Never Turn Your Back on an Angus Cow

by Dr. Jan Pol

  I was already thinking, What can I do? I was a proud graduate of one of the best veterinary colleges in the world, so I had all my lessons in my head. I ripped my shirt off, got both of my long, thin arms in there, and felt around, trying to figure out what the problem was. In this case the calf’s head was turned, so he couldn’t be moved. I knew that problem; we had worked on it in the clinic. The calf’s head had to be straightened out; the difficulty in doing that is when you grab the head with one hand you can’t hang on to it. So what I had learned to do is take my middle fingers and put them in the eye sockets of the calf. Animals are a lot more resilient than people think: you can push those eyes way into the head without causing any pain or damage. So I got one hand in there; then I squiggled around until my other hand was in there, grabbed hold of the eye sockets with my middle fingers, and straightened up the head. Within five minutes we pulled it out, alive and pretty quickly kicking.

  The farmer looked at Dr. Drysdale, then looked at me. Then he looked back at Dr. Drysdale. It was pretty obvious what he was thinking: This big guy spent a half hour working and he couldn’t get it; this kid got it out in five minutes. I didn’t say anything, but you bet I felt bad. It was embarrassing to Dr. Drysdale, but what else could I do? That calf had to come out or the cow was going to die; getting the calf out alive made me feel very good. All Dr. Drysdale ever said to me was, “Thank you, that was very good.”

  But after that there were a couple of times that he had a calving while he was in the middle of something else and he called me up and asked me to go do it. I wasn’t legally allowed to do that, but the time is expired so I admit to it now. I passed the board exams in Michigan and Ohio; in Ohio I had to stand behind a podium while four people asked me questions. One of the questions, I remember, was what to do for a cow whose uterus is out. Well, I told them, first put something underneath to keep it clean because if it gets infected there isn’t too much to be done. What I do is take it straight back, wash it up, and then carefully just knead it back in. I went through a very specific explanation. But then I noticed the people were laughing at me. I was wondering what the heck was going on. This was a very important examination and the people who had to pass me thought something I’d said was pretty funny. That wasn’t such a good sign.

  Then I found out the reason: My whole life I’ve talked with my hands. I need my hands to explain my words; that’s probably why I never smoked. But as I was answering the question, I was doing it step-by-step with my hands. I was cleaning and kneading. Once I found that out, I started laughing too.

  Once I passed the tests, I started looking for my first real job. At Utrecht they had taught us how to be good vets, but they hadn’t taught us how to earn a living being a vet. That was not the purpose of the school. But from my father I had learned about the economics of farming, so I understood the needs of farmers and their sometimes-limited ability to pay for services. Farmers use vets for very specific purposes: pregnancy checks, health certifications, tests and inoculations, those things that have to be done regularly to keep the animals healthy. But it is the other problems, the unexpected problems, the difficult births, the infections, the accidents, and the mysterious illnesses that cause them to call the vet at other times. For a farm vet especially, most of the work is routine. When we go to a farm we don’t expect to find a new disease that they can name after us: Dr. Pol’s Big Infection. Those days are long gone, and anything that is new or different is going to be discovered in the laboratory, not the barn. But the job can bring with it great satisfaction. I couldn’t wait to get started.

  Diane and I looked around for a good place to start our career. Most veterinary practices consist of the owner and as many assistants as needed, depending on the size of the business. After a few years, the assistants move along for the same reasons people in any other profession move: a better opportunity. Unlike in the Netherlands, there were jobs available. We finally accepted a job as the second assistant to Dr. Arnold Hentschl in Harbor Beach, Michigan, for the salary of $10,400.

  It was almost exclusively a farm practice; his clients were mostly small dairy farms, family farms—just what I liked: cattle, horses, and pigs. Dr. Hentschl taught me the importance of using brains rather than brawn to help make the farmers money. He liked to do the small animal work. Dr. Hentschl and his wife, Anna Marie, helped Diane and me learn how the business of being a vet worked. Harbor Beach was right at the tip of Michigan’s Thumb; it was a very flat area with fertile soil—in some ways it was like Holland. I spent the first few weeks riding with Dr. Hentschl and his assistant Dr. Arbaugh, just getting to know the clients and letting them get to know me. Dr. Arbaugh was a big guy; in those days a lot of large-animal vets seemed to be big guys, but he was easygoing and very knowledgeable about the profession. He knew his animals. He was also the president of the local school when the teachers went on strike—and Diane was one of those teachers who walked out with them! We’re vets, we agreed, and just didn’t talk about that.

  There were a lot of German and Polish immigrants farming in that area, and they were nice people, but pretty direct in their opinions. That worked well for me; the only way I knew how to do the job was to be direct and honest. There have been times when I’ve had to give my clients the worst possible news about their animal. That’s never an easy thing to do, but it doesn’t help anyone to be less than completely candid. My first concern has always been the animal; how do I keep the animal healthy, and if it is too sick, how do I make sure it doesn’t suffer?

