Don't Turn Your Back in the Barn (Adventures of a Country Vet)

by Perrin, Dr. Dave

  I stomped from the bank, aware that every eye in the place was focused on my retreating figure. My face burning with humiliation, and my heart pounding, I walked up the block to Veitch Realty. I was still furious when I sat down to tell my story to Gordon and Ruth.

  "Well, I could have told you not to go there," Gordon blurted with a hearty laugh. "This is Creston—your opposition banks there!"

  We had almost finished a long morning of rectal palpations at the Partington dairy farm when the call came through. The telephone company had yet to install a phone in my office, and this was another of those miraculous calls that was passed from one farmer to the next until I was finally located.

  "It's for you, Dave," Jean yelled over the high-pitched whine of the compressors.

  "Dr. Perrin, this is Mrs. Lennard from out to Yahk. I got a little horse that's bin hurt. The kids found 'im layin' down all caught in his tether chain. When we got 'im up, his leg was stickin' out funny. He can't walk on it and just hops 'round on his good leg."

  "Where does the leg change angles—at the top or at the bottom?" I was trying to visualize where the leg was fractured.

  "Halfway up—near where it bends in the middle."

  "Near the hock?"

  "I guess—don't know the parts of a horse too good. Kin you come right now?"

  "I'll be leaving here shortly; we're all but finished."

  After getting directions from Mrs. Lennard on how to find her house, I returned to the Partingtons and a cow that I was treating for a uterine infection.

  I was ecstatic that many of the dairymen in the Creston Valley had embraced the idea of a routine herd health program for their cattle. On a monthly basis, the farmer would pick out cows that had calved recently, been bred more than thirty-five days, or had multiple breedings. I would examine them by inserting my gloved hand into their rectums to check their reproductive tracts for signs of abnormalities or pregnancy. Cows that were sick or just not performing up to expectation were also examined.

  The goal was to pick up problems early and enhance the likelihood that the cows would perform well and calve on a regular basis. This made it possible to increase the amount of milk a cow yielded in her lifetime and reduce the amount of money that it cost to produce it.

  At the end of every herd health, the cows that were found to have uterine infections were infused with antibiotics. Scrubbing the vaginal region of the last cow, I held her tail to one side and passed the tip of a two-foot infusion pipette through the vulva to the os of the cervix. Pushing through the rectum with my other hand, I expelled jets of manure to the barn floor. Once the stool was evacuated, the rectal wall fit like a glove. I was then able to grab the cervix, which lay directly below, and thread the pipette through the cervical rings and into the uterus.

  "Okay, Jean." I held the end of the pipette so she could flush in the syringe full of tetracyclines. "I guess that's it for today."

  "Thanks, Dave. Hope we don't have to see you before next month."

  The half-hour drive to Yahk gave me the opportunity to reflect on my limited experience in equine orthopedics. I had gone to veterinary college thinking that I might want to work exclusively with horses. After the first two years, I gradually changed my mind. Observation had convinced me that horses as patients were the most cantankerous of any of the species that I would be called to work on. They were totally without patience for their own inabilities and extremely difficult to reason with.

  I thought back to an incident when I was still a third-year student at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at Saskatoon. A thoroughbred filly had broken her right hind leg midshaft through the cannon bone, and Dr. Larry Kramer had just finished an arduous session of surgery to repair it when I arrived on the scene. His face was a portrait of concern as he viewed before and after X-rays of a fracture site that had been carefully girded by bone plates. The plates were secured meticulously by chains of screws on both ends of the fracture, a repair that would have satisfied any orthopedic surgeon. Perusing those radiographs with a half-dozen other students, I felt proud to be a part of a profession that could accomplish such a fantastic feat. Truly proud!

  We peered through the crack in the recovery room door as the filly made her first movements. When she was able to support herself on her sternum, the observers hushed in anticipation. Within minutes, she would be on her feet and everyone would know whether or not the repair could hold up to that first crucial test.

