There is Gold in Them Hills, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

It was 11:10, and Bob should be coming through the door any minute. He was sort of the highlight of our morning in the office. Bob had been our Postman ever since the office opened. He was older, probably getting close to retirement, but he was a joy to talk with.

I think he must have us as a scheduled break on his route. He always seemed to have several minutes to talk. Bob was a Sweet Home native or as close as one could be to a native. He knew everyone in town. If we wanted to know about someone, Bob could give a pretty good synopsis. 

Bob could talk gold. He knew where to look in every stream, and he shares that information only to a trusted few. I liked to think I was one of those entrusted few. Bob had lost a son who was my age, a Lieutenant in the Army. In those years of the Vietnam War, Bob was probably preparing himself for his son serving in the war. Instead, he was driving home from the East Coast, and died in an auto accident.

The reality of the thing was he knew I was too busy to chase any of his stories.

We bumped into Bob one afternoon when he was panning gold with a friend. Bob took the time to give the kids and me a lesson on how to work the pan. We came up with a lot of black sand but no color. Bob truly enjoyed teaching his hobby to the kids, including myself. Hobby was probably the wrong word. I think gold was Bob’s true vocation. His postal job and any other work in his life only allowed him to pursue his real life’s work.

Bob told me a story one day about one of his trips to the California goldfields. He and a group of friends would make an annual trip to the areas out of Sacramento, California to pan for gold. This was a working trip for this group of guys. They would rework some of the same streams that were the site of the 1849 gold rush.  

Bob said that on one of these trips, they had a new guy along. He was always underfoot and trying to learn every little thing he could from these old guys. Bob finally tired of putting up with this guy. Bob pointed to a distant sandbar up the creek.

“Why don’t you go up there and work that sandbar,” Bob said.

The guy took his shovel and pan and headed up to the sandbar that Bob had pointed out. Bob and the rest of the crew continued to work with the dredge where they had been all morning.

“That was the biggest damn mistake that I ever made,” Bob said to me. “Just before quitting time that afternoon, this guy comes down the creek with a gold nugget the size of the end of your finger. I was so mad at myself after that, I almost couldn’t eat dinner.”

One August afternoon, we had a new client, Rob, came in with his dog, Yoda, a pit bull cross. Yoda had a pretty severe laceration on his large pad on his right front foot. Yoda was camping with his owner way up the Calapoolia River at the mouth of State Creek.

“Yoda spends most of the day in the river with me,” Rob said. “If he is not in the river, he is chasing a squirrel somewhere up the creek. I don’t know when this happened, I noticed him licking his foot last night, and then this morning he was limping on that foot quite a bit.”

Yoda was an excellent dog, and he didn’t flinch while I examined his foot. This was a deep laceration that extended halfway across the carpal pad, front to back. It was deep also. This was going to be challenging to get healed. Especially in a dog who was used to spending a lot of the day in the river.

“Pad lacerations are difficult to manage, in the best of circumstances,” I said to Rob. “In a dog who is spending a lot of his time in the river, it might be impossible.”

“I can keep him out of the water for a couple of weeks,” Rob said. “I am not on any schedule, I am just spending the summer up there panning for gold.”

“I suture most of these,” I said. “By suturing them and keeping them wrapped for a couple of weeks, most of them will heal. If we can’t keep a dry wrap on the foot, there is little chance that the sutures will hold.”

“When can you do this?” Rob asked. “Keep in mind, I am a long way from camp.”

“I can probably do it shortly,” I said. “But it is going to take a little time from Yoda to wake up.”

“This dog is the toughest dog I have ever owned,” Rob said. “You could probably sew this up with giving him anything. Is there any chance you could do it with local anesthesia?”

“We can try,” I said. “Yoda will let us know if that is an option or not.”

We moved Yoda into the surgery room. Laid him down on his side. He did not react as we started scrubbing the wound. Rob stood on the opposite side of the table from me and scratched Yoda’s ears. 

I drew up a syringe of Lidocaine and looked at Rob.

“We are going to find out right now, this stuff stings a little, I hate it myself,” I said.

Avoiding the laceration, I slid the needle through the skin at the front edge of the pad. Injecting a little at a time as I advanced the needle under the pad. I injected half the syringe here and then repeated the process from the back edge of the pad.

