Memoirs of a Cotswold Vet

by Ivor Smith

  Public honesty was seriously put to the test the day a lady from nearby Longlevens brought a magnificent and very expensive Amazon grey parrot into surgery. He had almost certainly escaped from a local home and was weak enough, probably from exhaustion, for the public-spirited lady to have picked him up and brought him to us. There were no signs of external injuries, but we admitted the beautiful bird and put him into a hospital cage where we could keep an eye on him. He recovered quickly without treatment other than food, water and nurses’ TLC. He was comfortable in their hands but nevertheless, he was no doubt anxious to be reunited with his owners.

  The local press provided a useful means to achieving this. They were normally very willing to come along and take a picture of a pet, usually in the arms of a veterinary nurse, and reported the story based on the details we provided. In this instance the Gloucester Citizen was as obliging as usual, and on the bird’s second evening’s stay, a nurse and the parrot had their moment of fame. It was an eye-catching picture and quickly spotted by a Longlevens reader who could not believe their good fortune. At about 4 p.m., at the start of surgery, one of my nurses popped into my room wearing her usual big smile to tell me the grateful owners of the parrot were on their way to collect their missing Amazon grey.

  Less than an hour later the same nurse, this time without her smile, came into my room to say: ‘I think we may have a problem, Mr Smith.’

  ‘We have, Jane? What makes you think so?’

  ‘Well, someone else has just phoned to tell us the parrot is theirs, but I’ve already given it to the first people who rang.’

  Things were rapidly becoming a first-come-first-served situation, and we could have done with a few more parrots. Surgery ended at 7 p.m. and by then we had a list of five other callers who, by chance, had lost a £400 Amazon grey parrot that week. The duty vet diverted the practice telephone to his home. The eighth claimant rang shortly after he arrived, and it did not stop there. By the folowing morning we had a list of twenty-odd people in the Gloucester area, all of whom had lost a parrot. It needed the wisdom of Solomon to sort that one out.

  The majority of our clients happily paid our professional fees and sincerely thanked us for our efforts. Farmers inevitably moaned about the fees but the majority of them paid their bills reasonably promptly. Some farmers just moaned about the fees and paid them slowly. It was unusual for a farmer not to moan and not to settle an account eventually. Naturally, as in all other walks of life, there was the one that never stopped complaining, was determined not to pay, and took his business elsewhere, where the cycle was repeated at a neighbouring veterinary practice.

  The companion side of the practice was a little different with regard to finances and normally the pet owner was expected to settle the account on the completion of treatment, and this arrangement usually worked well. Nevertheless, between 5 and 10 per cent of the practice turnover could be written off every year in unpaid fees. Not all of it was the result of dishonesty.

  Some related to the treatment of pets where their owners had hardly two pennies to rub together. Whether they should have taken on the animals in the first place is another matter. Often we found ourselves treating their pets regardless. It was sometimes possible to direct them to the RSPCA or one of the other charitable clinics, which was an immense help to the animal and to the grateful genuinely hard-up owner. It did not resolve the problem of course of the cat that was knocked over in the middle of the night or the collapsed dog that had been vomiting for days and had to be seen on Saturday afternoon. The situation was frustrating but I was convinced the only way to come to terms with the problem was to grin and bear it. It was arguably business madness but for me it was probably the only and right way of approaching an insoluble problem. It was less worrying to do what needed to be done now and argue about who paid for what later.

  I was lucky enough to be present when one of the greatest veterinary surgeons of all time, Professor John George Wright, gave his swansong lecture to the Liverpool Vet School, and in his lengthy talk he referred to this matter. He reminded us that we were particularly fortunate individuals who were entering a profession where our livelihoods were protected by law. In a nutshell, the Veterinary Surgeons Act prevented anyone other than a registered vet from practising veterinary surgery. It was illegal for any other person to diagnose and treat the animals of others. As a consequence of this privilege he reminded us that we were obliged to attend the animals at any time we were asked. No one else could.

  I resisted becoming too philanthropic, and my secretary reminded us all frequently that we were not running a charity. To be honest there were times when it was difficult to believe you were not becoming a cynic. We rapidly became wary of the owner who proclaimed at the first consultation, ‘I want the animal put right. I don’t care how much it costs.’ He might well have added, ‘Whatever it costs I don’t intend paying anything anyway’. The Small Claims Court was a useful tool for retrieving some of the fees, but many of the outstanding debts were too small to make it worth while chasing them through the legal system. Over the years I lost just one case, and on that occasion we had made a clerical error in submitting our details to the court.

  That particular day had not started well. The owner I was suing lived on a houseboat on the River Severn, and his attire was in keeping with a casual life on the river. His long black hair extended to his shoulders. His frayed denim jeans were supported by a very wide leather belt adorned with a huge brass buckle. An enormous sheath knife dangled from it. Somehow he had managed to obtain a green T-shirt with a slogan that read ‘Royal Veterinary College Trust Fund’. Dressed in my grey suit and carrying my briefcase I followed him into the courtroom. We sat in front of the judge, whose first words were, ‘Now then, which one of you is the vet?’

