by JULIAN EARL
One hot summer afternoon, I attended a cow and successfully removed all the membranes, trying to hold my breath and nose for the twenty minutes or so it required. Then, once the job was done, I left the barn to fetch some medication from my car and returned. As soon as I walked back into the barn I saw that the cow had collapsed and was lying down on top of her own new calf. All I could see of the calf were its two back legs sticking out from under the cow and kicking frantically as it slowly suffocated underneath the six-hundred kilograms of its mother. I immediately ran at the cow, shouting at her, and trying to make her stand up again quickly. Unfortunately, I trod on the very membranes that I’d just removed from the cow and I slipped. My feet shot up in the air and I landed flat on my back, straight in all the foul-smelling rotting fluid that I had just removed. Luckily, I was still wearing the large dark-green waterproof nylon gown of the type that you might have seen farm vets wearing. Unfortunately, they fasten down the back and all the liquid soaked through to my back anyway. I spent the rest of this hot summer afternoon driving round and having to explain to every client why there was such a bad smell following me.
To add insult to injury, the cow had immediately stood up of her own accord, saving the calf, probably disturbed by the commotion as I flew through the air at full speed. I am sure that cow laughed at me.
Occasionally one doesn’t need slips and falls to cause embarrassment, but the animals can trigger the event. I was called to see a dairy cow with a bad eye. When I arrived on the farm, I could not immediately find the farmer, Mr N, and so I carried on because I knew the buildings and the half-blind cow was easily found. She was in the barn amongst the wooden cubicles, and I approached her on her left side to have a closer look at her bad eye. She did not trust this stranger on her blind side and backed away until she could see me with her good right eye. I approached again, and she backed away some more; and so we went on for a few more minutes, repeating this pattern, both of us going round in a circle. Then I spotted her lowering her head. I thought, Oh really? I know what you are going to do. A docile dairy Friesian cow, surely not? But yes, she had truly got fed up with my attention and with our game of circling, and she charged at me. I jumped backwards into the nearest cubicle, but she continued forward at me and luckily I was able to dodge into the next cubicle instead. Blow me if she didn’t come into that cubicle as well. The only way I could go was up and I climbed into the woodwork of the cubicles out of reach of this docile but angry dairy cow.
I then had an embarrassing time explaining to Mr N what I was doing up in the beams hiding from his apparently quiet dairy cow when he appeared a few moments later.
Even in the comfort of the practice, animals have been responsible for my strange behaviour. We are sometimes asked to look at wild animals such as herons, sparrowhawks, and more commonly, owls – barn owls, in particular, because they fly low and slow, going over hedges into the path of oncoming vehicles. This usually does not end well for the owls; they often sustain severe multiple fractures and require euthanasia if they survive the impact in the first place. I had been examining an injured owl and what I did not know at that time was that they often carry parasitic flies that burrow under their plumage. Nor did I know that these flies preferred burrowing under shirts to feathers. After dealing with the owl I had to speak with an elderly farmer at the reception desk, discussing some important issue with his animals. As I spoke to him, I felt a tickling sensation on my chest and scratched through my shirt, then felt the same on my shoulder and slapped at it, then again on my neck – slap! Then my back – slap again! Slap – again at my side, and all the while I was trying to concentrate on what the farmer was saying. At this point he was looking at me with a puzzled expression as I swatted the annoying sensations. As soon as he left, I shut the door, ripped off my shirt and brushed off all of the dead, squashed flies on my body! The farmer subsequently always asked for someone else to deal with, and I had some difficulty regaining my professional dignity in his presence.
Chapter 5
Foreign bodies
The different objects animals think are edible
A common cause of illness in various species can be a ‘foreign body’ – that is, when something is eaten when it is not supposed to be eaten and it becomes lodged internally. Foreign bodies are usually associated with dogs because dogs can and will swallow many things that they should not. The list of objects I have seen removed from dogs is a long one. Personally, I have removed rubber balls, stones and bones from dogs and even removed portions of carpet followed by curtain fragments from one large dog. On other occasions: string, socks, stockings, a plastic Mr Men figure and a toy soldier have all been removed. One dog managed to eat a long spike of bone that travelled almost all the way through his system, but finished up lodged across the dog’s backside; piercing from the inside through the skin on both sides, while acting like a safety pin across that delicate part of the anatomy. The dog was a tough young Staffordshire Bull Terrier, but there certainly was no way to remove the bone without an anaesthetic.
I have mixed feelings about feeding dogs bones. Dogs clearly love chewing them, and we happily gave our dogs the large raw beef knuckle bones without problems, but many dogs have had chunks of bone stuck inside them. Chicken bones are a definite no-no, as are cooked bones because these crumble too easily. I have recommended only feeding a dog a bone that is the size of the dog’s head; they then seem unable to crush the bone or bite off significant chunks. To avoid the risk of obstructing the intestines, just don’t feed them bones at all. On the other hand, imagine what your mouth and teeth would be like if you didn’t brush your teeth for ten years or more? That is why nearly all cats and dogs develop dental disease in their lifetime, but dogs that receive these hefty bones usually have good teeth and gums. It doesn’t work for cats because they don’t gnaw big bones the same way.