  When it became obvious that she was ready to stand, two interns ventured onto the spongy surface of the recovery room floor, ready to support her. Suddenly, she lurched to her feet. Bearing most of the weight on her good hind leg, she steadied herself. Five minutes passed and everything was looking great.

  The filly appeared determined to try out her injured limb. She began with a peculiar rocking motion, shifting weight from her good leg to her repaired one. She tried part of her weight, then almost all of it. Finally, she lifted her good one off the ground about six inches and held it. The repair appeared to be holding up to her test. Then, as we all looked on in horror, it bowed and collapsed. The injury was considered to be irreparable, and the filly was euthanized.

  Her leg was on display during pathology rounds the next afternoon. Beside a view box with before and after radiographs, lay two ends of bones still held by one twisted plate.

  Following the directions that I had jotted down on a scrap of paper, I drove through the village of Yahk, past the gas station, and over a bridge. Immediately after crossing the river, in the midst of a grove of old cottonwoods, was the white house that Mrs. Lennard had described—an old building of clapboard construction. The roof had once been cedar shingles, but now it was patched with an array of materials ranging from tarpaper to oil cans, which had been cut open and spread flat. The white paint on the siding was checked and peeling, exposing the grey of the boards beneath it.

  The narrow driveway that led up to the house had been plucked of stones, but the surrounding area was a sea of boulders. Wherever the mounds of rock were thin, an automobile had been parked and scavenged. Some cars lay on their wheels, some on their roofs, some on their sides. Nowhere was there a vehicle that appeared to be in running condition.

  I pulled up in front of the house and Mrs. Lennard appeared. She was a pleasant-looking woman in her forties.

  "The pony's over to the pasture," she said, leading me through piles of stones towards the riverbank.

  Pasture indeed! I stumbled over boulders the size of my head and walked around others that would weigh over a ton. The Lennard pasture was no more than the Moyie River bed at low tide.

  As we neared the river, I could see a pony surrounded by a halfdozen children. Sitting on a rock not far from the group was a portly, grey-haired fellow I presumed to be Mr. Lennard. His right arm was suspended in a sling fashioned from part of a well-worn bed sheet.

  "He's a prince of a pony, that one," Mrs. Lennard was saying. "The kids kin do absolutely anythin' with 'im. He was fine when we put 'im out here at nine this mornin'. The kids come over to fetch 'im and found 'im just layin' with his broken leg under 'im and the chain wrapped 'round. We got 'im untangled but the leg just kinda hangs there and dangles funny—shur hope that he's gonna be all right or them kids'll be some upset."

  "The chain saw!" yelled Mr. Lennard, as we came within earshot.

  "Pardon me?"

  "The chain saw!" he repeated with agitation. "I cut my damned cords with the chain saw. Just got back to work too—only my second day. Can't wiggle the damned things yet." He thrust the arm in front of my face to show me the motionless fingers.

  "First me, now the bloody horse!" Mr. Lennard walked away, shaking his head, then turned on his heel. "Bloody hell, it makes ya wonder what'll happen next. It always comes in threes, ya know."

  As I stooped to examine the horse's leg, Mrs. Lennard and the children crowded close in an effort not to miss a thing. Mr. Lennard stood back, oblivious to what I was doing, and droned on about his mi
series with the compensation board.

  Gently manipulating the flopping end of the leg, I could see that the problem was not a fracture at all but a dislocation at the level of the tibial tarsal joint.

  Not quite what I had expected; not what I had expected at all! I had never seen or heard of a situation similar to this, but nonetheless, here we were.

  At this point in my career, my bedside (or should I say stallside) manner was in its infantile stage. An acquired gift, it is that intangible something that allows an open rapport and makes everyone—patient, client, and doctor—feel more at ease.

  "The problem is a dislocation. The pony must have gotten the chain wrapped around his hock; then he fell over sideways. He didn't break a bone, but he tore the ligaments that hold the bones together. They pulled apart and are now badly overlapped."

  The whole family by this time was peering over my shoulder. As no one spoke up or questioned me, I continued, "This is the joint where most of the movement in the hock takes place, so an arthritis here would be very serious!"

