Village Horse Doctor

by Ben K. Green

  He said he was driving out to his ranch for a little while and would be back about noon and asked me if I would care to go with him. Well, the demands for my services were far from pressing, and I didn’t think I would be missed for any reason before noon, so I told him that it would be my pleasure to accompany him and see his ranch. By the tone of his voice, it seemed an afterthought when he said, “I’ll call Mrs. Rochell to have a good dinner fixed for us when we get back.”

  As we started to leave town he said, “By the way, if you care to, we’ll put your medicine bags in the back of my car in case you might need to have something with you when I show you some sick buck sheep.”

  As we drove along to the ranch, he told me about sheep eating lechuguilla. I had never heard of the plant, so I asked some rather sensible questions and listened carefully (I intended to profit from my yellowweed experience). Guy was an intelligent man with a lifetime of ranching experience and he explained very carefully all he knew about lechuguilla.

  It is a dagger-like cactus plant that grows in the high rimrock and remote regions of the hills and is seldom eaten by sheep or goats until after cold weather. Then it seems that sheep will eat lechuguilla for the juice as well as the flavor and will not come in to water. Since this is a high fibrous diet, they will develop an impaction in the stomach, and in the carcasses of sheep that have died from lechuguilla, there will be balls of tightly compressed dried fiber that they have been unable to digest. After they are dead, many times this ball of fiber will not decompose as quickly as the body of the sheep and will lay on the ground for years.

  When sheep affected by lechuguilla were brought in from the ridges and placed in corrals with feed and water, they refused to eat or drink and the symptoms were what was commonly referred to as “dry mouth.” Their lips would be sealed together with dried phlegm and their faces would swell, and their lips and noses, if they lived long enough, would peel off from the extreme temperature they had endured.

  By the time Guy had finished his explanation and description, we drove up to a small chute pen where several of these bucks had been brought in and placed on feed and water. They had been there several days and had not eaten nor drank. I was very deliberate in my examination of these sheep and weighed carefully all the information that he had given me. I went to my medicine bags and prepared some hypodermic injections that I gave these several bucks.

  This was about all we saw of the ranch and, I think, this was Guy’s only intention when we left town. I don’t believe it had occurred to him to do this until the moment he saw me that morning on the sidewalk. Three or four days passed and I hesitated to ask about the bucks fearful of a continuation of my recent experiences.

  It was a cold morning and the average number of ranchers were holed up in the hotel lobby and drinking coffee in the dining room, and Guy motioned to me to come over to the table where he and some other ranchers were seated. I walked over—and by now I knew all of them—spoke and sat down. Guy volunteered the information to the rest of the men at the table that I had been to the ranch with him and treated some lechuguilla bucks.

  It had been the experience of everybody in that country that they always lost these sheep after they had gotten to the stage of “dry mouth.” There was a polite kind of silence for a minute when somebody asked, “Are there any of ’em still alive?”

  They all laughed, and I did too. Then Guy broke the news that his old Mexican ranch foreman had told him that every buck drank water and slobbered at the mouth and had a kidney action (which would usually dry it up) before we had had time to get back to town. Within a few days, all were drinking and were eating cottonseed meal and ground grain that was left in a trough of free choice. The fever had left them, their lips had peeled off, their heads were bright, and they were ready to be turned out of the hospital pen.

  The atmosphere brightened and the conversation of those around the table and those joining us warmed up considerably and Pat Cooper very hurriedly and respectfully asked, “Doctor, what did you give them?” I cut him a little short, but laughed when I said: “That’s a professional secret.”

  This was the first pleasant experience that I had had in weeks. My breakfast tasted better, and I left the hotel thinking that the poisonous plants of the Trans-Pecos Region of Texas were going to need far closer attention than I had imagined.

  I had been practicing in Fort Stockton about two months and had moved from the motel to the Hubbs Apartment Building, and the drugstore and other people were taking my calls for me. As yet, I didn’t have an office downtown.

