Starlight Christmas

by Bonnie Bryant

  Most of Judy’s medical tools were in the back of the pickup, but the cab held racks filled with empty tubes and containers, which were designed to hold lab specimens. A small cooler lay by Carole’s feet. Judy told her that it contained vaccines for injections.

  “That keeps the vaccine fresh and keeps the bottles from rattling around and breaking. Actually, though, I usually try to warm medicine to room temperature before I give an injection. The horses are less likely to notice that way.” Carole had watched Judy give injections to the Pine Hollow horses many times. She wished her own doctor gave them as painlessly as Judy did.

  Judy pulled the truck up into the stable driveway. Mr. Michaels appeared at the entrance and waved a welcome to Judy. Then he returned to the stable while Judy and Carole got the necessary items from the truck. Judy had a little case, which she used to carry tubes, sample containers, syringes, and medicine for each stop. She assembled the things she needed and they entered the barn.

  Judy introduced Carole to Mr. Michaels. Carole liked him the instant she saw him. He looked like a man who loved horses.

  “This old gal’s the one that’s giving me trouble,” he said, pointing to a bay mare.

  “Well, let’s see what kind of infection she’s got,” Judy said. She asked Carole to check the horse’s heart and respiration rate, handing her the stethoscope. Carole gulped.

  She was going to ask Judy what to do when she saw that Judy was deep in conversation with Mr. Michaels about the mare’s symptoms. Carole realized that Judy expected her to know exactly what to do. It frightened her a little, but of course, Judy was right.

  Carole stuck the earphones of the stethoscope in her ears and put the other end against the horse’s chest behind the elbow on the left-hand side. That was what she’d seen Judy do in the past. At first, Carole couldn’t hear anything except muffled rumblings. She moved the head of the stethoscope around until she could hear better. There it was! The mare’s heartbeat was strong and clear as a bell, lub-dub, lub-dub. Carole could begin taking the animal’s pulse, but her watch didn’t have a second hand. She had to have a second hand to figure out the heart rate.

  “Uh, Judy, can I borrow your watch?” Carole asked sheepishly. Without comment, Judy slipped the watch off her arm and handed it to Carole. Carole made a note to herself to borrow her father’s old watch with a sweep second hand the next time she came out with Judy.

  Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub. She counted carefully for a full minute, just to be sure, though she knew the faster way was to count for half a minute and double the number.

  “Thirty-three,” she announced. Judy nodded. Then Carole stood back and watched the horse, counting the number of times her nostrils expanded to breathe in. Carole did that for a full minute, too. The mare breathed in twelve times in a minute. That was perfectly normal. Carole told Judy, who jotted down the information on her patient’s chart.

  Then Judy began her own examination. Carole held the horse and talked to her soothingly while Judy poked and prodded. The mare was very sweet. She didn’t seem to mind at all. Carole hoped that whatever was wrong, it wasn’t serious. Such a nice gentle horse shouldn’t have to be sick!

  Next, Judy looked in on the mare who was about to foal.

  “She’s got a couple of days to go,” Judy said. “She seems fine. Keep a close watch on her, though. Call me when her labor begins, okay?” Mr. Michaels said he would.

  The next horse they checked was a feisty stallion. Judy clipped on a lead rope, held him with one hand, and drew the blood samples with her other hand. It only took a few seconds, and like the mare, the horse barely seemed to notice.

  “I’ll show you how to do this,” Judy told Carole. “But I’m not going to start you on a stallion. They tend to be much more high-strung than geldings and mares. You’re a good, healthy assistant. I’d like to keep it that way!”

  Carole smiled. Judy handed her two tubes with the stallion’s blood samples. “Mark the horse’s name, the stable, and the date on each of them,” Judy said. Carole had to borrow her pen to do it. She made a note to remember one of those next time, too. The last thing she wanted to be was a nuisance!

  Carole watched as Judy came out of the stallion’s stall. Judy moved the stallion up to the door of the stall, clicked off the lead rope, and backed out quickly.

  “Never turn your back on an unfamiliar horse, especially one who has flattened his ears and showed the whites of his eyes,” Judy remarked. “Don’t give him a chance to hurt you. He might just be frightened enough to do it.”

