by JULIAN EARL
COWS IN TREES
A warm and witty memoir of a vet’s life
Julian Earl MRCVS
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all the long-suffering patients, their owners and the professional colleagues who have put up with me for the last forty-five years.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost; thanks to my long-suffering wife for tolerating the silly hours that I’ve had to work and for not complaining too much about all of the telephone calls in the middle of the night. Also thanks especially for her technical help in the writing and formatting of these records from my career.
My thanks to Mr Gerry O’ Reilly, consultant neurosurgeon, and his team on the neurosurgical unit at Hull Royal Infirmary for saving my life in 2012 and encouraging me onwards since.
Thanks to Mike J Walton and Paul Isted a.k.a. ‘Ed’ for your technical advice on printing and publishing. Thank you both for guiding this project. Thanks to Elena Munns of BESPOKE PA for the initial proofreading of the draft.
Special thanks to the lecturers and examiners, who, for whatever reasons, in moments of weakness, saw their way to permit me to qualify and fulfil my childhood dream. Thanks, Professor Mike C and the rest.
I also thank the many local Women’s Institutes and Young Farmers’ Clubs who first invited me to regale them with my veterinary stories that have finished up here in this text some fifteen or twenty years later.
Last but not least, thanks to the animals, over the years, for not inflicting serious damage and generally having made life worth living.
The author with Wandle Goliath, the tallest horse in the world at the time of this photograph
(reproduced with permission of the horse’s owner, Keith Sanders)
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
1 Why on earth would anyone be a vet?
‘Too many yucky jobs’
2 D is for danger
How high can you jump?
3 Inappropriate laughter
Never stand behind a coughing cow
4 Black eyes and embarrassment
Various ways to get injured
5 Foreign bodies
The different objects animals think are edible
6 Crashing out
An arresting collapse and an armed response
7 Rare and exotic
Some of our more unusual patients
8 Common things are common
Uncommon things may also occur
9 Bloodstains and trauma
Nasty shocks
10 Dosing cats the proper way
Cats can’t read instructions
11 Goodbyes
Losing one of the family
12 Compliments and reprimands
Bouquets and a justifiable brickbat
13 Removals
Lumps, bumps and large calves
14 Great escapees
Shut that door!
15 The wedding ring
Feeling lucky
16 Planning for health on farms
How to untangle a health disaster
17 Cows in Trees
Not as rare as you might think
18 Henry and the bullock
The fastest veterinary student in the North
Author’s Note
A confession
Copyright
Jet – big, strong and docile enough for children to ride on his back
Chapter 1
Why on earth would anyone be a vet?
‘Too many yucky jobs’
I have asked myself the question many times – why on earth did I want to be a vet? Why? Did I have a love of animals? Or maybe I enjoyed being embarrassed by my patients. Did I enjoy dealing with stressed people? Or perhaps I secretly liked having to get out of bed in the middle of the night to attend to emergencies for animals and their owners. Was it that I simply enjoyed puzzles? Part of me has always suspected I was driven by a sense of guilt.
When I was just a couple of years old we had an open fire at home, as was common in those days. I somehow managed to throw my teddy bear on the fire. Although my mum repaired him by stitching bandages on his burnt feet and paws, my family think I never forgave myself. Several years later I tried to make up for it somehow by deciding I was going to do the only job that a seven-year-old could think of that could treat burnt animals: I would become a vet. From then on, being a vet was my only wish. Sorry Ted, I hope your paws feel better now.
It was certainly the case that, at that age, I didn’t know of anybody else who worked with animals, other than the vet who looked after our giant black dog, Jet, a Labrador-cross-Irish Wolfhound, who was so big my sister and I could ride on his back. When he arched his back in his bed under our kitchen table, he could lift the heavy marble table top. He was devoted to my dad and once jumped out of the upstairs window when dad left the house without him. All we saw was a huge black body flash past the downstairs window, as Jet leapt the four metres or so down to the ground. He barely left any dents in the ground either.
Jet developed a tumour on his tail and had to have his long tail amputated, leaving him with a short stump about fifteen centimetres long. Several years later, when Jet was over twelve years old the tumour re-grew at the base of his tail, Jet had to be put down and the whole family was distraught. Of course, my sister and I never rode on his back again. Only now do I recognise how remarkable Jet was as a giant breed, to survive until he was over twelve and a half years old. Giant breed individuals generally are not long-lived, often reaching only eight or nine years of age. Not only that, but Jet was extremely docile and calm. He would sniff and nuzzle my sister’s pet mouse, Twinkie, when she was in the palm of one’s hand. Twinkie appeared untroubled by being nose-to-nose with this enormous beast that could have swallowed her whole if he had been so inclined. Luckily, Jet was never likely to act that way.
He was my first pet, with a super temperament that I have expected all dogs to have. Sadly that was naïve, of course. Nevertheless, Jet was a major influence for me in developing a love of animals. To this day I have a soft spot for Wolfhounds, especially large, soppy ones.
