The Budget Book

 D. E. Larsen, DVM

Some life lessons are quickly learned, others not so much. And then, some lessons come by surprise and are entirely unexpected.

When I started veterinary school, I still had a couple of years left on the GI Bill and several thousand dollars still in the bank from my Army savings. I figured that we could manage the first two years of vet school if we budgeted ourselves carefully and if I could work when I had the time.

When we moved to Fort Collins, Aggie Village, the school’s married student housing complex, was full. We had to rent another apartment for the fall quarter. Not just an apartment, but some basic furniture also. We had sold all our furniture before moving to Colorado and moved with just a U-Haul trailer.

Married student housing provides furnished apartments for a very reasonable rent. Our fall apartment cost a little more, plus we had the added rent expense for the furniture. We were dipping into the savings sooner than we expected.

A budget book caught my eye on one of our first trips to K-Mart to pick up a few household items.

“This is just what we need,” I said as I thumbed through the book.

Sandy glanced at it around my shoulder but did not respond. I tossed the thin book into the shopping cart.

As soon as we got back to the apartment, I grabbed the budget book and the checkbook and started filling in the accounts and distributing our meager resources into the various accounts.

“You can’t fill that out accurately this fall,” Sandy said with a slight frown on her face. “Our living expenses will be a lot higher than when we move into Aggie Village.”

“I will fill in the rental expenses as if we were in Aggie Village,” I said. “The extra money for this fall will just have to come out of the savings account.”

Sandy just left me at the table with the budget book and got Brenda ready for bed. She didn’t seem too enthused about my new budget book.

“We really don’t know what groceries will cost us around here,” Sandy said as she came back to the table. “It will take me a couple of months to find the best stores and the best deals.”

“This is just a starting point,” I said. “It will give us an idea when expenses are coming and make sure we don’t make any extravagant purchases. I have my tuition and books expenses listed, and this fall, I think my final check from the cable company will cover that expense. If I can work over Christmas and spring break, I should be able to come close to covering the tuition expenses.”

Sandy made an audible sigh and headed to the kitchen.

I worked late, making sure I had everything entered. I have registration tomorrow, and then classes start the next day. I might not have time for this later.

Sandy finally came back to the table.

“You better get ready for bed,” she said. “You might have a busy day tomorrow.”

“My guess is there will not be much to the registration process,” I said. “There is no selection of classes this fall. We will all be in one big group.”

But we went to bed with a little nudge on Sandy’s part.

***

I was up and out the door early in the morning. Registration was in the old gymnasium, and it looked like a zoo when I entered. When I finally found the veterinary school table, they handed me a packet, I gave them a check, and that was that. Everything was preordained.

“That was easy,” I said to Tom, a fellow freshman I would soon learn was also from Oregon. “I will probably be home before Sandy is dressed.”

Sandy was a little surprised when I came home so soon.

“That must not have taken very long,” she said.

“I just showed my school ID. They handed me a packet, and I handed them their check,” I said. “Pretty simple. After lunch, we can go to the bookstore in the vet school and pick up my books. Then we have the rest of the afternoon off. Maybe we should eat dinner in the park.”

“That sounds fun,” Sandy said. “I talked to the neighbor lady in the apartment above us, and she said we should enjoy this fall weather, and she said you never know when winter will come.”

“Where did you put that budget book?” I asked. “I have a little time, and I can finish it before lunch.”

“I put it over in my stuff,” Sandy said.

That was a simple statement. Said with little emotion but with a hint of finality. That marked the end of my writing in her book.

In the weeks, months, and years that followed, Sandy kept meticulous records of where every dollar went. But there was never any planning on how much we would spend on anything. 

We did avoid any purchases that were out of our financial reach. When we moved into Aggie Village, there was a hookup for a washing machine in the apartment, and that was our first purchase. That way, we only had to use the community dryers. 

Next, we purchased small colored TV made by Motorola. I think the screen was like 17 inches. It was fine except for the high voltage power supply tube. My Army electronic maintenance skills bailed us out there. It was a straightforward diagnosis and fix. I was horrified when I first opened the back panel. Having worked on some of the most sophisticated equipment in the world, I was not prepared for the consumer electronics of a cheap TV.

We had room in the apartment for an upright freezer, and once that was installed, my folks shipped us some beef to help fill it. 

