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

by Perrin, Dr. Dave

  His look of sheer satisfaction was his answer. It was obvious that as long as Lug received his quota of attention, he could care less what I called him.

  The snow was falling with a vengeance. The hood of the car, which I had just swept off, was already white. The wiper blades thumped back and forth as I peered through the swirling mass. I was late for my appointment at Basque Ranch. Ginger Ferguson was not the sort of person who appreciated waiting, and I'd hoped to be on time for a change.

  I sat impatiently as a long string of cars followed a Greyhound bus and waited for it to turn off at the depot. A faded blue Ford pickup drove by, kicking up a blinding cloud of dry, whirling snow. Behind him, there was a long break in traffic.

  I hit the accelerator and was almost fully onto the highway when something swished past the nose of my vehicle. Thirty feet behind the pickup, a snow-covered object was dragging on the end of a chain, plowing through the residual powder in the middle of the road.

  What was that damned fool trying to do? Was this some sort of joke? I could have run into whatever he was dragging! Lug, in his usual spot next to me, craned his neck until his nose touched the glass. Painting a mosaic of slime on the windshield, he bobbed his head back and forth, trying to focus through the wipers.

  The amorphous mass flowed as effortlessly as a toboggan over the snow in front of us. Not until I got directly behind the truck, did I realize that the object in tow might, in fact, be the carcass of an animal.

  Couldn't be! What sort of sick person would drag a critter through town? I wondered if some sadist was getting his kicks. My hackles were really starting to get up at the driver of the truck, as I convinced myself I was in fact looking at a large dog.

  "My God, that's Bill Hampton," I blurted. Could that lifeless form at the end of the chain be Mouse? I put the possibility out of my mind. It was just last week he had brought his dog in for his yearly checkup and vaccinations. Bill was a young carpenter and general handyman who lived in the Goat River bottom and worked part-time for the school district. He was one of the gentlest people I knew; his dogs weren't pets, they were family members. He wouldn't intentionally hurt a gnat.

  Honking madly on the horn, I was certain I could draw Bill's attention, but for some reason he kept on driving. The traffic finally halted in front of the Bus Depot restaurant. Convinced that Bill had figured out what was going on, I jumped out of the car and rushed to the rescue.

  To my horror, I was looking down at a Saint Bernard embalmed in snow. Mouse lay motionless, his pale blue tongue hanging limply. There was no evidence of life. The loop on his choke collar had collapsed and elongated but was still intact; the chain was as tight as a bowstring!

  Grabbing the hair on the side of his chest, I heaved forward and dragged him towards the back of the truck. Just as I pulled on the collar to get some slack, the traffic light changed, and Bill drove away. The chain tightened like a hangman's noose, and I desperately ripped my hand free. Bill continued driving, pulling Mouse with him, and leaving me kneeling like a fool in the middle of the street. I jumped to my feet and ran down the roadway after him, hollering as I went.

  "Bill! Biiillll!"

  Just when it seemed that he was going to continue right through town, a woman on the sidewalk dropped her shopping bag and jumped into the street in front of him. The truck stopped.

  Grabbing Mouse by the front legs, I slackened the collar, pulled it over his head, and threw him off the road onto the sidewalk. He was completely limp; there was no evidence of a heartbeat or respiration.

  I pulled out his tongue—it was the colour of day-old dishwater. His airway was clear with the exception of a bit of mucous at the back of his tongue. With my sleeve, I cleared away what I could and extended his neck. Placing the heel of my hand over the base of his heart and, alternately lifting his front limb and depressing his chest, I began attempts at CPR.

  Bill jumped out of the pickup, took one look at his dog and wailed, "Oh, Mouse, what have I done to you? Oh Mouse...I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Bill's face was ashen, his hands trembling as he held onto the side of the truck box. "Is he dead?"

  Before I could answer him, a woman screeched at us frantically. "Quit fooling around! There's a vet just down the street—maybe he can do something!"

  "He is the vet!" yelled the man standing next to her. "Leave him alone! Leave him alone!"

