Tales from a Young Vet

by Jo Hardy

  I could see that. They looked like a bunch of over-excited children, pushing and shoving to get to the back of a queue for matron. Only these particular ‘children’ weighed around half a tonne each – and that could present a very real danger.

  Niall had already warned me about the difficulties of working with cattle. A few years earlier he had been kicked by a cow, fallen over and been trampled by two others before the farmer could rescue him. It had taken him six months to recover.

  ‘Stay well clear,’ he said, ‘keep your eyes on them and be ready to move fast. Oh, and make sure you have insurance.’

  Right. Bit late for that now.

  I eyed the cows. I’d met some very cooperative heifers during the previous few months of my training and I was feeling pretty confident about pregnancy testing, but this lot were clearly in the mood for a fight and I didn’t fancy our chances.

  Niall was a slightly eccentric Irishman with a skip to his voice and a full head of white hair, which he insisted had turned at an abnormally early age. He was the senior vet and the owner of a medium-sized mixed practice in East Sussex, where I was doing another two weeks’ work experience. Alongside Niall there were eight other vets and twelve nursing and support staff. The practice was based in a semi-rural area, so it covered small animals, farm animals like cows, pigs and goats, horses, alpacas (there were a couple of herds locally) and even deer. This meant that working there gave me a fantastic opportunity to try a bit of everything – including handling stroppy cows.

  ‘Let’s get them into the yard,’ Niall said, ‘and then we can pen them one by one.’

  Niall and I, both dressed in wellies and waterproof trousers and jackets, joined the farmer in shooing the cows through a metal barred gate into the small muddy yard beyond. From here we would lead them one at a time into the pen where, once inside, it would be impossible for them to turn around and we could approach them from behind more easily.

  As usual, the plan was for one of us to plunge an arm into the cow and feel for a foetus and then confirm the diagnosis with a scanner, inserted rectally. The art of diagnosing pregnancy manually is gradually becoming obsolete, giving way to diagnosing with a scanner, but whenever I shadowed vets for work experience they always made an effort to do both so that I would learn. Diagnosing manually is easy if the cow is more than a few months pregnant, and is the best way to diagnose how far along the pregnancy is if it is more than three months. However, a scanner picks up much earlier pregnancies, which are hard to feel, as well as checking the status of the ovaries if the cow is not pregnant. So there are pros and cons to both.

  With the first cow in the pen, Niall approached, sleeves rolled up, plastic glove on and fingers flexing. But when the cow realised something unfamiliar was going on at her rear end she began to kick and struggle. Niall had to get right into the pen with her, avoid her back hooves and get his arm inside her thrashing behind. At that moment I wouldn’t have swapped places with him for a free pass through my exams.

  ‘Right,’ he said, after cow number five. ‘Fancy a go?’

  My heart started racing. I’m always up for a challenge – I tend to bowl in and have a go at anything, however scary. But at that moment what I fancied, as a particularly cantankerous cow thrust past and almost knocked me flying, was a hot shower, some dry clothes and a cup of tea.

  ‘OK,’ I said, sounding what I hoped was upbeat and enthusiastic.

  ‘You can get in with this one then,’ Niall grinned, pointing at the cow being thrust into the pen. ‘She looks quieter than the others.’

  ‘Really?’ She didn’t look quieter to me. In fact she looked particularly demented, with eyes wild and nostrils flaring, a bit like the Hannibal Lecter of the cow world.

  ‘Yes, she’s a good girl this,’ the farmer added.

  ‘Fine, great, no problem,’ I muttered, pulling on the plastic glove that reached to my elbow and approaching the pen.

  It didn’t help that the film crew were there, although by that time I was very fond of Amy and Rob. We’d spent so much time together and they’d seen me through so many scrapes that we’d become good friends. But while I enjoyed their company, I was still aware that they were recording my every mishap for posterity.

  That day they’d brought along a new cameraman, Ash, who seemed just as friendly and easygoing as they were. The three of them had decided to begin the day’s filming by recording my journey to work, so they’d arrived at the house at the crack of dawn that morning to find Dad wandering out of the shower wearing a towel and Mum on a bed on the floor downstairs where she’d been sleeping with Tosca to stop her waking everyone up at three in the morning.