  Going to court was often an expensive waste of time. Having won the case it was common for neither our professional fees nor the court fees to be paid and it usually meant that I would be away from the practice for at least half a day. Dishonesty seemed to be such a common trait that there were times when you began to wonder if it was part of being normal. I suppose if our political leaders often get away with fiddling the books and indulging in hanky panky on a scale that beggars belief, the man in the street has good reason to believe his lesser misdemeanours will be considered of little importance. The degree of criminality I experienced varied right across the board from one extreme to the other. I could not have been more unaware of one end of the spectrum that I was about to encounter one evening.

  The telephone rang and a concerned owner described the suffering his dog was under as a result of what sounded like an acute ear infection. The problem needed speedy attention and, as he had no means of getting to the surgery, he asked if I would mind visiting him at his home in Brockworth. His Springer Spaniel was well behaved and there was no difficulty in gently inserting the speculum of the otoscope into the ear canal of the dejected patient, painful as it was. I gave a combination of antibiotic and analgesic injections, arranged to visit the next day, patted the patient’s head and bade them good night. The dog barked and greeted me at the door on my next visit. He was making a rapid recovery. I gave more injections and dispensed antibiotic tablets and an ear preparation from my case. I enjoyed a cup of tea with the owner and, having given instructions and advice on how to insert an oily lotion into a painful ear, departed.

  I thought little more of what was a routine case until a few weeks later, when my secretary Joan informed me that the account remained unpaid. The wording in her bill reminders, in usual fashion, became stronger, and finally the ‘pay up now or else’ letter went out. Months had passed since the first one had been posted, but Joan’s letter at last provoked a response. She suggested I had a word with the irate chap on the telephone. The next five minutes were spent confirming that he did indeed live at the address I had visited, but was not the owner of a dog. In fact he made it abundantly clear he had never owned a dog. The arguing continued. Then suddenly ther
e was an abrupt silence at the other end.

  ‘Oh my God’, he stuttered, ‘Perhaps you did see a dog here. We were away for six months and we let the house to someone.’

  ‘Well can you tell me who it was I saw that night?’ He gave me the name.

  ‘How can I get in touch with him?’

  ‘If you really want to’, he said, ‘you can write to him c/o Her Majesty’s Prison, Broadmoor.’

  There was silence while I digested this information. It came as quite a surprise that I had enjoyed a cup of tea with someone who had met two young women hitch hikers on the Oxfordshire bypass, then raped and strangled them both. He looked quite ordinary to me.

  Fortunately, most of the villains I came across were not wicked in that sense, in my view anyway, simply bored and misguided idiots. My father often said, ‘They wouldn’t have been doing that if they had done National Service.’ I agreed with him. Just about every mature person in the UK I have ever met would have agreed with my him too, except the politicians of course.

  Nevertheless, some young robbers wasted a great deal of our time and caused us a lot of unnecessary expense. Our Churchdown surgery was not immune to attempted burglaries. We experienced the occasional broken window, but it was not such an easy target with me living close by with our attentive dogs. Jimmy was not a huge dog but I would not have wanted to get on the wrong side of her when she was in a defensive mood.

  Our surgery at Brockworth, unoccupied at night, was more vulnerable. For many years it faced the Flying Machine pub on the other side of the road, which sadly achieved some notoriety. The locals in the bar must have enjoyed the entertainment one evening, wondering if an episode of Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em was being filmed there. Frank Spencer could not have performed better than our local comedian.

  The young man breaking into the surgery chose to go in through the roof. Once through, if he had veered to his left, within moments he would have been over the drug store and the cash area, although there was not enough there to have bought him more than a few pints. To provide a little security we regularly left the lights of the waiting room on throughout the night. The locked areas where the petty cash and mostly harmless drugs were kept were in darkness. Shortly before pub closing time the burglar made his move and broke through the ceiling plasterboard. He squeezed through the hole and dangled his feet into the room below. The disorientated nincompoop descended into the illuminated waiting room. The Flying Machine regulars could not believe their eyes, and needless to say he was arrested by the strong arm of the Brockworth residents.

  Over the years the Flying Machine pub became an enigma. For a long time it was just the place where locals put the world to rights and the local girl met the boy of her dreams. Eventually there was to be a more sinister association when it became part of the drug culture. Dealing in the pub and the car park were allegedly regular nightly and, eventually, daily activities. From the surgery the view across the road into the pub rooms and its car park were quite close and unobstructed and it came as little surprise when the police asked if we would allow them to spend some time in the surgery for surveillance purposes. For a while it was quite amusing when at the end of evening surgery Joan wished the police officer good night and locked him in. She probably told him to keep a watchful eye on the petty cash and the chocolate biscuits as well.

  About this time a young fellow brought his Doberman to our Churchdown surgery one Sunday morning and expressed concern about the dog’s behaviour. The dog certainly was behaving strangely. He seemed to be falling asleep on his feet. He responded if you spoke to him or stimulated him in some way and then began to doze off once more. I could find nothing really of clinical significance when I examined him, and certainly there were no findings that gave me a reason to be over-concerned. Nevertheless, something was interfering with his central nervous system.

