Memoirs of a Cotswold Vet

by Ivor Smith

  Nevertheless the building work started and was completed in months. The standard of workmanship was remarkable. The building contractors were the Ball brothers from Tetbury. There seemed to be a brother for every trade that was needed to do the job. It was fascinating to watch the mason cutting the stones and the carpenter making joints in the timber with his ancient tools. Finally the brothers produced a sibling painter, or at least a cousin. The job was completed on time. This was a remarkable feat considering the number of times Taff decided he would prefer something to be in a different place.

  I pulled into the yard one lunchtime at the end of my morning’s rounds to find him standing outside admiring his new building, a slightly puzzled look on his face.

  ‘Anything amiss, Mr Evans?’ I asked.

  ‘No, not really’, he replied. ‘I’m just wondering where to put the hooks for the hanging baskets.’

  Taff at last had his hospital. Well, he had a building that he called a hospital, and up went the sign, ‘Ridgeway Veterinary Hospital’. It all sounded very grand, but it was a very contentious thing to do. There existed a group of prominent practising veterinary surgeons at that time, who, with the blessing of our governing body, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, had formed a Veterinary Hospitals Association whose aim was to promote the highest standards of medical and surgical care for their patients. To qualify, and for the practice to be included on this list, an official inspection was required to ensure that the standards, with regard to facilities and trained staff, were maintained or existed in the first place.

  No matter how good the intentions, an empty building naturally fell a little short of requirements. As regards trained staff we had Sheila, the daughter of a local farmer. She was very sweet and willing, but veterinary nursing was not her forte. She was employed to look after Taff’s pigs and calves, which she did second to none. When asked by the vet, she held a dog correctly so that an intravenous injection could be given, but that was the full extent of her skills. If Mr Evans knew anything of these hospital regulations he chose simply to ignore them.

  Like most vets at that time my boss was aware that there was a promising lucrative future in the care of pets that we refer to today as companion animals. Big oaks grow from small acorns and Taff was ready to plant. His choice of building, prior to his hospital, would be frowned upon by planners today. His one-room surgery was an outbuilding adjoining the Mayfield Hotel, whose restaurant featured in the Good Food Guides of the day. How he persuaded the hotel owners to let him do this is anyone’s guess.

  Taff delegated the running of the small animal side of the business to his assistant; in other words I carried out the surgeries. Initially these commenced at 2 p.m., which meant that on most days there was hardly time to swallow a lunchtime sandwich. But it was enjoyable and a good opportunity to meet and chat to local people. When things went well they went very well, but when they didn’t, they could be horrific.

  On one occasion in my first week a Mrs Jones came to the surgery with her daughter, Samantha. She was carrying every vet’s nightmare, ‘something in a cardboard box’. Soon all was revealed. Samantha whipped off the lid of the box to reveal two pet mice.

  ‘It’s just a quick routine visit, Mr Smith’, Mrs Jones explained. ‘My daughter wants to be sure they are fit and healthy and that she’s doing all the right things.’

  ‘They look fine to me, Mrs Jones, but I’ll give them the once-over just to be sure’, I answered confidently.

  I swear the first mouse I lifted from that box was the most elusive that was ever born. He slipped from my hands and, as I tried to grab him, he dashed along the table. Sadly the table wasn’t quite long enough and Samantha’s pet fell headlong to the floor. I didn’t have another chance to grab him before he disappeared through a gap between the floorboards. Mother and daughter looked stunned, but worse was to come. Shocked at having lost the first patient, nobody had noticed his pal climbing out of the cardboard box and charging down the table after him. Before I could catch him, he too had dived off the end and without further hesitation followed his mate through the floorboards. Well, in a situation like that what can you say?

  I was more than sorry, naturally, but apologising to a hysterical young girl seemed a bit inadequate. Eventually, carrying their now empty box, they left the surgery in complete silence. I didn’t feel they were impressed with my professional competence. I would have loved to suggest that the two mice, now nesting next door to a cordon bleu restaurant, would live happily ever after, but I did not think it would go down too well.

