Cock and Bull Stories

by Peter Anderson

  The turning point came after a weekend retreat with a facilitator who helped us significantly and gave us some direction. A business plan (what the hell was one of those?) was written and responsibilities for different areas of the business were established. The need for staff changes was obvious: we needed another assistant/receptionist and we needed another vet. Despite the downturn in the economy and the share market crash and businesses elsewhere retrenching, we were going to expand. We employed a lovely and brilliant new graduate, Mandy Batchelor, and we shift ed to bigger premises. We were on the move again.

  Throughout our partnership PJ and I have always strived to improve our knowledge and expertise in the areas we enjoyed the most and were best at. While we both enjoyed the small animal work, with production animals we both also had a preference for sheep and beef cattle. Dairy cows were not our favourite species. Eventually I became the large animal (LA) vet and Pete concentrated more on small animal (SA) work and the technically demanding and intricate work, and business management. His business acumen was far more likely to benefit the practice than mine. I also had the ability to fly to many of the LA jobs, which saved a significant amount of time.

  While we could have both gone either way, once the decision was made that I would manage the large and production animal side of the business and PJ would look after the domestic animals and retail side, it was amazing how quickly I found it difficult to go back and work confidently in the clinic. I would sometimesfeel (fleetingly) sorry for PJ when I was enjoying a beautiful day out, working in good company and not being stressed by the day-to-day hassles more oft en experienced in small animal practice. On the other hand I occasionally envied him, especially when working long days in wet, cold weather well into the night, miles from home.

  PJ became a very competent and popular small animal vet and developed his orthopaedic skills to a high degree, a definite requirement in a rural environment with many working dogs. However, his real claim to fame would be his skill as a dog reproductive expert. By the time he retired he was one of the country’s leading experts on reproductive problems in bitches, collecting and using frozen dog semen. This did not come without cost and required several trips to overseas conferences and to study alongside the world’s best. The development of expertise alongside natural ability requires study, time and money, a fact that many clients who go for the cheap option oft en fail to appreciate. He also became extremely competent at sheep artificial insemination (AI) and together we were among the first to get into embryo transfer in sheep, goats, and deer.

  Although I have always enjoyed working with small animals and most of their owners, the veterinary field these days is just far too large and the expectation of the public so much greater, that to remain current and give a ‘good’ service, vets eventually have to specialise. We oft en have to give up some of the work that we enjoy, but one gets over that!

  LA vets dealing with production animals — sheep, cattle and deer — are basic epidemiologists. We deal mostly with populations of animals rather than individuals. We handle epidemics — whether they be trace element or vitamin deficiencies, infectious disease outbreaks, or poor reproductive or growth rate performances. We don’t tend to do much curing of individual sick animals because, unless it is a valuable stud animal or a valuable bull or ram, economically it doesn’t usually stack up. However, sick animals are still an invaluable source of information and discovering why this animal is not well will oft en indicate why the rest of the flock or herd is not thriving. One becomes very good at post-mortems.

  In fact one of the reasons why I had for some time felt that my future was not in the domestic pet field was because I kept finding my thoughts going down the wrong track when examining an unwell cat or dog. After a thorough physical examination I would sometimes find myself wondering what tests I should be taking. As a diagnostician I was not a patch on PJ or our more recent partners, Stuart Burrough and Mark Wiseman, the shareholders in the practice, but I do know how to do a post-mortem. When confronted with SA cases that stumped me, I kept finding myself thinking, ‘This would be an interesting post mortem.’

  It was time to move away from small animals and let someone else save them.

  So I have had the privilege of sharing a full and eventful working life with PJ. It really has been a great trip and I couldn’t have wished for a more stimulating and, at times, exciting business partner. Our friendship has strengthened over time and enhanced our working and social lives, together and with our families. It has also helped us through some difficult periods in both our lives.

  Throughout our years in practice together, we would oft en end the day discussing interesting cases and laughing over some of the more amusing experiences. Whenever an event had us both in fits of laughter, we’d remark: ‘That’ll be one for the book’, never really thinking there would ever actually be a book. Well, here is a bit of a book, but as time has dimmed the memory I know we have forgotten much good material. No doubt some of our clients, if they ever read this, will ask us why we didn’t tell the story about ‘so and so’. To those people we apologise in advance.

  AFTER-HOURS RIPPER — PJ

  The great bane of a vet’s life is the after-hours work. Getting called out from your warm home when you’ve settled in for the night with your family is tough. And it can happen at any time, for hundreds of different reasons. You never know what is coming and all country vets in particular will know that horrible feeling when the phone goes. Who is it? What will they want?

  As a new vet working for the Graham Vet Club, before Pete and Pete’s Pussy Parlour was thought of, I had to face my first night on call a month after graduating.

  ‘Gidday, it’s Les Ham. My heading bitch has a bad rip. Can you come out and stitch her up?’ The voice on the end of the phone was gruff but not unkind.

