Cock and Bull Stories

by Peter Anderson

  We settled on a professional fee, set up the programme, and away we went.

  On the big day, the first of two, we carefully anaesthetised the first hind, one of Ronnie A’s. After clipping and cleaning her abdomen, and scrubbing up fully, I opened her up with a small slit midline. I found the uterus, made a tiny incision, and passed the Foley catheter, a tube with an outer balloon, into the uterus. I inflated the balloon, then as PA passed me a sterile syringe full of the flushing liquid, I carefully catheterised the fallopian tubes. I squeezed the syringe, and fluid flowed through the fallopian tube and into the uterus. As the pressure came on, the fluid, hopefully having picked up the embryos floating in the uterus, would flow into the catheter and out the other end where PA had a collecting dish. Each hind has two flushes, one for each horn of the uterus, and each flush is a moment of great tension. We’re dealing with live tissue, easily ruptured and ruined forever, and we want to get these embryos for our client. With each flush we feel like Dan Carter taking the winning kick in the World Cup final.

  After we’ve flushed, PA takes the collection dish to a microscope at his bench and searches the liquid for the tiny embryos. As he finds them, he carefully sucks them up and deposits them into another smaller dish, then stores them in a large incubator, the size of a commercial refrigerator, behind him. This keeps them at body temperature until we implant them.

  You can cut the air with a knife as the two Ronnies, my nurse assistant, and I wait for PA to give his verdict. I stitch the hind’s belly up, give her a shot of antibiotic, and the men carry her out to the recovery room.

  ‘Two,’ PA announces. We have harvested just two embryos.

  That’s disappointing. We’d hoped for at least six or eight. Ronnie A isn’t disconsolate, however. ‘There’ll be more in the next ones.’

  He’s an optimist, the cup is always half full. We carry on with the next three hinds.

  ‘Eight.’ The next one, jubilation.

  ‘Nothing.’ Shit.

  ‘Six.’ The fourth one, complacent smile.

  From four hinds we have 16 embryos. It’s not brilliant, but it’s better than nothing.

  We spend the rest of the day implanting those into the eight recipient hinds. I use a laparoscope, which means we can implant the anaesthetised recipient deer without full surgery.

  At the end of the day, Ronnie A is still cheerful. His day hasn’t been overly successful, but not a flop. He has three more hinds to flush. Ronnie B has one hind to flush. We’ll do her tomorrow.

  The next day is crisp and clear. A light frost tinges the Wairau Plain, and the green bushy hills to the north are stark and clear against the clear autumn sky. We are at the deer shed surgery by 8am, ready to go.

  We flush the next hind. ‘Ten,’ calls PA. A good result and Ronnie A is full of enthusiasm. ‘Nought.’ The next one, Ronnie isn’t so happy.

  ‘Four.’ Ronnie A’s final hind.

  Thirty embryos from seven hinds. OK but still a little disappointing. It is Ronnie B’s turn.

  We flush his hind, a strapping red deer with ear tag Yellow 64.

  It’s a blinder.

  ‘Eighteen, bloody ripper,’ calls PA quietly from his microscope.

  We’re delighted, but our pleasure is nothing compared with Ronnie B’s. He’s in seventh heaven. His chest puffs out and he struts around the shed, especially when he comes close to Ronnie A.

  ‘You’d have thought he’d fathered the bloody things himself,’ I muttered to PA.

  I was feeling for Ronnie A, who had set the whole programme up, had put up the majority of the hinds and therefore carried the risk. He was looking pretty uncomfortable. A funny thing, competition between strong men.

  The strutting didn’t stop either.

  ‘Eighteen from one hind. I’ll tell you what,’ boomed Ronnie B, ‘bloody good hind that.’

  In the end it became a bit unbearable. I don’t remember whose idea it was but we hatched a plot.

  Peter A made up a fresh collection dish, put water in it, nothing else, and wrote with indelible pen in large letters ‘Yellow 64, 18 BIG EMBRYOS’. It contained none, but it looked as though it did — embryos are microscopic. He put the dish into the incubator behind where he sat. It was lunchtime; we would implant the whole 32 embryos, 14 of Ronnie A’s and 18 of Ronnie B’s that afternoon.

