What is in a Name?

D. E. Larsen, DVM

The young mare was standing in the shade of the lean-to in the corner of the pasture. I could see that her tail was soaked from explosive diarrhea.

“Winnie looks like she is losing a lot of weight, Doc,” Denton said. “It seemed to happen all of a sudden, almost overnight. One morning she just had this diarrhea, and I gave her a dose of stuff from the feed store, but that didn’t seem to do a thing for her.”

“When was the last time you wormed her?” I asked.

“I gave her one of those syringes of paste from the feed store last fall,” Denton said. “I guess I don’t know what was in it. Do you think this is worms?” 

“That’s a possibility, but it would be unusual for it to start all of a sudden,” I said. “Let’s get a lead rope on Winnie, and I’ll look her over.”

This was a nice young mare and no problem to handle. I noted mild dehydration, and it did look like she had been losing weight. I laid my stethoscope on her abdomen. Her gut sounds were increased. In fact, they were really rumbling.

I pulled on a couple of plastic sleeves before I handled her tail that was soaked with diarrhea.

“Winnie’s gut is really rumbling, and from the looks of this tail, she must be squirting diarrhea,” I said as I inserted a thermometer into her rectum.

“Does she have a fever?” Denton asked.

“Not much of one,” I said. “It is just slightly elevated, and that is a good sign. With how that gut sounds, I almost expected to have a gut infection going on.”

I lubed my left arm and carefully inserted it into her rectum as I braced myself with my right elbow on her hip. The lining of her colon felt inflamed, so I limited my exam to not cause any bleeding. I did sweep my hand along the length of her uterus before withdrawing it. She was not pregnant.

When I pulled my arm out of Winnie’s rectum, the sleeve was covered with hundreds of small, one-half-inch-long, bright red larval worms. I had read about this but had never seen it. In fact, it was supposed to be uncommon in this country. I showed my arm to Denton.

“Wow!” Denton said. “What is that?”

“Those are larval worms,” I said. “Winnie has larval cyathostomiasis, big word, but it means these little worms and thousands like them have been residing in the lining of her intestines. For some reason, unknown to me, they make a mass emergence from under the lining of the colon. This causes a lot of inflammation and, like we see here, explosive diarrhea.”

“How do you remember a name like that?” Denton asked. 

“It was hard for me,” I said. “I don’t hear the difference in many sounds, and I never learned phonics. I just have to hear it spoken a time or two, and then I can remember it.”

“What can we do for her?” Denton asked.

“I am going to tube worm her with some stuff that should take care of the worms,” I said. “Then we have to give her some medication to reduce the inflammation in the gut. Sometimes the damage is so severe in the gut that treatment may not work.”

“How do we if it works?” Denton asked.

“She gets well,” I said. “Now, I want to be honest with you, Denton. I am talking out of a book. I have never seen this before. We are just going to have to trust the guys who write those books.”

“Stan, down at the feed store, told me that you were a straight shooter,” Denton said. “Let’s give her what she needs, and we just hope you read the book right.”

“Now, you sound like Doctor Kainer,” I said.

“Who is Doctor Kainer?” Denton asked.

“He was the freshmen nemesis in vet school,” I said. “He made sure we knew how to read, say, and spell those big words.”

I treated Winnie with a tube worming and a dose of IV dexamethasone.

“I’ll give you a call in a couple of days, Denton,” I said. “I would expect this diarrhea to clear right away. If she does get worse, call me sooner.”

***

“Denton, how is Winnie doing today?” I asked when Denton answered the phone.

“Her diarrhea was cleared up the next day, and she is feeling great,” Denton said. “Is there anything else I should be doing for her?”

“I would suggest that you worm her about every two or three months for the next year,” I said. “It does have to be a tube worming. One of the syringes of paste will be fine. I will put you on a call list to check her next year.”

***

As was often the case, I never saw Denton again for many years. Then quite by accident, I bumped into him when I stopped at the feed store one afternoon.

“Good afternoon, Denton,” I said as I extended my hand.

“Doc, I don’t know how you do it,” Denton said as he shook my hand. “I have you out one time to save my wife’s horse, and that was ten years ago. You must have seen half the town by now. How the heck do you remember my name?”

“Just a good memory, I guess,” I said.

