A Yorkshire Vet Through the Seasons

by Julian Norton

  Dave pulled heavily on his cigar, which seemed incongruous both because he was standing beside a washing machine and because it was still early in the day. It did, however, give him pause for thought.

  ‘Well, okay. It needs to bloody well come art and if that’s the only bloody way, it’s the only way. What do we do now?’

  ‘It’s fine, I’ll need some more warm water and I’ll get my stuff – don’t worry, it’s pretty straightforward.’

  I gathered all my tackle – local anaesthetic, surgical kit, various injections and the all-important suture materials – and arranged the ewe so that she was lying on her right side with her left hind leg hoisted upwards, exposing her lower abdomen and groin. I explained to Dave, briefly, what I would be doing. If everything went according to plan, I would be finished in less than fifteen minutes.

  I loaded the scalpel onto its handle and prepared for my first incision. At this point, bizarrely, the recollection of the first caesarian section I ever experienced came to mind, maybe because this was the first time Dave had seen the procedure, too.

  I was a fifteen-year-old schoolboy and was just coming to the end of a two-day placement at a local veterinary surgery in Wakefield. A yellow Labrador retriever was giving birth and the pups were not coming out as they should. The vet in charge, a brilliant surgeon called Peter Rhodes, was supervising. I should have left the practice an hour or so previously, to catch my bus home, but the prospect of watching this amazing operation was too exciting.

  The bitch was placed under anaesthetic and her belly clipped and scrubbed. After just a few moments, Peter was making the same cut that I was about to make into the animal’s abdomen to reveal the distended uterus, full of puppies. I was enthralled by the spectacle and was peering in, as close as I dared. Just moments after Peter had made his incision, the bitch did a series of big puffs on the anaesthetic gas. This made the diaphragm contract and the result was that the mass of small intestines spewed out of the abdomen and headed straight towards my face! Clearly the intestines were well and truly attached to the inside of the Labrador and there was no danger of them spilling further than the draped area on the operating table, but I was a naïve schoolboy. Instinct took over and, oblivious to the sterility within the operating site, I stuck out my hands and caught the dog’s intestines. My games teacher at school would have been proud, but Mr Rhodes was not. In fact, he was furious. Prone to occasional bad language, even within the consulting room with clients, Peter let out a great torrent of expletives, not aimed directly at me, but at the general situation. As he summoned bags of sterile solution to wash any germs from the dog’s insides, I quickly realized my mistake and my face flushed a deep shade of crimson. It was a lesson well learnt.

  If intestines spilled out today, I did not want Dave and his cigar reaching out to catch them. Luckily for the sheep and for me, we were on the floor of the utility room and Dave was perched against the washing machine. I knew full well that he was not quick or agile enough to dive to the rescue.

  Dave talked continuously throughout the surgery, so much so that his cigar lost its light. I was concentrating hard on what I was doing, so there was precious little opportunity to reply or interject as he extolled his thoughts and theories about all aspects of life.

  The operation went smoothly, and one enormous lamb was soon spluttering in the straw next to the washing machine, shaking its head and splattering the kitchen units with bloody mucus.

  Dave didn’t seem to have any intention of moving the mother and baby out of the house and back to the proper place for a sheep and lamb, and he continued talking. I gathered up my kit and went out to find the hosepipe to clean off. I knew I would be on the farm for some time yet.

  ‘And I’ll tell you another bloody thing, that bullock you saw last year, you know, the one with the lump on its side, well, that bloody lump on that bloody bullock, it never did go away. And do you know what I think it was? I think it was – now I might be wrong here, but I don’t think I am – I think that lump was a big bloody version of a …’

  Dave paused and I dared not imagine what his next conjecture might be. I considered running away to my car, but that seemed rude.

  He took a deep draw on his long-dead cigar before uttering the unlikely words: ‘Lumpy jaw. I think it was a bloody version of lumpy jaw. I do.’

  ‘Well, it might have been, Dave. Where was the lump again?’ I could not bring to mind the particular lump to which he was referring.