  No one commented. I soon felt obligated to resume talking. "There's not much doubt that even if it were possible to repair this dislocation, the pony would end up with arthritis in the joint and not be good for riding."

  Silence. Damn it—someone could make a comment, ask a question. They all just stared at the pony's dangling leg. Not one of the family moved from his position at my elbow. I was engulfed by an overwhelming feeling of frustration; after all, I had known from the beginning that this was going to be a euthanasia. Surely, they weren't expecting me to repair it! Hadn't I told Mrs. Lennard on the phone that there probably wasn't much I could do with it? Why didn't someone say something?

  I took yet another run at it. "I'm afraid he'll have to be put to sleep."

  I was met with the same impassive stares that I had received previously. Pressing on, I addressed Mrs. Lennard directly. "Is that what you would like me to do? Would you like me to put him to sleep?"

  Without displaying the slightest emotion, she nodded her head and responded simply, "Okay."

  Baffled by her lack of emotion—by everyone's lack of emotion—I picked my way through the boulders to my car. I dug through the box of syringes until I found a sixty-millilitre size, slipped on a fourteen-gauge needle, and drew it full of euthanasia solution. After drenching a swab in alcohol, I trekked back to the others.

  As I approached, I noted that the family was more talkative when I wasn't around. I assumed they had been discussing my diagnosis, but no one appeared the least bit disturbed that their pony was soon to be lying dead at their feet.

  "Wouldn't it be better for the children if they were to go back to the house?" I asked Mrs. Lennard, thinking that surely to God they had some feelings for the horse.

  She answered me with her own question, "They won't be in yer way, will they?"

  Taking this as permission for them to stay, I asked the children to stand back, blocked the jugular vein at the bottom of the horse's neck, and wiped with the alcohol swab.

  Just as I was about to drive the needle into the vein, Mrs. Lennard spoke. "What're you gonna do with Freckles when he's sleepin'?"

  A cold shiver ran up my spine as I realized that the Lennards and I had not been speaking the same language. No one had the faintest idea that the solution I was about to inject would kill Freckles.

  Stepping back, I turned to Mrs. Lennard. "You obviously don't understand what I was suggesting. What I meant was that I don't think the pony has much of a chance for a normal life, and that he should be put to sleep permanently—destroyed!"

  "Kill 'im?"

  As I nodded, the entire family burst into tears. Not one of the children was left with dry eyes. Mrs. Lennard had her head on the pony's mane and was weeping uncontrollably. Desperate for justification and moral support, I turned to Mr. Lennard.

  "I doubt if there's any way I'd be able to fix it even if I tried," I stammered.

  It was to no avail; Mr. Lennard was crying in harmony with the rest of his family. Had I the sense that the Lord gave the lowest of creatures, I would have quietly listened until they could appreciate the wisdom of my advice and then performed my terrible duty.

  I blathered on. "There's such little chance that he would be normal even if I could get it back in place. You wouldn't want to see him crippled and limping around for the rest of his life?"

  Pausing again, I hoped that someone would say something to make it easier—something that would take the responsibility for their grief from my shoulders. It wasn't to be. Sobs from one and all.

  Justifying their tears as much to myself as to them, I muttered, "The only thing we could possibly do would be to anesthetize him and see how well it would reduce, but it may never stay in place."

  The trap was sprung! Even though I was sure no one had listened to a single thing I'd said all day, they stopped crying in unison, and Mrs. Lennard said, "Okay."

  Okay! Okay what? What in hell had I gotten myself into now? Why had Mrs. Lennard chosen that particular moment to pay attention to my ramblings?

  "Where'll ya want to do it?" asked Mr. Lennard. "Do ya want 'im over to the house? I think he kin hop that far."

  Stunned by the rapid train of events, all I could manage was a nod. As I had come prepared for little more than a euthanasia, it was necessary to return to the office for the materials that I'd need to perform this minor miracle.