  In the middle of a throng of people, I worked on Mouse for at least five minutes. Snow swirled in a constant barrage around us and my coveralls were covered with a layer of flakes. My hair was soaked and water dripped from my forehead and face onto the soggy carcass that I continued to harangue. I was almost ready to let him give up the ghost, when it happened. A thump! Just one, but a thump nonetheless!

  "I've got a heartbeat!" A murmur passed through the crowd.

  There it was again! And again!

  Within a minute, his heart was beating regularly. He took a deep breath, then another. His front leg moved and then his hind. He opened his eyes—two pieces of coal in the head of a melting snowman. Gathering his legs under him, he made a feeble attempt to stand, then crumpled like a drunk.

  "Let's load him up and take him to the office so I can get an IV going!"

  We lifted Mouse into the back of the truck; with a bystander doing his best to keep Mouse from jumping up, Bill headed to the office. I arrived at my vehicle to find the traffic backed up for blocks. Gordon stood beside the car. His thinning hair was plastered to his forehead, and water dripped off the end of his nose.

  "I tried to move your car out of the way, but you'd think that darned dog of yours had never seen me before!"

  "Sorry, Gord, but he sure protects this vehicle." Lug was standing on the seat with his nose pressed to the glass, his tail wagging madly. The windows were steamed up, with the exception of those on the passenger side that were covered in slobber. Wiping the windshield with my coverall sleeve, I made a quick exit onto the side street and reached the office shortly after Bill.

  Mouse had overpowered the stranger who was holding him down and was bleeding on him from abrasions on both his front and hind legs.

  Sure that the Saint Bernard was in need of supportive care, I started an intravenous drip and loaded him up on bicarbonate to treat the buildup of carbon dioxide in his bloodstream. I gave him steroids to treat shock and ameliorate the effects of severe trauma and anoxia on his battered body. Even before I finished bandaging his wounds, it was plain that he didn't think much of the proceedings and was ready to check himself out of our establishment.

  Bill hovered over his dog, whispering, "I'm sorry Mouse, I'm so sorry..."

  When the patient was finally in a kennel with his IV running, Bill had a chance to explain what had happened.

  "Mouse had been running through the place next door, and my neighbour was rather choked with him. In order to keep the peace, I tied him up with a thirty-foot chain in the back yard. He's such a powerful dog, and he hated being confined so badly that he developed a technique of jumping off the top of his doghouse and breaking the chain."

  Bill closed his eyes and shook his head in disgust. "The last time he broke loose, I was in a hurry to get to work, so I tied him to the back of my pickup. I wasn't the least bit worried about it because I was using the company truck constantly—hadn't driven my own in weeks. It just so happened that, this afternoon, Bob took the company vehicle and I jumped in my own. Mouse was curled up by his doghouse twenty feet away. I just never gave that chain another thought!"

  "You mean he dragged behind the truck all that way?" I shook my head in amazement. "I would have thought it would have broken his neck or crushed his larynx, dragging him like that!"

  "You'd think so, but you should've seen the way he launched himself off the doghouse. As luck would have it, I just bought that chain new a couple weeks ago. Maybe the old one would have broken with that much strain on it."

  "I can't imagine how he lasted that long without air. He must've dragged for two or three miles, up the Ar
chibald Hill and all the way along the Erickson back road—at least four or five minutes!"

  Bill left the office shaking his head in disbelief—that it had happened at all, and that Mouse seemed to have survived it.

  By the time I'd finished my farm call and returned to the office, Mouse had improved greatly. Just a few hours before, he had literally been dead. Now his kennel was rocking as he scratched and pawed at the door.

  "Settle down, Mouse!"

  "He's been carrying on like that for the last half hour," moaned Doris. "I think he's trying to tell us he's ready to go home."

  Mouse had worked himself into a complete tizzy. His IV line was hopelessly tangled, and blood had backed up into it.

  "That's done about all the good it's going to do." I opened the kennel door. "You don't look like you need that anymore, fella."

