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

by Perrin, Dr. Dave

  "Yeah, sure! Tell me that in a couple of years after you've been in the racket for a while."

  Hugh looked longingly at the beer bottle that sat empty on the table before him. Pushing his chair back, he opened the cupboard and hauled a gallon jug from beneath the sink.

  "Have I got a treat for you." He grinned and authoritatively plunked the crock down.

  "My God, what's that?"

  "Drink up." He motioned to my few remaining gulps of ale.

  "I've got to head over the summit yet tonight. I don't need anything more to drink."

  "But this is plum '72," Hugh pronounced, as if describing a wine of exceptional vintage.

  I drained my glass and winced as I watched the cloudy, brownish-yellow sludge spew forth from the jug.

  He filled the tumbler to the brim. "Whoa! You are trying to drown me!"

  "Oh hell! By the time Mom gets supper into you, it'll be all soaked up. Besides, the brew's not even a year old; it's just starting to work."

  I peered into the glass. Miscellaneous chunks of debris still swirled in a quiet little eddy. I was sure I could see a big wog bobbing deeper in the glass, but the wine was so cloudy that it was hard to tell.

  "I better get the barbecue warmed up for Mother," Hugh grumbled, taking his glass and heading for the door.

  "Do you plan on using that turpentine to start the fire?"

  "You damned Canucks—none of you have the slightest appreciation for good liquor."

  While Hugh was busy, I surveyed the room. Character oozed from every pore. The old-fashioned kitchen had cabinets along one wall and a sink in front of a deep window that was laden with plants. The living room was one with the kitchen, with a stairway heading to the upper floor. A couch and two overstuffed armchairs surrounded a stone fireplace, which occupied a portion of the outside wall.

  "I sure like these high ceilings," I commented to Hugh, as he wandered in from outside.

  "I've always been partial to older style places. This one reminds me a lot of the houses back home in England."

  Hugh sat down. Throwing his feet on a neighbouring chair, he grabbed his glass of wine. "Pretty good stuff, this." He took a sip and maintained a straight face. "Haven't even filtered it yet," he bragged, holding the glass up to the light.

  "Have you tried putting it through a kitchen sieve?" I eyed a large floating mass that I hoped was a piece of plum.

  Hugh chuckled, then leaned back and took another draught. "So have you always been a whiz kid?"

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "Well, I can't imagine anyone starting his own practice his first day out of school; Pete tells me you graduated third or fourth in your class."

  "That had more to do with the hours I spent studying than the brain cells I had working. I remember taking a letter of protest around to get signatures from classmates when the college decided to close the library at midnight. There just didn't seem to be enough hours to take it all in."

  "Somehow, you don't strike me as the serious type. Had a few bookworms in my class too, but I wanted to have time for sports and a few glasses of ale."

  "I guess I always had this thing about being big and dumb." I lifted the glass to my mouth to wet my lips. I grimaced as the dry, acrid liquid spread over my taste buds—what swill!

  "How old are you now?"

  "Turned twenty-five in June."

  "Well, anyone who qualified by that age sure didn't waste much time along the way."

  "Always knew I was going to be a vet. Don't ever remember making the decision—but always knew it. Not many people thought I had a hope of getting to university, never mind graduating. From the time I started school, I was always struggling to keep up; spent the majority of my elementary years in remedial reading classes. I know what it's like to be branded as one of the slow ones."

  Hugh sat quietly with the glass cradled between his hands. He rotated it slowly, staring at what was probably a piece of plum floating at the top of the slurry.

  "Had a terrible time with math when I got to middle school. Failed grade nine math even though I worked like a hound on it. My old man tried helping me. He'd get so frustrated that he'd holler and pound his fist on the table—it just didn't sink in. They advised me to take vocational rather than academic training."

  A peacock screeched outside, and one of the terriers barked shrilly. I glanced out the window. My mind drifted back to the meeting with my high school counselor, where he spelled out in black and white that I wasn't college material. He stressed to my parents that I should work towards an apprenticeship at the smelter where I'd be able to learn a trade.