  One aspect of my work that has given me immense satisfaction throughout my career has been performing surgical procedures. I was never happier than spending most of my day with a scalpel in one hand and forceps in the other. For whatever reason surgical work was not Taff’s forte and I was grateful for the opportunity to tackle any such cases that came my way. I would have been happier and more confident if the practice had provided some of the surgical basics that were available at the time. I can imagine Mr Evans describing his operating theatre as minimalist, but by the end of most operations Heath-Robinson would have been more apt. A veterinary nurse trained in medical and surgical routines would have been a dream come true, but Sheila did her best and I instructed her step by step as we went along.

  The old wooden operating-cum-examination table was scrubbed down, allowed to dry and the anaesthetised patient positioned on a clean blanket. The hair surrounding the surgical site was laboriously clipped away with scissors before Sheila scrubbed away at the exposed skin for a few minutes – following the scrubbing of her own hands for a bit longer to remove the remnants of her pig management duties. Under the circumstances we did quite well and I was usually happy with the outcome. Ingenuity and compromise were the orders of the day and we both managed to keep our sense of humour.

  There were some farmers in the practice who, for one reason or another, refused to allow a new graduate anywhere near their livestock and it was a long time before I ventured on to the premises of Mr Burdon. At some stage in my first year he relented and I got on quite well with him after that, having recovered from the initial nervousness of meeting him, and I enjoyed going there. He was not only a successful dairy farmer but he also enjoyed a reputation for breeding winning racing greyhounds.

  He also had another reputation: he frequently swore, but he swore like no one else I have met before or since. Whenever he got cross, which seemed to be most of the time, a tirade of expletives leapt forth. To say you had never heard anything like it would be a monumental understatement. It seemed impossible for him to express himself adequately, so the start of one known word would be added to the end of another and it sounded for all the world as though he were inventing his own vocabulary of imaginative profanities. Eventually, having shocked everyone within earshot, his wrath was overcome with mirth and he frequently ended up chuckling at his own theatricals.

  One day when I was on the farm he asked if I had time to look at a lame greyhound that had suffered a foot injury during a recent race. The injury was a common one, ‘a knocked-up toe’, and before I had time to discuss any treatment options, he said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve taken a toe off before, have you?’ From his body language on this occasion he seemed to know that I had not and was thus giving me the opportunity to operate on this one. It was a procedure that was frequently carried out to treat this condition and in the hands of an experienced surgeon was little more than routine. But nothing could be described as routine in our surgery and for me at the time this was major surgery. To add spice to the occasion Mr Burdon insisted on being present throughout. I have never been sure whether he wanted to assess my surgical skills or be certain I removed the right toe.

  The heavily sedated greyhound was positioned on a clean blanket and the foot prepared for surgery. Wisely I chose not to administer a general anaesthetic, which at that time would have been a long-acting intravenous barbiturate. Greyhounds are notorious for reacting adversely to ge
nerals, and an anaesthetic emergency was the last thing I needed with this audience. Movement of the patient without one could be a problem, but with Sheila’s weight bearing down on the dog this was reduced to a minimum. I had confidence in the tourniquet that she had applied tightly to the leg to control haemorrhage should I fail to find and ligate the digital blood vessels.

  I tried to ignore Mr Burdon’s presence and what he might be thinking as I made a Y-shaped incision over the toe and began the dissection. I would have liked to have watched the anxious expression on his face as blood oozed from the wound, but his cap was pulled down menacingly over his eyes. Throughout the operation he remained remarkably silent.