After a few minutes, I parted the edges of the laceration. There was no response from Yoda. Spreading the wound wide, I scraped the deep crevice of the wound. I applied some Neosporin to the in the wound and wiped it out with a sterile sponge. Then I draped the wound.

Taking a deep breath, I stabbed the pad with a suture needle. There was no response from Yoda. I glanced and Rob and smiled as I continued to close the wound. In this type of deep pad lacerations, I would use a deep vertical mattress suture using stints, made from IV tubing, on each side to spread the tension across the wound edges so the stitches would not tear the tissues.

Closure only took a few minutes. And then I applied a wrap that extended halfway up the leg. 

“The key to healing this wound is the wrap,” I said. “If it gets wet, it needs to be changed. Otherwise, we will change it every 3rd day. Is that a schedule that will work for you?”

“I can work with that schedule,” Rob said as he let Yoda stand up on the table.

“I will put him on some antibiotics just to make sure we keep the infection down as much as possible,” I said.

With that, Rob and Yoda headed back to camp. We started on their schedule of regular visits. Rob did a great job of keeping the wrap dry, and the wound looked better with each wrap change. After two weeks, we had a decision to make.

“We could go without the wrap starting now,” I said. “This wound looks good, but I really would like to go one more week.”

“The squirrels are going to love you, Doc,” Rob said.

The following week we removed the wrap and the sutures. This wound healed as well as any pad laceration that I had managed. I patted Yoda on the head when I set him down on the floor. 

“It has been fun working with Yoda,” I said as I shook hands with Rob. “It has been good working for you too. How long are you going to be around these parts?”

“I will probably break camp in a couple of weeks,” Rob said. “You never know about a guy like me, I might back next year, or I might be in Colorado.”

As the days passed, Rob and Yoda sort of slipped to the back of my mind. I was a little surprised when Rob was in the reception room one afternoon. He motioned to me, indicating he had something to show me. I invited him back into the exam area, and he looked at an empty exam room and stepped into it.

“I have to show this, Doc,” Rob said. “I saw this under a large boulder, and it took me three days to get to it.”

Rob had something wrapped in a square of rawhide in his left hand. He held his hand out as he peeled back the folds of rawhide. There, in the palm of his left hand, was the largest gold nugget that I had ever seen. I didn’t have words.

“Wow!” I said.

“This is what keeps us guys with gold fever going,” Rob said.

It was a few days later when I had time to meet Bob when he came through the door with the mail.

“Bob, I have a story to tell you,” I said.

“Will now, that is a switch,” Bob said, “you telling a story.”

“Bob, I just spent a few weeks working on a dog for a guy who was camped up the Calapoolia River at the mouth of State Creek,” I started.

“I know the area,” Bob said.

“He came into the clinic the other day with a nugget wrapped in a piece of rawhide,” I said. “This nugget covered the palm of his hand and was over an inch thick.” 

I motioned on my hand the size of the nugget. Bob grabbed my forearm, his eyes wide open, and his pupils expanded as wide as possible. 

“No!” Bob said, “I have been all over that river and that area. There is gold there, quite a bit of the stuff. But it is all small, tiny stuff really. I have never seen a nugget come out of the Calapoolia.”

“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “That was the biggest nugget I have ever seen.”

“That is a $20,000 nugget, maybe $30,000,” Bob said. “But, I can’t believe it came out of the Calapoolia.”

“I guess, when I think about it, he never specifically said it came out of the Calapoolia, I just assumed it,” I said. “He has been camped up there most of the summer.”

“Now you have done it,” Bob said. “I am not going to be able to sleep until I can get up there and start looking through the place myself.”

Photo by Csaba Nagy from Pixabay

New Job, New Equipment

New Job, New Equipment 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I stood at the corral fence and pondered my dilemma. I had just tried to uncoil my new lariat, and it was so stiff it was all but unusable.

“Doc, it looks like you need to drag that behind your truck for a couple laps around the pasture,” Jim said. “That will take that newness out of it and make it so you can throw a loop with it. You’re lucky today. This old girl is so tame you can just walk up to her and drop a loop over her head.”

