William's Gift

by Helen Douglas

  We wanted to show Ron and Gerhard something different about our area and give them time away from the vet practice. We booked a whitewater raft trip for our summer party and made the one and a half-hour trip up the Ottawa River. Jim was in high gear, decked out in his paisley party suit. It exceeded all our expectations. We spent three hours traversing six sets of wild rapids, the raft twisting and spinning through chutes and falls, turning sideways, backwards, often filling with water. Most of us fell out at one time or another and got pulled back in, breathless. Between rapids, we had water fights with our bailers and swam and bodysurfed in the small rapids. It was the best of summer.

  Ron spent a lot of time with me to learn more about horses. One night, we went on one of the funniest horse calls I have ever experienced to this day. We had been asked to go up into the Lanark Highlands to geld a two-year old Percheron owned by a man I didn’t know. I was glad Ron was with me as I found my way along lonely back roads, past ramshackle homes, further into the hills of the Mississippi Highlands than I had ever been. One family obviously lived in a school bus. The owner of the horse, Howard, lived nearby in a small, tin house trailer. His outhouse seemed to be an open-air board affair nailed between two trees. He had a beard to his mid-chest. Huskies were tied to doghouses everywhere, and his two horses, Thunder and Nelly, stood in a two-acre field surrounded by barbwire.

  “He’s started to bite now. I’ve got to cut him.” Howard said.

  “Would you mind getting some hot water before you put his halter on?” I replied.

  “Oh, he don’t need a halter, he stands when I touch him,” said the owner.

  Thunder, apparently spooked by the two strangers, trotted away from Howard when he approached him.

  “Would you like to get a bucket of feed?” I asked.

  “No, he’ll stop when I touch him.”

  Ron and I stood swatting the plentiful June mosquitoes swarming around our heads and trying not to laugh as Howard ran after the horse around the perimeter of the paddock. He looked like a 100-metre racer, pumping arms blurred, beard flowing. Yet he kept it up, around and around the paddock, as the horse cantered, bucked out at him, and veered this way and that, obviously having a lark. Howard kept this up for several rounds while we incredulously watched the man who thought he could catch a horse. All of a sudden, Thunder stopped, turned, and walked right up to his owner as if the game were over.

  “It’s okay, come on out now — he’s ready.”

  “Could you please put a halter and shank on him now? We’ll need it to drop him,” I said.

  “He’ll be okay without it,” Howard replied. My patience was getting tested.

  “Just give him the needle,“ he said as he held the horse gently under the chin. He was determined to do it his way, so I approached with the iv sedative in hand. As I gave it, Thunder bit down hard on Howard’s forearm, hard enough to break his skin. Howard didn’t flinch.

  “I told you he was starting to bite,” he said.

  “Please put on the halter now,” I said, trying to sound forceful while swatting the worsening mosquitoes. We had compromised enough, and now I somehow had to get control of the situation in order to do my job.

  “Old Doc Hanna used to do them standing,” he said.

  My patience was just about worn out and I snapped back with, “Well, I’m not old Doc Hanna.” Howard reluctantly shrugged and nodded that we could go ahead my way. Such was the dance I often had to do with woodsmen who had never seen a lady vet.

  I lost my beloved dog that summer. She had been with me from my student summer in Nova Scotia, through vet school, until now. As she faded into kidney failure and ill health, I decided to ask Jim to give the overdose of anaesthetic while I held her. I found it unbelievably hard, even though I had euthanized many other animals. As I held her close to keep her vein still, she wagged her tail trustingly, and I felt as if I were committing the ultimate betrayal rather than trying to spare her further discomfort.

  Is this how other people feel? I can’t believe how awful it is, I remember thinking.

  I was despondent. I found it took weeks to stop grieving and months before I stopped missing her — but I had a new understanding of what my clients were feeling as I carried out this all-too-common service for them. The ache in my heart taught me a lot about our bond to our pets and why so many people said they would never have another animal after going through this loss. Losing my own dog helped me to gain the empathy I needed for those times.

  Ron was working with me one day when a true emergency came in. A small white terrier had been run over by a car. Whitey’s front feet were destroyed, the bones crushed and exposed. There was massive soft tissue loss, and gravel was ground into what tissue remained. The owner had no money, and told us so right away, but loved the dog and begged us to do whatever we could.

  Ron took it on one hundred percent and got truly attached to the little dog as he tried to clean, debride, and splint the damaged feet day after day. Within a week, it was obvious the feet were dying and couldn’t be saved. The owner, who visited every day, agreed to have both feet removed, but only because Ron assured him we could design prostheses, and I assured him we would discount the bill so Ron could continue to work on him. Ron just couldn’t give up, and I hadn’t the sense or heart to advise him to do so. Whitey’s incisions healed so he finally had small, pink stumps. We kept him in the hospital to see if he could get along, while Ron experimented with different pads and supports. Soon he began to walk on his back legs around the clinic. He was part of the scenery. I noticed edgily that the owner was visiting less and less often, and nothing at all had been paid on his account.