  From time to time dogs, and cats too, will manage to find household remedies or more potent medicines that have been prescribed to members of the family, and try them, out of curiosity. This was a possibility although the owner ruled it out. Swallowing garden chemicals, herbicides, insecticides and rodent poisons were other possibilities, but again the owner did not think this was likely. One of the added bonuses of practising as a vet for a long time in a community is the opportunity to be part of it. It is amazing how much you come to know about folks, their personal lives and their families. I knew much of the background of this particular likeable young man, his lifestyle, and the company he kept.

  It would not have come as a surprise to hear that pot smoking was rife at one of his Saturday night parties, but that was not the uppermost thing on my mind when I dispensed palliative medicines to his dog, and almost in passing mentioned I would take samples if he had not fully recovered when I saw him the next day. I had not fully appreciated at the time that I had just examined my first patient suffering from the effects of marijuana. This had not been a topic included in my Liverpool Vet School curriculum.

  The worried owner was waiting for me with his dog in the car park when I arrived at surgery the next day. I had hardly got out of my car when he asked for a quiet word, and began to explain what had indeed happened on Saturday night. The reference to me taking samples had clearly alarmed him. I suspect there was an association in his mind between clinical samples and criminal evidence. A few minutes later, with the Doberman standing alert on my table, it was pleasing to find that my patient had made a complete recovery. They left the surgery with the young owner promising me for about the fifth time that he would never let this happen again. I really did believe him.

  Lord, when is a crime not a crime? I am not sure what the Lord might judge, but I think it was borderline one evening in the ’80s when someone was using the cottage extension of the practice telephone line for their personal pleasure. Actually I think that BT was half to blame.

  For some reason they considered that it was a useful service and no doubt a very profitable one to provide an early evening chat-line for lonesome chaps returning home from their place of work. In reality, a spicy dialogue between the caller and a fantasy girl at the other end took place if you dialled the correct expensive number. At this time one of our neighbouring Pound Cottages – parts of which dated back to the sixteenth century and had once been part of Pound Farm – was occupied by a young professional gentleman with very good credentials. I hasten to add that at this time it was not a vet, but perhaps I should have queried then why my bachelor veterinary assistants did not return home at the end of the day suffering similar frustrations.

  From the veterinary surgery our receptionist naturally telephoned frequently to speak to our clients, using the surgery line, about matters relating to their pets. It was possible for a client to use some form of ‘ring back’, and that was what receptionist Susan believed one evening when she lifted the telephone and put it to her ear. Susan was a mature family lady but could not believe what she was hearing. She was alarmed by the sounds of deep breathing and the moans and groans of someone in apparent need of urgent medical care. Before ringing for an ambulance she felt it was wise to ask me for a second opinion.

  ‘Oh, Mr Smith’, she gasped (it was becoming contagious), ‘I think one of our clients is having an attack of something, I don’t know who she is and she won’t tell me where she is.’

  Susan passed the telphone to me and I had to admit it was not the usual sort of conversation I had with my clients. There certainly was an abundance of puffing and panting. Later, at the end of surgery, I tactfully explained to Susan what I thought the matter might be about, and told her that I would have a quiet word with the gentleman in the cottage next door. As promised, I did have a chat with our tenant the following evening and I am not sure who was more embarrassed, but there were no repeat episodes as far as I am aware. I cannot recall asking Susan to confirm that, but I had no further complaints from anybody. I cannot remember either if I ever checked BT’s charges for this amusing interlude. Our generosity knew no bounds, but it is
all part of life’s experiences in this funny old world I suppose.

  At the end of the working day I was happy to go home, relax and enjoy a delicious supper my wife had prepared. Like most families we put our feet up for an hour or so, and both Angela and I enjoyed watching documentaries. A favourite for many years was the BBC’s Panorama. One evening we spent an hour watching a Panorama Special and listening to a reporter describe the inadequate funding of Britain’s police forces. To illustrate their point effectively, they had chosen the force policing the rural Cotswolds where, it was claimed, there were just two police cars to cover goodness knows how many square miles of our beautiful countryside. One car was on duty through the night and the whole of the enormous area was protected by just one car through the day. If the insurance companies were watching the programme they must have been tearing their hair out. The Cotswolds answer to Al Capone must have been rubbing his hands together as he saw the one police car a day accelerate into the distance. Naturally the programme progressed to the consequences of the inadequate protection.

  An idyllic film of Bourton-on-the-Water was shown, one of our Cotswold gems and one of the last places on earth you would expect to experience robbery with violence.

  No doubt the point being made was that if there had been two police cars a day available this offence might not have happened. Recently, the reporter stated, unbelievably, there had been a ram raid in the main street and many televisions had been stolen from an electrical shop. Worse was to come. Leaving the devastation of broken glass, the offenders spied the shop’s illuminated signs, which by chance contained the letter ‘E’. The bounders pinched that as well. Why on earth would anyone want to do that? Panorama was about to explain. Apparently, the reporter revealed, ‘If you want to show that you are really with it, you go to your next disco/club/rave/knees-up with a big plastic ‘E’ dangling from a necklace.’ ‘E’ is for Ecstasy.