  I remembered my father shouting at him. "But the kid wants to be a veterinarian! He's wanted to be one since he was old enough to want to be anything; I'll be damned if I'll stand in the way. I'm not about to sentence him to a life of hell with the company!"

  The session ended with the counselor shaking his head as he stared at my academic standings. He agreed to allow me to continue the struggle and, after much wrangling, he arranged for me to take both grade nine and ten math in the same year.

  I lifted my glass and took a sip. Hugh interrupted my reverie.

  "You must have done better in high school to get into college."

  "Well yes, but things never seemed to come easy for me. I'd work like hell to get the same grades that other kids got doing next to nothing. I was a dogged S.O.B. though; I was determined not to fail. By the time I graduated, my grades had climbed to C+s and Bs.

  "The best thing that ever happened to me was working one summer for Cominco. Didn't take me long to figure out that I wanted something more. Crawling into empty vats with sand-blasting equipment in ninety-five-degree weather, loading bags of fertilizer into railway cars—it was a great way to convince me to stick with school.

  "I put in a couple of years at Selkirk College in Castlegar; if you didn't consider my marks for math, physics, and chemistry, my grades really didn't look bad. I struggled through those courses with the barest of passes. I tell you, those classes taught me a new definition of misery. I hated every minute I spent studying those subjects!"

  "Did you keep working at Cominco during the summers?"

  "No, didn't have the stomach for it. Got a job with a logging company on the Anzac River north of Prince George. It was way out in the bush, and stacking lumber was a treat compared to working in the dust and grime at the smelter. There wasn't a lot to waste my money on either. Had no problem saving for the next year at college."

  "So you got right into the vet college from Selkirk?"

  "No, I applied but never had a snowball's chance in hell. Ended up going to U.B.C. for a year. Boy, I'll tell you, that was a shocker for a small-town boy. Couldn't stand the crowds and the traffic. The worst part was losing contact with my critters—really missed my horses, and I had never been without dogs and cats for as long as I could remember.

  "It was a good year for me academically though. I got into courses that actually interested me. From that year on, it seemed relatively easy to keep myself in the upper third of the class."

  The kitchen door burst open and Pat came clunking in, her arms laden with buckets, all three dogs following close behind her. The moment the Chesapeake stepped over the threshold, the Jack Russell terrier yipped and attacked him with a ferocity that surprised me. He jumped up and grabbed the big dog by his jowl. Dangling there, he swung like a pendulum.

  "Jeremy, stop that!" Pat hollered. "Behave yourself for a change! Duke could eat you in one bite if he had a mind to."

  Only after Duke backed out of the house did the little white terror release his grip.

  "Boy, he sure is a feisty little bugger." The dog strutted into the kitchen. His head held high and his belly only inches from the floor, he walked with the self-assured swagger of a barroom brawler.

  "He's death on anything that moves if he thinks it doesn't belong on the property," Hugh affirmed. "And he seems to have the notion that poor old Duke doesn't belong near the hous
e."

  Jeremy presented his front feet on Hugh's leg; Hugh bent over and scooped him onto his lap. The dog promptly curled up in a ball and went to sleep.

  "That poor old ewe has a swollen foot again," Pat lamented. "I gave her a shot and kept her in the paddock. I couldn't see a puncture, but it sure looks sore."

  Hugh took another draught of his wine. "Maybe we'll have to throw her down and have a look if it doesn't improve. Aren't you going to pour yourself one, Mom?"

  "Is it as bad as it looks, Hughie?"

  "It's coming along real good," Hugh insisted. "It's already got a bit of a nip to it."

  Pat rummaged through the kitchen cupboards; pots and pans soon rattled their way to the top of the stove. Dumping a bucket full of freshly dug vegetables into the sink, she began scrubbing them.

  "What happened after U.B.C. then?" Hugh continued.

  "Competition for seats at the vet college was fierce; my less-thanstellar performance at Selkirk hadn't helped my grade point average.