  Mr. Michaels nodded in agreement. “Old Admiral here has done it more than once,” he said. “He’s got a nasty temper, but his bloodlines are impeccable and he sires the most wonderful foals!”

  “Really?” Carole asked. She knew that horses were bred in the hopes of accentuating the good characteristics of their sires and dams, or fathers and mothers. A breeder might, for example, cross a good jumper who had a bad disposition with a good-natured horse who was a mediocre jumper in the hopes of getting a foal who was both a good jumper and good-natured. It didn’t always work that way, though. Sometimes what they ended up with was a moody foal who couldn’t jump for beans!

  “Are any of Admiral’s foals here?” Carole asked curiously.

  “Oh, sure,” Mr. Michaels said. “Let me introduce you to one. Judy, you should take a look at this fellow anyway because I’m about to sell him and I’ll want you to certify that he’s sound.”

  Judy and Carole followed Mr. Michaels down the row of stalls. There, in the last stall, was a big bay gelding with a dark mahogany coat and a lopsided six-pointed star on his face.

  “Oh, he’s beautiful!” Carole said.

  “He is that,” Mr. Michaels agreed. “And he’s going to be a champion one day, with the right rider.”

  “Bring him out, Carole. Let’s have a look at him,” Judy said.

  Carole stepped into the stall and took a close look at the horse. He took a close look at her as well. She couldn’t help smiling. He seemed so curious, almost puppylike. She clipped a lead onto his halter and scratched his face, right below his eye, to reassure him. He nuzzled her neck. It tickled. She was having such a nice time with him that she almost didn’t want to take him out of the stall, but Judy and Mr. Michaels were waiting. She clucked her tongue and brought the bay out to an open area in the hallway.

  Judy made a thorough examination of the horse’s soundness, running her hands along each of his legs, checking his hooves, and examining his mouth. She asked Carole to take him out into the arena and jog him around so she could watch how he moved. After he exercised, she checked his heart and respiration rate.

  “Everything looks okay to me,” Judy announced at last.

  “I thought so,” Mr. Michaels said. “I just wanted to be sure. The last thing I need is an unhappy buyer. I rely on repeat business.”

  That made sense to Carole. But one look at that horse and she knew that whoever bought him was going to be happy. “What’s his name?” she asked.

  “Pretty Boy,” he told her. “At least that’s what I call him. I don’t know if the new owner will use that or rename him.”

  Pretty Boy. It was a nice name and fit him, but it wasn’t what Carole would have called him. It wasn’t special enough for such a fine horse.

  Carole returned him to his stall, bolted it shut, and returned to help Judy give the inoculations to the other horses. Judy showed Carole how to put the alcohol on the horse before administering the shot and even let her put on the alcohol twice. That was fun, but it wasn’t as much fun as trotting around the ring with Pretty Boy.

  Soon after that, Judy and Carole were on their way, headed for another stable where, Judy told her, there was a lame horse that needed some attention.

  “Ninety-five percent of lameness is in horses’ feet,” Judy said. “We all assume that things will go wrong with their legs because they’re slender and they don’t look strong enough to hold up all that body. That’s partly true and
it’s one of the things that makes horses beautiful to us, but the feet are where the problems really begin.”

  The horse they looked at, a chestnut mare, was no exception. She had bruised the frog of her foot, which is the pie-shaped section extending from the heel to the center of the bottom of the hoof. It is the part of the foot that strikes the ground, and as long as it was bruised, the mare would favor that foot.

  “Keep her quiet, no riding, for about ten days,” Judy instructed. Then she handed the owner some medicine. “You can give her some of this if she seems uncomfortable. It’s probably best to let nature do the healing, but she shouldn’t suffer in the meantime. I’ll be back to check up on her progress.”

  The owner was very grateful for Judy’s advice and looked relieved that the problem was minor. Often lameness wasn’t minor and took a lot longer than ten days to heal.

  When Judy and Carole climbed back into the truck, Judy gave Carole some more information about the mare and her owner. “That wasn’t a problem,” Judy commented. “If that owner had more experience, he would have known that it wasn’t. I’m not complaining, though, and it doesn’t have anything to do with charging him a fee for the visit. I would always rather have an owner ask me to look at a horse when they’re not certain that it’s a problem than to have them wait until they know darn well that they’ve got a serious problem. A lot of the time, success in healing depends on early diagnosis.”