  I met Les and his friend Bill Gibbs at the clinic half an hour later. I unlocked the door, disarmed the burglar alarm and took the two of them and a nice heading bitch into the surgery. She had a huge rip, from her guggle to her zatch, as the hero of The Thirteen Clocks (a book enjoyed by my mother) would say.

  ‘Barbed wire,’ said Les. ‘Should ban the bloody stuff.’

  Les had Clydesdale horses on his sheep and cropping farm in Rapaura, and the sight of four or six of these great beasts in harness with a plough behind and Les on the reins was a joy to behold. Over the next few years I made many calls to see those wonderful animals, mostly good-natured giants, before advancing years made them a bit much for Les to handle. He sold them to various other enthusiasts of his craft, and they were lost forever to Marlborough. He was a lovely, kindly man, invariably polite and appreciative, humorous, and one of those farmer clients I always looked forward to visiting. But all that was in the future.

  Back in the surgery, the trusting heading dog allowed me to slip a needle into the cephalic vein and gently inject the anaesthetic. She was asleep in 10 seconds and after intubating her and getting the gas going, I clipped and cleaned the huge skin wound while Les and Bill watched, leaning against the wall of the surgery.

  ‘Would you like a spot?’ says Les. I very much enjoy a spot now, but not at the age I was then, and I was new at this and needing to concentrate, so I gracefully declined.

  ‘Well you won’t mind if we do, will you?’

  Of course I wouldn’t. So while these two old World War II soldiers watched and yarned and drank half a bottle of scotch, I went to work, stitching up the great tear in the little dog’s skin. These barbed wire rips can be horrendous, and it’s sometimes very difficult to fit the jigsaw together. Where did this bit come from? Can I get this bit over here? Use a tension suture or two, Pete. This was one of the worst. Nearly 30 years later, I still can’t recall a worse tear. And this was my very first solo emergency case. But away I went and an hour later it was all together again. No more gash. Quite tidy actually. The problem was, one nipple, instead of being just to the side of the midline of her abdomen, was neatly placed up beside h
er hip.

  Now everyone, every vet that is, makes mistakes in the heat of the moment, and especially young, inexperienced vets. One of my friends from vet school went to do his first caesarean section on a cow at about the same time. He correctly opened her up, with the cow standing, on the left side, saw a heap of intestines, panicked, said, ‘This is a very strange case,’ and closed her up. He went to the right side, opened her up again, found more intestines, panicked harder, closed her up and opened the left side again (the correct one). He delivered the calf safely, but the farmer would have needed plenty of compassionate humour.

  My mistake with the dog left me in a cold sweat. ‘Oh hell, Les,’ I groaned, ‘I haven’t done that right.’

  Les was totally unfazed.

  ‘No worries, Peter. It looks as tidy as my wife’s patchwork quilt. She isn’t going to have pups anyway. That’ll be fine.’ Dear man, I could have hugged him in my professional embarrassment.

  We waited round for an hour for the bitch to wake up, and I probably did have a dram then. I really can’t remember. And as the two old boys took the dog off home and I cleaned up and locked the doors, I reflected on my good fortune in finding such an understanding man.

  I saw Les and the bitch numerous times — the wound healed well and never caused any trouble. And I became, if I say so myself, a pretty tidy surgeon, and always paid great attention to the presentation of the finished article after that.

  WAKE-UP CALLS — PA

  As I retired from small animal practice or, as I tell my colleagues, promoted myself to only doing production animal work, I very quickly became out of touch with veterinary aspects of cat and dog medicine. In 2006 when I was faced with a major health issue, my partners ruled out after-hours and weekend work. This was a very generous gesture on their part because it increased their workload. As it was, I was beginning to feel rather inadequate when it came to doing small animal work because I was only doing it during the odd weekend and after hours.

  Being on duty for after-hours calls and weekend work does eventually become a bit of a grind. I suspect PJ would have carried on working for a few more years if he had been able to drop being on duty for 24 hours at least one day a week and working weekends. Unfortunately, with me not doing this work, it would have meant a lot of extra work for the other vets in the practice if he had done so.

  In the early days it didn’t seem to be a problem. It added to the interest and excitement; it was just part of the job. You also often got to know clients quite well after a few hours with them assisting on some emergency midnight surgery cases. Still, I always found late night calls a bit of a problem because I definitely wasn’t at my best when first woken up. Chick grew to loathe midnight calls as well because she knew how I reacted when the telephone woke me from a deep sleep. I just did not perform well.

  Calls would often go something like this.

  ‘Hello,’ I would answer after fumbling around, sometimes picking up the bedside radio or trying to turn off the alarm clock first. I’d occasionally also knock over my glass of water, which really put me in the right frame of mind to be civil.

  ‘Is that the vet?’ A tip: this is not a good way to get a friendly response. Of course I’m the bloody vet. Why else would you be ringing me and I do have a name. Very occasionally I would get an ‘I’m very sorry to disturb you’ but usually not.

  ‘Yes,’ I would reply, or ‘I think so’.

  ‘Well, I’m really worried about Tigger.’