  The lechuguilla story spread fast, and the fact that no medication had ever been given a lechuguilla sheep or goat that seemed to have done him any good before caused the ranchers to pay me a little more mind.

  Frank Hinde, who ranched about forty miles southeast of Fort Stockton, heard about the lechuguilla bucks and came into town, found me, and told me he had sixteen Angora goats in the corral that were as bad as lechuguilla goats could be and still be alive. He grinned and said, “If you can do ’em any good, I’d begin to believe you’re a doctor, and it might be all right for you to stay in the country.”

  Frank was foaled in the West, grew up in sheep and cow country, and had cowboy’d all his younger life and graduated to a ranch when he was about middle age. He was a natural-born stockman and a very close observer. He could tell what a sheep or goat was thinking and was referred to by all the Mexicans in the country as “Pancho y medio” which in their language means “man and a half.”

  He was six feet eight inches tall, wore a high crown hat, high-heel and high-top boots that came to his knees and stuck his britches in his boot tops. If you could have seen him get out of a car or walk in a door, you would readily understand why they called him “man and a half.” His generosity and humor were still on a larger scale.

  I told him I could treat lechuguilla but my experience was very limited, that I could make no promises as to how the goats would do but I would be glad to come out and expose them to my professional ability.

  I made this statement because it was dawning on me that very little was known about the poisonous plants of the Trans-Pecos Region, and I had hunted diligently through veterinary literature and no mention could be found about the plant or of its effects on any breed of domestic livestock that had eaten it. This was why I hedged a little instead of throwin’ my chest out and actin’ as if it was very simple to have sheep or goats that had eaten the plant.

  Frank laughed and said, “They’ve been exposed to enough lechuguilla to kill ’em, so they couldn’t be any worse off from your treatment.”

  I got to the ranch a little before midmorning the next day, and he was out at the goat corral with some Mexican ranch hands waiting for me. This was a bunch of fine Angora goats with lots of mohair on them. They were drawn and humped up with their faces blistered, their mouths sealed to, their eyes turning yellow, and were a pitiful sight. They would make very little effort to get away from a herder when he would go up to catch them.

  I had had a few days to think about lechuguilla and to think about the therapeutic action of internal medicine. It’s common knowledge that sheep and especially goats can eat and thrive on the leaves and bark of brush that cattle and horses cannot digest. The more I studied about it, the more I knew that it was not the impaction of dry fiber that was the killer; after all, there’s an old saying that a goat can digest almost anything, even a board.

  It is my professional opinion that the juice of the plant had astringent effects on the hair glands of the digestive tract that secreted the acids that would normally aid in the completed destruction of woody fibers. This was the reason I resorted to hypodermic injections and treatment by mouth with drugs that contained no purgative action but worked on the stimulation of the gland functions of the sheeps’ and goats’ bodies.

  As we went about treating these goats, I explained my theory to Frank, and he said, “Doc, I never knew anybody to worry as much about a goat’s belly befor
e, so maybe you got something.”

  He went on to explain to me that the Sonora Experiment Station called it photosynthesis and said that the blistering of the face and swelling of the ears was the result of the absorption of the sun’s rays. He hastened to explain that he had never believed a damn word of it, and if it proved out that I was wrong not to be hacked because at least I’d had a new thought about it.

  During this conversation we had treated the sixteen goats, and Frank and his Mexicans were talking in Spanish about the few that might get well if they weren’t treated. They pointed out three that had begun to peel off around the face and ears, which was an indication that they had passed the most dangerous stage and had a possibility of getting well.

  We leaned against the fence and began to visit and talk about each one as we looked at them. I pulled out my watch and told Frank that all of them should begin to slobber at the mouth and lick their lips in about fifteen or twenty minutes. If my treatment was effective, these goats should drink water within an hour by reason of the fact that saliva had come back into their dried mouths and their lips had become moistened, which would bring feeling and taste back. Frank spoke up, “Any sheep or goat that will eat and drink will get well.”

