Run for Your Life, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Joe always wanted Comet checked for one thing or the other. He was waiting for his turn in the exam room with Comet on his lap. Comet was a young Whippet. There was not an ounce of fat on his entire body. I could about define every muscle on him, just looking.

“What’s up with Comet today,” I asked as Joe placed him carefully on the exam table?

“I have been reading about heartworms, Doc,” Joe said. “I thought maybe I better have you check Comet and get him on some medication.”

“We have just completed a statewide heartworm survey,” I said. “One of the drug companies paid for it. Most of the clinics in the state collected blood samples from 100 dogs. They ran all those samples, and they say we have about a two percent incidence of heartworms in native Oregon dogs.” 

“That doesn’t sound like it is too serious,” Joe said. 

“Not too serious at this point, but they claim that is pretty standard for how heartworms invade an area. It will be in low numbers for several years, and then all of a sudden, it is a major problem.”

“Well, even if it is a low-risk thing, I think I want to get Comet on some medication,” Joe said. “You know how I am about him. He means as much to me as any of the kids.”

“I know, Joe, you have him with you all the time,” I said. “The kids come and go.”

“Now, don’t you tell my wife that I said that. She would be upset with me,” Joe said.

“Let me get a blood sample from Comet, and we will see if we can get him on some medication,” I said. “This new drug, Ivomectin, is a little bit of a problem with Greyhounds and Whippets. But the dose used for heartworm prevention is low enough that it is not an issue.”

“Whatever you think, Doc,” Joe said. 

“The risk of the medication causing a problem is very small, Joe. But then, the risk of infection is also minimal. At this point, where you live out on a hillside with few neighbors, I think it is your call.”

“That hillside is one of my concerns,” Joe said. “We are getting into quite a coyote problem. They are getting so brave that they come right down into the yard and bother Comet. I don’t want him catching anything from them.”

Comet tested negative for heartworms, and we started him on a new preventative medication. 

“You give him one of these tablets once a month,” I said. “Try to give it on the same day of the month, but you have a few days leeway if you forget.”

It was several months later when Joe returned to the clinic. He was distraught, and his body odor told that he had not bathed in several days.

“Doc, Comet is gone,” Joe said as he leaned hard on the counter, tears welled up in his eyes. “Those coyotes ate him, I am sure.”

“What happened,” I asked?

“Three of those damn coyotes came into the yard and started to attack Comet. Before I could do anything, Comet took off like a shot. You know those Whippets can run. The coyotes were right on his tail.”

“I doubt that those coyotes could catch Comet. I know of ranchers in Colorado who keep Greyhounds to hunt coyotes. Those Greyhounds just run them down.”

“Maybe a half-hour after they left the yard, the whole pack of coyotes were yipping up a storm. I am sure they got him. And he hasn’t been home, and that was four days ago. I don’t know what I am going to do without him.”

“Joe, you need to go home and take care of yourself. Take a shower and get cleaned up. Maybe have the kids help you build a little memorial in the yard of Comet. Then go out for a good dinner. Comet would want you to have a normal life.”

“Yes, you are probably right, Doc,” Joe said. “I brought this package of pills back. I only used a few, and maybe you can give them to someone who doesn’t have the money to afford them.”

“We are not supposed to do that, but we keep a few things in the cabinet, just for such a client.”

“That poor man,” Sandy said after Joe left. “That dog was his whole life.”

“He will be okay,” I said. “It will just take a little time and some diversion.”

It was only a few days later when Joe exploded through the door. Exuberant, he had a smile from ear to ear. He had combed his hair, and he was well dressed.

“Doc, I want to thank you for your advice,” Joe said.

“You look happy,” I said.

“Let me tell you the story,” Joe said. “I went home the other day and tried to take your advice, but I couldn’t get myself up to it. I laid around another couple of days. Finally, I looked at the yard, and boy, it needed to be mowed. So I went out and started the lawnmower, mowed the yard, and then I took the boys down to Hoy’s Hardware to buy stuff for a memorial. And what do you know, when we got home, there was Comet, sitting in the middle of the driveway, waiting for us. I was so happy. I almost ran the pickup into the house.”

“That is great news,” I said. “I bet that Comet ran so fast and so far that he didn’t know the way home. When you started the lawnmower, you probably gave him some bearings on how to get home. I didn’t think a coyote could catch him.”