  ‘That bloody lump was right on the end of his shoulder.’

  It seemed unlikely that a lump on the shoulder was a version of the distinctly different condition called ‘lumpy jaw’, a chronic bacterial infection of the mandible, but Dave was convinced and I knew Dave well enough to know that to disagree was futile. I also knew that it would be a while before I was retracing my steps down his long farm track. When I did eventually manage to get away, I couldn’t help but smile at the outcome of my caesarian in the utility room, Dave’s cheerfully persistent conviction that he had the answers and the beautiful hawthorn blossom on the hedge along his lane. I knew that once this final lambing of the year had been done, at Dave’s farm, springtime was officially over.

  SUMMER

  The first thing we all do when we arrive at the practice in the morning is check the daybook, to see what the day has in store. All the operations are listed first, sometimes going over onto a second page. After these come messages and appointments, followed by a list of visits. In a practice like ours, every day is different.

  On a sunny summer’s day, we all secretly long to get our initials next to a ‘plum’ job such as forty or fifty sheep to blood sample, outside in the fresh air, with an opportunity to soak up the sun. Apart from performing fifty squats – bending down and standing up each time a sample is taken – a job like this is not physically demanding. There is zero risk of getting debilitating cold fingers or freezing feet, and every chance of getting a suntan.

  Bingo and Bertie

  It was shaping up to be a beautiful day, and I scoured the pages of the daybook, searching for an outside call. But I was out of luck. Sue had already put her name next to the visit to disbud a gang of young calves and Ben, whose main interest was in equines, was, as ever, heading off to one of the yards to vaccinate some horses and contemplate the cause of lameness in a Shetland pony, before prescribing his usual treatment.

  ‘Nice trousers,’ Sue commented as she glanced back over her shoulder on her way out. ‘Very summery.’

  My trousers were indeed quite summery, although not intentionally so. Once upon a time they were the standard beige corduroy that is practically the uniform for a rural vet. Along with a checked shirt, the outfit is a classic and for good reason. Trousers of any brown shade hide the suspicious stains that would send trousers of any other colour straight to the laundry basket. Similarly, a shirt with numerous lines, vertical and horizontal, can easily fool the eye into an appearance of relative cleanliness. The combination is popular for vets who spend much of their time out on farms.

  Today, though, was the first outing of the trousers sporting their new lighter colour. It was around the time when our first son was a baby and the washing basket was permanently full. The sorting of the washing hadn’t gone quite according to plan and a bright blue baby outfit had sneaked in with my favourite and most comfortable pair of trousers. When they emerged from the washing machine, they had changed from a modest brown to a bright turquoise, rendering them utterly useless for wearing in public. Anne (who could not be blamed for this colour change) reckoned she could ‘save’ them by boiling them in various solutions to remove the aberrant turquoise. She set about the task with gusto.

  After several sessions in the washing machine, the trousers were passable. Not beige any more, but certainly not turquoise either. They were a very pale cream, almost all trace of any colour having been chemically erased. I reckoned that after a few clinics’-worth of scrabbling around on the floor of my consulting room and half a
dozen mornings standing behind cows, the trousers would return to something like their original light brown. The biggest problem was that their paleness was exaggerated by a gentle hint of blue, which gave them a whiter-than-white appearance. ‘Only for a few days, Julian,’ I thought. ‘They’ll soon be back to normal brown rather than electric white.’ Not being too concerned with fashion, Sue’s comment about my dazzling trousers quickly left my head as I pored over the book, looking for a nice outside job, where the offending trousers would be covered up under waterproof leggings anyway.

  But the only message left for me to deal with said: ‘Please phone Mrs Dill re Bertie and Bingo.’

  Mrs Dill was an elderly lady who had kept Jack Russell terriers all her life. Her current two dogs were called Bertie and Bingo. They were brothers, at least in so far as they both had the same mother. Not even Mrs Dill could be sure whether or not they shared the same father. In any case, they were definitely related and had the relationship that one would expect of two sparring brothers. Bertie was the elder but his seniority in years didn’t confer the respect he felt he deserved and the two dogs often got into skirmishes. I suspected this would be the problem today.