Then we started planning to purchase a small calculator. This was new technology. These small handheld little four-function calculators were expensive at the time. Their cost was out of our reach, and we could not justify spending nearly a quarter’s tuition bill for a little calculator.

Then, on Sunday morning, Sandy handed me the newspaper as I finished breakfast.

“Look at this deal,” she said.

There was a special price on a calculator. It was made by a subsidiary of Texas Instruments and was on sale for sixty-seven dollars. This was the first time these new small calculators were offered for less than a hundred dollars.

“Can we afford that?” I asked the gal with the budget book.

“I have been setting a little aside every month,” Sandy said. “I have most of the money. This is the cheapest we have seen, and I think we should get it.”

“That is still a lot of money,” I said.

“I just can’t keep up with all this bookkeeping doing all the addition and subtraction on paper,” Sandy said.

So we went to the store and made the purchase. It was great, handheld. Just hit a few buttons, and it would add a string of numbers with no problem. Sandy was pleased.

We had this calculator for nearly two weeks when Sandy opened the newspaper to the K-Mart ad.

“Oh! Now that makes me mad,” She said as she almost threw the paper at me.

There, right in the middle of the full-page ad, was a handheld, four-function calculator on sale for nine dollars and ninety-seven cents. We had just been fleeced for some fifty-seven dollars.

We, or I, learned several lessons. One, Sandy was the one that was going to keep track of our money, period. And two, stores tend to dump products with a sale when they know a competitor is about to undercut their pricing. So don’t be so quick to jump at a deal.

Hunting Dogs for Sale, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Cascadia is a small community located up the river from Sweet Home. It is currently little more than a wide spot in the road; however, there is a state park and a small church there. And there is a small collection of houses and small farms scattered across the open spots in the forest. In our early years, when there was still a lot of logging activity in the National Forest, Cascadia was a thriving little community with an elementary school, a store, a church, a post office, and the state park. 

Cascadia was also a center for the illegal marijuana trade in the area and probably the state. The County Sheriff Deputies were reluctant to leave the main roads. Except for Mountain House, there was nothing much except mountains and timber east of Cascadia until you came to Sisters, some 70 miles over the Cascade Mountains. 

I had several clients from Cascadia who habitually carried overdue accounts for most of the year. They would come in, usually in October, with a large roll of $100.00 bills, peel off the required amount and thank us for being understanding for their late payment. Occasionally, especially when they had a big harvest, they would pay an extra couple of hundred dollars toward the coming dry period. 

That was the background when Doug came in with a sick puppy. This was during the early days of the Parvo Virus epidemic that was sweeping the state and the country. Parvo is a devastating disease for young puppies, and this was at a time before we had a vaccine for the disease. Mortality rates were high, and treatments were not yet standardized, and they were expensive for the standards of the day. 

Doug was a middle-aged guy with rugged features. Short in stature and he walked a little bent over. He had worked in the woods in his early years, but back injuries had put him on disability. His hair on top was thinning, but his handshake remained firm. I am sure he had some other income because he was one of the annual accounts. 

This scrawny pup was approaching twenty pounds, had short grey hair, and he was sick enough that he wanted to lay down during the exam. Joey was in the clinic record as a mixed breed. He probably had some pit bull in him, but that was just a guess. 

“He has been vomiting for a couple of days, and this morning we noticed some bloody diarrhea,” Doug said as I was starting to examine the pup. 

I lifted the skin on the back of his neck, probably over 10% dehydrated, pale membranes and quite depressed. The rectal temperature was depressed, 99.0°, and there was blood dripping off the thermometer. I had not seen too many cases of Parvo Virus in Sweet Home, but this was the likely diagnosis. We had no rapid means of making that diagnosis at the time. 

“Doug, this pup has Parvo. Parvovirus is a new disease going around, and it kills a lot of pups. Very contagious, we will need to keep this guy in isolation. Treatment can be expensive, and I can’t carry that kind of an expense on your account until next fall.” 

“Doc I never heard of Parvo. Are you sure?” 

“We can get a diagnosis by sending some samples to the diagnostic lab, but this pup is going to be cured or dead by the time we get results. If we do some blood work, we can almost confirm the diagnosis, and if the white blood cell numbers are too low, that will tell us that his chances of recovery are not good. Right now, we see as many as 90% of dogs die. I think my rates of recovery are higher than that, but the numbers that I have seen are few.” 

