There were plenty of exciting moments. All of the deer capture took place in the northwest corner of the South Island — wild, magnificent, uninhabited country. Much of that country is only rarely visited by the occasional intrepid tramper and fishermen or geologists. One incident occurred when one of the four net weights jammed in its barrel under the helicopter. The rest of the net hooked itself on a ledge of a near precipice while the stag galloped off into the bush. We were therefore attached to the land and couldn’t move. The rotor blades were dangerously close to the cliff and Bill could not rest a skid on the ledge. The shooter, Wal, eased his way along the skid to try and release the weight but couldn’t. He then decided the best option was to leap off onto the ledge. That resolved the problem to a certain extent. The change in weight distribution meant the 500 pulled up and back — the barrel broke off, the helicopter flipped momentarily upside down, and Wal knocked himself out on the rock. After Bill had composed himself and I had sorted myself out in the back, we returned to carefully pick up the net and a dazed Wal, bleeding from the head. That was enough deer capture for the day.
On another occasion at the end of a relatively unsuccessful day, we came across a sow and her litter. Wal and I leapt out and raced off in different directions and eventually caught one each. As I leapt back onto the skid and grabbed hold of a short length of rope next to the shooter’s seat with my left hand, Bill moved off. Holding onto the piglet with my right hand I placed him onto the floor in front of the seat. When the helicopter was a good 100 feet up and Bill was looking for Wal, the piglet decided to latch onto my thumb. The power of self-preservation overcame the pain and I did manage to hang onto that rope but the pain was excruciating and worse still when I tore him off and hurled him into the back of the helicopter.
While most of the deer were eventually caught by net, I did have to resort to bull-dogging a couple of times. One day Wal was having a bad day. We had half a dozen nets that could be rapidly loaded into the net gun. This allowed repeat shots if a miss occurred or if more than one animal required netting. We were chasing a particularly wily hind this day and she had been able to avoid all the nets shot at her. These were now littering a considerable area of a mountainside. With no nets left Wal had to resort to bull-dogging but he also ended up as a blob on the landscape and the hind raced on. It was now my turn but luckily she was getting rather exhausted by this time and didn’t put up too much of a fight after I landed on her. While she was not the only one I bull-dogged, we avoided using that method of capture if we could. It was definitely the most physical way of deer capture and I doubt very much that my body would be up to handling that sort of treatment these days.
Those deer capture days were exciting ones and a good introduction to the effects of different drugs on deer and their amazing adaptability to domestication. However, it appears my deer capture days were not over. Recently, and 30 years later, I got involved with capturing wild deer again, this time for a very different reason. I had been involved with some work with Ivor Yockney from Landcare Research, who was doing some novel, ground-breaking research into working out home territories of wild pigs and deer and their use as sentinel animals for TB. The work was on Muzzle Station in the Clarence Valley for the pigs, and Molesworth Station for the deer.
With pigs we released animals in which Mary Bowron and I had implanted transmitters and in some, a GPS unit. Mary, a more recent veterinary graduate and a local, bucked the trend of most of her generation and is keen on the large animal work. These days she does most of the practical hands-on farm work in our practice while I work very hard at avoiding it. She is also very game and will take on everything thrown at her and even delights in flying with me. Getting her to help with the surgery in the field in possibly one of the more isolated areas, with Tapuae-o-Uenuku as a beautiful backdrop, is not a problem.
The pigs had been sourced from a wild TB-free population in the Marlborough Sounds and bred in captivity. Once they were old enough we operated on them, inserting implants under the skin, and a few days later released them at specific sites. They were later shot and post-mortemed to determine whether they had picked up TB after they had been released, and what territory they had covered from the information recorded on the GPS. If they had TB lesions, then it could be assumed they had picked it up from eating TB vectors such as possums that had died in the area they had travelled over. Poisoning possums, the most important wild vector of TB, could be then restricted to specific areas rather than the expensive blanket poisoning jobs which have become somewhat unpopular.
We darted wild deer from a helicopter as in the early days. We took a blood sample, tagged them and attached a collar with a GPS unit and a transmitter so that they could eventually be tracked down. After this they were given the antidote, which meant that within a couple of minutes they had recovered, stood up and then usually just trotted off, apparently not too fazed by the whole experience. This is the first such work that has been done on deer in the wild in New Zealand. Eventually they will need to be captured again to retrieve the units.
However, the job was just as I remember it — the smell of Jet A1, the excitement of looking for the deer, then the chase, and the eventual capture. All was the same except this helicopter seemed harder to climb in and out of, the deer seemed bigger and stronger, and the mountains were steeper.
OF ROOFS AND FINGERS — PJ
It had been a bad day, cold and wet. I was on a duty weekend, and Saturday had been full of emergencies. After a full morning doing routine consultations and some minor surgery — cats with abscesses, dogs with corneal ulcers, that sort of thing — I had then gone to see a lame horse before going back to the surgery for another dog or two. Early evening I had been called to do a caesarean section in a cow well up the Wairau Valley. An hour’s drive, at least two hours doing the surgery, a flat battery because I’d left the car door open and the lights on, and an hour home. I was bushed. I got home late, ate dinner and headed for bed.
