William's Gift

by Helen Douglas

  EIGHTEEN

  James the Third

  JAMES THE THIRD was my amazing flame-point Siamese cat. With the uncanny smarts of a dog, he had ridden across Canada twice in the front seat of the car, appearing to enjoy the scenery. Like his two predecessors, he had deep orange “points” and vivid sapphire-blue eyes that looked right at you. He could carry on a conversation. He was, at times, regal and at others annoying, as he wakened the household with bloodcurdling yowls at five a.m. He could play mind games with guests, hissing at them to keep them off his chair, allowing toddlers to carry him around upside down. You couldn’t pill him “no how.”

  James had a couple of great years on the new farm. He often travelled far afield and was several times returned by neighbours annoyed with his yodelling. One November night, at the beginning of hunting season, he did not return. It was too cold for him to stray far, so we knew something was amiss. When the next afternoon brought no sign of him, I knew he was in trouble. We called neighbours and vet clinics to no avail. After stomping through the woods calling didn’t work, and with worsening weather, we started a phone-call and poster campaign. After a week, we had all but given up. What a terrible feeling it is not to know what has happened to your animal. And there were fishers out there.

  A child’s voice on the answering machine gave us our only lead. “I think I saw your cat on Quarry Road,” the little voice said, leaving no number or address. Well, at least it was something.

  Elizabeth spent two days driving slowly up and down the dirt road five kilometres from home. On the last day before snow, she turned her head right and saw something white hop at the back of a hay field, far from the road. It was a quick movement in the grass that could have easily been missed, but something told her it was James. Running across the field calling him, she heard the unique voice, weak but recognizable. She scooped him up, hind leg dangling, and paged me, breathless.

  “James is alive, I found James!” she exclaimed, thrilled.

  “I’ll meet you at the clinic,” I replied, turning my car around.

  The cat’s leg was badly fractured and he had lost half his body weight. His tail had been shattered by the same careless, cruel shot that had broken his leg. There was a large healing wound in the cold, hairless tail. I doubted it would heal fully, as the circulation was so damaged. I decided to amputate the leg in a week when he had gained some strength, and give the tail a chance for a few weeks. Though battered and dehydrated, he seemed as happy as we were, purring on the treatment table as we put in an iv. The surgery went well, and the crooked tail healed and regrew hair. Though a shadow of his younger self, he has survived many years on three legs — body rearranged, but spirit intact.

  Each spring, horse owners dust off their mounts and breeding horses and prepare for a busy show season or a new foal. For many breeders, it is a time to dream of producing a beautiful animal or a top-performance horse. For riders, there may be a dream of sunny spring trail rides or of winning a red ribbon or championship at a show. It is a time of optimism. One of the most enjoyable parts of this annual ritual for breeders is choosing a stallion with which to breed your mare. In this world of technology and science, artificial breeding had become the norm in the horse world. Top-class stallions from all over the world are available to more and more owners through the use of cooled or frozen semen.

  Although I had learned a lot in British Columbia, I decided to take an update on artificial insemination in Colorado, where world experts provide short courses several times a year. I wanted to start out back at Brentwood armed with the most up-to-date credentials and knowledge possible. Using cooled or chilled stallion semen, the veterinarian has a larger window to follow the mare’s cycle and predict the time of ovulation and to order the breeding dose from the stallion owner. The cooled semen is sent by courier or airplane, picked up by the mare owner, and deposited into the mare, where it can live up to forty-eight hours.

  When using frozen semen, the mare owner must arrange for a portable canister of liquid nitrogen containing several sealed straws of semen to be shipped to the veterinarian, where it can wait safely frozen until the appointed time comes. The canister contains hazardous material, and not only is there danger from a spill, but any problem with the contents or temperature could cause the semen to be lost and the straws ruined. These straws are purchased by breeding dose, and each stallion owner charges a different amount for these doses, usually quite a lot, and often non-refundable. Each breeding dose is determined to be a specific number of straws depending on the potency of and preparation required for that animal.

  In addition to this intensive work at the stallion’s farm, the mare owner is highly involved in the mare’s preparation. The veterinarian must visit the mare many times, ensuring she is free of uterine fluid and infection and following her cycle with a trans-rectal ultrasound probe. Mares must be trained to accept these invasive procedures and some need to be tranquillized initially. There is also that final consideration in the frozen insemination process — frozen semen is fragile and can be damaged by preservation at such low temperatures. Although it may look and move fairly normally under a microscope, its strength and ability to penetrate an ovum are compromised. This means the veterinarian must insert it as closely as possible to the time of ovulation, even if it’s in the middle of the night. This can mean the vet has to visit and examine the mare many times around the clock, all on top of a very busy spring schedule. It is certainly a project that can’t be undertaken half-heartedly.