  He wanted desperately to get past me, but every time he tried to evade me, I managed to block his exit. Finally, he sat resignedly as I removed the tape that held the intravenous line in place and pulled out the catheter.

  "Grab me a leash and a big choke chain, Doris. After all those fluids, he probably has to pee."

  I gingerly placed the collar around Mouse's neck, hooked on the lead, and stood back. He bolted past me like a freight train, heading on a course straight for the door. The next ten minutes found me being jerked first one way, then the next, all over the back alley. He yanked me from one marking post to the next. He didn't cough or gag; he never gave any indication that he was sore.

  An hour later, I discharged Mouse. The last I saw of him, he was streaking down the snow-covered sidewalk, the leash straining and Bill dragging wildly along in his wake.

  The afternoon began with a trip to the Ballman farm in West Arrow Creek. Theirs was typical of the hobby farms that dot the British Columbia landscape: ten- and twenty-acre slivers of grass carved from the surrounding forest, bordered by rock ridges, and often littered with boulders.

  Jack was a local painting contractor who worked out and had as little as possible to do with the farm. His wife, Inez, absolutely loved her plot of ground and the animals on it. She was the secretary of the Creston Valley Beef Growers' Association and had been instrumental in its organization. She was constantly sending new clients to my door.

  As I slowed the car, I caught sight of Inez's dogs milling around the back of an old log structure that floated like a boat at sea in the middle of the pasture. An unusual location for a barn, it was at least fifty yards from the nearest fence.

  Inez emerged from the shelter, skirted a mound of decaying snow, and waved madly to attract my attention. She strode towards me, two barking dogs running before her. Lug perked up his ear and glared threateningly in their direction. A deep-throated growl was followed by several quick whines, as he twirled on the seat with excitement.

  "I'm glad you could come so quickly!" Separating the strands of barbed wire, Inez gingerly worked her short legs through the fence and over the remains of a snowbank. "Jack's away at work, and I'm home alone with 'the boys.'" She motioned towards the still barking dogs. "Ushi's been worrying me for the last week. I checked her breeding slip and, according to my calculations, she should have calved three days ago. She was off by herself all day yesterday, and I checked her every two hours through the night. Her membranes were hanging out when I found her at seven-thirty this morning. I haven't let her out of my sight since, and she hasn't done a thing—hasn't pushed once in all that time."

  "What type of bull is she bred to?"

  Inez ran her hand through her greying sandy hair. "A Chianina by the name of Hannibal. He's supposed to be an easy-calving sire, but I haven't used him before. Who knows how big her calf could be?" Inez's voice trailed off, and her hazel eyes focused worriedly on the barn.

  I grabbed my coveralls from between the seats, pushed Lug back from the door, and slammed it behind me. The younger of the two dogs cowered behind Inez's legs, growling as though threatened by my advance. The older dog tottered to the back of the vehicle. Emitting a low grumble, he lifted a hind leg, balanced precariously, and peed on the tire of my car.

  Leaning against the fender, I pulled the coveralls over my shoes and stuck my arms into the sleeves. Just as I stretched to finish the job, the old dog woofed and stuck his nose into my crotch. Taking a sniff, he sauntered off in a disinterested fashion.

  "Bruno! Where are your manners?" Inez scolded. "Don't worry about them, they're perfectly harmless. And he," she motioned to the old dog who was now staggering away, "is just as deaf as a post."

  I assembled everything I thought might be of assistance. Throwing the calving chains, handles, and soap into the bucket, I handed them to Inez.

  "We'll need this bucket full of warm water. If you have another bucket, could you fill it with cold?"

  "Maybe we could get her tied up first. I'd have had that done already, but she wouldn't let me close enough to put her halter on. She's halter broken and is usually a real pet, but today she doesn't want to cooperate. Between chasing her and coaxing her with the grain bucket, it took me an hour to get her into the corral. She had a spot over by that clump of trees all picked out, and she kept going back to it."

  Shuffling the drug boxes on the back seat, I dug out my lariat and noted with chagrin the squashed and misshapen coils of rope. Flinging it onto the grass, I stretched it until I was able to wind it into recognizable loops.