When the phone went at 1am I was dead to the world, so much so that I must rely on Ally’s account of the early parts of this story. The client was a lovely person, one of my favourite clients, a sympathetic and understanding woman from Picton. At least I knew I would have sensible assistance, and that her husband would almost certainly be there to help as well. Ally recognised the name, but as she always did, answered the call professionally and with some degree of protection for me. She knew I was pretty knackered.
She maintains that when she handed me the phone, I mumbled ‘Hello’ and went through the diagnostic motions, and then fell asleep with the phone clutched to my chest. She rescued me and clamped the phone to my ear again, so that I was able to hear the problem. A whelping bitch, one pup out, but with nothing happening for the last hour.
Now a whelping bitch is always an interesting problem. Two hours between pups is considered the absolute maximum before the bitch needs veterinary intervention. That can take the form of manual assistance, maybe with the use of the hormone oxytocin to stimulate contractions, or a caesarean section, meaning a general anaesthetic and full abdominal surgery to deliver the pups. With many of our dog-breeding clients, we would encourage them to take blood samples prior to mating, so that the date of ovulation was known. With that knowledge, it’s a simple matter to know the date the pups are expected, but it is hard to convince dog breeders to do this. Many still haven’t grasped the notion that veterinary science has moved on, and that the actual mating date can be removed from ovulation day by as much as seven days. Ovulation day is the key. Once that’s known, everything else follows, with small variations. So, if we knew the expected date, and if on that date they weren’t starting labour, I would encourage the owner to bring the bitch in during daylight hours so we could make a full assessment. That way we could do the caesarean, if necessary, in the day, with a full complement of nursing staff on hand.
At night, by oneself and with an anxious owner on hand, it can be a very challenging procedure. The bitch needs a
n intravenous anaesthetic, then must be intubated to go on the gas anaesthetic machine, and all surgery has to be done in a sterile fashion. So it’s not something to look forward to in the middle of the night, and many times my wife or children assisted me with these fascinating but demanding pieces of surgery.
But back to my weekend on duty.
We agreed that the owner would keep an eye on the situation and ring me if there was still no action in an hour. If that happened I would have to perform a C-section.
Sleep claimed me until 3am when the phone went again, and again I must rely on Ally’s account. She says it went like this: ‘Hello. Yes, hmmmm,’ mumbled advice, and then sounds of snoring as I fell asleep again. The next thing I remember was a thump: Ally had hit the floor and was rolling about laughing. That finally woke me up.
With whelping bitches, there’s a thing called Ferguson’s reflex and it is a handy trick that allows owners and vets to help their bitch produce the pups when things have ground to a halt. Eliciting Ferguson’s reflex involves stroking the roof of the bitch’s vagina with your finger and this oft en stimulates contractions in a labour that has stalled. I have used it many times with success, and it can save a trip to the vet for the owner. But this night, I wasn’t quite on form, as the perceptive reader might have guessed. Ally maintains that I said, ‘Yes indeed, Mrs McTavish. Now, have you tried stroking the roof with the finger of your vagina?’
During the caesarean that followed, and the ensuing weeks as the pups came in for check-ups and vaccinations, I fully expected Mrs Mac to tackle me over the events of that night. Sweet woman, she never embarrassed me by so much as mentioning it. And Ally still shrieks with uncontrolled mirth whenever she recalls it, which is embarrassingly often.
FAINTERS — PA
It is not all that surprising that many people feel uncomfortable in the presence of blood and guts and the smells of antiseptics, anaesthetics and myriad other concoctions — all necessary in a well-functioning surgery.
However, what does sometimes surprise me is who is most susceptible. More oft en than not it is a man. Quite oft en it has been one who has spent the day pig hunting, sticking pigs, getting his dog ripped up, doing some hasty surgery in the field to push back a piece of fern-covered dog gut and using his jersey as a bandage, carrying the dog for miles to the ute and rushing it to the clinic at some ungodly hour to be ‘fixed up’. Preliminaries have to be dispensed with — it is late, the dog has lost a heap of blood, he needs a drip (intravenous fluids and blood if possible) and he needs his wounds cleaned and repaired. Out comes the bottle of thiopentone, suck the required amount into a syringe, place a decent-sized needle on syringe, syringe towards the ceiling and expel unwanted air bubbles. It is about this time that you become aware the owner has stopped talking, is looking very pale, sweating heavily and complaining about how hot it is in the cold little surgery. You are about to lose your assistant.
So single-handedly you anaesthetise, intubate and hook up the dog to the anaesthetic machine, put him on a saline drip, and then clean up what, underneath a fairly small superficial skin wound, is a severely damaged and contaminated abdominal wall and intestines. Good surgical repair requires much cleaning of contaminated tissue and cutting away damaged or dead tissue. The actual surgical repair is oft en a relatively small percentage of the time spent on the dog. And no matter the value of the dog, and whatever the owner’s history for paying for services, you are a professional and you do the best job you can.
George Kyle was a giant of a man. Late one Sunday evening I received a call from him. ‘Is that the vet?’ The usual start to many telephone calls with no apology for disturbing my evening. ‘Yeah, I’ve just got home. Me best dog is pretty cut up. His guts is hanging out. Can I bring him in?’