  It was during those first few weeks riding with Dr. Hentschl that I learned a very important lesson that I have always taught to my own assistants: When you make a farm call, always turn your car or truck around before you get out. There are three reasons for that: First, all our tools are in the back, so this provides good access to them. Second, it seems there are always young children on a farm; this way you don’t have to back up and risk an accident. And third and sometimes most important, if it should become necessary it helps you make a quick getaway.

  A Practice of My Own

  When you have a large-animal practice like Dr. Hentschl did in Harbor Beach, there is hardly a night when there isn’t some kind of emergency. It seemed like our phone was always ringing and I would have to race out in the middle of the night to help with a calving or figure out why a cow was down. I don’t claim that I am the best veterinarian, but having grown up on a dairy farm, I understood the importance of every animal and maybe tried a little harder. To some vets a cow is just another cow, and there is always another one to replace it. So if it’s sick or gets hurt, they figure the farmer can just ship it out. But I understand that a cow has the potential to give a farmer up to $4,000 worth of milk in a year, and if the farmer loses that cow, he loses that money plus what it costs to replace her.

  Once Dr. Hentschl sent me out to a farm in a very small town called Parisville. At that time there were still some DPs—displaced persons, who had been chased out of Eastern Europe by the Russians—living in the area. This farm was run by an elderly couple from Poland and their children: one son and two daughters, who did the work. One of the daughters had called and explained that their cows were bloated. That isn’t usually a serious problem. But it was to these people; to them it may have meant the difference between survival and losing their land.

  It wasn’t much of a farm, really. They had a few cows, which they milked by hand—there was no modern machinery on that farm—and a small garden. All they did was try to exist, try to stay alive. As soon as I drove onto the farm I recognized it in my soul. I understood their struggle; they hadn’t been able to integrate into the community. Whatever money they were going to pay me was going to affect their lives. This is the kind of problem every vet has to deal with all the time. You can’t forget you’re running a business, and the bills have to be paid, but when you see the opportunity to help someone who could really use it, you try to find the right way to do so. My belief has alw
ays been that if you’re passionate about something, the money will follow. For veterinarians, just like medical doctors, the first thing is always do no harm; but doing nothing because the owner cannot afford the treatment is doing harm to the animal. That was my belief, but it was Dr. Hentschl’s practice. There were times we clashed about it. I understood that the money pressures on him were different from those I faced, and later when I opened my own practice and had to deal with those same problems, I tried to remember that feeling.

  The parents didn’t speak English. I looked at their cows, and as their daughter had reported, several of them were bloated, blown way up. Just like a medical doctor, I usually began my examination by asking a few questions. The cause quickly became obvious. It had rained hard the night before; then the farmers had put the cows out to pasture, which was alfalfa. The combination of water and fresh alfalfa causes foam, and that foam was the cause of the bloating. It was easily solved with a big dose of mineral oil. To prevent it from happening again, I told them, “Don’t let the cows out in the morning. You feed them hay in the barn first. When they have a bellyful you can turn them loose.” That was it; they never had that problem again.

  While I got my medical knowledge at Utrecht, I got my education during the ten years Diane and I spent working for Dr. Hentschl in Harbor Beach. I spent the first month I worked there going on calls with him, basically so he could introduce me to the farmers and show me how he did things. Then I began going out on calls by myself. Even though I had confidence, I have to admit I was pretty nervous. At first I continued doing things the way Dr. Hentschl had shown me because the farmers were used to it, but pretty soon I decided, Oh, this takes too long; it doesn’t have to be done this way. For example, to take out the afterbirth, Dr. Hentschl put on a special rubber sleeve that fit all the way over his shoulder, and then he added an apron to it. You almost had to dress up to get the job done. After putting all that stuff on several times, I thought, This is ridiculous. We have plastic gloves; they’ll work just as well. Sure, if a glove broke my hand would stink a little, so then I’d have to wash it, which I was doing already. A simple plastic glove got the job done just as well as the whole body sleeve and the apron, and nobody ever noticed the difference.

  I started by doing the simple jobs, like pregnancy tests, and gradually began working more difficult cases. Then I began making my own diagnoses, and that helped build my confidence. When Dr. Hentschl began depending on me to help him when he was having a tough time getting a calf out, I knew I had the skills to be successful. At first I tried to do everything by myself to prove that I was capable, but one Sunday morning I got a call that a cow had a prolapse. When I got to the barn, the cow was standing still, but its uterus, which was about three feet long, was hanging only six inches off the ground. That’s not an especially difficult problem—you can push it back in—but one person can’t do the job. The people there were no help. They thought this was funny, which really ticked me off. I had them holding an apron under the uterus to keep it off the floor to prevent infection. I stood there and stuffed the uterus back into the cow, and just as I got it all in, the cow strained and it fell out. That caused those fellas to laugh even harder, which made me even more upset. I stuffed it in again; it popped out again; they laughed harder. Finally I was secure enough to ask for help. When you’re starting out you don’t like to ask for help; you want to prove you’re capable of doing everything yourself. You actually have to be pretty secure to admit that you need some help.