  Carole made a note to herself that whenever she was in doubt, she’d call the vet. Then she realized that she was already doing that. After all, when Snowball had showed the slightest sign of being ill, she had called Judy. Snowball wasn’t as valuable as a show horse, but what a pet cost often didn’t have anything to do with how valuable it was to the owner. Snowball was very valuable to Carole.

  The rest of the afternoon sped by. Carole could hardly believe the variety of illnesses and problems that Judy had to cope with. Would she ever learn to remember the difference in symptoms among all the kinds of lamenesses a horse could have? Any loving owner should have a good idea of these things, even without four years at veterinary school.

  There were so many other things a vet had to know, too. When was it appropriate to increase a horse’s hay, increase his water, change his grain, eliminate his sweets, decrease his mash, throw out the mash altogether? It seemed to Carole that about a thousand facts and ten thousand questions were whirling around in her head—and all that whirling was exhausting!

  “Ready to quit for the day?” Judy asked.

  “Oh, no, I could go on for hours!” Carole exclaimed. “Who is our next patient?”

  “I think you are!” Judy teased. “And my prescription is a good night’s rest!”

  Carole was sorry the day was over, but a little relieved, too. Judy was right; she was tired. “Okay, Doc,” Carole said. “But I’m going to get that rest at Stevie’s house. We’re having a sleepover. Can you drop me off there?”

  “Sure thing,” Judy said. Carole slumped down in the comfortable seat and never even noticed her eyelids drooping closed. She was asleep before she knew it.

  WHILE CAROLE WAS napping in the pickup truck, Stevie and Lisa were busy in Stevie’s kitchen, which was noisy, as usual. Lisa was greasing the baking dish while Stevie counted out forty marshmallows. It wasn’t easy to count forty marshmallows, either, because her little brother kept snitching them from the pan. Stevie threw one at him in exasperation. Michael caught it in his mouth.

  “Hey, neat!” he said. “Do that again!”

  Stevie opened the door to the dining room and threw a marshmallow as far as she could, through the dining room and across the family room. When he left the kitchen to track it down, she slammed the door behind him and secured it with the bolt lock.

  “Alone at last!” Stevie heaved a sigh of relief and returned to her counting.

  “I made the calls,” Lisa told her. “It’s all set now. I’m just waiting to hear from Colonel Hanson. He might call us here tonight to let us know.” She measured the Rice Krispies and set them aside to wait while Stevie melted the forty marshmallows in a saucepan. Stevie stirred the marshmallow goo carefully and tried to concentrate on what she was doing. It wasn’t easy, with all the racket going on on the other side of the kitchen door. First, Michael banged loudly, then he shouted. Then he yelled for Stevie’s mother to come to his rescue. Then he yelled at Stevie’s mother when she refused to help.

  “Brothers!” Stevie said as she and Lisa mixed the marshmallows and cereal in a bowl. Lisa nodded. She knew just what Stevie meant, and even if she hadn’t known from her own experience, Michael was providing an excellent example of what could only be called typical brother behavior.

  They were interrupted by knocking at the back door.

  “It’s Carole,” Stevie guessed as Lisa dashed to answer it.

  Carole walked into the kitchen, sniffing appreciatively. “What smells so good?” she asked.

  “Rice Krispies Treats,” Lisa told her.

  Carole grinned. “Will there be any left if your brothers find out about them?” she asked Stevie.

  “Absolutely not,” Stevie replied. “Which is why we are going to guard them with our lives. They can make their own!” She completed shaping the batter in the dish. “The only trick is, how are we going to get them upstairs?”

  It took the girls only a few minutes to figure out a way. They took all of Carole’s clothes out of her bag and hid the dish there. They left the clothes in the kitchen for the time being, since Carole didn’t need them yet.

  “Great!” Stevie said. “We get the Rice Krispies Treats upstairs disguised as tomorrow’s clothes! We are so clever!”

  Stevie unlocked the kitchen door while Carole held her bag as nonchalantly as she could manage. Michael, Alex, and Chad burst into the kitchen as soon as the lock was undone. The girls scurried up the stairs. They weren’t going to be able to fool Stevie’s brothers for long, but they were able to fool them long enough to get to Stevie’s room and slam the door.

