The Gift of Pets: Stories Only a Vet Could Tell

by Bruce R. Coston

  As if on cue, the attendants began scrubbing the horse’s scrotum and testicles for the surgery. Clearly, they had assisted Dr. Evers with this procedure many times. Dr. Evers opened the packs he had laid on the towel, donned a pair of sterile surgical gloves, and instructed me to do the same. He pulled a scalpel handle out of the pack and attached to it a sharp new surgical blade. Without hesitation, he knelt beside the downed horse and grasped one of the baseball-size organs in his hand. With a quick flick of his wrist, he sliced through the skin and in short order was holding the testicle, which was still tethered to the horse by a thick cord of tissue. He turned to me.

  “Can you hand me the emasculator? But be sure to touch nothing but the handles.”

  It sounded to me like an instrument of torture, which I guess it was. I had no idea what an emasculator was or what one might look like. I turned to the open packs lying on the towel, looking for something with handles. Everything in the pack seemed to have them, so I reached for a large tool that looked like a pair of pliers and handed it to him, being careful to touch only the finger holes.

  “No, that’s a hemostat. I need the emasculator.”

  Oh, I thought. He must need something to cut with. I turned back to the open pack and reached for a huge fourteen-inch-long pair of curved scissors. These I extended to him, again being careful to touch only the finger holes.

  “No, those are the Metzenbaums. Give me the emasculator. Don’t you know what an emasculator is?” Dr. Evers seemed perturbed.

  Wasn’t it obvious that I didn’t know what an emasculator was? I thought. I looked down at him with confusion on my face. He shook his head and nodded to one of the grooms, who pointed to a huge two-handled hunk of shining stainless steel that looked to me like a pair of glorified vise grips. This mean, two-fisted piece of surgical chicanery was so heavy, it almost took two hands to give it to Dr. Evers.

  He took it and placed its blades around the inch-thick band of blood vessels and tissues from which hung the testicle. Checking its placement carefully, he then closed its jaws. The testicle dropped to the ground at his feet and the sleeping horse twitched his front legs involuntarily, but still Dr. Evers held the instrument with both hands, keeping it tightly clamped around the bloody stalk. He held it that way for about five minutes before tentatively loosening his grip.

  He stood and turned to me with great fanfare, holding up the instrument, which now had blood dripping from its teeth like a predator, and kicked the testicle toward me with the toe of his boot. “Now that is an emasculator!” he said triumphantly. Who was I to argue? The sleeping horse was not the only one who had just been emasculated.

  The opposite testicle was dispatched just as quickly and soon we were back in the truck and pulling away from the immaculate farm.

  “Do they use a different kind of emasculator at the school nowadays? You didn’t seem to recognize this brand.”

  It was true that the strict boarding school I attended was known for ironfisted enforcement of the rules, but I searched my memory for anything used at my high school that might approximate the surgical detonator I had just seen. “I don’t think they even have one at my school,” I replied. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dr. Evers cast a questioning look across the seat at me. I avoided his gaze.

  “One last call before lunch,” said my mentor after an awkward pause. “This is just a little laceration on the fetlock of a horse. Shouldn’t take long at all. This horseman is on the other end of the spectrum from the one at the place we just left. He’s a real down-to-earth guy. I think you’ll like him.”

  After a few turns, we pulled into the long driveway of a farm with warped, unpainted boards on the fence. The doors hung askew from their hinges and the tops of the stalls had been worn away by a long history of habitual cribbers. Cribbing is a vice that sometimes develops in bored horses that are stalled for long periods of time. They grab the boards at the top of the stall with their teeth and pull, tugging great gasps of air into their stomachs as they do so. Over time, this causes telltale damage to the wood. The taste of creosote will sometimes break this habit, so I was not surprised to see the wood at the tops of the stalls slathered with the strong-smelling tarry substance.

  A middle-aged man wearing jeans and steel-toed cowboy boots came out of the barn and welcomed us with a broad smile. With a calloused hand, he swiped a stray strand of dusty hair back over the top of his rapidly balding head.