  Armed with my updated knowledge and equipment, I contracted to breed three mares in our area with one famous dressage stallion. A group of friends from several different stables, all dressage aficionados, had decided to buy doses of frozen semen together, and I agreed to receive and maintain the canister. All three animals were to come to a central barn near the clinic. The Jameses’ farm had lush, green pastures, ideal for improving cycling in the patients. All were pre-certified free of infection and in good reproductive health according to their own veterinarians. Our project began in early May. Two mares were young, but one large chestnut warmblood had had many foals and had a uterus so large and pendulous it was hard to reach it all with my probe. This exam was carried out standing on my toes on a hay bale with my arm fully inserted in the mare. Day after day, we scanned the mares, waiting for their cycles to start. After a few days, all the mare owners agreed to synchronize the mares with hormone treatments so that they might cycle predictably and close together — saving work, time, and money for all of us.

  Mrs. White, who owned the older mare, acknowledged we might have some difficulties with her fertility, but we optimistically began the process, not knowing what was ahead of us. We were committed.

  After ten days of hormone treatments, the work began in earnest. Each day I met these patient owners at the farm and examined their even more patient animals trans-rectally. Finally we agreed that one owner would come and handle all three mares once daily. The tolerant animals were led into a set of wooden stocks, evacuated of manure, and ultrasounded for a maturing follicle over and over again. We were running out of things to talk about.

  Finally, two seemed ready to breed; a large, soft follicle was present, and we stepped up the exams to three times daily so as not to miss the optimum timing. The old mare just did not seem to respond. Perhaps her age was against her, and she would need more time and priming. We were ready to proceed with the other two mares, and I called in extra help for the big event. Others were needed to thaw the straws in a water bath and to wash the mares. My old friend Mary, a nurse, volunteered to help. At midnight, we all gathered and set up to thaw and inject the precious material. Each dose was to be four tiny 5-ml straws, thawed, gathered into a test tube, drawn into a pipette, and injected the two feet into the cavernous uterus. From there, the trip to the fallopian tubes could be another two feet of traversing the torturous uterine wall. If the ovum did not rupture, the weakened s
emen could not wait long before dying. By midnight, both mares were inseminated. We all went to bed, agreeing to meet at seven in the morning and hoping for the best.

  The exam the next morning found only one mare had ovulated, meaning the second was not co-operating and would have to be redone. The follicle remained present and un-ruptured, and she had not responded as predicted.

  “We will examine her again this afternoon,” I said. “Or perhaps we should plan now to wait for ovulation and inseminate just afterwards.”

  Four more precious mini-straws would have to be used, and we could not afford to miss her again. Often insemination would work after ovulation if it was close enough timing, and the owner agreed. We had no choice but to keep on. My other work was starting to suffer, and then there was the third, older mare. We had not been able to start her and must continue to be vigilant for a silent cycle. I started cancelling other calls in order to meet my commitment to my number two and three mares.

  By the following day, I had number two mare inseminated and, breathing a sigh of relief, booked the appointment to do an ultrasound check for pregnancy on both of them seventeen days later. Mare number three eventually co-operated, and by the end of a week, I had all three finished. My sense of accomplishment was to be short-lived. The required seventeen days passed and then some, and I had ultrasounded all three mares; none were in foal! We all gulped. Hastily I tried to explain the possibilities for failure of pregnancy. With a sinking feeling, I called for a repeat of the game plan but decided to call the stallion owner for advice.

  “We have been finding he didn’t freeze well this year,” the representative said. “Use two times the number of straws — that’s eight per breeding dose.” I gulped — we barely had enough straws left to do all three mares a second time. An immediate feeling of pressure came over me. What had been sent for three cycles would now do only two. How could I improve on what I had done the first cycle?

  We earnestly planned, discussed, and rehashed events to prepare for the next breeding. Different hormones were tried, more frequent rectals done, saline flushes post-breeding, and hormones administered. Midnight meetings became tenser, and still the unpredictability of ovulation continued to bewilder us. The three mares all ended up on different days and schedules. Bleary-eyed, I pulled myself up at 6:00 a.m. each day, finishing them at midnight. Now, grim and determined to succeed with this, I let all my other equine and small-animal work suffer. Frozen semen would not get the better of me. At the end of two more weeks, all the mares were bred and all the doses used. We waited.

  By the July first weekend, the farm owners wanting to go on holidays, we needed to check our patients and get them home. No one planned to try a third time. Each owner had spent hundreds of dollars. Thankfully, I had educated them before starting this process, and all understood there was no guarantee.

  We gathered to do the ultrasounds on the holiday weekend. I found myself anxious about starting, willing it to be over with at least one successful result. Everyone looked at the small screen. Mare one was finished, and with no black vesicle on the screen, the ultrasound told us there was no pregnancy. Then mares two and three were finished. Not one mare was pregnant. Despondent, I packed up my gear, knowing the owners had had to pay for the straws in any event, which was not always the case. I could barely speak. Rumours circulating about the stallion’s fertility did not help any of us feel better. The mares went home. Luckily, these three reasonable, well-educated breeders did not refuse to pay their accounts at month end and I felt incredibly appreciative, even contrite.

  In October, I received a call from Mrs. White, the owner of the large, older mare with the abnormal uterus.

  “She has not cycled again,” she said. “Should we check her for fluid or infection?”

