Finally one of the bullocks trotted into the fold yard, and the brothers guided it into a loose box. I handed the chloroform muzzle in to them and leaned on my mighty guillotine, thinking how much easier life had become over the past few days.
At the start of this session I had applied every tourniquet myself, then buckled on the muzzle before putting the halter over the top. But farmers are very adaptable people and the brothers soon devised a better way.
On the second day, Thomas, the eldest, made a quiet suggestion. “We could put on them bands and the muzzle ourselves, Mr. Herriot, while you wait outside t’box.”
I leaped happily at the idea. That rough binder twine had to be pulled very tight and my soft palms had been nibbed sore, but the horny fingers of the Dunning boys would be impervious to such a detail. Also, I would not be thrown around in the tying process.
As I leaned there, feeling again like an executioner, I bethought myself of my friend.
“Andy,” I said, “I think it would be a good idea if you climbed up there.” I pointed to one of a long row of square wooden feeding troughs known as “tumblers” which stretched down the middle of the straw-covered yard. Above them, running the full length of the tumblers, a hayrack dangled on chains.
He smiled indulgently. “Oh, I’ll be all right here.” He rested a shoulder against a post opposite the box and lit a cigarette. “I don’t want to miss anything and, anyway, it sounds very interesting in there.”
It did indeed sound interesting behind the wooden doors of the box. It always did. Gruff outbursts of “Ow!” “Stand still, ya bugger!” “Gerroff me foot!” blended with tremendous crashes as the big beast hurled itself against the timbers.
At length came the inevitable volley of yells. “Right! ‘e ‘s comin ‘ out’“
I tensed myself as the doors were thrown wide and the great animal, festooned with binder twine and wearing the muzzle like a wartime gas mask, catapulted outwards, with two of the brothers hanging grimly to the halter.
As the bullock felt the straw around its knees, it paused for a moment in its headlong rush and looked around till the eyes, glaring above the rim of the muzzle, focussed on the elegant form of my friend leaning against the post. Then it put its head down and charged.
Andy, confronted by fourteen hundredweights of hairy beef hurtling towards him, did not linger. He vaulted onto the tumbler, grabbed the slats of the hayrack and swung himself to safety as the horns sent the tumbler crashing away beneath his feet. I recalled that he had been very good on the wall bars in the school gymnasium, and it was apparent that he had lost none of his agility.
Cradled in the fragrant clover, he looked down at me as the rack swung gently to and fro on its chains.
“I’d stay up there if I were you,” I said.
Andy nodded. I could see he didn’t need much persuading. He had lost a little colour, and his eyebrows were arched high on his forehead.
All three of the Dunning brothers were needed to bring the bullock to a halt, and they stood there, leaning back on the rope and breathing heavily as they waited for me to make the next move.
This was the tricky bit. I leaned the guillotine against a tumbler and slowly approached the beast. Opening the front of the muzzle, I trickled chloroform onto the sponge. At this moment I never knew what was going to happen. Some animals turned sleepy almost immediately, while others, on inhaling the strange vapour, seemed to resent my presence and took a sudden dive at me. And in the deep straw it was difficult to get out of the way.
I was relieved to see that this was one of the former type. His charge at Andy and his subsequent struggles had made him breathless, and as he gulped deeply at the anaesthetic, his eyes glazed and he began to sway. He took a few stumbling steps, toppled onto his side and slipped into unconsciousness.
Now I had to move fast. I struggled through the straw, grabbed the guillotine and dropped the cutting jaws over a horn. I seized the shafts and began to pull. With small animals a single swift clip did the job, but the horns of these big bullocks were extraordinarily wide at the base, and I had to haul away with all my strength for several panting seconds till the knives crunched together. I repeated the process with the other horn, and it was just as tough to remove.
“Right,” I gasped. “Get the muzzle off him.” I was sweating and I had done only one beast, with about nineteen to go.
The brothers leaped into action, unbuckling the muzzle and running to usher another bullock from the pen where their father was already screaming and flailing around him with his stick.
