by Gillian Hick
‘Excuse me,’ he began, out of breath, ‘could I possibly have a minute of your time, please?’
Here we go again, I thought to myself wearily, knowing that now I wouldn’t have a chance to trace the dog until that evening.
‘My dog has gone missing, you see,’ he told me as I nodded my consent with what I hoped was a pleasant smile.
My heart missed a beat, and I heard myself ask casually, ‘What type of dog is he?’
‘Oh the most beautiful dog, you just couldn’t miss him. He’s a big long-haired German Shepherd.’
‘Right, well, if you’d just like to step inside and take a seat, I’ll be with you in a moment,’ I said as calmly as I could, not wanting to raise the man’s hopes. I quickly let myself out the back door to the kennel area.
‘Come on, big fella,’ I called to the dog, who was looking a little bit agitated by the confinement.
I led him out to the waiting area and as soon as his head came around the door the priest leapt up ecstatically. ‘Oh, thank God you’ve found him. Prince, where have you been?’ he cried as he fell to his knees and wrapped himself around the giant shaggy neck. Prince, as I now knew him, whimpered and cried in answer, obviously as delighted as his master by the reunion.
When the pair had sufficiently composed themselves, I filled in Fr Jim Hanley on the story.
‘Well, the little …!’ He trailed off without finishing what I assume would have been a most unpriestly sentence.
As I described the lads, he nodded wearily. ‘I know them, all right. Jock, Dermo and JP. They’ve been hassling me for months. Prince is the only reason they haven’t been able to do much damage but, God bless him, he’s such a trusting soul he’d go with anyone. When I think of what could have happened if you hadn’t noticed …’ and he shuddered at the thought.
‘They’re not bad lads, really,’ he continued. ‘Usual story – the parents aren’t up to much and they’ve just run wild, but by God I wouldn’t have let them away with this,’ he said fiercely, hugging the delighted Prince as his eyes filled with tears.
And I felt for this man; this man who had obviously sacrificed his life for his beliefs in an effort to do good for people who clearly didn’t want it.
‘How can I ever thank you?’ he said, gripping my hand. ‘If there is ever a thing in the world I can do for you, won’t you please let me know?’ he beseeched me.
‘Ah Father, think nothing of it,’ I assured him, only too delighted to have reunited the dog with his rightful owner. ‘Sure, maybe you could give me a few indulgences,’ I laughed.
‘I’ll give you a life’s supply of them, for sure,’ he answered as the happy pair left the surgery.
CHAPTER NINE
TWIN LAMBS
It wasn’t the first time I had been up to McFadden’s and the call this afternoon suited me just perfectly. It had been a busy morning, testing cattle in an inadequate yard with a rare type of unsociable farmer and I was in need of a bit of genuine hospitality and goodwill to restore my faith in the clients.
Even driving along the winding road up through the hills did much to cheer my spirit. Tom and Mary Mc Fadden were born into farming and despite the ongoing modernisation all around them, the yard itself had changed little since they had first taken it over. Although they now bought in hay from local contractors, the only tractor that ever ripped across the small but well-maintained fields would be one of a neighbour. George, the donkey, was solely responsible for manure removal and spreading, for loading hay and drawing grain, and the hundred and one other tasks that were always to be done around the admittedly small and uneconomic farm.
When I first met the couple, I was enchanted by Tom, with his well-weathered face and twinkling eyes, and by Mary, with her inherent strength that came from a life of physical toil. Nonetheless, I was concerned about introducing myself into a farm where time had stood still. I wondered how they would accept the modern medicines and methods that had become routine in the life of a vet. But my worry was needless. On my first visit, I had been called out to dehorn cattle, a task which, despite my usual misgivings, went relatively well. As I pulled out the embryotomy wire to saw off the immature horns, Mary, especially, was fascinated.
‘Well, I never,’ she declared, ‘it’s just like the old-fashioned cheese cutter my mother used to use.’
The description stuck and every time I appeared, I would hear the familiar cry of ‘Tom, come on out. It’s the vet with the cheese cutter!’ followed by much mirth and merriment all around.