  Tosca was doing well. In fact the indications were that the brain tumour might have slowed down its growth, but that didn’t stop her from becoming more annoying in her old age. Because she was completely blind she had no idea when dawn was, so whenever she woke up she insisted everyone else should wake up, too. If nobody woke up to keep her company she would whine and pace the house, bumping into everything and knocking things over. So Mum had started taking her downstairs when she woke up and going back to sleep down there with her, to stop her from waking everyone else.

  Mum and Dad were both a little embarrassed, so I gulped down the last of my tea, swallowed my toast and shoved Amy, Rob and Ash out of the door. They decided to film me driving off and made me do it twice, because the first take wasn’t right, which was a little frustrating as we were already running late. When I finally got going Ash went with me in the car to film my journey from inside, but as I’d run out of screen-wash the windscreen was a grimy mess and he had to try to film the road ahead of us between the smears.

  All this before eight on a dark winter morning, and now here I was, facing the rear end of a stroppy cow with the three of them there to record it. I took a deep breath and slipped in through the gate, hoping the cow wouldn’t notice.

  She did. It was like trying to examine a super-charged bucking bronco. I had one arm inside her, the other holding onto her tail and my feet as far back as I could get them in an attempt to avoid her thrashing hooves. I must have looked pretty demented myself. And then suddenly …

  ‘I can feel it, she’s pregnant, there’s a calf here and it’s pretty far on, I’d say about six, maybe seven months,’ I yelled. No matter how many times I did this, it was still absolutely amazing to feel the growing calf, curled up inside its mother.

  Niall smiled. ‘Put that one down as heavy in calf then, and let’s get the next one in.’

  I backed out of the gate and peeled off the glove, a wide grin on my face. Having felt the developing calf, knowing there was a healthy young animal that would soon be born, was a reminder of why, despite the long hours, the cold, the mud and the stroppy cows, I wanted to be a vet. I couldn’t imagine any other job like it.

  But there was a tough side to what we were doing, too. Some of the cows that were pregnant were too young to have calves and we had to inject them with a compound called prostaglandin, to induce terminations. A ten-month-old heifer is too small to manage a natural birth, so she will either die in the process or, if she’s lucky and the vet gets there in time, have a caesarean. Apart from the danger to her of such a complex birth, the cost to the farmer of the caesarean is often more than the heifer is worth, so it’s a bad idea in both health and economic terms.

  Niall gave me the job of injecting the young pregnant heifers with prostaglandin, which was a little easier than getting in behind them. For most I was able to inject them through the bars of the holding pen.

  Most of the cows we checked had put up a fight, although we eventually managed to work our way through them reasonably safely. All bar one. Realising that her friends were now in the field and she was the only one left in the pen, the last cow panicked and attempted to jump the metal gate. She hurled herself at it right beside Amy, Rob and Ash, who got a massive shock, abandoned the segment they were filming and ran across the yard.

  It made for a hilariou
s blooper, but what wasn’t hilarious was that we now had to go and round up this wild-eyed cow and get her back into the pen away from her friends. It took us all of half an hour before she was in the pen again and we were able to finish our job.

  By the time we’d finished checking all twenty-eight cows, seventeen of which were pregnant, we were filthy and exhausted. After a hose-down in the farmyard we stripped off our waterproofs, bundled them into the back of Niall’s car and headed back to the surgery, where I rushed to check on Nipper, a little Jack Russell recovering in the kennels after an operation to remove a thorn that had worked its way into his paw. He was awake but still a bit sleepy, his tail wagging and already up on his bandaged paw. I gave him a cuddle. ‘You’ll be going home this afternoon, Nipper.’ True to his name, he gave me a playful nip as I tried to whip my hand away. ‘Ouch, you need to learn some manners,’ I said, rubbing the place where his sharp little teeth had grazed me.

  ‘Grab some lunch,’ Niall called. ‘Half an hour, then we’ll get out on rounds.’