  As the two Ronnies waited, one with chest out, one trying to avoid his mate, I called to Ronnie B: ‘Would you like to have a look at these embryos?’

  ‘Would I what! Where are they?’ He began to strut towards PA, seated at his microscope.

  ‘Careful,’ I warned, ‘these things are delicate. You don’t want to bump PA. You could lose the lot.’ Only slightly chastened, he waited impatiently as I led him into the rough laboratory.

  ‘Pete, Ronnie B wants to look at his eighteen embryos.’ I said it carefully as if PA might not want to upset things. ‘OK,’ said PA. He carefully put the top on the dish of real embryos he was looking at, opened the door of the incubator behind him, and placed the dish on a rack inside. Then just as carefully, he brought out the dish he’d marked earlier.

  Ever so carefully he placed the bogus dish on the microscope stage. He took off the clear lid.

  ‘Need to get a clear look at these.’ An authoritative Ronnie B pushed forward.

  ‘Careful,’ said PA. ‘Don’t bump me.’ He peered down the microscope.

  ‘These are just the best embryos you’d see,’ he enthused. ‘Big buggers. Would you like a look?’

  Ronnie B nodded eagerly, straining at the leash. PA started to get off the high stool he sat on but as he moved, he appeared to have a clumsy accident. His hand brushed the dish on the microscope. It fell off the microscope stage, landing upside down on the wooden bench. The apparently precious fluid, supposedly full of embryos, spread all over the bench and began to dribble over the edge onto the floor.

  Stunned, Ronnie B could only croak: ‘Is that it?’

  Pete A looked up wide-eyed. He nodded. He couldn’t say anything.

  ‘Well, can’t you suck them up, fast, now?,’ yelled Ronnie.

  With one bare hand cupped under the bench, Pete A used the other one to sweep some of the spilt fluid into the cupped one, seemingly trying to catch the microscopic organisms with his bare hands.

  It was too much. He caught my eye and we both exploded into gut-wrenching laughter.

  ‘It’s OK, Ronnie,’ said PA. ‘We’re only having you on. The real ones are still in there.’ He pointed to the incubator.

  ‘You bastards,’ Ronnie B stormed out. Ronnie A, in on the story, felt a lot better, and eventually Ronnie B could laugh about it too. But he did take six months to pay the bill.

  I think all but one of the recipient hinds held at least one embryo and fawned successfully that spring. But I don’t think Ronnie B ever did ET again. There’s only so much a man can take.

  THE OTHER SIDE — PJ

  Homosexuality is not a word that sits comfortably with many people. It tends to be pronounced very carefully by newsreaders and social workers, with very clear enunciation and a look in the eye that proclaims, ‘There, I’ve said it.’

  In the animal world, homosexuality happens on a regular basis and I’m sure it passes without comment from the rest of the animals. In humans it tends to be more covert, and although accepted and tolerated by a majority of people now, our Victorian-age ethics still apply to some extent and there is still a degree of antipathy towards the idea.

  I am not homosexual, and neither is my business partner of nearly 30 years, Peter Anderson. But at least one person may not be so sure.

  In my early days at the Graham Veterinary Club, the general populace was emerging from the frugality of post World War II, but only just. People were not, for example, prepared to spend much money on their pets. Now, all is different. A broken leg will be mended for $1000 or even $3000 and pet owners will, more often than not, be prepared, if not happy, to pay for their loved pets. But not then. In 1979, $11 f
or a consultation and prescription was a lot of money to spend on your cat. As a consequence, many pet owners would ring or turn up at the front counter seeking free advice, or in many cases, prescription drugs to take home and treat their animals. ‘A consultation? Eleven dollars? No way. I know what’s wrong, just give me the drugs,’ was an attitude if not prevalent, then certainly common.

  This could create a problem for young vets. Hadn’t we been taught the sanctity of prescription drugs, and the importance of a thorough clinical examination before prescribing? Well yes, but the older vets and merchandise manager had been dishing out drugs for years, and as a newcomer you had to be very brave to stick your head up too far to oppose this policy.

