Old Dogs New Tricks

by Peter Anderson

  From memory, insurance was prohibitive, something like $2000 per doe for one month, at a value of $25,000 each. After a bit of nervous discussion we decided to take the risk, to carry the can individually. No insurance. The programme proceeded.

  Roger built his shed and together we bought 200 feral does from a variety of sources. We designed the programme, bought the drugs and the necessary equipment, hired a locum vet for a month to run the practice and generally prepared ourselves, while Roger prepared the recipients to our instructions.

  The Battys’ does were programmed on their own place where Jean was more comfortable (as were the does) and they were to be brought out on the day. Pete and I had a couple of trial runs, doing the surgery and the flushing on feral does, so we would be comfortable and well practised on the day.

  Roger had built a nice surgery, clean and hygienic, with a solid door between it and the viewing area. We couldn’t have distractions at vital times during surgery, but Jean and Errol could observe through a small window.

  The great day arrived. Pete and I were up early, vehicles packed, and we travelled out to the Smith farm with Jeanette, our surgery nurse. It was a crisp autumn morning in late April as we sped west to Renwick, then north across the Wairau River to the rough hill country on the North Bank. This country had been cleared by early settlers, first for gold and then for farming. The steep schist and semi-schist geology was not highly fertile, and was prone to erosion. From the 1960s the land was mostly abandoned farm grazing. Commercial forestry was planted on much of it, and gorse grew prolifically. Roger and Ket Smith had bought a small farm up a side valley west of the main road. The flats were productive, the hills planted in the ubiquitous Pinus radiata. It was colder in the valley than the Wairau Plain, which we’d just left, as we wound up the gravel road to the surgery, a converted woolshed. We were a bit tense as we set up our anaesthetic gear and laid out our sterile surgical equipment and the flushing equipment. There was a lot at stake for us.

  The Battys arrived with the first six does. We would do the next six tomorrow. Jean was very tense, while Errol attempted to settle her anxieties with gentle words. It was Pete A’s job to anaesthetise the does for surgery, and intubate their larynxes with tubes made for the job. This meant we could maintain the anaesthetised state with gas, far safer than topping up with the drugs used to induce. In humans, dogs, and even cats, this intubation is pretty straightforward. The anaesthetist can easily visualise the larynx and the arytenoid cartilages at the back of the throat, marking the opening to the trachea. But for sheep and goats (and deer) it is much more difficult. The larynx is a long way back, and the natural curve downwards makes it very hard to visualise. A special long curved laryngoscope, complete with battery-powered light, is absolutely necessary to intubate and even then it’s a tricky business.

  Pete injects the Pentothal into the jugular vein of the first doe, who falls instantly unconscious. While Roger holds the doe’s head, Pete carefully intubates her and blows up the cuff. This means that should she regurgitate rumen contents, they can’t run into the lungs.

  Pete and Roger quickly clip her belly to the skin and bring her into the surgery, where I await, fully gowned and gloved in sterile gear. They place the doe belly up, head down on the steeply sloping surgery table. The slope means her intestines will slide forward making the uterus easily accessible for surgery.

  After Jeanette has sterilised the skin with iodine and alcohol, she passes me a sterile drape, which I place with its rectangular hole over the surgery site. The intubated goat is connected to the anaesthetic machine, which will supply oxygen plus anaesthetic gas during surgery.

  We proceed. Carefully I cut the midline skin just forward of the udder, an incision of about 6 or 7 centimetres. Then, even more carefully, I make a small incision in the connective tissue and the lining of the gut, the peritoneum. Using scissors, I expand the cut. We are in! Gently pushing aside the fatty omentum, I expose the shining, glistening, pink uterus, looking like two curled-up fingers which unite as the body of the uterus further back. With some gentle movement of tissue, I find the left ovary at the forward end of the left uterine horn and oviduct. Manipulating it with a blunt probe, I carefully turn the ovary over. It is about the size of the end of a thumb, but what I’m interested in is counting the corpora lutea on it. Each corpus luteum is a small bulging raspberry red protrusion on the surface of the ovary, signalling where an egg was shed seven days ago when the doe ovulated. By counting the corpora lutea on both ovaries, I get a good guide to how many eggs we should find when we flush her.