  He turned and told his herders what I had said and one of them remarked that I would be “Mucho bueno, Doc-tor.”

  These goats had not drunk for the several days that they had been in this water lot, and about that time a weak little bitty yearling nanny walked up to the water trough and stuck her blistered mouth down into the cool water and licked her tongue out a few times and then drank so much that I stepped up and pushed her away from the trough. By noon every goat there had drunk and had begun to nibble at the alfalfa hay and the mixture of cottonseed meal and salt that was in the trough close to the water.

  It was about dinnertime, so we went to the house, and Frank’s wife, Ruth, had a big dinner for us. We had quite a visit, and Frank bragged on me and told me how glad he was that I was in the country.

  He wasn’t the timid sort, and it wasn’t long before everybody knew how he felt about having a horse doctor in the Trans-Pecos ranch country. This message coming from him didn’t hurt my future practice none.

  As I drove back into town that afternoon, I was well pleased with my day’s work. It was becoming more and more apparent to me that in order to practice veterinary medicine in an alkaline soil, semi-arid region, it was going to be necessary for me to buy some laboratory equipment and do a great deal of research so as to discover methods and formulas of treating livestock in this region that were almost unknown to veterinary science.

  Both the drugstores were taking my calls, and I was still carrying my medical supplies and practicing out of the back of my car and cleaning up and sterilizing my instruments in my apartment. Each time I drove into town, I went to the drugstores to see if I had any calls. The word began to get around that there was a horse doctor in town, and I began to pick up some emergencies and light practice.

  About two o’clock in the morning my phone rang and it was a very fastidious old woman who after some persuasion had caused me to do some surgery on her poodle dog. I had explained to her that the dog could not have any food for about twelve hours, but never in my practice did I ever say that any animal could not have a drink of water. Now this two o’clock call was to tell me that Charm was crying for a drink of water and would it be all right for her to have some. I hadn’t been to bed very long and I wasn’t too happy about Charm and her drink of water, but I thought better than to cuss this precise old social woman out and I just as well could have a little fun out of it.

  In answer to her question, I asked, “Do you have any distilled water in the house?”

  She said, “No, I don’t have,” just as though she kept it all the time and this was the first time that she was out.

  I said, “Put some water in a pan and boil it for about thirty minutes, let it set until it’s cool, and then it will be all right for Charm to drink all she wants of it.”

  Well, she was so grateful for my consideration of Charm’s health, she said she would boil the water immediately. I figured that by the time she got the water to boil and sat up waitin’ for it to cool, maybe she could go to sleep and wouldn’t hear that dog cry and maybe I could get some sleep too.

  By now my general practice had gotten to be rather steady, and all the early spring diseases and surgery were keeping me busy. It was time to begin doing the usual amount of spring surgery, mostly castrating young horses. As usual, ranchmen looked up the signs of the Zodiac before they ever came and asked me to work on their young horses. I never looked at the “signs” but I could always tell when they were supposed to be “right” because three or four different ranchers would want to make appointments to castrate their horses all about the same time.

  I went to Guy Rochell’s ranch one morning, and he had lots of good help to rope and tie as many as three horses down at a time. Guy carried my bucket of solution with my instruments in it from one horse to the next, and I carried my sulfa powder in a bottle in my hip pocket. Everything worked real fast and none of these horses had any unusual problems and from ten thirty till noon we caught, castrated, and turned loose twenty-seven head of horses.

  It was good, sunny, dry weather and fresh green feed had grown enough for horses to fill up on it. I knew from the luck we had in the surgery and the medication I used that these horses would have to have gotten well without the slightest complication.

  I was still new in the country and was hoping that my professional reputation was improving. I saw Guy Rochell standing in front of the Stockton Pharmacy talking with several other ranchers and thought that this would be a good time to get some complimentary remarks. As I walked up and shook hands, I said, “Mr. Rochell, how have the horses done? Did they swell any?”