Of course I couldn’t refuse and telling him to give the dog a disprin wasn’t going to work. I met George at the clinic and proceeded to examine his dog on the surgery table. Indeed his guts were hanging out, but luckily he had not lost too much blood. It was going to be quite a long job, firstly to clean up the contaminated intestines, then to repair the wound caused by the tusks of a boar. Luckily the intestines, although covered in bits of foliage and dirt, were not ruptured. But while superficially the wound didn’t look too bad, there was bound to be some major internal damage. George was covered in blood and was starting to regale me with stories of the day. It was all tough man talk, but George was putty in my syringe-filled hand. He went very quiet and then staggered out the door and collapsed against some cupboards and drawers the moment the syringe went vertical. There was a horribly expensive tearing, crashing sound as he bounced off the cupboards and fell sprawling over an examination table. He recovered after a few minutes and quietly sneaked out for a fag and then off home. Later the cupboards needed replacing and the table required some major repairs.
On another occasion I was removing an intestinal obstruction. Two of the more common causes of intestinal obstructions in working dogs are ear tags and corn cobs. The bigger Allflex or Nu-Zee type tags must have an irresistible earwaxy, scabby flavour to them when they fall out and dogs can’t resist them. They can roll up and get stuck halfway down the intestinal track and can be a real challenge for diagnosis, oft en undetected even with good abdominal palpation and radiographs. The classic symptoms of vomiting and not passing any faeces are not observed because ingesta or gut contents can still pass through. On the other hand solid obstructions such as stones, bones, golf balls or corn cobs are frequently easily palpated and picked up on radiographs.
On this occasion it was a particularly busy day, PJ was out doing some farm calls, Jill, our receptionist and assistant nurse, was busy trying to do both jobs and I was interrupted while in the middle of the operation by Keith, a drug company representative. The operation was to remove a three to four centimetre length of corn cob that had been stuck for too long, causing necrosis (death) of about 10 centimetres of intestine. All dead tissue had to be cut away and two ends of nice healthy intestine then needed rejoining. Keith liked to talk — lots. But I thought I could make use of him and allow Jill to get on with some other work requiring urgent attention. She was a total multi-tasker and could handle most things. Holding a set of bowel clamps so that the two ends of intestine were nicely apposed would allow for easier suturing and was not an onerous task for any assistant — or so I thought. ‘Keith — go and wash your hands well, use that brown stuff in the bottle beside the taps and dry your hands with the paper towels on the wall there and come and make yourself useful.’
Keith obliged and did what I asked of him and held the bowel clamps just where I needed them, rotating slightly as I worked my way around the intestine and he still talked — for a while. I then found I had to keep asking him not to keep moving his hands his way all the time because it meant I had to lean further over the table to keep suturing. I soon became aware that all was not well with Keith — Keith had gone very pale, Keith was sweating heavily, and Keith was not talking. I was about to lose another assistant. Sure enough he was now on a rapid slide down the wall, whites of eyes only showing in a deathly pale face, tongue out, not a pretty sight, but he diligently stuck to his duty and hung on to those bowel clamps. Intestines tumbled out of the dog’s abdomen and over the edge of the table and lay along with the bowel clamps, swabs, drapes, and bits of resected gut on Keith’s comatose body. I retrieved the intestines and instruments after checking that Keith was breathing — well, making little moaning noises at least. Jill returned to help finish the job but not before unceremoniously dragging Keith out of the way. Keith finally came to and looked with glazed eyes at the mess of swabs and resected dog intestine, corn cob and ooze soiling the front of his nice clean company jersey: ‘What the hell happened?’
I have always envied PJ’s skill at detecting when to react to a fainting owner, stepping in to catch them right at the moment their legs start to buckle and gently lowering them to the floor. I’m not too sure about male fainters but as far as I am aware he
has never failed a fainting female yet. As for me I usually only became aware something was amiss when they disappeared from my peripheral vision and I heard the thud-thuck as body followed by head hit the floor.
(PJ: This last paragraph is pure wishful thinking on PA’s part, and has no foundation in fact.)
TRAFFIC COPS — PJ
I’m not very proud of this story, but all things can have a funny side if you want to see it, so I think it’s worth telling.
In 1998, I had a disagreement with a policeman. It wasn’t actually a two-way altercation, more a unilateral disagreement.
It was my birthday, and we’d had a dinner for everyone from our practice at the Blenheim Club, a crusty, semi-stately fornicatorium/mausoleum built as a gentlemen’s club in 1903. The old walls are sheathed in stained rimu panels. The ceilings are impossibly high, and the place in those days was old, cold and ugly. It’s had quite a facelift now and is old, warm and ugly, but there is still a musty Victorian reek to the place, and the entrenched conservatism of the place is enshrined in the portraits of the Queen, Winston Churchill, and Lord Freyberg which adorn the walls.
But in those days, it was a pretty cheap place to hire out, and the managers of recent times have provided excellent fare when asked to do meals, so we chose to go there for our function.
Cock and Bull Stories Page 17