Despite their acceptance of modernisation, Tom and Mary had chosen not to invest in new ways, knowing that their meagre small-holding would not support much expensive investment. However, after my first few visits, I came to admire the rude good health of their collection of suckler cows, horned sheep, the single sow and the bewildering array of fowl that always seemed to be underfoot. The lack of pressure of the modern yard allowed them the luxury of attention to detail and the priceless tender loving care which seemed to have been lost in bigger more ‘efficient’ holdings.
My patient today was a large, horned ewe, known to the department as IE 42-509121 610, which I noted down for the clinical records, but, to Tom and Mary, she was known quite simply as Edel (‘She was the fifth lamb out of Patricia – always just a single ewe lamb she had,’ confided Mary, making me wonder yet again about the convoluted traceability schemes dreamed up by those in the know).
Edel, like her mother before her, I was told, had carried on the tradition of always having a single ewe lamb. This was her first time to require veterinary attention and as I inserted a carefully lubricated hand into her vagina, I realised why. Although she was a big ewe for her breed, the pair of cloven hooves that lay, side by side in the vaginal passage, seemed more suited to a large, roomy Texel. I was just about able to get my hand far back enough to feel the tip of the nose, all perfectly aligned and in normal presentation, but I knew without a doubt that there was no way this lamb would be delivered in the normal fashion. Tom and Mary waited anxiously as I squeezed hard between the digits of the hoof to ascertain if the lamb was still alive. Eventually, I felt the reflex jerk, as the leg pulled back assuring me that, at least for the moment, all was well with the lamb.
A caesarean is a relatively expensive option, especially on a small hill farm, but I had a good feeling, even before I discussed the options, that Edel’s guardians would want to give it a go.
In a few minutes, the operation table was prepared and Edel lay, carefully restrained by Tom’s huge and capable hands, on a bed of golden straw. Having prepared the surgical site, I injected local anaesthetic into the skin and underlying muscle, where I would make my incision. We chatted for a few minutes as I continued to scrub the site while waiting for the area to be numbed. Once I was happy that Edel had no feeling, I incised the taut skin, stained brown from the disinfectant with which I had carefully scrubbed her flank. The combined smells of the surgical spirit and the clear, fresh air around us made the place smell as clean as any sterile theatre. Once through the muscle layers, it wasn’t difficult to locate the glistening uterus as it seemed to take up the entire abdomen. Within minutes, I had located the joint of the hind leg of the lamb, but I had to extend my usual incision within the uterus to allow for the enormous, well-filled rump of the lamb to pull through. Apart from being covered in placental fluid, with the give-away floppy ears still clinging to the head, the lamb was so big he could have been mistaken for a two-month-old. By the time I had finished stitching the rapidly contracting uterus, he was up on his feet and butting hard at his mother who encouraged him with a deep-throated voice, accepting all.
‘Well, that’s a first for the family,’ said Tom, gently tossing the heavyweight upside-down. ‘That’s the first ram lamb in that line for two generations.’
‘But still only the single as always,’ added Mary.
Reluctantly declining the offer of a cup of tea, I was soon scrubbed and packed. As I drove away, I was delighted to see mo
ther and lamb settling down for a good feed, although Gulliver (promptly named after the giant in Gulliver’s Travels) almost had to stoop to reach his mother’s udder.
Although prior to Gulliver’s dramatic entrance I hadn’t visited the Mc Fadden’s in many months, as usual, bad luck comes in threes. It was only two weeks before I was to return, this time to a collapsed suckler. The long, winding road held no charm for me today as, in the race against time, it seemed to get longer with each twist and bend. The history of the cow worried me. ‘She’s a scrawny little one,’ Tom had told me over the phone. ‘She had her calf there a while back and hasn’t picked up too well since. I thought she was a bit stiff in herself yesterday, but she seemed agitated when I tried to have a look at her. I found her down this morning, over beyond the gorse bushes. I don’t know if I’ll manage it, but if ye like I can go up with the dog and try and get her up and into the shed for you,’ he added eagerly.