  Mrs Dill was immaculately presented at all times, sporting an elegant coiffure of white hair and bright red lipstick, and she was always very pleasant. I tapped her number into the phone.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Dill. It’s Julian here, from the vets. I’m just returning your call about the dogs. Is everything okay?’

  ‘Oh, thank you so much, Julian. How very good of you to take the time to call me back,’ she effused with the heavy lisp that made her voice so unmistakable. ‘It’s Bertie and Bingo. They’ve been at it again, you see. I gave them breakfast and, well, you know, they had a bit of a disagreement and Bertie has a hole in his neck and it’s bleeding. There is blood all over Bingo and everything looks a terrible mess.’

  ‘Okay, don’t worry. Can you bring them down, Mrs Dill? I can have a look at them and sort them out. Are you all right?’

  I knew that she would have tried to intervene to separate the two scrapping dogs and I knew that the paper-thin skin of an elderly lady would always come off much worse than that of the tough terriers. My own grandmother used to wade in, in just the same way, to break up skirmishes between various of the terriers she had throughout my childhood, and I remember the nasty purple bruises and angry puncture wounds that would be the result.

  ‘Oh, Julian, how kind of you to ask! It’s just a scratch on my arm. I am bleeding, but I’ll survive. When would you like me to come down?’

  ‘Straight away, if you can, Mrs Dill.’

  The sooner I could get the bleeding wounds of the dogs cleaned and, if necessary, stitched up, the better.

  ‘Oh, how very good of you. I’ll be on my way. I shall just finish off my coffee. I’ll be with you in about a quarter of an hour. I do hope that’s all right.’

  Mrs Dill was an amazing lady. In previous years she had spent each summer organizing and hosting the famous ‘Jack Russell Tea Party’. This annual event, held in June, on the tiny cricket pitch in the grounds of Upsall Castle, just outside Thirsk, attracted national attention. It was, as the name suggested, a summer garden party where the only entry requirement was to bring a Jack Russell terrier. I had been to many similar garden parties whilst at university, where the invitation requested that guests bring not a Jack Russell, but a bottle of sparkling white wine or half a bottle of vodka. It was hard to say which summer garden party accoutrement would lead to a more lively afternoon – anyone who has known a Jack Russell would anticipate a riot when the dogs have the chance to mingle on the same cricket field on a warm summer day. Admittedly, there were often a few skirmishes, but the short-legged and wilful dogs usually got on together remarkably well and veterinary intervention was seldom necessary.

  The dog owners would all bring picnics and there would be a dog show of sorts, with prizes for the most imaginative fancy dress, the best family of dogs, the prettiest bitch, the most handsome geriatric and so on. The dogs would love it, all standing especially proud as if realizing that they were on display.

  Some years after she had retired from organizing the Jack Russell tea parties, Anne was chatting to Mrs Dill at a party (a normal one, without dogs).

  ‘It’s most irksome,’ explained Mrs Dill. ‘I have done an awful lot of good work in my time, raising money for charity and so on, but all I seem to be remembered for is organizing the Jack Russell Tea Party!’

  She paused. ‘But’, she added, ‘Jack Russells are simply the most wonderful of dogs.’

  I checked through the notes of both Bertie and Bingo as I waited for Mrs Dill to arrive. The notes told the story of a pair of accident-prone dogs.

  Bingo’s notes read: ‘Bingo has had a foul-smelling accident in the bathroom. Also deaf. Rubbing his head along the ground.’

  It was not clear whether the foul-smelling accident and the deafness were thought to be connected.

  Next: ‘Bingo has taken to eating items of clothing, socks etc. Guts very active. Mrs D took decaying rabbit’s ears off him this morning.’

  These kind of clinical notes were fairly typical for a wilful and confident but unthinking Jack Russell. They continued:

  ‘Bingo vomited five times this morning. Eaten some nylon stockings.’

  ‘Bingo apparently has also eaten a Nurofen tablet this morning.’