Other foreign bodies I found have included babies’ dummies – a popular one because puppies seem to like to chew, and then swallow, the rubber teat that then becomes lodged in their intestines. In an earlier practice where I worked, I found whisky bottle tops in a dog owned by a local man of the Church, but even he was not as embarrassed as the lady whose Labrador raided her laundry basket and swallowed a pair of her knickers, which blocked the dog’s intestines very effectively. The lady was so embarrassed when we presented them to her on collection of the dog that I jokingly threatened to write to the local paper with a photograph, but my blackmail threat was to no avail and, of course, I never did.
We had a young puppy brought in which the owner had been cuddling when the puppy managed to grab a golden earring she was wearing and swallowed it. We retrieved the earring, and I believe it eventually was returned to its proper place. On occasion owners worry that their dog has eaten something harmful that isn’t. I once had a young lady consult me because her dog had eaten a pack of her contraceptive pills.
She asked me: ‘What should I do?’
I replied, ‘Have you considered just saying “no”?’
She did not reply, and did not even smile at my attempt at witticism! When young and newly qualified, one feels one can get away with such levity even though this lady was genuinely concerned about her dog. The dog was perfectly okay afterwards, incidentally.
I remember a Springer Spaniel that had a peculiar taste in music. This dog had what I thought would be a unique case for my memoirs and, in fact, it was the very first foreign body case that I saw after qualifying. I knew that the dog had a foreign body causing the vomiting because I could feel it inside the abdomen. The dog came in to be operated upon, surgery being the only treatment option. The dog was opened up on the operating table, and I found the blocked intestine quite easily, but as I started to handle it, the dog’s bottom jaw started to waggle up and down. This gave us a fright because it could have been a sign that the dog was waking up too soon. We quickly checked the anaesthetic machine delivering the gas, looked at the settings of the dials, checked the tubes and pipes delive
ring the anaesthetic and they were all okay. But, on closer examination, I spotted a loop of black material under the dog’s tongue. It was a portion of a reel of cassette tape. The dog had chewed up the cassette, presumably spat out the plastic bits, but swallowed most of the tape. The dog was fine afterwards, but I don’t think that the tape ever played Beethoven again. This was a slightly disappointing case because I thought it so unusual it would be a one-off, but a virtually identical case was reported in a Sunday magazine over ten years ago. Yet another one was shown some years later during a television programme about veterinary students.
Dogs are not the only animals to try to swallow foreign bodies. Kittens swallow cotton, or Christmas tinsel, and I have seen a hamster that tried to eat a needle almost ten centimetres long. This hamster had the blunt eye end of the needle still in the cheek-pouch that hamsters have to the side of their mouth, while the sharp end had penetrated down to the hamster’s back left leg. This hamster received a gold star from me for good behaviour because I’ve probably been bitten more often by hamsters than by all other animals put together. This little ‘hero hammy’ just stood still while I pulled the needle out and scampered off across the consulting table, as though nothing had happened. His predicament was equivalent to a cow being impaled on a metal spike one to two metres long.
That actually happened to a cow, when a metal spike penetrated the cow’s chest at the base of her neck; it went into and through the chest, the point reappearing between the ribs. The cow lived thanks to a lot of nursing care by the farmer, plus being heavily dosed with antibiotics to deal with the infective material in the deep penetrating wound. That cow was very lucky, and certainly sustained a lot more damage than another cow I treated, that merely had an umbrella stuck at the back of her mouth!
There was also a wild duck that lived at the river near the practice that managed to swallow a fishhook. For a while, after the surgery to remove the hook from its throat, and the subsequent successful release of the duck at the local river, I used to keep trying to spot the duck with the bald neck, where I had plucked the feathers in order to operate.
Even goldfish sometimes try eating things that they shouldn’t. I have seen several goldfish that have had a piece of gravel from the bottom of their aquarium jammed inside the mouth; they swim around, pick up a bit of gravel but are then unable to spit the gravel out again. I don’t know why goldfish do this; perhaps it is nesting behaviour similar to that shown by sticklebacks in the wild, or perhaps feeding behaviour. Or maybe it is just a bored goldfish’s idea of fun and how to pass the time. Whatever the reason, it is simple to remedy, because the gravel can usually be levered out quite easily using a toothpick.
Chapter 6
Crashing out
An arresting collapse and an armed response
Foreign objects are not only swallowed. At my first job at a city vets where I worked as an assistant and teenage dogsbody, it proved invaluable experience for my later career. We occasionally had to deal with official dogs, such as the city police dogs. A hefty German Shepherd police dog was brought in because of a cut pad. The police dogs often received cuts, frequently severe owing to the rough ground they sometimes worked on, with broken glass, sharp metal objects and similar hazards on the ground, and this cut was a fairly deep one in the main pad of the front right foot. The policeman was holding the dog correctly up on the examination table, right arm around the front of the dog’s chest and neck, and the other behind the dog’s back end. I was just observing at this time because I was then still a student.
I watched the vet examine the cut in the pad and he said, ‘Hmmm, it is a bad cut and you know – I think there’s something stuck in here.’