“My problem is bigger than just this pup,” Doug confessed, hanging his head a little to avoid eye contact. “I have 13 pups at home, and this morning, about half of them are vomiting. I was hoping you could give me something for all of them.” 

“Thirteen pups, are they all from the same litter?” 

“No, they are from a couple of litters. But they are all about the same age and size. These are valuable pups, Doc. I know they don’t look like much.” 

I looked at the pup, valuable indeed, I thought. I was going to have trouble getting paid for this pup, let alone for 13 puppies. Doug’s wife and daughter could maybe give injections and subcutaneous fluids, with a little luck that might be all they would need. If we saved half of them, we would be doing good. 

“So Doc, do you think you could bring a bunch of medicine up to the house and show me what to do. Then I could treat them at home. That would save me a bunch of money, and we might get lucky. I can’t afford to pay a big fee right now, but I could afford a house call and the medicine.” 

“You have to understand, you could lose the whole bunch with that plan,” I explained. “I can bring some fluids and some injectable antibiotics up to your place and show you how to use it. But if we save half these pups, we are going to be doing good. 

“Yes, I understand the risk, but that is just the way it is going to have to be right now. When I sell a couple of these, I will have plenty of money to pay for the medication and the visit.” 

There was the key, “When I sell a couple,” this was going to be a credit, and he is planning to sell a couple of $50.00 pups to pay the bill. 

“Doug, we could also lose the whole bunch. I am going to have to have some money to cover the drug cost, at least.” 

“I have $100.00 tucked away still from the fall harvest I could give you. Would that help?” 

“Okay, I will do a quick blood count and a fecal exam. We want to make sure this isn’t a bad case of Salmon Poisoning. You could have had someone throw a fish into your yard if they were tired of listening to the pups. You go ahead and take this pup home, and I will be up there right after lunch. You might refresh directions with Sandy on your way out the door.” 

The fecal exam was negative for Salmon Disease, only a few roundworms. Doug probably wormed these pups with chewing tobacco, a common remedy around here. The white blood count was 2400, a low number but pretty good for a pup with Parvo Virus. We might have a chance with this plan. 

After a quick hamburger ordered from the Dairy Queen, I loaded the truck with 3 cases of fluids, Ringers Lactate, three dozen IV administration sets, half a box of 16 gauge, 11⁄2 inch needles and a box of 3cc, 22 gauge syringes. I mixed a 100 ml bottle of Polyflex (injectable ampicillin) and grabbed a bottle of gentamicin. 

The drive up the river will be a pleasant one. There is seldom much traffic other than a couple of logging trucks, and the river should be running clear and full for early June. It is only 19 miles to Doug’s place, but it will take well over a half an hour. 

The bushy regrowth on a couple of maple stumps mostly obscured the turnoff to Doug’s house. Several houses shared the long gravel driveway. These houses were all the same. Small, unkept yards and untrimmed hedges made finding numbers difficult. Numerous Marijuana plants were evident in the ditch along the driveway. Unattended but they grew well in our moist climate. It reminded me of the “plant a pot seed” drive conducted by the hippie crowd when I was in vet school in Colorado. They had pot plants growing all over town, drove the sheriff and police nuts. 

Doug’s was a small house, probably built in the 1930s and added onto several times. The yard was overgrown, and a large clump of marijuana plants grew in the corner of the yard. Pups were everywhere in the yard. This yard was going to be the local infection source for Parvo Virus for the next couple of years. 

Doug and his daughter, Debbie, were at the gate to greet me. Debbie was older than I had expected. She looked in her early thirties, dishwater blond, slender, with an attractive figure. We unloaded everything, and we grabbed a pup to demonstrate how I wanted them to treat them. 

“How do we know which ones to treat?” Doug asked. 

“I think it would be a good idea to treat them all. I will do a quick exam on each pup. But any pup not sick today, will be sick tomorrow.” 

I showed Doug’s daughter how to give the injections and how to administer the fluids. 

“Give each pup about 500 cc fluids under their skin on their back, between the shoulder blades is easiest. It will make a big lump, but that will go down quickly as the fluid is absorbed. You may notice some swelling around their elbows but don’t worry about that.” 

She took the instruction in stride and already and chart to keep track of what she would give each pup. 

“You give me a call every morning at about 10:00. I should be done with surgeries by then and will time to talk with you. We could lose some of these guys. We are going to need to get lucky,” I said as was getting ready to leave. 