‘Thanks, Tom, but no. Not this time,’ I assured him. ‘Leave her where she is until I get there.’
As we made our way slowly up the hill against the biting cold wind, I could see where she lay, her limbs paddling, with the sod worn off under her. A quick listen to the booming, rapid heartbeat confirmed my suspicions of grass tetany – a metabolic condition where the magnesium levels in the body drop, resulting in the collapse and neurological signs that lay before me. The problem with treating an animal in this condition was that any stress or excitement could trigger a seizure and instant death.
The first thing to do was to sedate her, so I drew up a small volume of sedative and slipping the needle into the vein, I depressed the plunger. Gradually, the laboured breathing of the cow became more relaxed and even.
Now I felt a little more confident and fitted the bottle of magnesium to the flutter valve and inserted the wide-bore needle under the skin. I flicked at the value and watched as the air bubbled up into the familiar brown bottle.
With the stethoscope in my ears, I carefully auscultated the heart, waiting for the familiar pattern to return. By the time the bottle had drained in and I was ready to add a bottle of calcium, this time directly into the vein, the tips of my finger had become numb and I fumbled to find the vein in the thickened, hairy groove. The cow moaned slightly and I stood up holding the bottle as high as the flutter valve would allow, speeding up the flow. As I was bending down again to recheck the heart, from behind the bush, I could see two lambs capering around the hill seemingly oblivious to the near Arctic conditions. A distinctive black patch over the flank assured me that the larger of the two was Gulliver, but it was hard to believe that he was only two weeks old.
‘He’s as fine a lamb as you’d ever see, isn’t he, Tom?’ I said, turning to face my companion who was wiping at the stream of tears that were whipped from his eyes by the wind, forming a thin trickle down his face.
‘There’s no doubt about that,’ he replied. ‘But what do ye think of the one beside him?’
In contrast to Gulliver, his playmate was not much to look at. The tiny lamb looked no more than a few days old and was poorly built. I was surprised at Tom drawing my attention to her, but didn’t want to offend him, knowing how attached he and Mary were to their stock.
‘A bit of sunshine on her back and she’ll come on nicely,’ I replied, carefully, and wondered why my response caused Tom to break out in wheezy laugh as the stream of tears down his face thickened.
Before long I was happy that the cow was on the mend and we padded her up well with thickets of gorse to prop her into sternal position to allow her to get up more easily when the sedative had worn off.
Making our way back down the hill, Tom kept erupting into half-coughing, half-laughing fits and nodding his head wisely. I began to wonder if old age and harsh conditions were beginning to take their toll.
Mary had obviously spotted us making our way down the steep hill and was waiting at the back door to greet us.
‘How’s Bella?’ she called out while we were still quite a distance away. A thumbs-up sign from me brought a smile of relief and she hurried back into the kitchen again. By the time I had packed my gear away in the car and come into the kitchen for a wash, the table was set with a pot of tea and hot scones.
‘And I won’t take no for an answer this time,’ she told me firmly. Despite her dainty stature, I didn’t dare argue.
Although the couple seemed in good form, in fact almost giddy at times, I felt that something strange was going on.
By the second scone, Mary burst out, obviously no longer able to contain herself, ‘Well, what did you make of the twins up there?’
‘The twins?’ I enquired, puzzled, wondering which ones they was talking about.
‘Gulliver and Lilly,’ she said. ‘I saw you looking at them up there.’
‘Well, I was just saying to Tom what a fine lamb Gulliver is, but who does Lilly belong to?’
‘Lilly is Gulliver’s little sister,’ cried Tom, triumphantly.
I stared at them both blankly, wondering what had come over them. Although it was not uncommon for a lamb from a ewe with multiple lambs to be fostered onto a ewe with a single, they surely wouldn’t have fostered it onto Edel with a big lump like Gulliver to feed.
At this stage, the couple were falling around the table, in uncontrolled mirth, breaking up laughing every time they looked at my confused face.