  It was not a long operation. I clamped and tied off the small artery and toe veins, disarticulated the damaged toe joint to complete the amputation, and stitched up. We applied a pressure bandage and the job was done. Mr Burdon lifted his sleepy greyhound almost affectionately and placed him gently on hessian sacks in the back of an old van. The operation had gone well and I felt he was satisfied and grateful, and although he said little he did manage a few choice words. Mr Burdon was probably approaching fifty at the time and his charming wife well into her forties. They had several children who were in their late teens and I suspect he was more than a little surprised when he discovered that Mrs Burdon was expecting another. No doubt he had a few choice words on that occassion.

  For reasons known only to himself, Mr Evans opened a branch surgery behind the windows of a little shop on the High Street at Cricklade, another pretty Cotswold village about 7 miles from Cirencester. Professional attendance was limited to one hour per week on a Thursday evening and, not surprisingly, the surgery was run by the vet assistant. I suppose you could argue that any service is better than none and for some it avoided the inconvenience of travelling to Cirencester, Lechlade or one of the other nearby Cotswold villages. Facilities were, by any stretch of the imagination, a bit spartan. The examination table was the old shop counter. The original shop owner lived in rooms at the back, and at 6.30 p.m. always provided a large china bowl of hot water as a hand wash, and a towel. Needless to say after an hour it was cold and murky and looked like a big bowl of cold soup. Having seen perhaps up to half a dozen patients, I closed the shop at around 8 o’clock and drove home as fast as I could. It was by rota off-duty time and I looked forward to at least a short evening at home. There was no need to look at my watch. In the background I had been listening all night to the landlady’s television.

  One Thursday night I had done surgery to the accompaniment of Terry Wogan and his commentary on the Eurovision Song Contest. In 1967 it was one of the television highlights of the year and on this occasion a barefoot Sandie Shaw was our great hope. I normally left the surgery to the sound of music, and on this particular night it was ‘Puppet on a String’, which won the competition. Those were the good old days when England had not upset enough people to be awarded ‘nul points’.

  At the start of each month Taff produced the vets’ duty rota. This was an important document. It was the only indication I had of knowing whether I was on duty on a Monday, Tuesday or any other night of the week. It was a certainty that the following week the off-duty nights would be different. We wondered at first what the logic behind his thinking was until we realised that he was working backwards. He filled in the nights he wanted to socialise and gave his recovery nights to me.

  Our social life had been on hold for a few months since we left Liverpool. Things improved rapidly after we moved to Crudwell. Our house was close to the main road through the village and consequently there was always activity of some kind. In some way or other most of the traffic, tractors, trailers and cattle lorries that hurtled past was related to farming. Our immediate neighbours kept the post office next door and we soon became friends with them and the young local couple beyond them. It was lovely having someone to chat to in the day and to pop down to the pub with for a quick pint in the evening. Removing the practice from my mind for any length of time was a different matter.

  Eight-thirty each morning arrived all too quickly. Taff sorted out the morning calls and off we went in different directions. That was the usual plan, but one day things went disastrously wrong on the road. I had spent my morning on the east side of the practice while Mr Evans had gone west. To finish my calls I slipped back to a farm to revisit a cow with a severe mastitis that I had seen the day before, to ensure she was responding to the antibiotic treatment I had given her.

  It was a beautiful day as I travelled west, unknowingly on a collision course with Taff, who was now returning home travelling east. Half a mile from the practice, along a quiet narrow road, I spotted a large grey car approaching and slowed to allow each of us ample time to move to the nearside of the lane to pass comfortably. This simple manoeuvre did, however, depend on each driver being aware of the other being there, and I started to have my doubts. As the vehicles got closer it became obvious that the driver of the approaching car hadn’t seen me, and to my horror I recognised the unmistakable face of my boss. I first saw the profile of his face. He was looking sideways, admiring the hedgerow and whistling the time away. I stared in disbelief and in a desperate last measure I leaned heavily on my car horn. Suddenly, Taff’s large Cortina Estate started to skid and judder and jump towards me as he stood on his brakes. I waited for the inevitable impact. Following the sound of bending metal and breaking glass things were quiet again for a moment. Taff bashed the inside of his car a few times to release the jammed door and struggled out while the air around him turned blue.