  I don’t recall the numbers. There may have been four on one ovary, six on the other in that first doe, a total of 10. So we expect 10 fertilised embryos.

  Then Pete A hands me the Foley catheter. This is a 15-centimetre-long catheter with two holes in the top, for collection, a wide mouth at the other end for passing the harvested fluid and a cuff to be blown up with air or fluid, just behind the collected holes. This ensures all the fluid goes through the catheter, and all the embryos are harvested.

  I push a hole in the left uterine horn near the bifurcation with a pair of artery forceps. Then I introduce the catheter, nose first, and pass it into full depth. I carefully blow up the cuff using a syringe full of saline. This is a critical procedure. Too tight could rupture the uterus wall, rendering the doe permanently infertile; too loose means we lose the embryos. Gently I blow it up until I’m satisfied it’s firm. That will work.

  Pete then passes me the flushing fluid in a 20 millilitre syringe, and a plastic tom cat catheter. I find the ovary, then probing gently, I pass the catheter past the fimbriae: the ‘fingers’ which are the beginning of the oviduct and which would normally collect each embryo as it leaves the ovary to enter the oviduct on its way to the uterus. With the catheter successfully in the oviduct, I attach the syringe of flushing fluid, while Pete A waits with a petri dish at the open end of the Foley catheter. I begin to inject the fluid.

  Pete reports on progress: ‘Drip, drip, drip, drip.’

  We need a good flow to get the eggs flushed out of the uterus, not a drip. Eventually I hear ‘Good flow’ and I press harder on the syringe until all the fluid has passed through the uterus, through the catheter and into the petri dish.

  Pete then places that dish of embryos very carefully on the microscope as he readies to count for eggs. I wait. After 90 seconds he finds one, then others.

  ‘Six,’ he says.

  Satisfied, we then follow the same procedure on the other side of the uterus. Four there. A good harvest.

  It is tricky, demanding work that requires a lot of concentration, and we are aware of Jean peering anxiously through the viewing window. Eventually we are done. I suture the doe up, then Pete and Roger take her out to recovery, where Jean and Errol can look after her.

  The doe receives a shot of antibiotics, and when she starts to swallow, the tube is removed. We carry on, and do the same on the next five does. The results are variable, between 12 and zero for each doe. I think we average six or eight embryos per doe. A reasonable result.

  In the afternoon we transplant the harvested embryos, two at a time, into the recipient does.

  In that first season we did all that part surgically too, which made for some long and exhausting days. In subsequent years I developed skills using a laparoscope, so we only had to sedate the recipients and use local anaesthetic at the entry sites. This was much faster and easier on the animals. But this first year we were still learning.

  The upshot was a fairly successful first day. Jean was relieved, and she and Errol took their precious does home for some TLC.

  We went home and slept well. So far, so good. The following day we repeated the whole procedure. The first donor doe came with a warning. ‘We got this one from Rae Adams. It’s always held its head to one side a bit,’ said Jean.

  Pete injects the Pentothal and the doe goes to sleep. Then disaster. The problem comes when he tries to intubate it. He just can’t find th
e larynx. Sweating a bit, but still calm, he keeps trying. The goat isn’t breathing, and its mucous membrane begins to go very blue. All I can think of is the $25,000 we will have to fork out, a sum that will ruin us.

  With me on the verge of panic, and Jean shouting, we get the dying doe onto the table, and with minimal preparation I pierce a hole in the larynx from the outside, a tracheotomy. Pete shoves the tube into the trachea, we blow up the cuff and begin ventilating with oxygen, squeezing on the bag to inflate the lungs. We can hear Jean shouting from the viewing area. It was one of the worst moments of my veterinary life.

  After a few minutes pink colour was returned to the doe, and eventually she breathed on her own. But we weren’t going to risk her and removed her from the programme. It was a close call.

