Memoirs of a Cotswold Vet

by Ivor Smith

  It took me back to the Liverpool road signs and the red and white cones that appeared from nowhere on a Sunday morning in our university’s halls of residence. Young men have an inborn desire to collect trophies on a Saturday night. ‘It would be sensible’, we were advised by our head warden, Professor Seabourne-Davies, ‘if you returned them straight away to where you found them.’ This assumed that anyone could recall where they had found them. The advice had come from a good source; the professor was one of the country’s leading criminal lawyers at the time.

  My next day in the practice began with a morning session at our Brockworth surgery. Even before I entered the building for my 10 o’clock cup of coffee, I was aware that something at the surgery was different. This morning I was not heading towards the ‘VETERINARY SURGERY’, but the ‘V-T-RINARY SURG-RY’. Now wasn’t that a coincidence, Panorama?

  It was an interesting but for us expensive exercise and we hope the kids enjoyed their moment of glory. We replaced the attractive Perspex letters with stick-on ones that were guaranteed to be non-peelable, and we hoped that the BBC would not repeat the programme any time soon.

  Most of us enjoy a good practical joke, but causing unnecessary expensive damage becomes vandalism and is no longer funny. My sense of humour was stretched to breaking point when I had to replace a wall on the corner of Green Street. I had bought one of the neighbouring ancient Pound Cottages at the beginning of the ’80s, a time when it was still customary for the veterinary practice to provide free accommodation for the vet assistants.

  An elderly lady walking along Green Street was surprised to watch a car perform an unusual manoeuvre in the road in order to face the wall. The vehicle then accelerated into it before reversing back on to the road. The old wall had been dented but stood firm. The demolition gang however was not to be beaten. The second shot was more successful, and the car ended up on the paved area for a moment, partly buried in debris, before reversing; the vandals then drove off in the battered vehicle. I bet it wasn’t even their car. The police interviewed the old lady, the sole witness. Despite being in a state of shock, she gave the police as much information as she was able. The police then knew they were looking for a black saloon and three or possibly four youths.

  For a week or two, while arrangements were made for a builder to restore it, a pile of stones remained outside the cottage where once there had been a fine wall. By the time a stonemason arrived to begin building there were no longer enough Cotswold stones to fill the gap so more had to be bought. There seemed to be a secondary market in the vandalism business. Apparently at night various people had been seen wheelbarrowing stones off for their own use. The old wall was probably being transformed into fireplaces and garden rockeries all over Brockworth. I was pleased to see the rebuilding job completed before the original wall disappeared completely.

  If the occupants of the car on that occasion had injured themselves they could have expected little sympathy; they would have had only themselves to blame. I have similar feelings for the mean, anti-social person who on one occasion smashed the surgery reception window with a brick just sufficiently to reach through and take the ‘Guide Dogs for the Blind’ collection box. How badly he gashed his arm on the jagged glass I have no idea, but there was a great deal of blood to clean up with the fragments of broken glass the following morning.

  Perhaps he got what he deserved, but shortly after, in another surgery-related crime, a youngster got a little more than he deserved. On this occasion the lad ended up in hospital fighting for his life in intensive care. One of my assistants was a vet named Steve Butterworth who lived in Pound Cottage in the late ’80s. He rang our main Churchdown surgery early one morning to let us know he would be a little late for work. Actually he asked for a lift; his Astra had disappeared early that morning from his parking spot outside the cottage. Apparently Astras were notoriously easy to break into. The police contacted Steve to tell him where his car was, and it was not too far away. It was quite easy to find along the road between Brockworth and Churchdown: a large gap in the roadside hedge pointed to where the car had left the road, and then bounced and rolled before settling on its roof. A trail of veterinary bandages, white dressings, cotton wool, and boxes of medicines and syringes led to the battered car. The two youngsters involved in the theft were very seriously hurt and one of them had neck injuries, leaving him paralysed at the time of the crash. One hopes the damage to his spine was not permanent and that he eventually recovered.