  "I was on my way to a job in Ontario, so stopped in Saskatoon with the hopes of arranging an interview. It wasn't mandatory, but I thought it might help my chances. The receptionist made several calls and told me that no one from the admissions committee would be available to meet with me for the rest of the week.

  "As I was leaving, a distinguished-looking gentleman asked if I was interested in becoming a student at the veterinary college. He had apparently overheard me talking to the receptionist. I told him I had wanted to be a vet for as long as I could remember and that I would get in there eventually.

  " 'I'm sure you will...I'm sure you will. I'm Larry Smith,' he said. He shook my hand and spoke as casually as if he were part of the janitorial staff. 'Would you like to come to my office?'

  "I was more than a little humbled when he opened the door with Dr. Larry Smith—Dean of Students boldly printed across the front of it. I chatted with him about my hopes and my experiences.

  "As it turned out, he'd been waiting for the president of the University of Saskatchewan to arrive for a personally guided tour of the clinical facilities. Before I knew it, I was being escorted around the college in the company of the president and his wife with the dean as guide."

  "Wasn't that a stroke of luck," Pat chimed. "You sure wouldn't have gotten that treatment from Hughie's dean, would you, Hon?"

  "That's for damned sure," Hugh pronounced glumly.

  "I was in a bush camp near North Bay when I discovered that I hadn't made the cut. B.C.'s quota was only five students and, as it turned out, I wasn't one of them. They mentioned that I was on a list of alternates—that I'd be called if other candidates dropped out. I never had much hope of that."

  "So what happened then?" Pat leaned back against the kitchen counter.

  "I was down in the dumps for a while, but I can't say I was surprised. I went through the remainder of the summer with the thought that I'd just have to slug it out and raise my grade point average enough to get in the next year.

  "Towards the end of August, I got a call from my parents that they'd received a letter for me from the vet college. Someone had declined a seat, and I'd been selected as a replacement. I had less than a week to help wrap up the bear project in Ontario and get to Saskatoon before the term began."

  "You must have been pretty happy!"

  "I was ecstatic about getting into the college, and I was sure that Larry Smith played a big part in it. The fact that I was one of the last students in a class of sixty to qualify left me feeling rather insecure though; I was sure I was going to have to work harder than all the others to survive."

  Pat smiled and moved to the table to sit down. She tried to pull out the chair but it wouldn't budge. Lifting the tablecloth, she peered underneath.

  "Suzie, you run along now! I want to sit here."

  Suzie, Jeremy's better half, reluctantly jumped to the floor and shuffled away. She shot an accusing look at Pat and meandered to the living room. She stepped onto a stool, then jumped over to the sofa. Walking across its full length, she hopped to a high-backed chair, circled a few times, looked reproachfully in Pat's direction, then lay down and curled up with her nose tucked into her tail.

  "My first day at the college really shook me up. I thought it would be like U.B.C. where you were given brief overviews of what to expect from the different classes. I remember dawdling along and arriving at the room assigned for the first-year class assembly with neither pen nor paper. I was expecting some sort of orientation speech and maybe a tour of the facility. What a shock when I found myself immersed in a lecture on gross anatomy by Dr. Horowitz. He put things in perspective when he said, 'We're already behind by two weeks, so we better get hustling.'

  "That pretty much summed up my entire stay at college! I always felt like I was two weeks behind. I found the first year tough—couldn't wait to get through all that theory and actually get some hands-on experience.

  "The vet college became a home away from home. If I wasn't in the anatomy lab dissecting a cadaver and gagging on the formaldehyde fumes, I was in the library trying to absorb the material that had been fed to us that day. I found the course material intense, struggled with anatomy and a few other classes. I survived and eventually got my feet under me."

  "So what's all this about bears?" Pat put another pot on the stove. "How in the world did you ever get a job like that?"

  I took a swig of my wine. "I applied to be a part of a student exchange program between Ontario and British Columbia. The program was eventually cancelled, but somehow my application managed to find its way to the desk of a biologist in North Bay, Ontario. Mike Buss was looking for a student to do field work on a black bear project in the McConnell Lake area. The fact that I was six foot eleven and weighed two hundred and thirty-five pounds caught his attention, and he hired me.

