of all shapes and sizes, courtesy of very tolerant parents, and I think that the idea of spending my life working with them probably grew with me. At one stage our home was shared by the obligatory dog and cat of course, but also in attendance were the pet mice, hamsters, guinea pigs, a rabbit, tropical fish, cold water fish, pond fish, frogs, newts and slow-worms. I bet I’ve missed somebody out.

  Disaster struck in late 1947. Many people still associate that year with a dreadful winter and snowdrifts that appeared mountainous to youngsters. The spectacular floods that followed the melting of the snow added to the miseries of many local folk, but, in true British fashion and more than a bit of Gloucester humour, the adversities, as usual, were overcome.

  My problems were a bit different. A few weeks before Christmas I developed an illness that almost put an end to me. My medical records state I had polio-meningitis, and at one stage it was touch and go, so they say. Nobody knew how I became infected, but just in case it originated from one of our menagerie of animals, the doctors instructed my father to have all my pets put to sleep. Only my dog was spared. She was Nellie.

  I have no idea why anyone would want to call their dog Nellie but when dad brought her home she came with a name, and for many happy years old Nel was a prominent member of our family. Most of the time I thought this black and white sort of Border Collie cross was the most popular member of the family. Seeing her face on the wintry side of the hospital ward window on Christmas Day certainly cheered me up. Perhaps soon they might let me go home, and I couldn’t wait to get better and be with her. Walks with Nel on Robinswood Hill would never be the same again. There was no doubt in my mind she would be my best mate forever, and she was – until my thirteenth birthday anyway.

  Had the events of that year initiated the vet vocation journey? Who knows? I can only say that if I close my eyes I can recall countless details of that very strange time in my life.

  I was a pupil at Gloucester’s Finlay Road School, recognised then as one of the city’s leading junior schools. The majority of the children in the school passed ‘the Scholarship’ exam, later to become known as the 11 plus, and left to go to the grammar school, or any other school of their choice. At this time a strange anomaly was the relative ease of winning a place at a Gloucester grammar school if you lived within the city boundary. It had one of the highest intakes in the country. If you lived outside the boundary the opposite was the case, and it was difficult to get into a grammar school. The unsuccessful pupils went to one of the city’s secondary modern schools. There was just one thing wrong with these schools – their description. They were modern but the term ‘secondary’ erroneously and daftly suggested the pupils were second-class students, to some people anyway. Consequently, there was a high proportion of very bright articulate youngsters at most of the schools.

  Life at Finlay Road was an enjoyable time with a wonderful teaching staff that were particularly helpful to me following a nine-month absence recovering from polio-meningitis (if such it was). Sadly, fifty years on, life has not been kind to the school; it has recently been described as an ‘underperformer’ and,
at the time of writing, is ‘up for sale’ by Gloucestershire County Council. No doubt there is still plenty of the old Gloucester spirit to turn things round.

  I left my junior school in 1952 with many happy memories and friends and moved on to the Crypt, Gloucester’s oldest grammar school. Founded in 1539, the Crypt was, of course, a lot younger when I attended. Getting to school was fun; we rode our bikes. In fact we seemed to ride our bikes everywhere back then. For many of us this was after we had finished our paper round. Delivering early morning papers was the acknowledged way of having a schoolboy income. The 5s wage did not go far but at least made it possible to invite a girl to the pictures, just in case she didn’t offer to pay for herself. Most mornings I was awake enough to glance at the papers’ headlines as I pushed them through the letterboxes. One day was paramount; it was indeed the day the music died. That was 3 February 1959. Buddy Holly had been killed in an airplane crash.

  There seemed no urgent need for girlfriends in 1952 although we boys talked about them a great deal. Getting to know your new schoolmates seemed sufficiently rewarding for the time being, without knowing of course that some of these boys would become your lifelong friends. Learning French, Latin and Greek all at the same time was daunting but we seemed to cope. Maths, English, history, geography and the sciences were thrown in for good measure. Somehow there was still time to fit in the weekly periods of religious instruction, music and a session in the gym, plus the all-important weekly afternoon of sport.

  In our first school year every subject was compulsory, and that included our introduction to the game of rugby football. Our Welsh rugby-international games master, Horace Edwards, must have despaired at his attempts to teach us the new discipline. Most of us had come from junior schools where we had played football with a round ball and were reluctant to change codes. Nevertheless most had been converted within a few weeks. Our school tried its best to make gentlemen of us off the playing field, but permitted us to be hooligans when on it. At the start our skill levels allowed us to do little more than get plastered in mud. Everyone yelling as they got under the tepid shower after a game was a new experience.