Most vets have to at least like animals and be interested in them, otherwise the job would be intolerable. But do doctors love all humans? Do dentists love mouths? There are some individual animals described in these chapters I most definitely did not like and they did not always like me. I have long argued that if one does the job properly, it should not make a difference how much you like animals; one’s responsibility and duty is to care for them regardless of any emotional attachment.
When the telephone rings and wakes one up at three o’clock in the morning because a lady who has just sprayed her dog for fleas wants to know why the dog hasn’t stopped scratching yet, one has to wonder why one chose the job. The answer to her question was because dying fleas wriggle around a lot. I wonder if a person would dial 999 if they had an itch themselves? Likewise, when the person who rings at nine o’clock at night on Christmas Day about his lame dog reveals that the dog has been lame for six years.
‘Six years?’
‘Yes, really but he’s just got much worse!’
A perfect example of the unusual situations I found myself in came once when I received a telephone call from a farmer to report that his flock of sheep were ‘dancing’. It was certainly a novel description of symptoms. I drove to the farm wondering what the farmer could be describing; the lambada or perhaps the rumbaa? On arrival a quick glance revealed that the sheep were indeed dancing, but it looked more like tap-dancing than anything else. I enquired about when this phenomenon had started and asked a few general questions about management. Closer examination of the individual sheep revea
led that they, in fact, had laminitis: a very painful condition for animals with hooves, sometimes described as feeling as if you have hit your fingertips when hammering nails, then walking on your hands. This ‘dancing’ was the way the sheep relieved the pain in their feet one by one. A similar call about a dancing dog proved to be a dog with painful abscesses in his toes.
I have benefited professionally from working with many people over the years, not least talented Professors of Surgery who generously share their skills by setting up large specialist referral centres, complete with MRI-scanners and fully-kitted out laboratories and who are exceptionally helpful, offering to teach other less-talented vets, such as me, about diagnostic or surgical techniques. They also offer a reliable ‘help-out’ service for very complicated cases. I have also learnt a lot from rural vets with whom I saw practice as a student. They all had their idiosyncrasies and their own well-honed talents.
Mr F springs to mind. He was regularly seen pregnancy-testing cattle, invariably wearing his trilby, smoking his short cigar, and memorably refusing to wear the arm-length plastic gloves that one usually wears when warming one’s hands inside a cow’s rectum. Mr F remarked that he could not feel what he needed to feel inside the cow when doing this job with the gloves, so refused to wear them. He’d probably be in trouble with Health and Safety nowadays I expect. Mind you, he clipped his nails before starting, so the cows were not scratched. He also carried a well-used scrubbing brush in his car boot.
His colleague, Mr J, was extremely popular with visiting students for two reasons: he drove us around in a lovely old Mercedes, far better transport than we students were used to; and he would entertain us with his tales of his duties in World War Two. He claimed to have had the best job in the war. As a member of the Veterinary Corps, he was assigned a free rail pass for travelling around India and Burma and declared that all he had been required to do was travel round on the trains, and then castrate the regimental goats, their mascots. To entertain us, Mr J liked to drive his Mercedes at considerable pace down the country lanes and speed between the stone gateposts at the farm entrances. On hearing our gasps of terror, he would turn and look at us, and simply whisper, ‘What? Really? What?’
His car never lost the tiniest bit of paint and he was, apart from the sense of fear, lovely to travel around with, always helpful to us students.
Mr M was a completely different personality and fairly fearsome to work for. We dreaded getting something wrong because he could drive nurses to tears with his temper. He was a wonderful vet, but not one to upset. I once saw a Miniature Dachshund turn on Mr M and bite deeply into his palm. The dog held on to his hand while the vet whipped his hand away, to well over head-height, before the Dachshund let go and landed harmlessly on the floor. Mr M was so angry I thought that either I, who was meant to be restraining the dog during the examination, or the dog, or both of us, had a short life-expectancy. Instead, the vet vented his wrath by storming across the room towards the trembling dog, that was now curled up on the floor, and kicked the Formica-covered wall very hard. The dent made was thirty centimetres away from the poor dog on the floor. I think Mr M limped for a few days after that display, and the Formica remained cracked for years.
If one does want to be a vet, it is essential not to be squeamish and faint at the sight of gore, something I learnt within a few minutes of my first day attending a vet’s for my weekend job as a boy aged just thirteen. I had been there probably between five and ten minutes when the vet walked in, carrying the body of a German Shepherd – or Alsatian as we then called them. He dropped it on the table, slashed it open (with hindsight I’m sure he carefully dissected it) and opened the body to perform his post-mortem. He identified a hugely enlarged liver and decided that it was a liver tumour. The nurse, Angela, and I then had to clear up the debris. I had thought I would be seeing live animals so this gave me quite a surprise, coming, as it did, without warning. Later that Saturday morning, I was watching as he neutered some cats – a routine operation. It seemed simple at that time, but the first simple operations that one does after qualifying are always nerve-racking.