  Ron’s world came crashing down the fourth week. The inventions and boots wouldn’t stay put. The owner had moved and left no phone number or forwarding address. Whitey was now ours, nothing had ever been paid, and now we were all faced with the grim truth. Could any of us keep him or cope with a dog missing both front feet? I could not and Ron could not take him back to school. It was an extremely hard decision to put him to sleep, but that’s what had to be done and probably should have been done earlier. Ron took a day off work, hurting badly. Sometimes we have to know when not to go on, and this was one of those times.

  That fall, two evenings of emergencies ended my career with cattle. I had been doing less and less cattle work and found the late-night emergencies stressful and unsettling. One Friday night, I had a call to a calving in the evening, a delivery that went well, but when I came home at eleven, I was nonetheless tired and hit the hay. Shortly before midnight, another calving call came in, and I felt groggy as I drove to the second call, twenty miles away. It was hard work, and my arms were numb and bruised as I lay on my side working to correct the malpresentation. The cow lay straining in the gutter, and I was working uphill. I had to remove the dead calf’s head to get the two front legs out. Finally I resolved the messy situation. I drove home now covered with manure and blood and jumped in the shower.

  At two in the morning, I had just gotten to sleep when the phone rang again. It was a calving. I actually cried. I couldn’t face it and called Jim. The cow needed a Caesarean section in the end, and there was no way I would have had the strength to do it. It was for the best, and Jim didn’t mind, as I seldom asked him to bail me out. I was constantly questioning my ability and desire to continue doing these cattle emergencies.

  The next night, I had a call that made up my mind. I went to see a downer cow. She was in a large, free-stall barn. To get to her, I had to slog through manure over my ankles. I perched my kit on the edge of her stall near her hindquarters and opened it, wondering if she had milk fever, mastitis, or even ketosis. I took her temperature first. While waiting for the thermometer, I ran through the possibilities in my mind. Suddenly, the cow next to her stepped into the gate separating them and it swung forcefully over behind me, knocking over my kit full of needles and b
ottles first, then hitting me. Without knowing what had happened, I arrived on my hands and knees, just a nose above the deep manure in the aisle with all my gear scattered around me. Bottles and needles were sinking into the muck.

  It was at that moment that I decided cattle practice wasn’t for me. I was going to have to find a way to tell Jim. He had so much stress already, what with the business and problems at home, and he seemed really down. I certainly didn’t want to let him down, but I just didn’t want to do it any more. Larry was also spending more and more time away from the practice, so I knew all the cattle work would be on Jim’s shoulders. He took it well, though. He had seen it coming. I hoped we could work it out, and we did for a while, with everyone just doing what they were good at and helping each other get by. I didn’t know it, but the writing was on the wall. We all couldn’t both continue to be on call at all times.

  NINE

  Never Drink and

  Drive Your House …

  I HAD JOINED THE LOCAL Drag Hunt with my friend Mary. The riders were an enthusiastic group of people who got together twice weekly to gallop cross-country and jump, following a dragged trail of fox urine. There was a comfortable clubhouse where everyone could meet after riding and a well-loved pack of American Foxhounds that were the pride of the Hunt Master. We were lucky enough to have hundreds of acres of land to use, and over the years, many jumps and trails were constructed and maintained for the use of the hunt. The landowners were an important part of the picture and were invited to the meals and social events with the riders.

  Though improbable now, I managed to ride almost every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon with the Hunt. Perhaps it was because I didn’t own the practice, but it was also because Jim was an extraordinarily kind and accommodating man. Then there was all the riding in between to keep myself and my horse fit. I felt a confident rider and often took Mary’s second horse to the meets, a young, flea-bitten gray mare that was quite strong — yet we forged a partnership.

  There was a lot of ritual involved, including the red and black Hunt coats, the sherry served on silver trays before we rode, the blast of the hunting horn, and the excited horses. It really didn’t matter to us how we looked to others. The thrill was so great and the feeling of galloping and jumping cross-country and being a team with a horse, as we made split-second decisions on timing, jumping, or pulling up, was exhilarating. The draw to ride was far stronger than any voices in my head about “stuff and nonsense.” Many of my friends made fun of us for playing at hunting or dressing up to ride in what they saw as a pretentious charade. I knew the element of pretension was due in part to the British aura and in part to the fact that we followed the hounds as they chased a laid trail of fox urine — not a real fox. Early in the day, two or three energetic people, usually patient spouses or people no longer able to ride, spent hours laying the scent through field, bush, and across ditches. They tried to set an interesting course to follow, and there was emphasis on how the hounds would work and test their hunting skills.

  Sometimes the scenery alone was worth all the effort. In the summer, the meets were sometimes a bit tedious, with heat and flies and rock-hard ground to deal with. But the fall was glorious. All senses came alive as the riders struggled with strong mounts and the smell of the lathered horses mingled with the subtle tones of the foliage heated by the afternoon sun. The skies alone were so breathtaking that to canter along the field with thirty other horses alongside, watching the vista change from blue and yellow to the purple and brown of late afternoon, felt sometimes as if we were in a magnificent eighteenth-century painting. The horses loved the fall too, and we could gallop for longer, through cut corn, across mown hay, and through narrow trails in technicolor maple forests. We went home exhausted, smelling of horse sweat and covered with mud. It was always a heady rush.

