Early Days in Sweet Home

D. E. Larsen, DVM

My first learning experience after arriving in Sweet Home was how the schedule worked in the construction industry. The clinic was initially scheduled for completion in August of 1976. It was late August before it got started.

After leaving Enumclaw in July, I had six mouths to feed, if I included mine. It was evident that I would have to generate some income while I waited for the clinic to be completed.

The telephone started ringing even before my equipment and supplies arrived. Word of my presence in the small community spread fast. There had never been a veterinarian in Sweet Home before, and getting services from Lebanon or Albany was difficult.

As soon as I had some basic equipment, I started doing farm calls out of the back of our car. It was no time before a house call service for dogs and cats was in demand.

And that is when my second learning experience occurred. This learning experience was of a professional nature. I was the first veterinarian to practice in Sweet Home, and before my arrival, veterinary services were not convenient. One consequence of that was the poor vaccination status of the pet population.

Kirby was a walking ball of fluff. A twelve-week-old Shih Tau, he was Emma’s pride and joy. Emma had called for me to stop by to look at Kirby. He was doing okay, but he had a slight cough.

Emma was outside with Kirby when I pulled into her driveway. Kirby was playing on the lawn and did not seem bothered by a slight cough that would stop him momentarily.

“How long has Kirby been coughing?” I asked.

“I noticed it last night,” Emma said. “It wasn’t bad, but today it has been getting worse this afternoon.”

I did an exam on Kirby. His temperature was just slightly elevated, and his lung sounds were normal. I could induce a cough with the slightest pressure on his trachea.

“Is he eating?” I asked.

“Yes, you wouldn’t know anything was wrong with him except for the cough,” Emma said. “I felt a little odd calling you for what looks like such a minor thing.”

“When was his last vaccination?” I asked.

“He hasn’t had any vaccinations, Doctor Larsen,” Emma said. “We have never vaccinated our dogs before.”

“You should be vaccinating him pretty soon,” I said. “Canine distemper is rare, but they say it sneaks up on you.”

“What do you mean by rare, Doctor?” Emma asked.

“I have never seen a dog with distemper,” I said. “I don’t think I have ever talked with another veterinarian who has seen the disease. Of course, counting school, I have only been in this profession for six years. But, I would count that as rare.”

“But this is just a little cough, Doctor Larsen,” Emma said. 

“Distemper is a pan-tropic virus,” I said. “That means it attacks most of the systems in the body. It comes in stages, usually separated by days or weeks. The first stage is sometimes just a cough. Then, the second stage might be pneumonia or diarrhea and vomiting. The final stage is usually neurological, where the pup will seize, sometimes uncontrollably. Many pups this age will not survive the second or third stage. Dogs that survive the disease will usually have lasting neurological signs. That might be a twitch or seizures like epilepsy. It is not a good disease.”

“Maybe we should vaccinate Kirby now,” Emma said.

“That’s a thought, but I would rather put him on antibiotics for a few days first and see if we can get this cough under control,” I said. “And Emma, if this were to be distemper, vaccinating him now would not help with the course of the disease.”

So, I dispensed antibiotics and a cough suppressant for Kirby and sent him home with instructions to recheck him the first of the week. And like I would also learn, those recheck appointments are often not kept.

It was over two weeks later when Emma called. She was frantic on the phone.

“Kirby has been having seizures all morning, Doctor,” Emma cried into the phone. “What am I going to do. My husband wouldn’t let me have you come back to recheck him because of the expense. What should I do now.”

“It sounds like he may have canine distemper,” I said. “I could look at him and see if we can get the seizures under control. At his age, if this is distemper, his odds are not good. And Emma, if this is distemper, my recheck would not have changed things one bit.”

“I have you back,” Emma said. “Can I pick up some medication?”

I called Karl at Groves Drug Store and prescribed some phenobarbital for Kirby’s seizures. But I had little hope that it would be helpful under the circumstances.

Emma called the next day with news of Kirby passing. I was unsure from the conversation if Kirby died or if her husband put him out of his misery. Either way, it was a sad outcome for my first case of canine distemper.

Kirby was the first case in Sweet Home, but he was far from the last. I saw more cases of distemper than probably any veterinarian in the state.

It changed the way we conducted practice in Sweet Home. In my clinic, vaccinations were not elective. No elective procedures were performed in the clinic without the dog being current on vaccines. If they were not current, we would vaccinate them and wait for two weeks before admitting them to the clinic for their procedure.

We were the only local veterinarian with that requirement. Did it lose us a few clients? I am sure that it did. But I could sleep easy at night, knowing that it was the right thing to do.

The lack of convenient access to veterinary care played a significant role in Sweet Home’s canine distemper epidemic. However, a couple of years later, we were able to identify the source of many of the cases of distemper. The City run dog pound, was sending out unvaccinated dogs into the community, and many of those dogs would come down with distemper. 

With the help of the humane society, we got the City to clean up its facilities and change its policies. After five or six years of work, distemper in Sweet Home became the rare disease it should have been all along.

Photo Credit: Edytta Stawiar on Pexels