  I drove out to her farm, worried. What if the repeat manipulations had caused an infection? Hoping for the best, I inserted the ultrasound probe. Perhaps her ovaries had just shut down when the summer got hot, which is known to happen when breeding season is over.

  “Good God, she’s in foal!” I just about fainted. “The small vesicle must not have been visible on day sixteen in this big uterus. I should have ultrasounded her twice.”

  Although both other mares were checked, I had no further pleasant surprises. It was ironic that the most unlikely patient had caught — but breeding horses is full of such unpredictable events. Many years later, I can still say that even with experience and all possible factors favourable, with healthy mares and good semen, there is a large measure of luck in all of it. I now warn owners that breeding mares is not for the faint of heart or pocketbook.

  They named their filly Elena, a small tip of the hat, I suppose, to her vet.

  Breeding season was well over with when I got called to examine two neglected horses with the local S.P.C.A. officer.

  “We have had numerous complaints from the neighbours of these folks,” he said. “Better go check it out. Have to take a vet along,” he added gruffly.

  We drove along a back road to an affluent-looking hobby farm, with beautiful landscaping and two nice cars in the drive. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw behind the tall, completely solid cedar fence. I have always considered animal and child abuse to be forms of mental illness — one I cannot comprehend, my first visceral instinct being to wish the perpetrators had to suffer at least a modicum of the same treatment. Nothing had prepared me for the scenario I was about to encounter.

  We knocked on the door and the man of the house motioned to the barn area, but indicated he had no wish to talk to us or accompany us.

  “Yeah, there’s two horses out there, I think,” he said. With that, he slammed the door in our faces.

  Walking around the fence, we saw a small barn surrounded by a barren half-acre paddock with badly chewed fencing. There were no animals in sight. We entered the barn, ducking our heads and trying to see in the dim light. The floor had three feet of dried manure piled up, so my head was near the beams. I saw a couple of overturned feed buckets, and not a bit of hay in sight, before I registered that there were two horses in the far corner.

  I gasped. The two Appaloosas were skeletal. I could see their spinal bones clearly, and their grotesquely inverted necks barely held up the bony heads with defeated eyes. There was not one ounce of flesh on the horses. It was a miracle they were alive. I cried. There was no water on the premises, and no sign of feed or hay on the property.

  “He said it was the children’s responsibility to look after them and they had lost interest,” explained the officer. “A neighbour caught sight of them somehow.”

  “I don’t know if they can be saved,” I choked, shaken. I fought the urge to scream or to run.

  “We must get them out of here today, and even then it may be too late.”

  “I know. I’ll call a trailer for them and get the police.”

  The couple responsible for the neglect appeared to have simply wiped their hands of the care of the horses when their kids stopped going to the barn. They almost denied that they were there. The children were eight and ten years old.

  One of the poor animals was destroyed, but the other grand fellow was saved. “Bob” lived with another of my kindest clients for ten more years. With star status as a revered survivor, he had enough carrots, apples, and love to make up for his abuse and heal his soul. Mine, however, was not the same for a long while.

  NINETEEN

  They Just Didn’t Notice …

  A YEAR HAD PASSED, sometimes in a blur, and the clinic was so busy I had to give serious thought to hiring another veterinarian. I had been on call seven days a week, and the pace was hectic. Often I got called back to the clinic for small-animal emergencies after going home, or called out to a horse emergency when starting a surgery. The town was growing rapidly, in fact experiencing a boom. New streets and houses were going up almost overnight. The workload showe
d no sign of diminishing.

  We placed an ad in the professional journal serving our area, trying to describe our practice facilities, staff, and equipment as well as possible and setting out the terms of the job being offered. It was completely different trying to describe the atmosphere or practice philosophy. Each practice has a subtle and unique culture and unspoken rules and ethics, and we would just have to hope for a personality match. Many complex professional issues, such as policies on records, leniency on dispensing and finances, and — perhaps the most difficult — attitudes towards euthanasia, can be hard to negotiate with the wrong person.

  To complicate the situation further, I was offering a job position in a mixed practice, but not a traditional mix with livestock. The fact that we did small animals and horses only served to put us in a very small group that tended to have very few applicants. In addition, those applicants had to be willing to be on call, something fewer and fewer new graduates are willing to do. Into this mix of factors, one could add location preferences, and the number of potential employees would drop further. Thankfully, our area was a popular one in which to live.

  Although I had mentioned that experience was preferred, no experienced vets applied. In fact, only three people applied at all. Knowing that on call was a big deterrent, I was prepared to negotiate on this in the interviews, with lessening it being a bargaining chip. I dove into the interviews optimistically and was surprised at what I discovered. Rather than considering that it would be a privilege to get a job with Brentwood, the graduates felt I would be very lucky to get them. And the salary demands reflected this self-assurance. There seemed to be little awareness of the very necessary teaching, guiding, and mentoring that would be needed the first year out of school. Not to mention that the generally slower speed of work of a new graduate results in lower billings, with the result that the practice must carry the new vet for a while. What this really meant was that all the risk and responsibility would still lie on my shoulders, and I could anticipate adding teaching time to my busy schedule. Hopefully, taking the plunge and hiring a new graduate would be an investment in the future.