  After a breather we carried on. The next doe was uneventful and produced six embryos. The third one was also going well. I was just starting to flush the uterus for the first collection when there was a banging on the window.

  It is Jean who then bursts through the door.

  ‘That doe isn’t breathing!’ she shouts.

  Our nurse Jeanette is monitoring the breathing, and has an audible beeping alarm to help. This will go off after 30 seconds. It is now about 24 seconds. As Jean comes in, the goat breathes. This time we are grumpy.

  ‘You are compromising the success of this operation, Jean,’ I say. ‘Please leave!’

  She did and we carried on, but it was another dicey moment.

  I am pleased to say that we remained good friends with the Battys and when Jean died some years later, the family even invited me to speak at her funeral, a task I accepted humbly and with pleasure. At the funeral I recounted the incidents with the goats, and Jean’s anxieties, which surprised no one.

  Jean was a wonderful person, strong, dedicated and loyal, and she had a huge passion for her animals and the mohair industry. We were very fond of her. But she could be a challenge to those of us who provided professional services.

  FOOTNOTE

  After three or four years, the ET craze died out quickly with goats, but the training allowed us to do a lot more in both deer and sheep ET in the years to come. It was a defining and developmental phase of our professional careers, and we raised our standards considerably, both technical and organisational — things which stood us in good stead from then on.

  HOOF TO PROPELLER — PA

  Rural vets are totally dependent on their vehicles to do their work. Rarely do our patients come to us so our cars or utes become our offices. While many vets have preferences for a particular shape or make of vehicle they all have one thing in common. Inside, they all smell the same. It’s a combination of drugs, antiseptics, used overalls, wet boots, the odd bit of animal tissue gone bad and ruminant faeces. We get used to the smell but our families never seem to.

  We have to cover a fair bit of ground on our house calls, so we spend a lot of time sitting behind the wheel. My car is my communication centre. By cell phone or radio-telephone I keep in touch with the rest of the practice and the radio keeps me in touch with the rest of the world. It’s also my entertainment centre. Long trips are helped by having good music in the background. As I’ve said the car is my office. Materials used at the last job and mileages to the job are recorded before I head off to the next farm call. A tape recorder to note thoughts or advice for the farmer that might come to mind while driving are also part of some vets’ office equipment. Too often the front seat is also my cafeteria. One of the joys of large animal practice is actually being able to relax after a morning or afternoon’s work, having a cup of tea and bite to eat with the farmer and family. But often I am running late and it is 40 minutes’ drive to the next call, so I forgo that pleasure and eat a sandwich or apple and drink my thermo-cup of lukewarm tea on the way.

  When I was in full-time clinical practice anyone looking through the driver’s window undoubtedly thought ‘what a mess’ — notepad, day diary, record forms, prescription pad, certification pads for different contingencies scattered all over the floor and passenger seat and intermingled with an apple or two, water bottle, used thermo-cup, reading glasses, cell phone and a couple of parcels to drop off at farms on the way. In the early days my bull terrier mate Roo enjoyed snuggling among this collection of everyday requirements, things that needed to be within arm’s reach. And anyone looking into my boot would have thought ‘what a shambles’. The boot was my workbench and storeroom and I knew where everything was. It might have taken a bit of shifting of boots and bottles to get to an infrequently used piece of equipment but I always knew where to go.

  So in a funny sort of way I got quite fond of my vehicle, and when I had to abandon it and use another means of transport to get to a job, as was not infrequently the case, I felt as if I didn’t have a mate along for the ride. However, with all the different cars I have had over my 40 years of veterinary practice none have meant as much to me as the aeroplanes I have flown and used for work. Perhaps it is the sheer thrill I get out of flying but in fact it is more than that. These planes have all given me moments of excitement, fear and pain, as well as spectacular and unique scenery and wonderful peace.