  Guy rared back and wrinkles formed over his nose, and in a complete expression of disgust and high tone of voice, he said, “Did they swell? Did they swell? They swelled the mares in another pasture.”

  Not too long after this, Bud Calhoun called and wanted me to come out to his place and castrate a two-year-old colt that he was very fond of. His place was just north of town in the irrigation valley that was watered by the natural flow of Comanche Springs. Bud made a business of repairing windmills, pulling sucker rods, and doing whatever was necessary to keep water flowing in the big pastures of the ranch country, and this farm where he lived was not his full-time work.

  When I drove up, he had one man who worked for him and a neighbor there to help with the horses. As I began to get my instruments ready, Bud wanted to have a little talk with me. He was glad that I was in the country and all that kind of polite stuff, but directly, he cocked his head to one side and squinted his eyes and asked, “Did you ever cut a horse before?”

  We talked on as I was gettin’ ready for the operation, but I didn’t give him any assurance that I knew what I was doing or that the horse would live or anything of the sort, and against his better judgment, we went ahead with the operation. We had plenty of rope, and the men helping were stout and didn’t know a whole lot about tying down a horse but were willing. The colt was halter-broke and it didn’t take long to get him on the ground.

  I had him castrated in less time than it takes to put it on paper. When the men helping had all the rope off the horse, and I was about to get up off my knees and the colt made no effort to struggle or get up, I looked up over my shoulder at Bud. He looked awful pale and sick and you could tell he was sure enough worried about his pet horse. I cleared my throat and raised my voice right quick and asked, “Bud, what are you going to do with the hide?”

  Just before I thought he might faint, I slapped the colt in the flank with my hat and squalled at him and kicked him real hard in the belly from the ground side, and he jumped up and ran off. Bud took a long breath and said, “Doc, you scared me. I don’t know whether you’re gonna do or not.”

  I had met Dow Puckett soon after I came to Fort
Stockton, and he, like many others, had me do some dentistry and also remove tumors from backs and shoulders, and other light surgery on their horses. Most of this practice was an accumulation of neglect because there had never been a veterinary doctor living in Fort Stockton and they were not accustomed to being able to get some of these better livestock practices performed.

  One Sunday afternoon in the summer, the cowboys were gathered over at the Sheriff’s posse grounds for a calf roping. Lee Graves came into town with his horses, wife, and kids and had started to the roping. He had an awful bad jaw on him from a toothache, and it wouldn’t get any better. He didn’t want to miss that calf roping, so he stopped at the drugstore to see if he could get something to ease it.

  Gallemore told him from the size of his jaw and looks of his mouth that he ought to go to the dentist. He called Dr. Bailey at home but never got an answer and Gallemore said that he didn’t have anything strong enough to do him any good that he could give without a doctor’s prescription.

  I had driven up in front of the drugstore and was gettin’ out of my car when Lee came out the front door. He was holding that jaw, and I guess he was wondering how he was going to stand the pain and not miss the calf roping. Then he saw me. We were good friends and I had done some practice for the Hoover Ranch, where he was a partner with his Uncle Arthur.

  He said, “Doc, I’ve got a toothache big enough for a horse, and I want to go to the calf ropin’. The way it’s pumpin’ and jumpin’, it might affect my ropin’ and you know that I need to get even with some of the boys from the last ropin’. Have you got anything that you could give me to kind of ease the pain?”

  He explained that he had tried to get the dentist and that he guessed he was gone from home. Well, I didn’t think Bailey was gone from home because I knew he didn’t answer the phone on Sunday. I was interested in the performance at the calf roping because I was going to go watch. So I said, “Sure, Lee, I’ll give you something ’cause I would consider it an emergency in the matter of tryin’ to steady a man’s hand who was going to a calf ropin’.”