With the loss of a little more perspiration I did the second and third, but the fourth defeated me. The horns were so vast that I had to open the shafts wider and wider until they were almost in a straight line. I groaned and strained, but it was obvious I would never be able to close them. Thomas, who had the build of a heavyweight wrestler, came up behind me.
“Move in a bit closer, Mr. Herriot,” he said.
I grasped the shafts halfway up their length, while Thomas seized the extreme ends in his great hands. Even with our united effort nothing happened for a few seconds, then the hom came off with a crack. But unfortunately I was the man in the middle, and as the shafts came together, they thudded with pitiless force against my ribs. It was the same with the other horn. Thomas had to help again, and my ribs took another hammering.
As the brothers trotted off for the next beast, I sank down on the straw and moaned softly, massaging my aching sides.
“Are you all right, Jim?” The voice came from above, and I looked up into Andy’s anxious face. I had been vaguely aware of him all the time, rocking on his chains as he twisted around in the rack to see as much as possible.
I gave him a rueful smile. “Oh yes, Andy, I’m okay. Just a bit bruised.”
“I don’t doubt it. I wouldn’t like that big bloke squeezing me in those choppers.” My friend’s head, protruding from the hay, was all I could see of him, but his eyes looked startled.
They looked still more startled when the next beast, at the first sniff of chloroform, launched himself forward and knocked me flat on my back. In fact, it was clear that little Mr. Dunning was upsetting the cattle with his constant shrieking and the poking with his stick.
Thomas thought so, too. “For God’s sake, Dad,” he said in his slow way. “Put that bloody stick away and shurrup.” He spoke without anger because he was fond of his father, as indeed I was, because he was a nice little man at heart.
Mr. Dunning quieted down, but he could contain himself for only a brief spell. Very soon he was yelling again.
About halfway through, the dreaded accident happened. I chopped through the tourniquet on one of the horns.
“Quick! More twine!” I shouted, groping my way through the red fountains spurting high from the sleeping animal. I had to retie the tourniquet with the warm fluid spraying my face. There was no escape. As I pulled the last knot tight, I turned to Mr. Dunning.
“Could I have a bucket of warm water, some soap and a towel, please?” My eyes were almost closed, the lashes gummed with the fast-clotting blood.
The little man hurried to the house and was back soon with a steaming bucket into which I eagerly plunged my hands. A second later I was hopping round the fold yard, yelping with pain and shaking my scalded fingers.
“That bloody water’s boiling hot!” I cried.
The brothers regarded me stolidly, but little Mr. Dunning was highly amused.
“Hee-hee, hee-hee, hee-hee.” His high-pitched giggles went on and on. He hadn’t seen anything so funny for a long time.
While he was recovering, William fetched some cold water and diluted the original sufficiently for me to give my hands and face a rough wash.
I went on with my work almost automatically and with increasing weariness. The driving of each bullock into the box, the hangings and oaths from behind the door, the final yell of “He’s comin’ out!,” then the straining and the chopping, and all the time in the back of my m
ind the question every veterinary surgeon of that era must have asked himself—”Why in heaven’s name did I have to study five years at college just to do this?”
But at last I saw with relief that there was only one more to do. I had just about had enough. Thomas had done his nutcracker act on my ribs a few times more, and every muscle in my body seemed to be protesting. I watched thankfully as Mr. Dunning started to drive the beast into the yard.
This animal, however, was reacting differently to the little man’s bawling and stick work. I remembered that the brothers had described the beast as being “bully-headed,” and indeed there was a vibrant masculinity about this shape and expression which suggested that the bloodless castrators might not have done their work completely.
The shaggy head, instead of turning away from Mr. Dunning’s importunities, kept pushing towards him. The little farmer poked at the nose with his stick but still it came on, and at that point Mr. Dunning evidently decided he would be better out of the way.
He walked off through the straw and the bullock walked after him. He broke into a trot and the bullock did the same. The trot became a stiff-legged gallop and the bullock followed suit.