  “Hello, Doug. Mighty fine day we got going, isn’t it?” Dr. Evers greeted him warmly.

  “Good to see you again, Dr. Evers. Who is this you got with you?”

  “This is Bruce. He’s going to be an equine practitioner soon and wanted to ride along with us for a day.”

  “You all looking to hire another doctor for your practice, then? Already got a passel of them, don’t you?”

  Dr. Evers cast a furtive glance my way before answering. “No, we aren’t planning on hiring Bruce here. Just hosting him for a day of observation.”

  “Well, it’s good to meet you anyway, Bruce,” Doug said. “Can’t learn from any better horse doctor than Dr. Evers, that’s for doggone sure. The horse I called you for is back here in the barn. He’s got a right nasty little cut, too. Wouldn’t have called you if I thought I could handle it myself.”

  We followed Doug to a stall at the far end of the barn that housed a small palomino gelding who held his right rear foot gingerly up off the ground. From a circumferential wound on his leg just below his fetlock joint, there oozed a reddish liquid, which attracted a host of flies. A pinkish mass of raw tissue bubbled out of the wound. Dr. Evers took one look at it and turned to me.

  “What do you call that, Bruce?”

  Finally, an answer I knew. I had spent hours in my younger years poring over anatomical diagrams of horses with arrows pointing to all the salient areas with the proper anatomical terms labeled out to the side. I had this one nailed.

  “That’s the fetlock joint, sir,” I responded proudly.

  “No, not the joint, son. What do you call that gangly red tissue below the fetlock?”

  I was crestfallen. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been asked a question I could answer. I offered the only answer I could come up with but held no illusions that it was right.

  “A scar?” I offered haltingly. I heard Doug choke back a laugh, but I didn’t dare look in his direction.

  “No, Bruce. Amazingly, the medical term for that tissue is not a scar.” At this, Doug could contain himself no longer and he began to laugh right out loud. To my horror, Dr. Evers joined him.

  “Bruce,” offered Doug when his laughter died down, “that’s called proud flesh.”

  “Proud flesh is the medical term for that?” I asked incredulously.

  “Well, the technical name is actually exuberant granulation tissue,” Dr. Evers said. “But the common name is proud flesh. For reasons we don’t entirely understand, horses produce way more scar tissue than is necessary to heal a wound. And it can be very difficult to get rid of. I’m not sure why the old-timers called it proud flesh, but the name has stuck. You’ll get used to it.”

  Dr. Evers went to work doing some type of surgical debulking of the excessive tissue; but honestly, my heart wasn’t much into it. I was distracted by a two-week-old foal in the adjacent pasture that was kicking up his heels. A sudden question from Dr. Evers brought me back to the task at hand.

  “So, Bruce, after I finish cleaning this wound up, what important shot should I give this horse to make sure it doesn’t get sick?”

  “I guess an antibiotic injection?”

  “Don’t guess, man—know!” He fairly shouted the words at me. “Soon your clients will be paying you for your training and knowledge. They deserve better than your best guess. Yes, I will give him an antibiotic injection, but what preventive shot does a wound like this need?”

  Though I was beyond mortified at this heated chastisement, I had no idea what Dr. Evers was referring to. I looked at him blankly
but did not speak.

  “My goodness, Bruce, think, for heaven’s sake. It’s something you need to get every ten years or so.”

  “Maybe a tetanus shot?” It was a blind stab in the dark.

  “Yes, a tetanus shot! Surely you know how susceptible horses are to tetanus. Whenever they receive a penetrating injury like this, they have to have a tetanus booster. Bank on it.”

  “I’ll remember it, sir” I said quietly. When Dr. Evers looked at me with disbelief on his face, I repeated my promise, this time defensively. “I will.”

  And I have remembered it ever since. If tomorrow, by some strange twist of fate, I was called out to treat proud flesh on a horse’s leg, I would have not the slightest idea what the currently accepted treatment for it is. But I would, without hesitation, give the horse a tetanus shot.

