I had been looking forward to doing some scuba diving in the Atlantic, and Dr. Read arranged for me to go out with one of the elder Bush fishermen. A friend who also wanted to dive arranged to come to the South Shore the same day so I could have a buddy. We headed out shortly after sunup, the mist still hanging on the water, which was eerily still, slate gray, and looked very cold. He put down anchor three times for us, and we did shallow dives just off small islands so we could descend gradually. The large, purple starfish, sea anemones, and rock coloured lobsters were spots of life on the sandy ocean floor. We each came up with a large scallop on our last dive, proudly hoisting our net catch bags over the side of the boat. I was taken aback when Mr. Bush opened one with his knife and carved it up into several pieces. Thrusting one of them at me on the end of his knife, he assured me that scallops were best eaten raw. I was surprised to find out that they are as delicious and delicate in flavour as an oyster.
Later that summer, I had another remarkable diving experience. Ray Patton, my diving coach at Guelph, was spending two weeks in Nova Scotia with friends and intended to do a couple of dives with a biologist from Dalhousie University. The scientists had a summer research program going in St. Margaret’s Bay, where they had impounded a dozen bluefin tuna, some weighing up to 600 pounds and reaching lengths of ten feet. They were conducting trials on digestion that necessitated feeding the large fish pieces of tagged bait, and divers had to swim out to the large, netted compound regularly for these feedings.
I was invited to dive with them, and they got together enough scuba gear for me to go along. We swam out along a guide rope and descended into the cold, dark green water with our baskets of raw fish. Nothing could be seen as we adjusted our buoyancy, so we could hover easily at thirty feet below the surface. Suddenly they appeared, silver and flashing they swam by us, eyes as large as bottle bottoms, dark blue stripes down the middle of their sides … beautiful fish! They took the bait out of our hands, swooping so close we could touch them. It was breathtaking to see these giant creatures so close to us that their yellow eyes seemed to be looking right into ours. I felt unafraid. I had been blessed with a privileged moment. At the end of the summer, they were released.
One Saturday afternoon, we were just finishing up a hectic morning of appointments and looking forward to going home when a man from Liverpool, an hour away, telephoned in a panic. He had discovered several lumps on his dog’s abdomen that he was certain had just appeared. The animal simply had to be seen, as waiting until Monday would be too distressing for the owner. Reluctantly, knowing that the dog was otherwise in fine form, we agreed to see him as an emergency. When the man hurried in and put the dog on the table, he assured us that these lumps had not been observed previously in the two years they had owned the dog. It was one of the funniest moments of the summer when we told him that it was perfectly normal for a male dog to have nipples. Beet-red, he couldn’t get out of the clinic fast enough.
On the weekends there was never a shortage of things to do. The Glens had taken me under their wing, and I was included in Sunday dinners, nights around the television, and invited on many outings. They had a small stable and allowed me to use one of the young horses on a regular basis that summer. Ben, the huge Percheron cross gelding I was given to ride, had a heart as big as his dinner plate-sized feet. So I’d feel I was helping out, the exercise was called “giving the young horse some mileage” — but it was sheer pleasure for me. I had been an enthusiastic rider since, at the ripe age of seven, I was bribed with lessons in order to modify some undesirable childhood behaviour.
I had been really unhappy at the thought of spending the entire summer away from the beasts and my favourite pastime. In the evenings I would explore the hills and lumber roads stretching away from the river with their seventeen-year-old son Michael, on his horse. Some of the hilltops were cleared, and we could see far out along the river to the sea ten miles away, glinting blue in the distance. We could canter our horses up the grassy track of an abandoned farm to the top of a hill, scattering daisies and dragonflies, and be rewarded with a panorama in all directions.
On other occasions, Mrs. Glen and I would go exploring the antique and junk shops that opened every summer for the tourists. Mrs. Oickle’s at Green Bay was an old house whose every room overflowed, until finally the house itself spilled out onto the lawn. Hours could be spent inspecting the piles of books, rugs, postcards, old clothes, and every other sort of Maritime memorabilia. Several rusty school buses on blocks housed collections of tools and car parts.
These outings would often end with a trip to the Turkey Burger, a once-white shanty in the middle of nowhere. This canteen was run by an ex-navy cook, who would pile more food on every plate than could possibly be eaten. The lineup outside the door of the flat-roofed, dingy building often straggled well out into the parking lot. Once inside, clients had to choose from a menu that was handwritten on pieces of cardboard and posted on every available flat surface. The chowder was so thick you could stand your spoon up in it. The side salad was piled into soup bowls till they overflowed. It was always fun to sit in different seats on return visits, because I was then confronted with parts of the menu previously hidden from view. The friends who visited me that summer were always taken aback when I pulled up in front of the dilapidated Turkey Burger after telling them I was taking them to the best restaurant in town. For good food, it had the others beat by miles, so the unique and colourful character of the place and its patrons was just a bonus.