Denton shook his head and went on his way out of the store. I never told him that I had a buddy in the Army with his name. And that made it hard to forget.

Photo by Lucas Oliveira from Pexels.

So Much Work, So Much Hope, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

It was a perfect spring afternoon when I pulled onto the Hansen place. Mrs. Hansen was watching Leah finish up a workout with Bella. Leah and Bella were quite a barrel racing dual. Just out of high school, but Leah and Bella were one of the top barrel racers in the area.

Huh”Oh, I am glad that you come on such short notice,” Elsie said. “Leah just found out that Bella needed a Coggins test to compete at a big event in Idaho.”

“It was no problem, this is just a stop on my way back to the clinic,” I said. “This is just a simple test, I just need to draw a blood sample. Besides, it is sort of fun watching them work.”

“I am so glad Leah has Bella,” Elsie said. “Things have been really tough since her father died last fall. There has not been a lot of joy in the house with just Leah and I. I don’t know what we would do without Bella.”

“Thank you, Dr. Larsen,” Leah said as she dismounted Bella. “I had already paid the entrance fee, and then I found out I needed a Coggins test. And we have to leave the middle of next week.”

“Simple test, I draw the blood, and I should be able to get it in the mail this evening,” I said. “We will have the results on Monday. Tuesday at the latest, it does go to a state lab.”

“I am so excited, if we do well at this race, I will be ranked high enough to get into some of the sanctioned events,” Leah said. “That means we could make some money and help out around here a little. Things are really tight, even with both Mom and I working.”

Bella was a good horse, and drawing a tube of blood was a snap, it only took a moment. I never saw a positive Coggins test, a test for Equine Infectious Anemia. It was one of those regulatory tests that obviously served its purpose of keeping the disease from spreading.

Leah did well in Idaho and went on to compete professionally in local rodeos. Time passed, I think I looked at Bella once more for some swelling after Leah had given her some vaccines. Then an early morning call came from a tearful Elsie.

“Dr. Larsen, can you come quickly,” Elsie cried into the phone. “Bella got her leg hung up in the fence. She was fighting with the neighbor horse through the fence. There is a terrible wound. Leah is at the barn with her.”

Horse wounds were sort of like eye wounds or porcupine quills, you could never rely on a client’s interpretation of the severity. One or two quills elicited the same response as 200.

In Bella’s case, I could see before I got out of the truck; this was a significant wound. She had torn the skin off the face of her left hock. This was probably the worse area on the horse’s leg for a laceration. There was so much movement here, and it was difficult to keep a good wrap in place, even small wounds were a challenge.

This was no small wound. There was a patch of skin that was gone, probably hanging on the fence rail somewhere. The wound was about 3 inches wide and 4 inches long. There was no skin to close. It would heal, but it was going to be a long process.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Leah asked as I approached her and Bella. She obviously could read the expression on my face.

I knelt and examined the wound without touching it. Bella was shying from my presence without me adding a touch.

“It could be worse,” I said, not sure how blunt to be with Leah right now. “It could be worse, but this is bad. This wound is going to take months to heal. There is no skin, and this is a large area. A skin graft might speed up the process a little.”

“Dr. Larsen, we can’t afford a lot. If you’re going to need to make a bunch of farm calls, we might not be able to afford even that.” Leah said. “Mom does without, just for Bella and me, there is no extra money right now.”

“If you can learn some basics of wound care, we can get this healed, it is just going to take several months. It will heal by granulation if we do nothing. We can speed the process up if we take care of wound and protect the new cells that will be migrating across the wound. I know it doesn’t mean anything right now, but you will be amazed at how well this wound will heal. Bella will be her old self, I promise.”

“She will be able to race again?” Leah asked.

“Yes, I don’t see why not,” I said. “But for right now, we need to get a wrap on this wound and get Bella in a stall. The more we can limit her movement, the quicker this will heal.”

“She will go nuts in a stall,” Leah said.

“She will adjust, it might take a few days or a week,” I said. “Now, if you are going to take care of this wound, you need to watch everything I do. It will take me about 3 visits at 3 day intervals, and then I will turn things over to you. Our goal will be to have most of this wound covered with new skin in 3 months. After that you can probably give Bella a little more freedom. I would guess you could start working her in 4 months, she should be competitive in 5 to 6 months.”