  I was quiet when we got back in the truck. It was only lunchtime, but already the day seemed very long—very long indeed. From the moment I had stepped foot in Dr. Evers’s practice I had been grilled and interrogated for answers I did not know. Repeatedly, I had exposed my ignorance to the men whom I so wanted to impress. Nothing had gone right. I was tired and embarrassed and tired of being embarrassed. So I just sat silently in the passenger’s seat, sulking. If Dr. Evers sensed my frustration, he didn’t let on. And he couldn’t leave well enough alone.

  “Honestly, Bruce,” he began after a prolonged silence. “I have some real concerns about your readiness for practice.”

  “I know I’ve got a lot to learn, but I’ve still got plenty of time before vet school’s over.”

  “But graduation is only a few months away, right?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m really looking forward to graduation.”

  “Have you gotten good grades in school?”

  “Yes, sir, I have,” I responded defensively. “I expect to end this semester having gotten straight A’s through my whole four years.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Dr. Evers seemed unimpressed by my grades.

  “No, sir, I’m not. I’ve worked really hard for my grades.” He did not respond to this for a moment, and I hoped the grilling was over. It was not.

  “Do you have plans yet—after graduation, I mean?”

  “Yes, sir,” I responded. “I’ll be working at camp this summer again. Then I’m headed to Tennessee for college.”

  Dr. Evers didn’t really seem to be paying much attention to me, but at this comment I saw his face jerk toward me and he fixed me with a questioning look, which made me feel all the worse.

  “Wait, what did you say?”

  “I said I am planning to attend college in Tennessee. It’s the college that both of my brothers attended. I’m really looking forward to it.”

  To my utter surprise, Dr. Evers broke into a peel of laughter that went on so long, I began to get angry at him. He had belittled me, bemused me, and berated me all morning long. My intelligence had been questioned, my knowledge demeaned, my future derided. Why, even the receptionist at the clinic had looked at me askew. I was frankly sick of it! And here was this man, whom I admired beyond words, laughing at me yet again. I was about in tears when he turned to me.

  “Bruce, we owe you one great big apology, all of us!” And he went into another prolonged round of laughter. When he had gotten himself under control, he wiped the streaming tears from his eyes and looked at me with more warmth and compassion than I had felt all day.

  “When you said you were a senior this morning at rounds, we all thought you were a senior in veterinary school. We had no clue that you were about to graduate from high school. Wow, with that piece of vital information, I have to say that you have handled yourself amazingly well. No wonder you didn’t know the answers to even the simplest of questions. O my stars, I can’t wait to tell everyone at the office. You know, the only one who was even close was the receptionist. She said you looked awfully young.”

  Immediately, I felt a heavy weight roll from my shoulders. Together, we rehashed the morning’s events through the eyes of each other’s incorrect assumptions. Things got funnier and funnier, till we were both laughing helplessly. Needless to say, the afternoon was considerably more enjoyable than the morning had been.

  As I think back on my day with the horse doctors, I still chuckle at the comedy of errors that played out at my expense. At this point in my career, I may be surprised that I do not practice equine medicine. But I doubt that Dr. Evers and his colleagues at the Maple Plain Equine Services practice are surprised one little bit.

  Lisa

  I first met Lisa Spalding when she responded to our ad for a kennel attendant. There was nothing extraordinary about her. She had nondescript brown hair pulled into a tight ponytail. Her face was long in both dimension and demeanor, with puffy, sad eyes and buckteeth. She was lean, but not because she was in especially good physical condition. Her movements were fluid in a rather careless, almost exasperated way. The fingernails of her thumb and index finger, I noticed as I shook her hand, were nicotine-stained. I judged her to be in her late twenties, though her hardened face hinted at many more years. There was about her a veneer of self-protective nonchalance, a carefully applied indifference, as if she didn’t really care whether or not she got the job. But around the edges, the veneer was a little loose, and below it I sensed an eagerness that pressed unwillingly to the surface. True, the job for which she was applying was not very exciting: walking dogs, cleaning cages, refreshing litter boxes, a little sweeping and mopping. But I detected a spark of enthusiasm behind her mask of studied detachment. Lisa really wanted this job.