  ‘Who the hell are you and who the hell is Tigger?’ I would feel like saying. Instead I usually had to ask who was speaking. Not introducing yourself is just plain bad manners. Waking me up when I’m not at my best, asking if I’m the vet, and not introducing yourself: we are off to a very bad start. Chick is by now cringing next to me.

  By the time I had found out who I was speaking to, I was usually starting to think a little more clearly and hoping like anything I could find a way of solving their problem without having to get out of bed. Sometimes if I thought the animal could wait until the morning, I would suggest they give the dog a disprin. This didn’t always go down well with the dog’s owner, nor PJ or Stuart when they had to deal with the problem the next day.

  Chick today reminds me of two questions I invariably asked.

  ‘How long has she been like this?’ If the problem had only started an hour or two ago and was getting worse my reaction was somewhat more civil than if it had started the previous day.

  ‘What colour are its gums?’ That was a good question because no one ever knew and it gave me a little time to wake up further as they went to have a look.

  Often, however, it was best to get out of bed and get in the car and drive into town to see whatever the problem was, because if I didn’t I would invariably lie awake waiting for them to ring back to tell me that there was no improvement. Our children, George and Caroline, remember the times when I was having a bad night. They would get woken by the phone and shortly afterwards hear me stomping down the hall, slamming the back door shut and then the car roaring off down the drive. What really annoyed Chick was that after I left in what she reckoned was always a foul mood, she would lie wide awake hoping everything was going all right. Then when I returned, invariably now in a good mood, I would fall sound asleep — and she wouldn’t.

  On the odd occasion there was definitely no need to get out of bed and I could turn over and go back to sleep with a clear conscience that I had done all that was necessary.

  I received a call after midnight one night from Greg Mitchell, who had recently acquired a young German shorthaired pointer. Up until then he had been very much a cat person but when his wife walked out on him, she took her precious Burmese cats with her. As she didn’t like dogs, Greg very quickly got hold of one, partly I suspect to ensure neither the wife nor the cats returned. Greg, who had always had a fondness for a beer or two, tended to top up more regularly after they left. It was after one of his late-night sessions that he came home to find Neville, his dog, in some distress.

  ‘Pete,’ he slurred, ‘It’s Greg here. I’m really worried about Neville.’ There was no need to ask who Greg or Neville were. ‘He’s all hunched up and uncomfortable and it looks like his balls have slipped down and are strangling his cock’.

  ‘That does sound very uncomfortable, Greg. I’m not too sure I’ve ever experienced that. Tell me what you can see’.

  ‘Well his cock is all swollen up and red and his balls are not where they should be. They look like they are coming out. Bloody hell, it’s horrible.’

  By this stage I was getting the picture.

  ‘What sort of look has he got on his face? Does he look in distress?’ I asked him.

  ‘Ah, no, no, he looks quite happy actually.’

  After I had stopped chuckling away, I explained that Neville had either been dreaming of a bitch somewhere or was possibly very happy to see Greg. He had an erection and what Greg thought were displaced testes was actually the swollen bulbus glandis — important erectile tissue that allows a dog to get tied or knotted when mating.

  ‘Go to bed, Greg, and leave Neville alone. Let nature take its course.’

  On another occasion telling the owner to let nature take its course was possibly not good advice. I had been woken up at some ungodly hour on a Saturday night by a man who had become worried over the last few minutes because his cat, which was about to have kittens, had not made any progress since she had started to go into labour.

  ‘How long has she been trying to pass a kitten?’ I asked.

  ‘At least 10 minutes and she is purring frantically,’ he replied. ‘I’ve never heard her purr so loud. Something must be wrong.’ He sounded a little anxious.

  ‘And what has she passed so far?’

  ‘Nothing — there’s a little blob of whitish jelly stuff showing though’.

  ‘Just leave her alone and go to bed. Give it time. Sounds like everything is in order.’

  ‘But the book says she should have had
the first kitten by now.’

  ‘Don’t worry about the book. If she hasn’t had the first one in half an hour, ring me back. Don’t interfere. Let nature takes its course. Goodnight.’

  Twenty minutes later the phone rang again. The same man again, now sounding even more distressed.

  ‘She’s had the first one but she stopped straining and there are more in there because I can see them moving and none are coming out.’

  ‘OK — what’s the kitten doing?’

  ‘It’s trying to find a nipple but can’t find it.’

  ‘What’s mum doing?’

  ‘She’s just lying there purring but she’s not doing anything.’

  ‘She’s resting. She will be OK. Give her time.’

  ‘But the book says …’

  ‘Forget the bloody book. It might be 12 hours before she is finished. Sometimes they take a long time and it’s all quite normal. If she strains really hard and nothing appears and she looks as if she is getting distressed then ring me back. Have some faith, man. Have faith that nature will take its course and all will be well.’

  An hour later, about two minutes after I had finally got back to sleep, the phone rings again.

  ‘She’s had three now but she has been straining really hard and nothing has happened. You told me to ring back if nothing happened.’

  ‘How long has she been straining?’

  ‘At least five minutes. Oh — one minute. Oh, one has just popped out. Oh goodness me. Thank the Lord.’