Unfortunately, a few people do faint, including the elderly man who, on a hot summer’s day, watched me drain a particularly foul-smelling abscess affecting his cat. He immediately fell and dented the wooden door of the consulting room with his head. Luckily, he was okay, as was his cat. The door was beyond repair.
Some people, such as my son, never want to be a vet because, according to him – and I quote – I do ‘too many yucky jobs’. He said this after watching me perform a caesarean section on a ewe. With the benefit of experience, and as evidenced in some of the tales you are about to read, I cannot disagree.
Chapter 2
D is for danger
How high can you jump?
Not many vets really enjoy being called out at night, but emergencies do happen. They usually fall into one of three categories, none of which can be ignored: the A, B and C of emergencies – accidents, births and collapse. There is also a D in the job and that is danger. I’ve had to deal with various aggressive dogs over the years, and they have always been managed one way or another, but there was one occasion when I felt at serious risk of being savaged. I had a straightforward job of vaccinating an English Bull Terrier; the stocky Bull Terriers with a big Roman nose. I should emphasise that they are usually a good breed to deal with, but when they are difficult, they can be very awkward indeed.
First, the owners parked up outside the clinic, and they refused to bring the dog inside because there were other dogs in the waiting room. The woman waited outside with the dog. When it was their turn to be seen, the man said that he didn’t want to go to the car to deal with that ‘damn thing’. The woman removed the dog from the car and I noticed immediately that she had two leads on the dog: one attached to a normal dog collar; the other attached to a halter-type collar that stretches around the face and is useful for controlling boisterous dogs. I watched her remove the dog from the car. She didn’t bring him inside, but just walked him to the railing outside the door. She tied him to the railing there, pulling the lead tight so that he couldn’t move around much, or so we thought. I went out to the dog, and he was snarling and growling, and clearly meant business. He struggled frantically to get free, and I quickly decided that no heroics were necessary. He appeared healthy enough, and he was here for a check-over and booster so that’s what he was going to get. I walked up, gently inserted the needle – honestly as gently as I could – but he wasn’t impressed and he redoubled his efforts to get free. He growled and snarled as a stern warning to the person who had just stabbed him. To my horror, and to that of the owner, his violent struggling caused both collars to slip forward over his head, and he was nearly free. The lady saw what was happening and immediately shouted to me, ‘Get back in the surgery! GET BACK in the surgery!’
Now, I’m not one to ignore good advice, but I had a problem: I was standing a couple of metres from the door, and this writhing blur of snarling anger was immediately in front of me at the door, blocking my way. The only alternative was to jump on to the roof of my car, which was parked directly behind me. I abandoned this idea when I realised the dog could probably jump better than I could and, in addition, I did not want to display too much fear in front of the other clients watching the noisy antics through the windows. My only option was to take a running leap over the top of him, in through the door, slamming it shut behind me, smiling politely at the grinning customers waiting inside. I spent the next few years hoping that this dog never became ill, or if he did, he would be so ill he would become docile and pose no danger.
To be honest, you know if you have performed a surgical procedure well, and if you haven’t, the patient soon lets you know one way or the other. I had a large female Doberman undergo a major operation. Bearing in mind that Dobermans do not always necessarily have the friendliest reputation, she stood perfectly still on the consulting table whilst her wounds were dressed and re-dressed, r
epeatedly over several weeks, without ever complaining or struggling. In fact she is just about the only dog I have completely trusted to have her wounds cleaned and bandaged without needing anyone to hold her still at all. I ought to compliment this dog officially here. You’re a heroine, T, a canine heroine in my eyes.
On this subject, I cannot recall a nasty Doberman, despite their reputation and background as guard dogs. But I will put in writing that I do become annoyed by the comment that aggression is always down to the owner, and therefore down to nurture, not nature. Tosh! Breeds clearly have different tendencies – that is why we have breeds – we have dogs that like to chase like Border Collies; dogs that are ‘argumentative’ like Terriers; dogs that are hyperactive: Boxers, Springer Spaniels, and others of course. In forty years of working with dogs, I cannot recall ever seeing an aggressive English Setter, nor a bad-tempered Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. I have had one of the last-named breed attempt to bite me, but he had recently had a badly traumatised leg amputated and found the stump sensitive, which changed his very passive temperament for a while. However, that individual is a very rare exception to the docile Cavalier King Charles breed.
The worst biters, though, are not dogs, not cats, certainly not snakes (although iguana bites do hurt – don’t ask me how I know this). It’s not even parrots, although they come a close second, because their beaks are capable of crunching a large nut and fingers are a lot softer! The very worst biters are monkeys. Luckily I have not had to deal with one myself and any telephone enquiries were referred to specialists. As students, we were warned that monkeys are potentially very hazardous, so I have conscientiously managed to avoid them. First, monkeys have teeth big enough to do real damage; secondly they have hands as well, so they can grab hold of you and keep hold while they bite. To add insult to injury, they can transmit some nasty diseases. To control them you should hold them in a half-nelson with their hands held up behind their back, so they cannot grab you in the first place. Luckily they are very rarely seen by most vets and, as noted, are best referred to specialists.