  It is just this desire that I seek in applicants for openings at my hospital still—the yearning that pivots around the essence of what it is that makes a good employee in a veterinary hospital. Let’s face it, it is not the fantastic pay scale that attracts people to the field. Nor is it the glamour. There’s very little of that. It certainly is not the pristine work environment. Rather, it is the intangible but far more fulfilling currency of earning the trust and confidence of unruly, hurting, and confused patients and bringing them relief from their pain and discomfort. It is the compensation of seeing the tense face of a worried owner melt into joy when reunited with her healthy, tail-wagging dog or purring kitty. It is the knowledge that without your participation, this reunion would not have occurred. The kitty would not be purring and head-butting its owner; the wagging tail would be still.

  Having had previous experience working in a veterinary hospital in northern Virginia, Lisa had already cashed those emotional checks. And I could tell she wanted this job. She was also willing to start out doing the most menial of tasks associated with animal care. Best of all, she was willing to take the hourly wage I was able to pay her. Still, it was not without some reservations that I hired Lisa. She seemed unsettled somehow, with a dissatisfied and pessimistic approach to life. This dour outlook concerned me as I envisioned her dealing with my clients and staff. What influence would her attitude have on the interplay of the group? I well knew the negative impact one cynical, sour person could have. Lisa also seemed insecure in her mannerisms and interactions. I had worked with people in the past whose lack of self-esteem had made it difficult for them to assimilate into the mechanisms of a group. Would Lisa be able to make herself part of this team? It was a risk, but one I judged worth taking.

  For the first two or three weeks, Lisa came to work and performed her duties with efficiency, but she entertained very little interaction with us. She was quiet, unsure, and tentative when we attempted to draw her out. But it was clear from the start that she had a unique ability to connect with the animals. They adored her. Even the timid, fear-biting ones responded to her quiet influence—those who hovered near the back of the kennel with heads low and tails tucked. Never afraid of even the most aggressive patients, Lisa rapidly became the go-to person for handling the few truly difficult patients that came in. As time went on, her icy persona began to thaw and we began to learn a little about her background.

 
She had a veritable menagerie of animals at her house, including two Border collies, which were her constant companions. Tillie, the alpha dog of her crew, had a very white face with piebald, soulful, and intelligent eyes. A few large patches of black, like island continents, floated on a sea of white fur. Unlike that of most dogs, Tillie’s tail, black and full, was not a harbinger of her emotions. She kept it still and straight behind her, a rudder in the serious waters she navigated.

  Life for Border collies is not what it is for Labradors, who are given to cavorting constantly in a state of never-ending celebration. Border collies are born and bred for work, with work in mind at all times. If they are not given a job of significance, they will often create one for themselves, which they will perform with unswerving devotion and dedicated attention. Such is the life of the typical Border collie.

  But Tillie was not a typical Border collie. She was a Border collie on steroids, with a work ethic that made Mother Teresa seem like a slacker. And her job was to follow Lisa’s every command. Her intense eyes never left Lisa’s face, searching earnestly for what Lisa might want from her, often sensing even before Lisa spoke that she might want her to sit or come or lie down. Even a nod or a change of Lisa’s facial expression spoke volumes to Tillie, who would respond immediately to the most subtle of cues.

  Grizzly was Tillie’s pup. And though he was two or three years old when I first met him, he remained an irresponsible, insolent adolescent compared to her. Grizzly was mostly dark, with hints of blue merle around his neck and in the blue iris of his left eye. You could look at Grizzly and know from his expressions and mannerisms that he had probably been up to trouble recently, but, like a scheming schoolboy, he was hard to pin down. One minute he would be haughty and glinty-eyed with mischief. The next, he would be ingratiating and compliant, desperately seeking your approval. Grizzly soon associated me with needles and unwelcome probing of some orifice or other, and he quickly developed the odd and humorous habit of squatting submissively and wetting the floor whenever I was around. Just the sound of me calling his name invariably evoked a squat, eyes suspicious and frightened, the splatter of urine hitting the floor, and a little yellow puddle pooling around his feet.