  "It was a fantastic job working in one of the most beautiful areas of Ontario. The first year, we trapped and tagged bears—weighed them and took all sorts of measurements. I got to hike all through the area to collect data about the habitat and the bears' feeding habits. I loved the work and Mike was a fantastic boss. As long as he got results and knew we weren't jacking around, he pretty much left us alone."

  "You're sure nursing that drink," Hugh grumbled, as he poured himself another tumbler.

  "Still got to try and get out of here without drowning." I took a draught to appease him. "Can't afford to be drinking much more—I can feel this stuff already."

  "So what made you want to become a vet, Dave?" Pat asked. "Were you from a farm like Hughie?"

  "Not really. Dad had three acres in the country, but you could hardly call it a farm. From the age of six or seven, if you were to ask me, I would have told you I was going to be an animal doctor. Almost every picture I've seen of me as a kid has me cuddling a puppy or a kitten or stretched out with an animal of some sort.

  "Nothing ever seemed to deter me. My health wasn't the best when I was a kid; I was constantly sniffling and coughing. Both my mom and dad were heavy smokers, and I can remember from the earliest age being disgusted with cigarette smoke and certain that it was a big part of my problems. In grade six, my symptoms got worse and worse. I was constantly staying home from school with a cough and snotty nose.

  "One week things really got bad. My face got puffy; my eyes swelled shut. Mom took me to a doctor. He had her wait outside and spent a long time asking me questions and going over my body for signs of bruising. In hindsight, I think he was trying to rule out the possibility of physical abuse.

  "As it turned out, I was allergic to house dust, cigarette smoke, and a variety of weeds; worst of all, I reacted terribly to cats, dogs, cattle, and horses. My parents decreed there would be no more animals in the house, but they kept smoking like steam engines."

  "Wasn't that the way of things back then?" mused Pat. "People used to take smoking so much for granted. They never gave a thought to the fact that you had to breathe all that smoke secondhand."

  "The doctor n
ever made much of a big deal about it either. I'd always slept with my cat curled up on the head of my bed. The doctor was adamant that I'd have to avoid critters for the rest of my life; I told him that would be difficult seeing as I was going to be an animal doctor. He thought that was pretty funny. He laughed and told me I had lots of time to reconsider my choice of a profession—I had other ideas.

  "I vowed that I'd overcome the allergies. The tests showed my most violent reaction was to cats, so I spent more time than ever outside handling my own. I propped a ladder against my bedroom window, closed the door so my parents wouldn't find out, and encouraged her to climb in for the night. The symptoms slowly waned, and the restrictions of animals in the house went by the wayside."

  "You better throw the steaks on the barbecue, Hughie," Pat suggested. "I've about got everything else ready."

  "Medium rare all right with you?"

  "Yeah, sounds good to me."

  "Hope these steaks are good." Pat lifted the lid off a pot and stabbed at a potato with her fork. "They're from a barren heifer we just got done in and we haven't tried them yet." She had just finished chopping up the greens for a salad when Hugh returned with a platter full of steaming meat. I had become increasingly aware of my hunger as the kitchen gradually filled with the smells of supper.

  "Don't waste too much time on that rabbit food, Mom," he chortled. "There's plenty of real grub here."

  "Who's going to eat all that?" I questioned. "You've cooked enough to feed an army."

  "You obviously haven't seen Hughie eat yet," Pat chuckled. "Besides, you must be getting pretty hungry yourself."

  Hugh plunked a huge T-bone on the plate in front of me. It covered the entire dish and hung over both sides. Juice dripped from the overlapping edges, staining the tablecloth.

  "That's enough for all three of us, Hughie—sure doesn't leave much room for anything else."

  "Well, what else is there? The rest is just rabbit food anyway." He transferred an identical steak to his own plate and set the platter in front of Pat.

  "Dig in," he ordered. "No sense in letting it get cold."