  Having a car stolen is a very strange feeling. The immediate reaction for me was one of disbelief and denial. When I discovered one morning at The Brambles that my car was not in the place I believed I had parked it the night before, I began to rack my brains, assuming for a few moments that I must surely have parked elsewhere. After a few minutes came the realisation and acceptance that it had been stolen. My beautiful new little Ford Escort turbo had been pinched. If there was still any doubt in my mind, it quickly disappeared as I reported the details to the police. Within the hour I was back on the telephone letting the police know that my car, or most of it, had been located. It was in one of the ancient quarries at Birdlip and had been found by a Cotswold Park warden. There were enough personal details still in the car for him to identify me as the owner.

  ‘I think you should get here as soon as possible, Mr Smith’, he instructed me over the phone. ‘I’m afraid they’ve already taken the wheels and the front seats, and if you don’t come and get it soon, it won’t be long before others come along and take some more of it.’ There was obviously a secondary market in the car-nicking business too.

  From time to time we lost other cars by the same route and when my restored Escort disappeared for the second time it was never seen again. On that occasion it was a truly professional job and the Manchester police informed me that my car was now probably part of another car. I never really understood why the crooks go to the trouble of sawing cars in half and joining two different ones together but no doubt there are sound profitable reasons. To add insult to injury I last saw my favourite stethoscope in a plastic bag marked ‘exhibit 136’. It had been retained by the police as evidence; I had started to lose property to the bad guys and the good guys.

  A particular concern regarding those who steal or just break into vets’ cars is the possibility of them getting their hands on dangerous drugs. This was a problem that could only occur during the daytime. At night anything of concern was removed and placed under lock and key in the surgery. Should anyone be silly enough to try sampling anything found in the car boot the worst scenario was they would not be seen outside their bathroom for a couple of days.

  A discussion about animals and the ways they have involved me with criminals and the law would not be complete without referring briefly to animal cruelty. Like most vets in practice I have occasionally encountered cruelty so repulsive that I shall not attempt to describe it and thank the heavens that these encounters were very few and far between. As we all know, cruelty takes many forms and is sometimes the result of an owner killing their pet with kindness. The obese dog that is doomed to joint degeneration from an early age has been the subject of media attention for decades and still the obsessively kind owners continue to stuff their fat dogs with cream cakes, and perhaps they always will. At the other end of the spectrum is, of course, the malnutrition and starvation of animals as a result of the owner’s stupidity.

  All the cases in which I was involved over the years seemed to follow the same pattern. In the case of the greedy rogue farmer, he failed to provide adequate feed for the cattle or the sheep, and often combined his disregard with an appalling and unacceptable standard of husbandry. From time to time, it gave me great satisfaction to provide supporting evidence in court that led to their successful prosecution. With domestic pets the cruelty caused by neglect sometimes became apparent at the time it was necessary for some reason to examine the pets of initially well-intentioned people who simply had no funds to pay for a tin of cat or dog food.
Often it was combined with not having enough money to provide for their numerous children. What do you say to such an owner, who asks, ‘Why shouldn’t my kids have animals just like everyone else?’ There were times when I could have yelled at them, ‘Because you can’t bloomin’ well afford them, that’s why.’ But I never did. The dilemma was that I knew that all the numerous children would in some way benefit from their family association with their pets, but sadly they could not with neglected animals like that.

  Since I hung up my rugby boots, my Saturday afternoon violent aspirations have been limited to shouting in our Gloucester’s Kingsholm stadium, usually at the referee. The point I am trying to make is that when senseless violence was inflicted on the animals I treated there was never a referee to help them. There was the odd owner who bullied their pet into submission in the belief that it was part of a strict training programme. Occasionally the act of cruelty was the result of an individual striking out or kicking an animal impulsively. This would often occur at night after the owner obviously had one too many. Enough said, you have heard it all before. Actually, you have not. There was one particular case woth relating.