  “Whew!” Stevie said, collapsing on her bed. “Now I know what it means to run a gauntlet!”

  The girls took off their shoes and got comfortable. It was time to talk. It was time for a Saddle Club meeting.

  “I had the most wonderful day!” Carole said. “You won’t believe all the things I saw and did. I got to hold horses and help while Judy examined them, and you should have seen me at the first horse we examined.”

  “Don’t you love the ‘we’?” Stevie teased. “She left us this morning just an ordinary horse crazy girl and came back to us this afternoon a veterinarian!”

  Carole smiled. She didn’t mind the teasing. After all, she had helped with the examination. She began to tell her friends all the highlights of the day.

  “… and then, there was this foal we looked at,” Carole said. “He was so cute you couldn’t believe it. He is only three days old and he’s prancing around the foaling box, swishing his tail. It’s only about six inches long. His mother never lets him out of her sight. She’s the most attentive mother I ever saw. Anyway, Judy wasn’t there when he was born, so this was the first time she was seeing him. She had to examine him and give him some shots. He didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he didn’t seem to notice as long as he was nursing. The tricky part was keeping his mother from being overprotective. I got to pat her. She didn’t pay much attention to me. She was much more concerned with what Judy was doing to her baby.” Carole was about to explain exactly what inoculations Judy had given the foal, and why, when the phone on Stevie’s bedside table rang. Stevie picked it up.

  “It’s for you,” she told Lisa.

  Lisa took the phone from her and said, “Hello?” Although Lisa lived down the block from Stevie, and although she was very sensible—in many ways much more sensible than either Stevie or Carole—Lisa’s mother was always calling her wherever she was for one reason or another. Carole suspected this was one of those calls.

  “Do you think Mrs. Atwood wants he
r to remember her vitamins this time?” Carole whispered to Stevie. “Or maybe remind her to floss?” She laughed at her own joke and was a little surprised when Stevie looked puzzled. “That is Lisa’s mother calling, isn’t it?” Carole asked.

  “Huh? Oh, yes,” Stevie said in a way that sounded a little strange. “Probably wants to tell her about bedtime or something like that,” Stevie joked.

  “Uh-hmmm, yeah, um-hmmmm, right. Uh, pretty, right, yes. That’s it. I think so … sometime next week, okay? Sure, Wednesday afternoon is fine, Colonel, of course. Bye for now.”

  Stevie glared at Lisa as she hung up the phone. Lisa instantly realized her mistake. The caller wasn’t Lisa’s mother at all, but Carole’s father. Lisa had slipped badly by calling him Colonel. How are we going to cover that? Stevie wondered.

  “You call your mother Colonel?” Carole asked, now definitely suspicious.

  “Oh, not my mother,” Lisa said quickly.

  “Stevie said it was your mother who called. What’s going on here?” Carole wanted to know.

  “Oh, of course it was my mother who called,” Lisa said, trying to sound as logical as possible. “But she called me because there was this Salvation Army colonel at our house and she wanted me to talk to him. I’m going to be doing some volunteer work for them over vacation, so we had to make arrangements. It’s this new thing she’s gotten me into. I’ll tell you about it some other time. It’s pretty boring, though. So why don’t you tell us more about the foal?”

  “Oh, right, the foal,” Carole said, trying to remember where she had left off. “So, anyway, there I am, holding the mother, who wasn’t paying any attention to me, when the owner asked Judy if it would be all right to let the two of them out into a little paddock right off the foaling box. Judy said sure, as soon as she was finished. We got to wait and watch. The owner opened the door up and the mare led the way. That three-day-old just gaped at the open door at first. It was like he couldn’t have imagined something so wonderful and so frightening. He sniffed and cocked his head to listen. He took a couple of steps toward the light. I think he would have stood and looked forever if it hadn’t been for his mother. She stepped into the warm sunshine outside and then began calling to him. He took slow, careful steps, sniffing, looking, and listening every step of the way. Then, of course, once he got outside, he was at home. After fifteen minutes, when it was time to bring them back in, he started acting like he’d found his new home and he didn’t want all that indoor stuff! His mother was ready to go back in, though. She gave him a piece of her mind and a nudge with her nose. He got back into the foaling box, took a sip or two or milk from her, and then practically collapsed to take his nap. He was so cute. He was almost snoring!”