Jim was right on both counts. The lariat needed some work, and the cow was a real pet. She nuzzled my arm as I fashioned a halter with the rope and tied her to a post.

“How long has she been in labor?” I asked.

“I found her almost three hours ago,” Jim said. “I had Dean come over and check her. He said her head was turned back. He tried to fix it, but he couldn’t get it. He is the one who said to call you. Otherwise, he said I would be waiting all day to get somebody out of Albany.”

 I tied her tail to a twine that I tied around her neck to keep her tail out of the way. After scrubbing her vulva, I ran my left arm into her birth canal.

The head was turned back to the calf’s right side. That always seemed to be the direction that a retained head took. I don’t know why, or even if that was a valid observation. There was not enough room for me to reach the head.

“Are you going to be able to get it?” Jim asked.

“Yes, I think so,” I said. “I am going to have to turn one leg back, so I have more room in the birth canal, but I should be able to reach the head then.”

I attached an OB strap to the right front leg of the calf and pushed it back and down out of the birth canal. With the extra room now, I pushed my left into the birth canal up to my shoulder. I grasped the calf’s head by its eye sockets and pulled it forward.

Then I cupped the calf’s muzzle and popped the head into the birth canal. As I pulled my arm out of the cow, I paused and stuck my finger into the calf’s mouth. The calf sucked on the finger. It was still alive. With a bit of traction on the OB strap, I quickly pulled the right front leg of the calf back to a delivery position.

“This is going to be a tight fit, Jim,” I said. “This is a big calf for this cow. That is probably why the head got turned back.”

“I’m still pretty stout. The two of us should be able to pull it out,” Jim said.

“The problem, Jim, is that once we start, that calf has to come quick,” I said. “When the calf is this large, there will be some significant compression on its chest. This calf has been being pushed on for several hours. If the chest compression lasts for any period of time, the calf will die.”

“So, what’s the plan, Doc?” Jim asked.

“I’ll grab my calf puller, and I will be able to pop this calf out in a short minute.”

I attached an OB strap to both front legs and then washed my arms before going to the truck to retrieve my calf puller.

This would be the first time I used this calf puller in Sweet Home. It is brand new and looked it. When I was in Enumclaw, all my equipment was hand-me-down stuff. I was always worried that it didn’t provide a favorable professional impression. But now, this equipment made me look like I had just come out of school.

I pulled all the pieces of the case and carried them back to the corral. I threw it all over the fence. Hoping it would get a little dirty and scratched up in the process.

“Doc, this thing looks brand new,” Jim said. “Are you sure you know how to use it?”

“Ha! I have to admit that this is the first time I have used this one,” I said. “But, I can assure you, I have used these things many times.”

“I guess everything you have is brand new if you are just getting started in a new practice,” Jim said.

“Yes, I sort of feel like a kid with a new shotgun,” I said. “Afraid to use it until I finally walk through the brush and put a scratch on it.”

“Sort like when your wife puts a dent in the new car,” Jim said. “You are just happy that she did it before you.”

I hooked up the OB straps on the calf to the calf puller, and with everything positioned correctly, I started jacking the calf out of the birth canal. 

When the calf’s chest and abdomen were pulled into the birth canal, a large volume of mucus came out of the nose and mouth. Most of this probably came from the stomach, but I quickened my pace.

The calf’s hips hung up on the cow’s pelvis briefly. I lowered the rod on the calf puller, changing the direction of the pull and elevating the hips higher in the cow’s pelvis.

The cow strained at the added pull. She stiffened and pulled against the rope tying her to the post. She fell, stiff-legged, in a flop onto her left side.

The calf plopped out on the ground. My brand new stainless steel bucket squirted away from the cow’s impact and laid, severely bent, in the straw some ten feet away.

The calf raised his head and shook some more mucus from his nose. I unhooked the OB strap and cleared some more mucus from his mouth.

Jim retrieved my bucket and pressed the edges of the bent top, sort of straightening it out a little.

“Sort of like that scratch on the shotgun,” Jim said with a broad smile as he handed me the bucket.

I wiped the mucus splatted from my forehead with the back of my hand and chuckled with Jim.

“It’s good steel. It will still serve its purpose,” I said.

Photo by D. E. Larsen, DVM. Same bucket, forty-some years later.

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.