  The telephone rang late one Saturday night and a frightened lady asked me if I would look at their Labrador dog that had just been involved in a road accident. They believed he was concussed but was recovering. He needed to be seen anyway to ensure he had not received internal injuries, and within the half hour the Jones’ arrived at the surgery with their dog, Joe. He was unsteady on his feet when I lifted him onto the table. I was surprised that I could not find a single superficial mark on him, but he was certainly not compos mentis. I remarked that this was odd and asked if they had actually seen the accident. The owners looked at one another, apparently knowing that I did not believe their story. Then the truth came out. Mr Jones’ lips began to tremble and he had difficulty speaking. He put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and sobbed.

  ‘There wasn’t an accident’, he eventually managed to reveal, ‘I hit him and I’m so sorry.’

  Mr Jones certainly packed a punch. In the intervals when he was once more in control of himself he explained that they had been out for the evening and when they arrived home Joe had come to greet them and in his excitement jumped up against him. It must have been a bad night for Mr Jones. He responded by landing a severe uppercut on his dog, who was immediately knocked unconscious. Joe was steadily recovering on my examination table and I am sure the repeated apologies from a distressed Mr Jones to Joe cradled in his arms were reassuring enough to mend any bond, which must have been stretched to breaking point. But clearly a bond existed between them.

  The young couple came to see me the next day, and of course tail-wagging Joe was with them. Apologies all round were still abundant. All was well and by now they were appreciated but unnecessary. I suspect that the owners may have been anxious to know if there were ‘further enquiries’ to be made in a case like this. Was this a case of cruelty? I am not a judge, but until today I have never told anyone about what actually happened that night. I was satisfied it would never happen again.

  Another example of madness is the sort I really wish we would never see again, but I have not sufficient faith in human nature to believe that. These events happened a long time ago and the area in Churchdown where this took place has changed immensely for the better. One afternoon a middle-aged couple came into surgery with a small kitten who was fitting. Within minutes of a clinical examination it was clear that it had meningitis resulting from head trauma. The couple had witnessed a group of youths playing a ball game with the cat outside a block of flats. One young lad took the cat up the stairs to a higher balcony and tossed it to other members of the group waiting below. If the unfortunate creature had had any luck someone would have caught him before he hit the ground. The state of the kitten showed that he had hit it on more than one occasion. This really was a shocking example of juvenile cruelty and I discussed the case the following day with the local RSPCA inspector.

  Before continuing I need to make it clear that I am a member of the RSPCA and have been for most of my life. I support most of the society’s policies and have much respect for the achievements of the dedicated, hardworking, fund-raising members, particularly at local level, from one end of the country to the other. My comments are not a criticism of the society, just of one inspector at a particular time in history whose ineptitude made me so angry and frustrated I cannot forget him. It will now not come as too much of a surprise when I say that I was a bit disappointed by the inspector’s response. I was also astonished. Assuming it was his job to investigate cases of alleged cruelty to animals, he was being handed a case on a plate. He was given the names of the individuals dropping the cat from the balcony, the names of the witnesses and a veterinary report of the cat’s injuries prior to euthanasia. He was not the slightest bit interested and I was flabbergasted.

  ‘Well, do you think you could go along and have a word with the individuals concerned?’

  ‘A waste of time, my man’, was the reply. ‘That lot are so used to talking to people in uniform it would be water off a duck’s back’, or ridiculous words to the same effect. As far as I was concerned he should have hung up his uniform there and then, but no doubt he would have continued to his impending retirement and a back-slapping session where someone else swathed in medals spoke of his lifetime’s dedication to animal welfare. Thank the Lord for the present generation of RSPCA inspectors.

  Towards the end of surgery one cold January morning my receptionist Claire tapped on my consulting room door and apologised for interrupting me.