At no time did the beast show any sign of charging the farmer, but Mr. Dunning didn’t seem reassured. He kept on running and his face registered increasing alarm. His progress was impeded by the deep straw and it must have been like running in knee-high water but for all that, he cut out a very fair pace for a sixty-year-old.
Nobody interfered. Maybe we were all a bit irritated by his antics during the afternoon, but we stood back and laughed. I laughed so much that it hurt my bruised ribs as Mr. Dunning shot down one side of the row of tumblers, then up the other, with the big animal’s nose a foot behind his neck. It might have been a Roman arena, with the mocking spectators and Andy away above rocking perilously in his cradle as he watched the chase.
It had to end sometime. After the second circuit Mr. Dunning’s cap flew off, he made a few lunging strides, then fell flat on his face in the straw. The animal did nothing more than run over the top of him, then allowed itself to be caught as though the whole thing had been a tease.
The little farmer jumped to his feet, hurt only in his dignity, and glared at us as he retrieved his cap.
With the help of the brothers I dehorned the beast, and the afternoon’s work was over.
We helped Andy down from the rack, and it took quite a while to brush the hayseeds from his smart serge. He watched impassively as I cleaned and dried my guillotine and with an effort heaved it into the boot. Then, with my own little brush, I washed the thick plastering of muck from my Wellingtons before putting on my shoes.
We got into the car and drove away into the darkening countryside. Andy lit another cigarette, and I could see him glancing at my sweaty, blood-flecked face and at my hand feeling the tenderness of my ribs under my jacket.
“Jim,” he said at length. “It’s funny how you can jump to conclusions. Maybe my own job isn’t so bad after all.”
Chapter
34
IN THE SEMI-DARKNESS OF the surgery passage I thought it was a hideous growth dangling from the side of the dog’s face, but as he came closer, I saw that it was only a condensed milk can. Not that condensed milk cans are commonly found sprouting from dogs’ cheeks, but I was relieved because I knew I was dealing with Brandy again.
I hoisted him onto the table. “Brandy, you’ve been at the dustbin again.”
The big golden Labrador gave me an apologetic grin and did his best to lick my face. He couldn’t manage it since his tongue was jammed inside the can, but he made up for it by a furious wagging of tail and rear end.
“Oh, Mr. Herriot, I am sorry to trouble you again.” Mrs. Westby, his attractive young mistress, smiled ruefully. “He just won’t keep out of that dustbin. Sometimes the children and I can get the cans off ourselves, but this one is stuck fast. His tongue is trapped under the lid.”
“Yes… yes …” I eased my finger along the jagged edge of the metal. “It’s a bit tricky, isn’t it? We don’t want to cut his mouth.”
As I reached for a pair of forceps, I thought of the many other occasions when I had done something like this for Brandy. He was one of my patients, a huge, lolloping, slightly goofy animal, but this dustbin raiding was becoming an obsession.
He liked to fish out a can and lick out the tasty remnants, but his licking was carried out with such dedication that he burrowed deeper and deeper until he got stuck. Again and again he had been freed by his family or myself from fruit salad cans, corned beef cans, baked bean cans, soup cans. There didn’t seem to be any kind of can he didn’t like.
I gripped the edge of the lid with my forceps and gently bent it back along its length till I was able to lift it away from the tongue. An instant later, that tongue was slobbering all over my cheek as Brandy expressed his delight and thanks.
“Get back, you daft dog!” I said, laughing, as I held the panting face away from me.
“Yes, come down, Brandy.” Mrs. Westby hauled him from the table and spoke sharply. “It’s all very fine, making a fuss now, but you’re becoming a nuisance with this business. It will have to stop.”
The scolding had no effect on the lashing tail, and I saw that his mistress was smiling. You just couldn’t help liking Brandy because he was a great ball of affection and tolerance, without an ounce of malice in him.