Doug came out and handed me $100.00. “This is all I have right now, but all I need to do is sell a couple of these pups, and I can make things right with you, Doc.” 

You might need to sell more than a couple of $50.00 pups, I thought to myself. “Give me a call in the morning so we can keep track of how we are doing. And Doug, hold your mouth just right when you sleep, we are going to need all the luck we can muster.” 

The first morning the call came right at 10:00. The pups were still alive, but all of them were vomiting. Debbie had treated them all with no problems. The next morning everything was going fine, and Debbie thought most of the pups were feeling better. By the third day, it was looking like we were out of the woods with only one pup still not feeling well. It looked like we were going to get through this smelling like roses. This could be something other than Parvo.

Now all I needed was for Doug to pay the bill. 

It was a month later when Doug came into the clinic. He had a broad smile on his face as he pulled a roll of bills from his pocket. “You did great Doc. Those pups all came through that Parvo without a problem. I have already sold five of them.” 

“That’s good, we got lucky. We have a new vaccine coming out, you just have to remember to vaccinate your dogs and all the pups next time. That virus stays in the ground for over a year.” 

“I have enough to pay the bill, and I can pick vaccine for all the dogs. It has been a while since I wormed them, except for a tobacco chew, so I better pick up some worm pills also.” 

“Are you sure you have enough for the bill and all of the other stuff. You only sold five pups.” 

“These are valuable pups, Doc. I sell them as hunting dogs.” 

“Hunting dogs! What do mean by that, Doug?” 

“I train them up in the mountains, and I sell them all over the country. I don’t have any problems selling them. If I do, I just lower the price to $500.00, and they are gone almost overnight.” 

$500.00 was unheard of for dogs at the time, even the best purebred dog in Sweet Home would not sell for $500.00. 

“Doug, that is unreal, what is your initial asking price?” 

“I sell most of them for $750.00, plus whatever I need to add on to cover the shipping cost. I sell these pups all over the country. I just run a couple of little magazine ads.” 

“What kind of training do you give them? I mean, what can they hunt that makes them that valuable? Guys that run purebred hounds don’t get that kind of money for their pups.” 

“We train them up in the mountains. There is a lot of stuff that goes on in those woods that people never see unless they spend a lot of time out there.” 

“What are you talking about?” I ask, somewhat afraid of the answer. 

“Doc, where else can you buy a hunting dog that has actually been trained to track Sasquatch?” 

Photo by furkanvari from Pexels.

Stuck in the Barn

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Looking over the field carefully, I could see the guard dog with sheep in the far corner. He had stood up when I pulled into the driveway, and he was watching me now. He was a large Great Pyrenees and a large one at that. He towered over the sheep who were grazing around him.

Jim had called earlier, asking me to check a ewe in the barn which had lambed last night.

“I just don’t like how she is acting this morning,” Jim said. “I don’t have time this morning to check her. I have a meeting this morning that I can’t miss. I should be home by early afternoon.”

“Is she straining any?” I asked. “I guess she might have another lamb.”

“I don’t know,” Jim said. “She is the only ewe in the barn, so you shouldn’t have any problem finding her. My one concern is you might have a problem with our guard dog. He is pretty protective of his flock. But the barn is closed up. I don’t think he can get in there. Just remember to close the door behind you when you go inside.”

“Do you think he would bite?” I asked.

“He is extremely protective of his sheep,” Jim said. “He hasn’t bit anybody, but I would use some caution. I wouldn’t trust him if I’m not around.”

I poured a bucket of warm water and gathered my stuff. I glanced at the dog. He had changed his position and taken a few steps toward the barn. He started toward the barn at a trot when I went through the gate. I hurried through the door and latched it closed after I was inside.

The ewe was penned with her lamb in a small pen fashioned from four panels that were lashed together with baling wire. The ewe looked like she was still discharging some fluid but was not straining at the moment, and the lamb was doing well but working on her udder.

I grabbed a rope sheep halter hanging on a nearby hook and climbed into the pen with the ewe. 

Sheep always seem easy to work on, but it is a mistake to think of them as small cows. Sheep are born looking for a place to die, and if one is looking like she isn’t feeling well, she needs to be treated aggressively.

With a bit of struggle, I finally got the ewe haltered and tied to a corner of the pen. I leaned over the panel and grabbed my bucket and my bag. As I leaned over, I could hear a low growl. The guard dog was eyeing me through the crack in the barn’s side door.