  At the Hunt parties, I met a couple that had purchased land near the Hunt and wanted to build a house and barn there. There was a small log home on the property and the reclusive older man who had lived there for years had just been moved to a nursing home. They wanted the house demolished or preferably moved and used. My mind started to spin. Could I do it? What was involved with moving a house? Well certainly I had to get land first and find out if this house even could be moved. After confirmation that it all could be done, I purchased the house where it stood and twenty-five acres of land near the Hunt, where I would move it in the spring. There were permits to apply for and all sorts of preparations to be made before then.

  At Christmas, my mother visited, and I took her to see the house I was going to move and renovate. It was dark and cold. The little house was truly depressing, if not disgusting, that day. The horrible furniture, the garbage — even the old man’s clothes — remained. Not to mention cat dirt, mouse dirt, and years of grease and grime on all the walls. On top of that, I explained to Mum, I would have to deal with removing the brick façade and the summer kitchen before moving it. All she could say was “Why, Hon, why?” I could see she was totally upset by what I was undertaking.

  With much help from friends and a lot of brute physical work, I was ready for the move the next spring. We had already spent days removing the porch and summer kitchen by mid-May, the day the load restrictions came off the roads. Both the old and new sites were prepared for the event. A large flatbed was backed under the little house where it stood on four corners of its former foundation, and down the road it went. Accompanying it were hydro and telephone crews and police. All went according to plan as it pulled onto the new land, at the end of a dead-end road. The house sat on the truck poised to move into place by noon, and the moving crew knocked off for lunch.

  The two friends who had taken the day off to be with me suggested we go for lunch to celebrate. We were all giddy with excitement at the undertaking and had been up since early morning. A large bottle of champagne was produced by one of them, and off we went to the nearest house to make sandwiches. Undoubtedly we would have been better off to have crashed the bottle onto the house to baptize it than to drink the champagne. After much toasting and excited banter, we were all feeling tipsy and giddy and had to make a pot of coffee to straighten up before going back to the site. We had taken far too long. Even dealing with the work crew again seemed like a big task. I was already exhausted, and the champagne hadn’t helped.

  When we got back to the site, close to two hours had passed, and the workers had given up waiting for us. This was before everyone had a cell phone and they hadn’t known where I was — so they simply moved the house into the place they thought I wanted it and started blocking it up. Unbelievably, it had been put down in the wrong place, facing north instead of west. I had planned to face the front windows towards the sunset. After all the planning, how could such a thing have happened? There was no turning back. Because of a magnum of champagne and a careless hour, I had to crane my neck to see the evening sky as long as I lived there. Later, I told the story of the move many times and was thankfully able to laugh about it.

  Anne and I had continued to own a horse together and we kept her at Mary’s. She was an old hunter mare with good bloodlines and now had advanced asthma, a condition known as heaves. We decided to have her bred, as she could no longer be ridden. The summer I was working on my house she foaled in mid-June. She had been leaking colostrum, the precious early milk that contains life-saving antibodies for the foal, for about two weeks. It was a worry, as it could deplete the antibodies available to the foal in the first few hours after birth, which would then compromise the animal by weakening the immune system and thereby leaving it more open to a life-threatening infection called septicemia.

  As the time came, I camped out at the barn and was present when the foal arrived in the early morning hours. I called Anne, who raced over in time to see the foal still wet behind the ears — it was a chestnut colt, lovely, but small and thin. Undoubtedly, the mare’s problems breathing, which had really worsened in the past few weeks with s
pring pollens, had decreased the oxygen supply to the foal. When the foal did not get to its feet within the usual time, I started to worry. I knew too much to pretend everything would be okay.

  When by four hours after birth the foal still hadn’t nursed, I milked out the mare and administered the vital colostrum to the foal by nasal tube. He put up little resistance and seemed cold despite the warm June day. About twelve hours after he was born, I was deeply worried, yet trying to remain calm on the surface so as to not let Anne know how concerned I was. He had stopped trying to get to his feet and had a weak suckling response. I had no stall-side kit to check his blood globulin level but I knew he probably had far too few antibodies in circulation. Was this a dummy foal, deprived of oxygen, or a foal with an infection before or at birth? In any case, it seemed likely he was now suffering from septicemia.

  For the next forty-eight hours, we struggled to save him. We had no commercial antibodies to give intravenously, no special neonatal facilities, no waterbeds or blood gas machines. We got oxygen in a small cylinder from the hospital for a nasal tube, put the foal on fluids, heated, tube-fed him, and turned him. Even when his colour finally turned brick red, then blue, and his heart stopped, I still couldn’t give up. I was performing cardiac massage through tears when Anne finally said, “Stop; it’s over. It’s okay.”

  We sat outside against the barn wall shocked and speechless. I tried to understand that the eleven months of anticipation had ended this way. I vowed to improve my ability to help such helpless, fragile little foals. It could be attempted at the big veterinary hospitals, but even there, the success rate was low. How could we do better in the field? Trying to save a critically ill foal is still one of the biggest challenges a horse vet faces, and losing a foal the most intense experience a horse owner can have. I had had both happen at once.