  Bertie was less reckless with his dietary habits, but we saw him more regularly. His notes were more copious because he had a heart murmur and therefore needed regular checks. His weak heart was a relative term, as a Jack Russell with a bad heart is still a formidable force. It didn’t stop him from fighting with his brother.

  By the time I had finished perusing the notes of both dogs, Mrs Dill had arrived in the car park. From the window of my consulting room I watched her clambering out of the car clutching one of her dogs, who was covered in blood.

  There was some remonstrating in the car park – the dog clearly did not want to attend the surgery that morning while there was unfinished business back in Upsall. Mrs Dill appeared only to have brought one of the dogs and he eventually trotted along beside the old lady, shaking his head as he walked. Even from a distance I could tell that it was Bertie, as his brown bits were paler than Bingo’s, but on this occasion, most of his hair was pink and red after the fracas.

  I met Mrs Dill and Bertie in the waiting room. Before I could say hello and usher the pair into the consulting room, Mrs Dill, with her customary enthusiasm, stopped in her tracks, stared at me and gushed, ‘Oh, how simply splendid, Julian! I do like to see a man dressed in smart white trousers!’

  She was obviously even more impressed by my attire than Sue had been earlier, but her lisp made her proclamation seem even more ridiculous. She could hardly have constructed a sentence with more ‘S’s in it!

  Once they were in my room, I lifted Bertie onto the table, without any objection from him at all, and started my examination. There was, as Mrs Dill had correctly identified, a puncture wound in Bertie’s neck and blood all over him. The laceration was quite deep – as deep as a terrier’s canine tooth is long – and about an inch long, gaping open like the mouth of a fish. There was also a small tear in Bertie’s left ear. I explained that I would need to sedate Bertie to clean up his injuries and put a couple of sutures in the gaping wound. Often bite wounds are left open so infection doesn’t get trapped under the skin, but if the wound is large and gaping and if we can do the surgery promptly before infection takes hold, the healing process is speeded up.

  The small cut to Bertie’s ear also needed attention. It was very small but these little nicks can produce copious amounts of blood. A bit of blood goes a long way on a white dog, but a lot of blood goes much further, and this was the reason why Bertie was a shade of strawberry pink. I explained my plan to Mrs Dill, who was delighted that I could repair the wounds so promptly. I took Bertie into the prep room to give him a sedative, which would take a few minu
tes to work, and then returned to my consulting room where Mrs Dill was waiting.

  ‘Shall I have a look at your arm?’ I offered.

  ‘Oh, how kind. It’s just a small scratch, but there is plenty of blood!’ she commented. ‘I did try to stop the boys from fighting, but they were just so determined. I couldn’t really help.’

  The wound was not deep, but there was some bruising developing, extending in both directions along her forearm. I wiped the dried blood off with some antiseptic and then applied a light dressing. Mrs Dill seemed very appreciative and continued her profuse thanks.

  Bertie was swiftly sorted out in theatre and was happy to see his owner as I brought him back to the waiting room. He was stitched up, his bloody war wounds were cleaned and he looked not much the worse for his morning’s exploits. The same could not be said for my poor trousers, which were now bluish cream with large red smears of blood from both patient and owner. They were destined for another appointment with the washing machine, very shortly.

  Later that day, after evening surgery had finished, I was relating the story of the dogs and Mrs Dill’s admiration of my trousers to Tim, one of my senior colleagues. It seemed her liking for a man in white was long-standing. Tim recalled having a similar conversation with Mrs Dill many years earlier. It was in the corridor of the old surgery at 23, Kirkgate – the original practice from which Alf Wight, better known as James Herriot, worked. In those days, veterinary surgeons wore white coats, just like doctors, pharmacists and pretty much all other healthcare professionals. Tim was wearing his white coat over a pale checked shirt and even paler, faded-once-beige trousers. As he rounded the corner from his consulting room and headed to the waiting room to call his next patient, Tim was greeted with the same compliment from Mrs Dill: ‘Oh, how smart! All in white!’