He gently probed the wound to investigate. Then, using some fine forceps, he slowly and carefully pulled a long, narrow piece of brown glass out of the pad. I can remember clearly that it was about two centimetres long, and shaped like a number 9 or a comma. We saw the dog wobble – except it wasn’t only the dog – the police dog handler started to sway backwards ever so slowly and then fainted, toppling over at the sight of this foreign body removal. The only problem was that he kept hold of the dog, and ended up flat on his back with a large German Shepherd, spreadeagled across his chest, looking thoroughly surprised. Slightly red in the face, the policeman rose to his feet and comforted his somewhat confused dog.
This wasn’t my only experience with the police. I once found myself issuing orders to an armed response unit at the scene of a cattle transporter crash.
Cattle are physically tough. I know of one occasion where a cow withstood impact by a lorry. The cow survived even if the lorry did not. Cows often demonstrate their resilience, but never more clearly to me than when I was called out on this icy November night.
Arriving on the scene, I saw that a large cattle transporter had overshot a sharp corner, slid off to the side of the road and then rolled over sideways into a ditch, ending upside down angled at forty-five degrees, with about fifty frightened cattle inside. Unfortunately, I had just been discharged after knee surgery so called on a young assistant vet to help with anything requiring much mobility. We had driven there and introduced ourselves to the many police and others in attendance. I had collected medication for euthanasias in case any were required. Although possessing a humane killing gun, I did not think it wise to fire bullets in an enclosed space such as the upturned trailer so decided to leave it behind. All the same, several armed police were present, willing to shoot any cattle for which there was no alternative. It was an impressive turnout: the police in force, a huge lifting crane on another lorry, eventually – the last to arrive – an ambulance for the driver, plus another transporter to move the cattle on to their next home.
We inspected the scene inside the lorry and it was carnage. The cattle were jumbled around, on their sides or their backs, all piled on top of each other, legs and heads trapped under each other or sticking out of the jumble of bodies and flailing around. The internal metal barriers were distorted and bent by falling cattle, and many were jammed shut. At this point, I could not see an easy way of rescuing these animals. Eventually, the partitions were battered and loosened and, one by one, we gradually managed to release the bovine bodies from the heap. Surprisingly, very few cattle needed to be euthanased or were dead when we arrived, despite their positions indicating that suffocation was imminent. Most incredibly, as we managed to release the cattle, we stood behind them towards the open rear end of the lorry, and were vulnerable to being trampled as the cattle enthusiastically ran out of the lorry straight into the second transporter. Slipping and stumbling on the shiny metal, now liberally coated in wet green cow excretion, I felt very precarious on my bad leg as I leapt out of the way each time. In the end, all the surviving cattle were able to continue their journey, not really much the worse for wear. I confess to having some sympathy for the other people called out because it was a bitterly cold night and, despite all the physical activity, we were shivering badly. We two vets did the most sensible thing we could and hid in my car whenever possible, with the heater fully on. It was a very long night that started after midnight and took six or eight hours to complete the rescue. The rumour that my wonderful veterinary assistant spread – that I fell asleep in the hot car – is just gossip and not true. I was far too busy thinking about the amazing lack of injuries to fall asleep, truly I was.
Eventually, with all the cattle safe, I was asked permission by the armed police for them to retire for the night, which I gave because we all wanted to go home by then. I have never had so much power and authority before or since.
Chapter 7
Rare and exotic
Some of our more unusual patients
I have dealt with snakes, spiders and plenty of tortoises. Wild ducks are one of the less common patients to appear, but these slightly exotic animals are a real source of interest and pleasure. On one occasion I had to deal with a raccoon on its way to a new home at a zoo, shortly followed by a coatimundi. I recognise
d a coatimundi when I saw one and, unless I had forgotten, I was pretty sure they hadn’t taught us about South American predators when I was at college. Sometimes you have no choice but to learn on your feet.
Probably one of the most memorable individual patients was a tortoise aged ninety-six years, which had been passed down through the family, and he was okay except for being so active that he had fallen off a wall and damaged his shell. The current owner still had the original receipt from when her relation had bought the tortoise in the previous century, at Covent Garden, in 1895, if I remember correctly. The moral of that story is: it’s not a good idea to climb on walls when one is aged ninety-six!
Other reptiles I have seen include a rather large female boa constrictor that the owner thought was constipated because of the swelling visible about two-thirds along her body. This boa was well over two metres long. Such snakes are solid muscle and extremely strong, and she was indeed so strong that David, one of the bosses, and I could not manage to pull her straight in order to measure her size. However, we did manage to X-ray her – in several sections. What the owner thought was constipation was, in fact, an unexpected pregnancy. Appropriate medication called oxytocin (a hormone that acts rapidly on the muscle of the womb and causes the contents to be pushed out) soon resolved the problem.
We also discovered that day that Barry, one of the vets and co-owner of the practice, had a secret – but very real – phobia about snakes. David walked into the room and stood behind Barry whilst carrying the rather large boa constrictor. When Barry saw the snake he nearly jumped out of the first-floor window. Luckily the window was jammed shut, but Barry’s secret was out.
