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.

The Orange Kitten 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Don stepped on his brakes and pulled his pickup to the side of Bellinger Scale Road. 

“I think that was an orange kitten,” Don said to himself as he stepped out of his pickup.

Don looked for traffic before starting across the road. Being an EMT, he didn’t want to become a statistic. He trotted back up the road to where he thought he saw the kitten in the ditch.

The little kitten turned on his back and hissed, with his paws spread wide and claws out, when Don stepped down in the ditch beside the kitten.

“Oh, aren’t you a mean little guy,” Don said as he pulled on his gloves before scooping up the kitten.

As soon as Don got back into his pickup with the kitten, he wrapped the kitten in his sweatshirt and took a moment to look him over.

This kitten was an orange male with extra toes on every paw. Don tended to collect orange cats with many toes. This little guy was going to need some help. He was skin and bone, covered with fleas, and his rear end was soiled from diarrhea.

“I wonder if you were dumped out here?” Don asked himself and the kitten out loud. “Whatever, it looks like I am going to drop you off with Doctor Larsen before taking you home.”

“I’m sorry to drop in on you guys unannounced,” Don said to Sandy as he came through the clinic door. “But I found this little guy in the ditch our on Bellinger Scale Road just now, and it looks like he is going to need some help.”

“I’m sure the Doctor will work you in with no problem, Don,” Sandy said. “Is this a kitten you are going to want to keep, or do you want to get the KATA group to take him?”

“If he survives, he will fit right in with our group,” Don said. “He’s an orange male, and he has a lot of extra toes. But I think he must have been dumped out there. He is in pretty bad shape. A little kitten like this can’t fend for himself out in the wilds. He is probably lucky that I found him rather than a coyote.”

“Let’s get you in an exam room, and I will get the doctor,” Sandy said as she ushered Don and the kitten into the exam room.

“This guy is lucky to be alive,” I said as I did a quick exam of the kitten. “I would guess he was probably out there on his own for a week or more. He was either dumped, or mom got run over or something. Someone could have dumped the whole litter. Five-week-old kittens cannot fend for themselves in the wild, and they have no hunting skills until mom teaches them. When I was growing up on the farm, the momma cats would take their litters up on the hill for a week or two when they were six or eight weeks old. Those kittens would become good hunters. But at five weeks, with no access to food, this guy is probably the sole survivor, and he is close to the end of his rope.”

“That’s what I thought,” Don said. “Why don’t you hang on to him for a day or two. Do whatever it takes to save him. Just give me a call when you think he is ready to go home.”

We collected a blood sample and a stool sample before placing the kitten in the kennel to wait for treatment.

“Should we give him something to eat,” Joleen asked. “He looks starved to death.”

“Open a can of a/d and give him just a teaspoonful for now,” I said. “We need to get his gut straightened out a bit before we give him too much to eat, and it will just shoot right through him now.”

I made a smear on a microscope slide from the stool sample and diluted it with floatation fluid. Under the microscope, the slide was covered with both roundworm eggs and hookworm eggs. Hookworms were a little unusual to see in kittens around Sweet Home. His blood showed some anemia, but not severe. 

“The anemia should resolve when we take care of the parasitism,” I said to Joleen. “So we will give him a dose of Nemex liquid for the worms and a bath with a flea shampoo to clean him up and take care of the fleas.”

“He just about ate the spoon when I put the a/d in his kennel,” Joleen said.

We gave the kitten a dose of Nemex and bathed him with a mild flea shampoo. It was difficult to comb the dead fleas out of his hair coat. Then when he was dry, we returned him to his kennel, where Joleen had made him a bed of warm towels.

He devoured another spoonful of canned a/d, and we put some dry kitten food into his kennel to hold him overnight.

“We will see what morning gives us,” I said to the kitten as we closed the kennel door. “I will give him a vaccine in the morning if he is doing well.”

***

The kitten was screaming when we came through the door in the morning. He was reaching his paw through the kennel bars anytime someone was close. He was hungry.

Joleen quickly warmed a couple of teaspoonfuls of canned a/d and set the dish in the kennel. The kitten literally dove into the plate with both front feet, and he devoured the a/d. His dry kitten food we had put in the kennel last night was gone. And his litter box had a soft stool, somewhat formed, that was full of dead worms.

“I think he is well,” Joleen said with a laugh.

“I think so, too,” I said. “Give Don a call, and we will send him home this afternoon. We need to get a vaccine into him sometime this morning.

When Don arrived, he was pleased with the appearance of the kitten. Joleen had it pretty well tamed down, and he loaded into Don’s carrier with no problem.

“I think just some groceries and TLC is what he needs now,” I said. “We should see him at the end of next week to repeat his worming and then in four weeks for booster vaccines.”

“I’m pleased,” Don said. “I thought it was going to be a struggle for him, but he must be a tough one. After all, he survived out there, all on his own.”

“Just for the record, Don,” I said. “What are you going to call him?”

Don lifted the carrier and got eyeball to eyeball with the kitten.

“I think I’ll call him Wazzu,” Don said.

***

When Wazzu came back for another dose of Nemex for his worms, he had increased his weight by almost a full pound. He had fat on his ribs and was a happy kitten.

“I think you can probably consider Wazzu a normal kitten at this point,” I said as we loaded Wazzu back into his carrier.

“Do you think he will have any lasting problems from those days of starvation?” Don asked.

“I don’t think he will have any physical problems,” I said. “But, we see cats who are rescued from a feral situation that have a real problem with overeating. Some of those cats will eat food until it is gone, and if the owner doesn’t regulate their portions, they will get heavy.”

“He will get enough to eat at our place, but he has enough competition at the food dish that he won’t have much of a chance to overeat,” Don said.

Fate served Wazzu well. Rather than becoming a boney morsel for a coyote, he fell into a household of multiple cats and attentive owners.

We neutered him when he was old enough, and he lived for many years. 

Photo by Rudy van der Veen on Skitterphoto