  We’d been on the go since eight that morning and I knew the rounds would probably take us till past six. I’d been hoping to get home in time to ride Elli and Tammy, neither of whom was showing signs of getting any thinner. But by the time I drove home it would be past seven and too late. One thing I had learned on rotations was that being a vet meant very long days as well as tough, physical work. Even in a placement like this, a ten- or twelve-hour day was normal.

  By one o’clock I felt hungry enough to eat one of the cows we’d just been to visit, so I was grateful for the chance to sit down and enjoy my longed-for cheese sandwich. But as I opened my mouth for the first bite Susie the receptionist stuck her head round the door.

  ‘We’ve got Mrs Brown in the car park. She’s worried about Doris. Niall says can you pop out and see her? He will be out to join you soon.’

  I gazed longingly at my slab of crusty bread and cheese, stuffed it back into my bag and headed out to the car park, where a very stylish black SUV was parked.

  Out climbed a smartly dressed woman.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Brown. My name’s Jo. I’m a final-year vet student. Niall is just on his way, but has sent me out to get started. How can I help?’

  ‘I’m concerned about Doris. She’s just not herself at the moment and I’m not sure what’s wrong. I’ve been giving her special food and lots of attention but she’s being a bit listless and quiet, and it’s not like her normal behaviour at all.’

  ‘OK, let’s have a look and try to find out what the problem is while we wait for Niall,’ I said, in what I hoped was a reassuring and professional way. ‘Is Doris in the back?’

  Mrs Brown said she was and went to open the boot. I expected to find a cat or perhaps a small dog curled up in a basket. So it was a bit of a surprise to find a very large, handsome white goat sitting in the back of the car regarding me with what appeared to be extreme boredom.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘She’s a goat.’

  Mrs Brown looked at me as though I was a little odd. ‘Of course she’s a goat. What did you expect?’

  Anything but a goat, I thought, smiling brightly at her.

  ‘So Doris is feeling unwell, is she?’

  ‘Well, maybe unwell, I don’t know. She gets the very best of everything, but I can tell she’s not her usual self.’

  ‘Would you like to get her out of the car and I’ll give her an examination?’ I suggested.

  ‘I’m afraid Doris doesn’t like getting out of the car. She gets upset. She only gets out when we’re at home. Can you look at her here?’

  ‘Yes, er, of course,’ I said, still smiling with a grin that was beginning to feel a bit rictus-like. And so I climbed into the back of the SUV, checked Doris’s temperature and heart rate and gave her a good nose-to-tail check – or as good a one as I could manage with her lying down on her cosy blanket in the back of the car and me squashed in beside her.

  Her vital signs were all fine, but her stomach was large. ‘I wonder if she could be pregnant,’ I said.

  Mrs Brown’s face lit up. ‘Oh, do you think she could be?’ she asked. ‘It would make sense. I have a couple of billies as well as my three nannies. Maybe one could have got to her without me knowing. I’d be so happy, another little kid to add to our family, and more wonderful milk from Doris – I sell it you know, it’s so much healthier than cow’s milk, and it makes the most wonderful yoghurt and cream.’

  She was still extolling the virtues of goat’s milk five minutes later. I interrupted, as politely as I could. ‘It sounds like marvellous stuff. Let me go and talk to Niall, and we’ll see if we can scan Doris and let you know for sure.’

  I headed back inside and explained the situation. ‘Oh yes, Doris,’ Niall said. ‘She’s a very spoilt goat. She absolutely refuses to get out of the car. Tell Mrs Brown to back up to the large animal unit round the side and we’ll bring out the ultrasound scanner.’

  And so as Doris reclined regally in the car, I crouched next to her in the back, holding her still, while Niall brought out the scanner and Mrs Brown stood by, hopping from foot to foot.

  ‘Oh, dear Doris, she will need all kinds of special foods if she’s expecting,’ she exclaimed.

  Niall studied the scanner and then turned to her. ‘One large, healthy kid on the way,’ he said. ‘Congratulations, Doris. And Mrs Brown.’