THREEHORSES
Since Dr. Read had taken over the practice, the emphasis had gradually switched from large to small animals, so we didn’t get many country calls. When we did, it was a pleasant change from the usual routine at the clinic to go out to a farm. Some of the calls involved long drives on back roads, more visits to homes and parts of the province I would otherwise never have seen. Many of these small family farms were being run by elderly people, as the young people had not been interested in taking over and had gone off to the city or to Upper Canada.
In much of inland Nova Scotia, small farms were being deserted and sadly lay overgrown. On some of the remaining ones, I was fascinated to see the men still using methods that had scarcely changed in a hundred years. Hay was often raked with a horse-drawn vehicle and loaded by fork for transport to the mow. Many farmers still plowed the small, rough fields with a team of oxen. These oxen were prized possessions and were often exhibited in the local fairs; with their brass-tipped horns and ornate carts, they were an important part of the parade. On the country calls I was able to go along on, I met some of the most interesting people of that summer. Many of them had never heard of, much less seen, a woman vet.
One such call was to a cow with a prolapsed vagina. We arrived at a farm with a low frame barn, and I followed Dr. Read into the dimly lit interior, carrying my share of the equipment we needed. Cobwebs hung about my head and neck. Some minutes later, a stooped, very wrinkled, and obviously nearly blind farmer entered the barn. He watched the fairly simple procedure to replace and secure the prolapse without much comment, and I busied myself, also quite silently, holding the cow’s tail. When we all emerged into the sunlight, the gentleman realized for the first time that I was female. My coveralls and scarf certainly contributed to a total lack of femininity, and with his posture and poor vision, my cover had been complete. As I stood with my arms in a bucket of hot soapy water, he contemplated me for a moment. Then without any formalities or introductions, he came right to the point with his query: “Shouldn’t you be a nurse?”
THREEHORSES
In midsummer, I adopted a kitten. A child had found her under a hedge, wet and shivering, and brought her to the clinic. The mother and the rest of the litter were nowhere to be found. The tiny tabby fit into the palm of my hand and was almost too young to be fed solid food. Yet she had an undeniable will to live. I decided to take her on and fed her from an eyedropper until she learned to
lap. She looked perilously small and fragile curled up on a red hot water bottle in the big cage. Eventually I christened her LaHave and took her home to my cottage. That made three of us to sit on the porch admiring the river in the evening.
The last week of summer had been slow around the clinic. I was getting organized to leave for Ontario that weekend, feeling entirely satisfied with what I had learned and done. On the second-last evening before my departure, Dr. Read asked me if I would do office appointments by myself for the last hour. These after-dinner appointments usually consisted of vaccinations, flea allergies, and ear infections — things I could handle on my own. A look at the book confirmed that only routine problems were booked, and so at 6:00 p.m. he left for an important regatta at the yacht club.
Happy that things had gone smoothly, I was just about to put the answering service on when the phone rang. True to Murphy’s Law, the second calving call of the summer came in when the veterinarian was out on a boat, having left his student in sole charge for the first time all summer. With a surge of adrenalin, I told the farmer I would be right there. The young woman on reception was willing to help me and thankfully knew where most of the necessary equipment was kept. We rounded it up and put on our coveralls with false bravado. If I had known then what complications lay ahead, I would have been doubly nervous. Luckily I didn’t, and beginner’s luck saved me.
We drove up to the large dairy farm shortly after dark. The farmer was a Dutchman who greeted me at the door to the milk-house with poorly disguised disappointment. He led Pam and me into the barn, where his wife and daughter stood by the straining cow. I tried to look confident as I laid out my equipment and put together the calf-jack. The farmer gamely tried to hide his regrets about not having the “Doc” and even ventured a good-humoured crack about “Ladies’ night.”
My examination quickly told me the reason for the delay in calving. The calf was breeched, and only the tail could be readily felt. But it did not seem too large, so I was optimistic about correcting the malpresentation. Standing on a bale of hay in the gutter, I spent ten minutes revolving the calf forward until finally a hind leg could be grasped and carefully brought up and out so the foot was visible. The other hind leg took about as long, as it was farther down in the uterus. When the calf finally arrived on the barn floor, we were all terribly disappointed to see that it wasn’t alive.
I had started to wash up my equipment when luckily something triggered a vague memory about the connection between breech births and twins. I sauntered back to the cow, explaining that a final exam should always be done on the mother for tears in the womb. And there it was, another tail, pushed now into the identical position of the first calf. It was smaller than the first, though, and in no time was lying on the straw at our feet. To my great disappointment, it, too, was dead. After examining the mother to ensure she was fine, we packed our gear somberly and said goodbye to the family. It was not until I was in the car that I let myself experience the full range of my feelings: excitement and happiness at having been up to the job … relief at not having missed finding that second calf … and sadness at their both being stillborn.
Leaving Nova Scotia was bittersweet. The next time I pulled a calf, it would be as a veterinarian.