  Yet I tried, and I always disliked the idea of dishing out a bottle of Albipen tablets to a cat breeder who lived 50 kilometres away and therefore needed them ‘on hand’, or six bottles of Penstrep injectable to a deer farmer who may have needed it from time to time. So I got into a few discussions at the counter (and so did all the other vets) with some clients who I still think were pretty demanding. There were one or two who kept coming back and back, always for free advice, sometimes even after getting the drugs.

  It got so bad that we kept a list of the worst offenders and whenever one of these unfortunates would turn up, there would be a scramble among any vets in the office to be the first to disappear out the back to find something which needed doing urgently. If you were last out then you were stuck with the difficult client.

  Some of these people knew a captive audience when they saw one and would just not let go. And gradually, I couldn’t say who started it, the other vets, those who had escaped, began the practice of doing anything to distract the victim vet and make him laugh. All sorts of tricks were used and it goes beyond the delicacy of this tome to describe most of them, but those I can mention included funny faces, the occasional show of underwear, and, after a time, a sly pinch on the backside as one walked past the vet at the counter.

  If you were the victim, some of these tricks were very hard to resist and I’m sure I offended a few clients with sudden, odd and inappropriate squeals and snorts of laughter as they described their pet’s ailments to me. But I tried very hard not to succumb to the offenders, my associates.

  One morning, Pete Anderson got caught. My memory fails to place the client across the counter, but she was one of the real heavies. She had PA in her grasp and was going to squeeze every last ounce of information from him, for free. Now, Pete is a very kind and tolerant man, much more so than I, yet even he was starting to shift uncomfortably on his feet, glance at the clock on the wall, and say he had something to do. No way. She wasn’t finished yet.

  I couldn’t resist it. I moved past Pete’s back to the filing cabinet, and gave his bum a good squeeze as I went. I found the file I didn’t want or need, and as I passed behind him again, gave him another, this one more prolonged, almost, dare I say it, a caress. And just at that moment I became aware that the door at the back of the office had opened while I was going past Pete the first time and hadn’t been closed.

  With my hand on PA’s arse, I looked behind me to the open door. Standing in the doorway, wide-eyed, stunned, was Mrs Gaylene Twyford from Renwick, long a cat breeder. She’d watched me on both passes as she came through the storeroom into the back of the office.

  For some reason Gaylene never really wanted to see me again when she brought her cats in. The old dear is dead now but I’m sure she went to her grave convinced that those two Peters at the Vet Club were a couple of homos.

  A STINT IN KOSOVO — PA

  In July 2001, not long after the conflict in Yugoslavia, I took on a job with the FAO, the Food and Agriculture section of the United Nations, in Kosovo. It came about because Ron Jackson, a New Zealand vet and epidemiologist who travelled the world visiting trouble spots was looking for someone who might be interested in working there.

  At the time of my arrival, a 28,000-strong NATO-led security force involving 35 nations patrolled Kosovo. NATO had become involved after the Kosovo Liberation Army — Albanian revolutionaries — had risen up against Slobodan Milosevic and his Serbian regime, who had been in power since the 1980s. Albanians dominated the population but were treated like second-class citizens. The Serbs retaliated and the conflict became bloody so NATO took control. Those Serbs remaining in Kosovo were subjected to revenge attacks and most lived in ‘enclaves’. When visiting them, we had to go via guard posts.

  Disintegration of the Serbian leadership had left a policy void relating to animal health services. No one knew what to do, no one knew what diseases were important and there were no defined responsibilities for the private and public sectors. Ron was pretty well in charge of defining the situation and determining what was required. One thing he felt was needed was someone to get local vets thinking about herd and flock health programmes. So I responded to his request for a vet with suitable experience in this line of work to help.

  Agriculture is important for Kosovo, which has a population of two million and is one of the poorer regions in Europe. Outside the main towns, most of these people live in villages comprising perhaps 80 houses with 30–40 of the houses owning a cow or two. During the crisis the cows were either stolen or shot and eaten by the Serbs, so the returning Albanians had no cows — vitally important to them for milk, yogurt and cheese, which make up a significant part of their diet. To overcome this crisis the United Nations gathered up 2500 in-calf Simmental and Swiss Brown heifers, mainly from Austria and Germany, and distributed these to farmers in December 2000 — usually one cow per family. One of the conditions of receiving a cow was that any heifer calf born had to be given back for redistribution and the cow had to be impregnated for the next redistribution. But there were lots of problems with getting these cows back in calf.