With that, I cleaned the wound and carefully shaved the wound edge. One more scrub and I applied Furacin ointment and non-adherent gauze pad to the wound and secured it with a figure 8 gauze wrap around the hock. Then a pressure wrap with roll cotton and VetWrap that went down to the hoof.

“If this holds in place, we will change it in 3 days,” I said.

“I can tell, if I have to do that wrap every 3 days, I am not even going to be able to afford the materials.” Leah said with tears welling up in her eyes.

“This is probably the only big wrap we will need,” I said. “We will work with you on this, Leah. Your father was a good client for many years with Jack. After this wrap, you will only be doing the first part where I secured the gauze pad on wound.”

“I am going to give her a tetanus booster and some long-acting antibiotics today,” I said. “We are probably not going to need to keep her on antibiotics.”

With that began a multi-month process of wound healing on Bella. Leah proved to be a good nurse. She was in the office often, and anytime I was in the area, I would make a quick stop just to check on Bella. I probably came to know Elsie and Leah better than any of the other horse clients. Bella almost became a favorite patient.

There was little a celebration the day I stopped and had Leah remove the wrap on Bella’s leg. The wound was now a narrow strip of granulation tissue on the face of the hock.

“I think you can be done with the wraps, and you can start letting Bella out of the stall for some light exercise,” I said. 

“Oh, thank you, Dr. Larsen,” Leah said with a brief hug. “I thought today would never come.”

“Now, take it slow for the first week and call if you see any change in that wound,” I said. “I will stop next week and take a peek. If it is okay, I let you start getting Bella in shape.”

Things went well from that point. The wound was completely closed ahead of schedule, and Leah and Bella were running barrels, and Elsie was running the stop-watch. Leah had her sights on a local event in the early summer.

The last time I stopped, Elsie was standing at the fence of the arena. 

“How are they doing?” I asked.

“Their times are great, even better than their times before the injury,” Elsie said. “We can’t thank you enough. They have a competition next week. Leah is so happy again. After all that work, she deserves some good times.”

The following week, I was in the clinic for Saturday calls. I had come in a little early just to make sure things were in order. I did give a brief thought about Leah and Bella finally getting back into competition today.

Then the phone rang! It was early, that meant the organization for the morning just went out the window.

“Hello, this is Dr. Larsen,” I answered the call.

“Oh, Dr. Larsen, I am so glad it is you.”

I recognized the voice of Elsie. 

“We have been in a terrible accident on the highway,” Elsie continued. “Can you come quickly? It is bad.”

After telling Elsie I was on the way, I left a note for Mary and headed out to the highway.

There were police, wreckers and a lot of people standing around when I got there.

Leah ran up to me and buried her face in my chest. “We pulled out onto the highway on our way to the event in Puyallup. We were rear-ended almost immediately by this logging truck. Mom and I are fine but the trailer is a wreck. I am afraid to look at Bella.”

They had just finished pulling the truck off the horse trailer. It to several of us to wrench the trailer’s rear door open. Bella was down, very scared, and very painful. I could not see any leg fractures, but there was some blood coming from both her rectum and her vulva.

“She is so painful, maybe we should put her sleep,” Elsie said.

“Let me just check with a quick rectal exam,” I said.

I put on an OB sleeve and lubed it well, I could feel bone fragments immediately as I pushed through the rectum. As I sweep my hand around the pelvis, it was shattered in a dozen pieces. I pulled out. 

So much work, so much hope, and now we can only bring Bella’s suffering to an end.

Leah didn’t need me to say anything. She knew from the blood on the sleeve and expression on my face. She cried on my shoulder, and Elsie stood with tears streaming down her face. The people in the crowd could have no understanding of what these girls were going through right now.

“Leah, there is nothing that can be done,” I finally said, “not with a million dollars. The only thing we can do now is to make Bella’s pain go away.”

In school, Dr. Adams talked some about how to euthanize a horse in front of a crowd. If you didn’t have immediate access to euthanasia solution, you could carry a scalpel blade in rectally and lacerate the abdominal aorta. That was not something I wanted to do here, not with those bone fragments lacerating the pelvic structures. I had euthanasia solution. I just lacked easy access to a large vein. There was no way I could get up to the front of the trailer. I would have to use the tail vein.