TWO
An Elephant Comes to Visit
MY FINAL YEAR WAS the epitome of the axiom “work hard, play hard.” For myself, and most of my 120 classmates, it might be argued that the “play hard” part won out, but perhaps that is just what is remembered most easily. The riotous goings-on were a necessary outlet for the tension building up as exams approached. There was the additional pressure of job hunting, and it was the first time most of us had looked for a full-time job. Leaving the university and friends we had known for six years was frightening. The pressure to find and choose the right job seemed overwhelming and more competitive than I had anticipated. As our time to join the real working world loomed nearer, our partying grew more exuberant, as if we intuitively anticipated the huge responsibilities that would await us when we left the sheltering walls of the veterinary college.
We had been required to sort ourselves into groups of four or five people who were to remain together throughout the year. The process whereby that number of people arranged themselves into teams would have been amusing if so many people hadn’t been hurt by it. It took almost two weeks. It was the same feeling of discomfort that I experienced as a child when the captain had to choose a team one by one from a gang of kids. Some of us were invited to join more than one team, while others were totally left out. Subtle yet complicated negotiations preoccupied us for days until finally a list was presented to the professors — just in time for the first rotation.
I was lucky enough to find myself in a group whose interests complemented each other’s perfectly. On some rotations, my interest in horses proved to be of value, and on others Gord’s or Sue’s knowledge of cattle pulled us through. The fourth member was the most scholarly of our group and intended to become a small animal practitioner, so we were well rounded out. All of us were easygoing and more or less inclined to pull our weight. Not all of the groups stayed so harmonious throughout their time together.
Our final year was organized into rotations of two weeks. Small animal medicine and surgery were two of the most important. It was critical to make the most of the short time we had in surgery and seemed equally critical to make a good impression on our evaluating professors, though in retrospect we were all doctors already. In comparison, the two-week poultry rotation or the study of epidemiology never caught anyone’s complete attention. The small animal devotees went into these surgery rotations with fervour, while our large animal types couldn’t wait to get into the barns.
Our two-week surgery rotation had four procedures scheduled. We were all to be given a chance to be surgeon, then assistant surgeon, anaesthetist, and finally instrument person. Our patients were Humane Society dogs and cats we were charged to neuter, and it was imparted to us with great gravity that we were lucky to have this opportunity, as other veterinary colleges had not had live surgical patients for many years.
The fellow who was to do the first surgery had a cat to work on, and his hysterectomy took well over an hour. All of us were terrified. As he cut into the pale midline, I felt a hot flash, and the blood drained out of my head. I was precariously close to fainting. I felt panicky — perhaps I could never be a surgeon, and therefore never a vet! How could this be? A feeling of total dejection overcame me as the week proceeded and my own surgery day approached. I tossed and turned all the night before in a cold sweat, envisioning my first incision over and over, almost as a nightmare. I was sure I couldn’t do it.
The surgery went beautifully from the first application of scalpel to skin. I felt totally at home and found that tissue handling came quite naturally to me. Surprisingly for someone who has never been able to sew on a button without personal injury, when it came to surgery on animals, I was right at home. My mark wasn’t outstanding, but my relief and happiness could not be measured. I would be able to perform surgery after all; it was just getting past that first cut. From there on, I was sailing and had found a new and seemingly familiar element in which to perform. Surgery day couldn’t come fast enough.
Every few weeks, there was a party given by a drug supply company in an attempt to draw our attention to their products. There were often wine and cheese parties, and we nodded in the direction of the tables of brochures and displays as we made our way to the refreshments. The most notorious of these was an extravaganza thrown for each graduating class at one company’s headquarters, an hour’s drive from Guelph. Buses were supplied for the occasion. We all trouped obediently around the factory and the product display before we were shown to the large banquet room. Rows of tables had been set up for us, and a buffet steamed in readiness. The crowning touch was the unlimited supply of wine that made this annual event what it was.
The eve
ning started on a formal note, with speeches of welcome followed by speeches of thanks. As more and more of the inexpensive Canadian bubbly was consumed, decorum was abandoned. Comedy acts were followed by yodelling displays at the microphone. Suit coats and ties were shed. A team of salesmen competed with a team of students in a wine-drinking competition. In a moment of total absurdity, the most retiring fellow in our class was carried from the shadows on the shoulders of two of the huskiest class members to receive some sort of contrived award. Not surprisingly events deteriorated rapidly. As we staggered back to our bus, they were prying one of their sales managers out of a lavatory stall where he had become lodged. And one of my classmates was found the next morning sleeping in his car with his head on the steering wheel. Thankfully he had never turned the key.
My sister visited me often in Guelph. Anne is two years younger than I am, and we have always shared our interest in horses. As teenagers, we boarded horses near home and were able to get out to see them most days after school. As soon as I got my driver’s licence, I took over my parents’ role as stable shuttle. All through high school, we continued to ride regularly, even in the worst winter weather. Even after six years away, I still missed riding with her. Anne enjoyed coming to stay with me for weekends in Guelph, despite the six-hour drive. Being part of the activities around the university was a great break from being the youngest child and the only one left at home. I kept my horse, a reliable cob type, with friends who ran a boarding stable, and there was always a spare horse for her. There was also a communal cutter and a set of harness I could use on Clunker, my reliable buckskin schoolmaster.
William's Gift Page 2