  Historically the main method of impregnation was by artificial insemination and as a result there were not many bulls around. Unfortunately the critical timing for insemination to take place was invariably missed. Oft en telephones did not work, the vet might not have access to a car, or the owner missed seeing that the cow was on heat. The big imported heifers, housed for 90 per cent of the day, did not show the typical oestrus behaviour of the small indigenous cow the farmers were used to. To top it off many of the cow owners could not, forgive the pun, give a ‘damn’. Most had other jobs and all were trying to rebuild their lives and their houses. Getting the cow back in calf was low on the priority list. One day while I was there the FAO boss rang from Rome to see how things were going. I don’t think he was impressed when I told him we didn’t want any more semen from Europe. All we wanted was lots of randy little bulls — Jersey bulls from New Zealand would be ideal.

  I was based in Pristina and living at the Park Hotel. It certainly wasn’t the Park Royal. In fact it used to be a brothel in the days when the Serbs were in control but unfortunately there was no sign of the previous occupant of my room. The walls were a shocking purple, the water — when it ran — was cold, power was only sometimes on, and sleep was difficult. Very early every morning I would be rudely awoken by calls to prayer from a tone-deaf muezzin shouting through a megaphone on top of a minaret outside my window.

  I would walk to the FAO office each morning and then head out with the driver and an Albanian vet, who acted as interpreter, to ‘vet stations’ around the country. Here we would oft en spend a good part of the day discussing issues with vets and vet technicians, perhaps visit a few crook animals on farms, and generally try to change the world. It was not an easy mission. Firstly there was a language barrier and difficulties with interpreters. I found talking using an interpreter very tiring and sometimes quite a challenge, not helped by the fact there were always people coming and going during these meetings. Farmers would oft en charge in and jabber away with the vet, who then leaped up and disappeared for 10 minutes. Sometimes the vet also disappeared to go and do a bit of praying. When he eventually returned, you started up again. Then someone would bring in coffee. Thi
s stuff

  was strong as hell, thick and sweet and not too bad. Once you had had a couple of these you didn’t need to eat much for the rest of the day. It was also probably one of the reasons that I didn’t sleep well the whole time I was there.

  Semi-wild dogs, many apparently with rabies, were common in the city. After dark, these dogs would appear and congregate around the overflowing rubbish skips parked on every second corner, fighting for the best scraps off and on throughout the night. Then as dawn approached they went and holed up somewhere and the crows took over. They made quite a din, as did the mosquitoes, which seemed to enjoy a bit of Kiwi blood. Then the tuneless singing from the minaret eventually forced me to give up all hope of sleep. I could understand why there was tension in the country.

  The first few weeks in Kosovo were spent helping local vets learn a few basics, such as pregnancy testing cows and getting them to think about preventative medicine. They were very good at attending to sick animals or calving cows but the bulk of their work revolved around treating ‘downer cows’ or those with mastitis, and removing retained foetal membranes. Many of the health problems in cows suggested a selenium deficiency, but it was not possible to prove this while I was there because there were no animal health laboratories. Later on some bloods that Ron Jackson had collected for other tests were analysed in Britain and this confirmed very low seleniums. Something about the communist background meant people never asked why. If there was a problem such as a retained placenta, they knew how to remove it but no one had ever thought to ask why they were getting so many. Their philosophy was, ‘This is what it is; this is what you do. End of story.’

  The written word was also gospel. One day I visited a relatively modern clinic where a very prominent and respected vet was treating an old horse with what appeared to be chronic parasitism. He was stomach tubing it, which involves gently feeding a plastic hose through the nasal passages and down the oesophagus to the stomach, and then pouring the medicine down the tube. In this case he was using an early type anthelmintic, or wormer. When I suggested he might like to try a newer more effective product, Ivomectin, because we had found it very successful in such cases, he refused to even contemplate it. He kept telling me that it was only for cattle. I kept telling him that it also works well in horses. He got more and more angry and then stomped off and brought out a packet of Ivomec which admittedly did say ‘for cattle only’. In his mind if it wasn’t written down that it was for horses, then it wasn’t for horses. End of story. And no one, least of all a vet from New Zealand, wherever that was, was going to tell him otherwise.