My first chore was to take care of the ewe. Then I was going to have to figure out how I would escape from the barn.

When I took the ewe’s temperature, it was actually a little low. I cleaned up her rear end and did a vaginal exam. Her cervix was starting to close, and there was no apparent content in the uterus. I inserted a nitrofurazone bolus into the uterus just to be safe.

Then I palpated her udder. The right side was soft, and the lamb had drained its milk. The left side was hard and cool to the touch, and the teat was slightly purple. I stripped a little bloody fluid from the teat. 

The ewe had acute mastitis, and she could lose the left side of her udder. Plus, this could be a life-threatening infection.

The teat was still viable. Otherwise, I would amputate it to provide some drainage. I instilled a couple of mastitis tubes into the infected side of the udder and loaded the ewe up with antibiotics. I would make a point to stop by tomorrow and recheck her. Hopefully, Jim would be home then, and I would not have to deal with the dog.

Now, how was I going to get back to the truck without having a dog attached to my rear end?

I packed everything up and set it by the front door. I went to the side door and rattled it. A loud growl said the dog was still there. 

I looked around the barn. A typical sheep barn with a maze of little pens. It looked like I could let the dog in the back door, run to the front door, and make my exit before the dog could get through the maze of pens and panels.

I went to the back door and rattled it. It only took the dog a moment to be there. Leaning over a pen, I slid the door open just enough for the dog to get his head through the opening. He looked at me and growled. These dogs seldom barked.

I headed for the front door, and the dog struggled to get through the back door. He finally pushed through the door just as I reached the front door. He was confused for a moment, not knowing if he wanted to go out the door and around the barn or work through the pens to get me. I waited for him to make a decision.

When he jumped over the first row of panels, I exited the front door in a hurry. I was loading things into my truck when the dog tore back around the barn and ran up to the gate. I knew he wouldn’t leave his pasture, but he growled enough to tell me that I was not going to get back through the gate.

When I got back to the office, I called and left a message on Jim’s answering machine that I would check back in the morning and that the ewe had severe mastitis. I also suggested that he should supplement the lamb for a few days.

***

The guard dog came running as soon as he saw my truck. I was lucky that Jim was waiting at the open barn door.

“She is feeling a lot better this morning,” Jim said as I stepped out of the truck. “She is eating and paying attention to the lamb. And you were right about the lamb. That little guy drained a bottle last night in record time.”

“Well, it must mean that I used the right antibiotic,” I said. “Let me grab a couple of things, and I will be right there. That dog doesn’t particularly care for me.”

“Yes, he is pretty protective of his sheep,” Jim said. “But he is fine when I am here.”

Jim pointed back to the flock in the middle of the pasture and told the dog to “go home.” The dog hesitated a bit but turned and headed back to his flock.

The ewe was definitely feeling better. The discoloration on the left teat was gone, and the side of the udder was soft and warm on palpation. I stripped as much milk out of the left side as I could, and it actually almost looked like milk.

“I’m a little surprised, Jim,” I said. “Had you been here yesterday, I would have told you that I thought she would lose this half of her udder. Now it looks like it will heal up fine.”

I squeezed a couple of mastitis tubes into the left teat and repeated the antibiotics I gave yesterday.

“I will fix you up with some injections to give her for a few days,” I said. “And I want you to infuse one of these mastitis tubes into her left teat once a day. You should  strip as much milk as you can out of that side of her udder before infusing the tube.”

“What about the lamb?” Jim asked. “Can I let him go ahead and nurse on her?”

“I think he will be fine left with her,” I said. “As long as you strip out the left side of her udder once a day and supplement the lamb with a bottle morning and night, he won’t bother that left side much until it gets back to giving good milk. I’ll give you a call in a few days. I would expect her to be pretty much back to normal by then. She will probably lose some milk production in that left side. That is typical in cows with mastitis and probably true in sheep. Just keep track of the weight of her lamb at weaning to see if she is keeping pace with the flock.”

***

When I called three days later, the ewe was doing well.

“When I stripped out her left side this morning, it looked as normal as the milk on the right side,” Jim said. “I would like to turn her out with the others if you think that is okay?”

“Yes, I think that is fine,” I said. “Just remember to keep track of her lamb and make sure he grows like the others.”

Photo by Tychon Krug on Pexels.