‘It was such a fine day, the day Gulliver arrived, that we decided to let himself and Edel out with the others,’ began Tom, pausing to catch his breath every now and again. ‘The next morning, I went out with George to feed them and down trotted Edel with Gulliver close behind. Well, I thought I was seeing things,’ he continued, warming to the tale, ‘because by the look of him he had six legs. When he got closer though, I was able to see that two of the legs belonged to a little speck of a lamb and while Edel was having her nuts, there the two of them were, feeding away from her, one on either side, like Little an Large.’
I stared at them in open-mouthed amazement. ‘And where did she come from?’ I asked stupidly, hoping I had missed a part of the story
‘Well, Edel was the last due to lamb. Apart from the few hoggets in the far pen, all the rest had lambed. Sure, the poor little bugger must have been in there all along and watched the brother being pulled out and wondered what the hell was going on when you stitched her up again!’
My face must have gone deathly white as realisation dawned on me exactly what had happened before Mary quickly intervened.
‘But sure, not to worry,’ she cried, in obvious glee at the story. ‘She was that tiny she slipped out the usual way, not a bother on her.’
Despite their obvious enjoyment of the story, I couldn’t really share it with them. My mind was filled with horror, thinking back to the caesarean and my amazement at the size of the lamb and the unbroken history of a single, and wondering had I really not carried out the usual examination around the uterus to check for a second or even a third?
‘But maybe,’ I stammered, ‘well, maybe, could one of the smaller hoggets have been in lamb and had it without you knowing?’
‘Well, I suppose it’s possible,’ considered Tom, ‘although I didn’t see any signs of it.’
‘And she always was a bossy ewe, Edel,’ carried on Mary. ‘She’d be just the one to decide the youngsters weren’t doing it right and take over.’
And to this day, we don’t know. Did Edel break the trend and have twin lambs, one with my help and the other despite my hindrance, or did she take a fancy to an inexperienced hogget’s lamb?
CHAPTER TEN
BEAUTY – OR THE BEAST?
As usual, the week had rolled around to Wednesday night before I knew it, and I prepared myself for the weekly Blue Cross onslaught. At quarter to five I was sitting in a comfortable armchair trying to remind myself why I did it. The clients would have another good hour before they would have to get ready to go out in the fierce winds and the dark rain that I couldn’t ignore, no matter how hard I tried,
beating against the window. Not for the first time I wondered why the Blue Cross couldn’t expand to having a clinic in Wicklow.
One look at my bag was enough for Molly to break into an agonised wail. ‘Mammy, make sick doggies better – Monny coming too!’
‘No, Molly stay and mind Sluggie,’ I reassured her firmly. I was having more success with the Maltesers I placed in her sticky fist, and feeling totally unrepentant of the buy-off.
Slug drooled hopefully, waiting for the inevitable titbit.
The journey seemed to go in slow motion as I shivered despite the thin trickle of heat I allowed myself in the car – no point in warming up too much.
Surely on such a night there won’t be a big crowd, I consoled myself, in a vain attempt at self-delusion. And a delusion it was. From the far side of the roundabout I could see the assortment of teenagers with puppies, and old men with old dogs and young women with shivering children and somewhere in their midst an equally shivering pet.
I noticed a forlorn-looking budgie hopping miserably from one perch to the next, despairing at the variety of natural predators that surrounded him.
‘Right, let the budgie in first,’ I called above the din, ignoring the good-humoured protest that broke out.
‘So, what seems to be the problem?’ I enquired of the equally bedraggled young girl, clutching the cage as though her life depended on it.
‘Ah nuttin’, Doc. I just brought ’im for ye to have a look at ’im.’
I looked at her closely, trying to see if she was winding me up, but the big innocent eyes gazing up trustingly at me gave nothing away.
Gently, I tried to explain to her how such tiny birds have fairly delicate hearts and that even my handling him could be enough to make him keel over. ‘Budgies don’t like any change – he hates that wind and rain, so get him home and cover his cage with a large towel and keep him quiet for the rest of the night,’ I finished, praying to God that the little creature wouldn’t be belly-up by that stage.