  As I unfurled myself from the back of the car and staggered into the surgery, still bent double and desperate to retrieve my sandwich, Mrs Brown tucked Doris in, closed the boot and drove merrily on her way.

  ‘You ready yet?’ Niall called. ‘We need to get going. We’ve got an alpaca, several pigs, a horse and another goat to see.’

  I gulped the last crust of my sandwich and leaped to my feet.

  ‘Coming.’

  We spent the afternoon looking at some calves that had pneumonia and a sheep whose head was tilting to one side. It had also lost its sight. Niall thought it had cerebrocortical necrosis (CCN), which is a common neurological disease that comes from a deficiency of thiamine, a type of vitamin B. I wasn’t so sure, though. I remembered that CCN doesn’t usually include head tilt, but rather the sheep look up (it’s called ‘star-gazing’), and I suspected that this sheep might have listeria instead, a bacterial infection, which would mean it needed antibiotics, not vitamins. After a couple of days, when it hadn’t improved with vitamin treatment, it was put on antibiotics, which led to an immediate improvement.

  I had been right, which was a small victory that I kept to myself but cherished, since in between calls Niall enjoyed quizzing me relentlessly on every aspect of treatment and pointing out with some relish anything I got wrong.

  At the end of the day our last call was to revisit an alpaca. There were several herds of these woolly South American camelids in the area. They look a bit like small llamas, or sheep with very long necks. They produce gorgeous wool, soft, warm and much prized, and generally they adapt well to life in Britain. But this particular alpaca, a very pretty, creamy-coated chap, was lying on the ground, his hind limbs paralysed after some kind of trauma to the spine. We’d seen him earlier in the afternoon and Niall had told the owner that there was nothing we could do – the only option was humane euthanasia.

  The owner had said she wanted to talk to her husband first and, as the alpaca wasn’t in pain, we had agreed to come back. Now it was late afternoon and the owner had gone out, preferring not to be around for the procedure, after giving us permission to put the alpaca gently to sleep.

  I never like euthanasia calls, although there is something comforting about the fact that vets can end an animal’s pain and suffering. I had made a deal with myself that once I graduated I would always try to put myself in the animal’s position before making choices about death, and if there was a chance that the animal could get better I would fight for it. But if it was likely to continue to suffer or was simply being kept alive for the owner’s sake I would put it out of its misery.

  As we pull
ed up at the end of the driveway, the house and the grounds were eerily quiet.

  Although the owner hadn’t wanted to be present for the euthanasia, Niall wanted to make sure no one was at home who might like to attend, so he made his way to the house to check while I put my farm gear on beside the car.

  At college we’d been taught the best way to get ready for farm visits was by rolling our waterproof trousers over our wellingtons before we put them on, so that we could simply step into the boots and pull up the trousers; a fantastic tip for those like me who are so uncoordinated that the visit would be over by the time we were ready.

  I was just pulling up my waterproofs when a piercing screech resonated from the house.

  ‘Well, they’re not in,’ Niall yelled, over what must have been the loudest burglar alarm I had ever heard.

  ‘How did you manage to set that off?’ I said.

  ‘There was no answer when I was banging on the doors and then I noticed a window was slightly open, so I leaned in and called out to see if anyone was home and it set the damn thing off.’

  Knowing Niall, who I was beginning to realise could be really quite eccentric, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d climbed in, but I kept that thought to myself.

  With the alarm still screeching in the background – I’m sure people could hear it for a radius of several miles – we headed out to the field where the alpaca was. As I stroked his woolly head and murmured comforting words to him, Niall administered the anaesthetic overdose and the alpaca closed his eyes for the last time.

  The owners had asked for a partial post-mortem for insurance purposes and we needed to do it immediately because the alpaca was too large to take away with us.

  ‘I don’t think it’s fair to do it in front of the other alpacas,’ I said. There were about ten of them lined up along the fence, peering across at us.

  ‘Quite right,’ Niall agreed. ‘Let’s take that wheelbarrow over there and we can move him away from the field to some flat ground.’