There must have been some nerve damage also because Bella had no reaction with I elevated her tail and stuck the needle into the tail vein. The injection went smoothly, and Bella was gone before the injection was completed. I was just sorry I had nothing to relieve the pain for Leah and Elsie.

I Are One

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Dad was drying his hands as he entered the kitchen. He had just finished the morning milking and had washed up for breakfast.

Looking over Mom’s shoulder as she stood at the stove, he asked, “What’s for breakfast? I am hungry as a horse.”

“David wanted hotcakes, but I also cooked some bacon and eggs for you,” Mom said.

Dad sat down at the table to wait for breakfast.

“Vern stopped by the barn this morning to pick up a jug of milk,” Dad said. “He said that Shorty Shull sold his place yesterday.”

“Oh, that’s great,” Mom said. “He has been trying to get it sold ever since he hurt his back last fall.”

“Yes, but the price he got is almost obscene,” Dad said. “These damn Californians keep coming up here and paying these high prices for a place, and it just drives the prices so high that a young man can’t get start anymore.”

“It will help Shorty get his back taken care of and allow them to move to town with no problem,” Mom said.

“At these prices, a place can’t pay for itself,” Dad said. “It doesn’t matter how many cows you milk. You would have to work out also. And not just to feed the family, but to pay the mortgage.”

***

This was the same conversation that I had heard my entire life. The influx of money into the local real estate was ruining the market for local folks. Of course, it was true, but it was unavoidable in a free market society.

It was also the beginning of the end for the family farm, at least in our little corner of southwestern Oregon. To some extent, farmers became little more than land speculators. All they had to do was struggle to pay the mortgage and provide a living for their families for a decade or two before cashing in on the inflationary spiral for the price of their land.

***

Years later, Sandy and I started exploring the family histories and soon became engrossed in genealogy.

“Sandy, look at this article,” I said as I placed the old newspaper article in front of her. “This is an article showing the taxpayers in Coos County in 1910 who paid more than a hundred dollars in property tax.”

“So, who is of interest to us?” Sandy asked.

I pointed to a name on the list, Joseph Davenport.

“There is my great grandfather,” I said. “I looked through this list. He paid three hundred thirty-seven dollars, which ranks him about 68 on the list. But forty of those above him are companies. This guy was well to do. We need to investigate this some more.”

***

Over the next ten years, we gleaned all the family information we could get from family members. Still, it was not until the internet became available that we really started on the road to mapping out our various family groups. Joseph Davenport proved to be interesting.

Joseph was born in England in 1835, and he came to this country with his family in 1847. He lost a brother and a newborn sister at sea on the trip. 

After settling in Wisconsin, his father traveled to California during the gold rush. He returned to Wisconsin after a year of limited success in the goldfields.

Joseph married his wife, Libbie, in Wisconsin in 1866, and he came west to Grizzly Bluff, California, in 1871. There he had a dairy farm and raised a family of five children. 

He built a creamy in Ferndale, California, when the dairy farm needed to expand its market, and shipped butter to San Francisco on lumber schooners sailing up and down the coast. I often wondered if he ever met my Larsen grandfather. The latter sailed one of those lumber schooners in the 1890s.

Sometime between 1900 and 1903, he sold out in California and moved to Coos County. My grandfather was married in Grizzly Bluff in March of 1904 and moved to Coos County with his new wife.

***

“Look at this, Sandy,” I said as we scoured documents on the computer screen. “They bought four ranches, two on Catching Creek, one on Fat Elk out of Coquille and one below Cedar Point just out of Coquille. He also built a creamy and ice plant in Coquille.”

“They must have had a bundle of cash when they came to town,” Sandy said.

“Their house in Coquille is one of those classic old houses,” I said. “Very large and elaborate for being built in the early 1900s.”

“We will never know what people thought of them when they came to town,” Sandy said. “I wonder if people complained about the Californians in those days?”

“It is just like Mike Enright said, the most ardent environmentalist is the guy who has just built a new house on Big Sur,” I said. “I have heard nothing but complaints about the prices the Californians pay for property in Oregon.”

“Maybe those people didn’t know the family history,” Sandy said.

“It is just a little upsetting,” I said. “After I heard all those complaints about transplanted Californians, for all those years, and repeating them myself at times, and now I find out that I are one.”

Photo of Davenport House in Coquille, OR by D. E. Larsen.