  ‘I am sorry to bother you, Mr Smith, but I’ve just taken a call from a client in Hucclecote and I think you should deal with this one as soon as you can.’

  ‘Oh dear, what’s the problem?’ I replied in a nonchalant way, still looking forward to the first cup of surgery coffee of the day.

  ‘I am not sure what has happened’, she continued, ‘but a horse has suffered a dreadful head injury.’ An injury resulting from a road traffic accident immediately came to mind, but Claire was sure that there were no vehicles involved.

  ‘Okay, ring him back and reassure him I’ll be with him in just a few minutes.’

  The patient was a small sixteen-year-old Welsh Mountain pony called Bubbles. Her owners were Bryn and Janet Rudge who lived in Hucclecote and stabled the pony in a small building on the slopes of Chosen Hill. Local children enjoyed rides on her around the lower fields of the hill, and many others simply went to say hello. Who on earth could possibly wish her any harm?

  I met an ashen-faced Bryn in the field near the little stable. He tried to prepare me for what I was about to see but his words were totally inadequate. Blood was splattered all around the small stable building, and a closer inspection revealed tiny fragments of skin and hair. In the centre of the carnage Bubbles stood motionless. She was unrecognisable as a pony. Her head had been beaten to a pulp. Her face was so flattened and distorted that her features were more like those of a donkey. I am sure no further description is necessary for anyone to appreciate the full horror of it. Words of comfort to her were a waste of time; she was dying.

  I rang my old colleagues at Ormond Eeles and had a quick chat with Walter’s son, Richard. I knew that he would not be long coming but if Bubbles was still aware of anything a few minutes would be a very long time. I gave her a massive dose of pethidine and she sank to the floor shortly afterwards. We waited. I looked around the building and did not have to look far to find the murder weapon – on the floor at one end was a sticky, bloodstained scaffold pole. Richard walked into the stable and uttered, ‘Good God, I hadn’t expected this.’ Neither of us had. Surely nothing other than a battlefield could create such a scene. Richard raised his gun to Bubbles’ head. There was a sharp bang and she suffered no more. Sadly I had watched Richard, or his sister’s husband, Bob, perform this humane killing on many occasions. It was remarkably professional. It was fast, safe and accurate and the stress on b
oth horse and owner was kept to a minimum. At the appropriate moment the gun seemed to deftly appear from nowhere and in the next second it was all over.

  The following day back at my surgery our local RSPCA inspector, Alan Brockbank, called in for a chat about the incident. He too joined the ranks of those who had never seen or heard the likes of it. A reward for information was offered at the time but as far as I am aware no one was ever arrested for the crime. That was seventeen years ago. It’s hard to believe that the person who carried out this atrocity has lived with this on their conscience all this time.

  On a happier note and once more side-tracking from the animals, it is a pleasure to write about the Rudge family of Hucclecote. Peter and Edward (Teddy) Rudge were classmates from the time we donned our maroon Crypt School blazers in 1952. Peter and I often asked each other, ‘Where did Ted get his brains from?’ He had IQ to spare. We were fortunate enough to have a maths master in school at the time named Arthur C. ‘Aggie’ Paget. He was reputed to be the best mathematician ever to be associated with the Crypt School. That was of course before Teddy came along. Which one was the more brilliant? I cannot answer that one. I don’t think I was suitably placed to judge, except on those occasions when I found myself at a desk near him in an end of term exam.

  At some stage I was taught additional maths, which embraced calculus, and it was not long before I thought I was being taught another language. I was never close enough to read what Ted had written, just near enough to see how much he had written. While I struggled to get beyond my fifth line of deductions I could see he had filled one side of foolscap, and I was convinced we could not have been given the same question. Ted was never destined to be a schoolteacher but how I benefited from his knowledge of A-level physics and chemistry. His enthusiasm for these subjects made him a natural teacher and he appeared to have more patience than our officially appointed ones.