I had seen the Westby children—there were three girls and a boy—carrying him around by the legs, upside down, or pushing him in a pram, sometimes dressed in baby clothes. Those youngsters played all sorts of games with him, but he suffered them all with good humour. In fact, I am sure he enjoyed them.
Brandy had other idiosyncracies, apart from his fondness for dustbins.
I was attending the Westby cat at their home one afternoon when I noticed the dog acting strangely. Mrs. Westby was sitting, knitting in an armchair, while the oldest girl squatted on the hearth rug with me and held the cat’s head.
It was when I was searching my pockets for my thermometer that I noticed Brandy slinking into the room. He wore a furtive air as he moved across the carpet and sat down with studied carelessness in front of his mistress. After a few moments he began to work his rear end gradually up the front of the chair towards her knees. Absently, she took a hand away from her knitting and pushed him down, but he immediately restarted his backward ascent. It was an extraordinary mode of progression, his hips moving in a very slow rumba rhythm as he elevated them inch by inch, and all the time the golden face was blank and innocent, as though nothing at all were happening.
Fascinated, I stopped hunting for my thermometer and watched. Mrs. Westby was absorbed in an intricate part of her knitting and didn’t seem to notice that Brandy’s bottom was now firmly parked on her shapely knees which were clad in blue jeans. The dog paused, as though acknowledging that phase one had been successfully completed, then ever so gently he began to consolidate his position, pushing his way up the front of the chair with his fore limbs, till at one time he was almost standing on his head.
It was at that moment, just when one final backward heave would have seen the great dog ensconced on her lap, that Mrs. Westby finished the tricky bit of knitting and looked up.
“Oh, really, Brandy, you are silly!” She put a hand on his rump and sent him slithering disconsolately to the carpet, where he lay and looked at her with liquid eyes.
“What was all that about?” I asked.
Mrs. Westby laughed. “Oh, it’s these old blue jeans. When Brandy first came here as a tiny puppy, I spent hours nursing him on my knee, and I used to wear the jeans a lot then. Ever since, even though he’s a grown dog, the very sight of the things makes him try to get on my knee.”
“But he doesn’t just jump up?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “He’s tried it and got ticked off. He knows perfectly well I can’t have a huge Labrador in my lap.”
“So now it’s the stealthy approach, eh?”
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She giggled. “That’s right. When I’m preoccupied—knitting or reading—sometimes he manages to get nearly all the way up, and if he’s been playing in the mud he makes an awful mess, and I have to go and change. That’s when he really does receive a scolding.”
A patient like Brandy added colour to my daily round. When I was walking my own dog, I often saw him playing in the fields by the river. One particularly hot day many of the dogs were taking to the water, either to chase sticks or just to cool off, but whereas they glided in and swam off sedately, Brandy’s approach was quite unique.
I watched as he ran up to the river bank, expecting him to pause before entering. But, instead, he launched himself outwards, legs splayed in a sort of swallow dive, and hung for a moment in the air rather like a flying fox before splashing thunderously into the depths. To me it was the action of a completely happy extrovert.
On the following day in those same fields I witnessed something even more extraordinary. There is a little children’s playground in one corner—a few swings, a roundabout and a slide. Brandy was disporting himself on the slide.
For this activity he had assumed an uncharacteristic gravity of expression and stood calmly in the queue of children. When his turn came he mounted the steps, slid down the metal slope, all dignity and importance, then took a staid walk round to rejoin the queue.
The little boys and girls who were his companions seemed to take him for granted, but I found it difficult to tear myself away. I could have watched him all day.
I often smiled to myself when I thought of Brandy’s antics, but I didn’t smile when Mrs. Westby brought him into the surgery a few months later. His bounding ebullience had disappeared, and he dragged himself along the passage to the consulting room.
As I lifted him onto the table, I noticed that he had lost a lot of weight.
“Now, what is the trouble, Mrs. Westby?” I asked.
She looked at me worriedly. “He’s been off-colour for a few days now, listless and coughing and not eating very well, but this morning he seems quite ill, and you can see he’s starting to pant.”
The Lord God Made Them All Page 32