  I first started flying soon after graduating and coming to work in Marlborough. At that time the Graham Veterinary Club frequently used the local Marlborough Aero Club to fly vets to various far-away jobs. Often it meant the pilot had to hang around all day while we did the work although they were in many instances very useful vet assistants. As I had always wanted to fly it seemed the logical step for me to get my pilot’s licence and then see if I could actually fly myself to the jobs. Once I did get my private licence, I could understand and appreciate why the Marlborough Aero Club was reluctant to let an inexperienced pilot take its planes into remote back-country airstrips. I really needed to get some experience with my own plane, where there were no restrictions on where I went, and in 1985 I became a quarter owner of a 90HP Piper Cub BQX. While it was a delight to fly it was very light and had the horrible tendency of wanting to fly even when I wasn’t in it. In the very slightest of breezes BQX needed thorough tethering to the ground whenever I left it to do any veterinary work. BQX was sold after a year and I next became a half-share owner in a Piper Colt EEW. While this two-seater was underpowered and had limited short take-off and landing (STOL) characteristics I gave myself more scares and thrills in it than any other. It was the machine in which I really learned to fly in the mountains. Unfortunately it all came to an end when I crashed on landing on a farm strip in Kekerengu (see ‘Flying and Work’ in Cock and Bull Stories).

  After EEW was wrecked and I had recovered from a rather nasty knock to the head I flew one of the world’s favourite back-country planes, the Piper Super Cub. BPG was owned by Lands and Survey who owned Molesworth Station, but it was kept at Omaka near Blenheim and managed by the Marlborough Aero Club. It really was a delight to fly and a very practical machine to use for veterinary work in the back country. However, it too had a sad ending when it blew over and was wrecked one night. Although I had tied the plane down well behind the super-bin on a topdressing strip on Mike and Kristen Gerard’s property in Clova Bay in the Marlborough Sounds, it blew over in some severe squally wind conditions. I had overnighted on Pohuenui Station in the outer Sounds, having gone there by boat. As we came into the jetty on returning to Clova Bay, I could see wheels rather than wings outlined against the super-bin. Not a pretty sight and as she was the favourite plane of all pilots I was definitely not Popular Pete at the aero club after that.

  For the last 20 years I have been flying an ex-topdressing plane, a Piper Pawnee CIQ I bought off a local ag pilot Ray Patchett. While it is slow and uses far too much fuel it has heaps of power, a large hopper which can carry lots of equipment as well as three jerry cans of spare fuel, and copes well with short rough farm airstrips or paddocks. Another advantage of having a hopper is that I do not get clouted in the back of the head by airborne pieces of equipment when I get into turbulence — a not infrequent eve
nt in my other planes. I find it ideal for the job and love flying it.

  Because of Marlborough’s topography, with several mountain ranges separating fertile farmed valleys, an aeroplane has been indispensable. Often I will do a full day’s work from the plane, involving several calls and far more than would be possible by driving. However, unlike the car where I have learned to carry most things for most contingencies, when flying I do have to think of everything I might need for the day and what to take out of the car and put into the hopper before taking off. On a few occasions I have forgotten important pieces of equipment, including basics such as gloves and lubricant when pregnancy testing cows, and emasculators when castrating horses. You just make do. On another occasion I didn’t take enough Tuberculin to TB test a deer herd. I really couldn’t make do then and had to fly back to town for more, an hour and a half round trip.

  So for rural practitioners our vehicles, whatever they may be, are a vital piece of equipment and absolutely essential for the job. Surprisingly, unlike some urban professionals with super-smart 4WD SUVs, which seldom get out of 2WD, no rural vet I know gets too sentimental about his vehicle.

  DON’T BITE THE HAND — PJ

  We vets have a sometimes risky job. All professions have their associated hazards, but I can’t think of many which require a university degree and also have such a high physical risk. Dealing with large animals always carries some danger and PA and I talked about some of our moments with deer, cattle and even merino rams in our first book. We understand the perils, and the boundaries that we shouldn’t cross, but sometimes have to.

  But companion animal vets can come up against it too, as I found out a few times in my career. I’m not going to talk about cats; an angry cat is a very dangerous animal, but all vets face this.