  Dr. Arbaugh had been at a party the night before, so his head wasn’t completely clear. But he came by and together we managed to get the uterus back into that cow.

  It was in Harbor Beach that I learned how to be a vet and run a practice. Be honest with your clients. That was always first. Work hard, and if you don’t know what the problem is, don’t be afraid to admit it. Tell the clients what you find and tell them what you think it is. They will respect you for that. If you don’t know, treat the animal to the best of your ability and learn from that treatment. If you’re not sure, go back the next day, and if that treatment didn’t work, try the next thing that your mind tells you might be effective.

  I learned what I thought was the right way to do things, but I also saw things that I disagreed with. Arnie Hentschl was a good vet, and he ran his practice in the way that was right for him, but it wasn’t for me. For example, we were paid a base salary and a percentage of the business we brought in. I didn’t like that because it encouraged us to charge our clients more, and even to sell medicines that might or might not have been completely necessary. There was absolutely nothing done dishonestly—nothing—but for me it made the financial aspect of the profession almost as important as the client. Even then I knew that when I had my own practice everybody would share in the profits.

  Also, while everyone in the practice respected one another, there was not a lot of camaraderie. We were colleagues, not friends. Dr. Hentschl and I got along, but we got along better when one of us was out on the road. As much as I loved the work, it always felt like a job, and admittedly after all that time I didn’t think I was being paid fairly for my work. I was doing the most work and getting paid the least. While Diane and I had been talking about starting our own practice, we realized it was finally time when Dr. Hentschl and I had serious argument. I remember the argument very well. What I don’t remember is exactly what we were fighting about. I know it was about the way I had handled a case. He started yelling at me, “That’s not the way to do it.”

  “Listen,” I said back to him, “I have been here ten years. I know what I’m doing. If you don’t agree with it, then you go ahead and tell me. But don’t yell at me.” Then I slammed my hand down on the table and walked out. I came in the next morning, and okay, everything was fine. Not an apology, not a mention. Okay, I thought, time to go.

  Diane was also ready. A lot of people who have watched our show have asked me how we found Mount Pleasant. It wasn’t that hard, I always told them; it was right there where it always has been, in the middle of Michigan. In fact, we found it by looking at a map of the entire state that pinpointed where vets had their practices and compared it with farm bulletins that estimated the number of animals in each area. We discovered several Michigan counties that seemed to be underserved. Isabella County, for example, was second in the state for beef cattle and third in the state for dairy cattle, but there were only three almost-retired vets in the area. There was a large-animal practice for sale in the small town of Coleman, which was in the next county, which we looked at. We went there in the springtime, and a lot of yards were flooded. It didn’t really matter; the vet wanted more money for his practice than I thought it was worth. It turned out that he had been a classmate of Dr. Hentschl’s, and when we decided not to buy his practice, he called Hentschl to tell him we had been there.

  Dr. Hentschl tried to talk us out of leaving. That made sense for him; he had an assistant he could trust whom he was not paying that well. “You know,” he said, “you’re making $40,000 a year. If you start your own practice, you have to make $80,000 just to live the same way.” Well, I didn’t know the numbers, but I knew it was time to leave.

  We drove through several different areas. I remember the first time we visited one of those little towns. It had a population of a little more than three hundred people; the main street included a church, a hardware store—and two bars. As we went through it, I remember thinking, who in the world would ever want to live way out here in the country? But the area had a good feel to it. The people we met smiled easily, even with strangers. There was an older vet in the area, and we thought it would be right to speak with him before moving into the area. He turned out to be a strange bird, and he serviced only a very small area around his house. When you talked to him he wouldn’t look at you; instead he looked directly at the button on my shirt. I was talking to him and he was talking to my shirt, so we didn’t know how to figure him out.

 
But after we’d left he contacted the wife of one of his clients, a woman who was a local real estate agent and told her she’d better help us find a house there. It turned out this vet needed a quadruple bypass and two new knees, so he was more than happy to have somebody younger come in to take care of the area.

  In Harbor Beach we’d bought an old house to fix up, which meant we never actually got done with the fixing part, so we wanted something a little newer. The real estate agent, Donna Murphy, found a nice house for us, which was more than we could afford, but her husband, Tom, a local farmer, helped us get a loan, and we settled in Isabella County. Just like Harbor Beach, this area was mostly family farms. What made it a little different was the fact that the Amish were coming into the area, which is a whole different culture I knew nothing about when we moved there. But we loaded everything we owned into an eighteen-wheeler and began our new life.

  Starting a new business is scary, exciting, and challenging. When we started we turned the garage into our small-animal clinic, and people just waited outside. It wasn’t much, but we didn’t need much. No matter how much planning you’ve done, until the telephone starts ringing, there is always that doubt that you are going to be successful. We didn’t get the double-wide clinic that people know from the show until five years later.