  With the rope over my shoulder and the calving jack and cradle in my hands, I followed Inez across the pasture. There, in the centre of a log triangle at the back of the barn, stood Ushi.

  "I'm afraid this isn't much of a corral. Jack isn't the least bit interested in farming, so I just do the best I can with what I can put up myself."

  The corral consisted of logs stacked one upon the next with no posts holding the corners together. As far as I could see, no nails had been used in construction, and only long overlaps and the odd bit of plastic twine held the structure together. I could see why Inez was anxious to get Ushi tied up, considering the condition of the corral and the size of the cow. For a heifer, she was a huge animal.

  "How old is she, Inez?" I stared in awe at the long-legged beast. "She's a massive creature."

  "She'll be three on the third of May. She's from my foundation cow, Penny, and is fifteen-sixteenths Chianina. I'll be able to register her calf as a purebred...that is, if it's still alive."

  Inez climbed gingerly over the corral rails and grabbed a rope halter from where she had left it on the top log. "Pass me that grain bucket, will you?"

  Bucket in one hand, halter in the other, she advanced towards Ushi. "You're Mama's little girl, aren't you, sweetie? Good baby...Good baby...Come to Mama...Come get your grain...There we go, sweetie. You love your grain, don't you, girl?"

  Ushi lowered her head as if interested in Inez's offering and took a step towards her. "There we go, sweetie." Rubbing the halter along the big cow's neck, Inez inched her way towards the head. "You just let Mama get that halter on you."

  As though she'd understood the words, Ushi twisted her neck away and spun, hitting Inez with her hip and sending her, the grain bucket, and the halter sprawling to the ground.

  Inez was near tears as she picked herself up. "She's always such a gentle thing to handle. She's never been like this before! Even when I got her in for the technician to inseminate her, I walked right up to her and slipped the halter on."

  Ushi was not happy—not happy with being penned, not happy with the stranger who was too close, not happy that her owner was getting more distraught by the moment. Throwing her head, she took two quick steps towards the corner of the corral and flung herself onto the logs like a walrus leaping out of the water onto a rock.

  I ran around the outside of the corral, managing to get in front of her before she tipped over the other side.

  "Back girl! Back!" I delivered a solid whack across her nose with the flat of my hand. "Back you get!"

  Ushi slid off the rails, twirled quickly, ran past In
ez, and plunged headlong onto the corral rails of the opposite side. As they gave way under her weight, there was a sickening crack, and Ushi's body tipped forward until only her hind legs remained on the rails.

  Fumbling with my lariat, I found a loop and threw just as the heifer got her hind legs free. "You got her!" Inez screeched with delight. "You got her!"

  Sure enough, my loop was square on Ushi's neck. Planting my feet, I tried stubbornly to slow her retreat.

  At first, I had her off balance and was able to pull her head to the side but within ten or twelve strides she had me following directly in her wake. She gained speed, and it was all I could do to keep up with her. In desperation, I made an attempt to get a wrap around a passing tree. There was a terrible burning sensation on the palms of my hand as the rope sizzled through them; then she was gone. We watched as Ushi disappeared into a draw at the other end of the pasture.

  "How about your getting the water ready, Inez? We'll give her a few moments."

  I was out of breath and my hands were on fire; it seemed like an ideal time to let Ushi settle down. I scooped some snow from a small mound and rolled the cool ball around in my hands. Perching on a nearby boulder, I leaned back to enjoy the warmth of the March sunshine.

  Ushi was nowhere to be seen by the time Inez emerged from the house with a bucket in each hand.

  "Just set the buckets down by the fence; we'll see if we can get her snubbed up first. I'll come back for them."

  "Let's go over to that clump of trees." Inez motioned to a nearby spot where still-naked trees lined the pasture. "That's where we started out this morning."

  "You know, Inez, with critters like her, it's sometimes best just to leave them completely alone so that they can get on with calving. Your being there all the time gives her something else to focus on and breaks her concentration."

  "I couldn't do that! If something happened to that calf, I'd never forgive myself."