  My inner voice harangued me all the way to town. This was a fool's errand. I probably wouldn't get the damned leg back in place to start with; even if I did get good reduction, he was bound to get so much arthritic change that he'd be permanently lame. Besides that, it was obvious that the Lennards couldn't afford to be spending money on that horse. They looked as if their ends were a long way from meeting already.

  When I arrived back in Creston, Doris was still chipping away at the filth in the back room. Wandering around with a trouble light in one hand and a scrub rag in the other, she had the arborite on the countertop gleaming. From the look of the improvements, it was obvious she had had little time for knitting.

  "I found a light switch under the sink, but I can't find anything that it turns on."

  Ignoring the mystery of the hidden light switch, I got working on the problem at hand. The drug traveler from Clarke Cote had left me a couple of packages of a muscle relaxant called glycerol guacoate, and I busied myself with preparing it.

  I juggled the plastic pouch of the medication back and forth over the narrow neck of a bottle of saline in an attempt to empty the icing sugar-like material inside with a minimal chance of contaminating it. After ten minutes of patient manipulation and a two- or three-minute temper tantrum, the final lumps of glycerol guacoate passed into the bottle.

  Getting the material through the bottle neck was one thing; putting it into solution was yet another. I shook that bottle until my arm was sore but was only able to decrease the sludge layer from an inch and a half to a half-inch plus lumps. No manner of contortion, no burning glare, no discharge of four-letter words was the key to getting that product into solution.

  Certain that using saline rather than sterile water had led to poor solubility, I poured the concoction down the drain and started over with the second bag of muscle relaxant and my one and only bottle of sterile water. Transferring the glycerol guacoate from bag to bottle went no smoother than it had the first time and, to my dismay, the lumps and the sludge that sat in the bottom were no more soluble in distilled water than they were in saline.

  "Doris! Could you come and shake this damned bottle while I hunt up the rest of the stuff I need?"

  Doris had wisely stayed as far away from the commotion in the back room as possible and surrendered her dust rag with considerable reluctance. Leaving her to deal with the sludge, I busied myself digging through boxes for the potions that would be required for my "magic hock" routine.

  A general walk-through of a procedure in my mind had become a very useful technique and the more detailed my im
aging, the less likely I was to forget something vital. First the tranquilizer—I already had Atravet in the car. Two grams of Biotal to mix with the sludge should put the horse down. I placed two bottles of Biotal in a cardboard box and returned to the visualizing. The horse was now stretched out on the ground. I had a rope pulling on the bottom of the leg, a rope anchoring his hip, and either a tug-of-war team or a come-along stretching his leg out.

  Along with the image of the chain block appeared a picture of Gordon. Surely he'd know where I could come up with one on short notice.

  Okay, the horse's leg was repaired and back in position. I'd wrapped it with padding and was now applying a cast. A bag of cast padding and a carton of Velroc went into the box.

  "I'm going down to Gordon's to see if he can come up with a chain block, Doris!" She was still in the back room, vigorously agitating the bottle of sludge.

  An hour later, my Volkswagen was on its way to Yahk with Gordon in front, a chain block at his feet, and Doris in the back beside a box of materials.

  "I'm sure glad you warmed that bottle of glycerol guacoate and got it into solution, Doris. I would really have been up the creek without that stuff."

  The trip passed quickly with my giving Doris and Gordon a description of what was about to happen with the horse: how it was likely to be a very difficult case. How horses were troublesome patients. I had finished telling my story of the filly with the broken leg when we drove through Yahk. Passing over the little bridge, I was met with a sight that sent shivers up my spine. I pulled over to the side of the road and buried my head in my hands. My whole body shook as though I had suddenly been thrown naked into a prairie snowdrift.

  "Holy...," muttered Gordon. "The whole town is here."

  The whole town indeed! The driveway was plugged with vehicles. People were coming and going from the yard. A car pulled up and two women got out carrying plates of sandwiches and an assortment of other goodies.

  "They've turned this into a bloody carnival," I moaned. "There's no way I'm going in there. This is just plain ridiculous!"