  Following a lecture on the need to drive with extreme care on country roads he disappeared down the lane towards the practice to telephone our local garage, leaving me with two cars blocking the road and warning oncoming traffic of an obstruction. With their wheels almost in the ditch it was just possible for other vehicles to squeeze by. At 8.30 the next morning the lecture on safe driving continued. To emphasise his concern regarding road safety, later that week Taff installed a roadside mirror at the end of his drive to warn him of unseen approaching traffic. A wise move, but it seemed to have little relevance to not looking where you are going. I decided not to comment.

  With cars repaired I was free again to enjoy my job and the beautiful Cotswold countryside. One of my favourite destinations was the drive to the old rural estates of Lord Sam Vestey at Stowell Park, tucked away about 9 miles from Cirencester. Although I rarely had the opportunity to meet his young lordship, who was twenty-one at the time, it was a pleasure to work with his farm staff. A large number of the chaps I met had worked on the estate all their lives and were very good stockmen. Most understood my lack of experience but appreciated the skills and knowledge that I did have.

  I have always enjoyed driving and the only time I ever became frustrated were those odd occasions when I arrived back home only for Angela to say that the farm manager had rung to ask me to pop back to look at another sheep or steer in trouble. ‘Popping back’ was another 30-odd-mile round trip. Three cheers for today’s mobile phone.

  Emergency cases were not few and far between. With so many animals there was always the odd steer or heifer with the rapid onset of a severe respiratory infection, or cattle or sheep developing a sudden painful lameness. From time to time there was the satisfaction of helping a struggling heifer in labour and delivering an oversize calf. A great deal of the work was routine and there was plenty of it. Castrating and disbudding young calves was one of these procedures. It could become a little monotonous and thus was often a task that, unsurprisingly, was normally carried out by the assistant vet. Disbudding involved handling the calves on two occasions. To deal with the large number of calves, sometimes fifty or more in one session, the animals were run through a small calf-size cattle crush. They were injected with a local anaesthetic to freeze the area of the small horn buds on their heads, and then run through the crush again to remove the buds by burning them off with a red-hot iron. This may sound horrific but done correctly the procedure i
s painless.

  On one of the estate’s farms, I must have dealt with hundreds of calves in this manner and one of my regular helpers was an old weather-beaten stockman named Harry, although of course most called him ’Arry. He was at least seventy and very fit and agile for his years. He probably enjoyed a pint but I knew he was not a smoker, and he always liked a chat. At this time it seemed as though everyone was a smoker, including me. At the end of my first calf disbudding session there, having packed the kit back in the car, I lit up and offered ’Arry a cigarette.

  ‘No thanks, son’, he said. ‘Don’t touch ’em these days. ’Aven’t ’ad a fag now since I ’ad bronchitis in the twenties.’

  ‘That’s a long time ago, ’Arry; do you ever feel like one?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, I do’, he replied, ‘Every bloody day of my life for the last forty years.’

  Disbudding some frisky calves on one occasion, ’Arry started to talk about the hot iron I was using, which was heated from the gas in a portable Calor gas cylinder.

  ‘Better than the way we used to do it’, he reminisced. ‘We used to burn a fire and when it was red hot we’d stick the irons in the fire. Well yer Mr Evans was ’ere one day doing the calves and nothing seemed to go right, and he started shouting and bawling at everybody. Things went from bad to worse and we couldn’t get the irons ’ot enough and he was taking so long the anaesthetic started to wear off and that made things worse. I don’t know who he thought he was talking to, but he called us everything you can imagine’, related ’Arry at length.

  ‘I couldn’t stand any more, so when he shouted for another iron that I’d only just stuck in the fire, and he told me how useless I was, I thought I’d give ’im something to shout about, so I gave ’im the hot end first’, ’Arry chuckled. I winced, but I had to smile secretly at what might have followed. I could see that iron disappearing across the field.