“You are probably correct,” Joe said. “This time of the year, I mow the lawn at least once a week, maybe twice, if I get bored. So Comet would know the sound for sure.”

“I would give you those pills back, but I gave them to an old guy this morning,” I said with a smile on my face.

“That’s okay. I will gladly buy some more,” Joe said.

“No,” I laughed. “I will grab them for you. I was pulling your leg a little.”

Photo by Mitchell Orr on Unsplash

Nessie’s Demise 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

It had been several years since I had seen Ayers when I noticed Sandy showing him and Nessie into the exam room. I knew he had a few tough years, as is always the case when an old man loses his wife.

Nessie was a rough-looking little miniature schnauzer. She wouldn’t win any contests at the dog shows, but she was one of the best little farm dogs I knew. She has been Ayers’ sidekick for many years, and now I would guess that she is his only companion.

“What’s up with Nessie?” I asked as I entered the exam room.

“I don’t rightly know, Doc,” Ayers said. “She has really slowed down the last week or two. And this morning, she wouldn’t even chase the squirrel out of the manger. You know she’s a tough little rascal, so when she quits doing her job, she has to be hurting.”

I leaned over and lifted Nessie onto the exam table. She tensed and groaned at the procedure.

“Something really hurts,” I said. “It is either her back or her abdomen. Has she been eating okay?”

“She ate a few bites yesterday, but she hasn’t touched her food today,” Ayers said.

I ran my finger down her spine, applying only moderate pressure, and Nessie showed no response. She tensed her abdomen with the slightest touch to her belly wall. I petted her and held her right side close to my body, and I lightly blotted her abdomen with the fingers of my left hand. I bounced off of a large abdominal mass.

“Ayers, she has a large mass in her abdomen,” I said.

“What does that mean for her?” Ayers asked.

“We need to investigate it a bit,” I said. “Abdominal masses can be anything. Location-wise, I would guess this is a splenic mass, but it could be her liver or something else. Sometimes we can define things with an abdominal x-ray. Still, it often requires surgery to determine if we can do anything with it. If it is on the spleen, we can remove the whole thing with surgery. Then it just depends on if it is malignant or not. If it is the liver, those are usually over my head here, and I send them to a guy in Eugene.”

“Doc, I have been bringing Nessie here since she would fit in my coffee cup,” Ayers said. “We will be here until she dies. I don’t want any discussion of going somewhere else. If you can’t get it done, it won’t be done.”

“Okay, I will need to get some blood out of her and do an x-ray,” I said. “Then we can talk about what needs to be done.”

“Whatever you think is okay,” Ayers said. “But it sounds to me like you just need to open her up and take a look. You are either going to be able to fix her or not. If her kidneys aren’t going to be able to take the surgery, so be it. And if she only has a short time to live, if she is out of pain, that is all I care about.”

“You’re right, of course,” I said. “A lot of the testing is just to generate dollars and cover my butt. In Nessie’s situation, if we aren’t going to be referring her, I just need to look and fix it if I can. I can do that surgery later this morning. I have some surgeries scheduled for this morning, but I can do those another day or do them this evening.”

***

With Nessie on prepped and on the surgery table, I draped her abdomen for a long ventral incision. I started the incision about an inch below her xiphoid process and extended it to an inch below her umbilicus. As soon as I entered the abdomen, I could see a massive splenic tumor.

I carefully worked the spleen out of the incision. I was worried that this tumor could easily rupture is I handled it roughly. When I had it out of the abdomen and laid on a moist towel, I could get a good look at the tumor.

This tumor looked like it had a mix of tissue in it, and it was unlike any splenic tumor I had seen before. That was probably not going to be good news for Nessie and Ayers.

The good thing was it was contained within the spleen, and by removing the spleen, we would be sure to get the entire tumor. The bad thing was if it was a malignant tumor, it had likely already spread elsewhere in the body at this size and appearance.

Starting at the tail end of the spleen, I started ligating the row of vessels, and I tied the ligatures close to the spleen. It was a tedious job, requiring over two dozen double ligatures. I severed the vessels between each double ligature as I progressed to the head of the spleen.

When the spleen was removed, and I double-checked all the ligatures, I returned everything remaining to the abdomen. I explored the abdomen for any other tumors. Finding none, I closed the incision in three layers, and we recovered Nessie. 

Nessie recovered well and was bouncing around the kennel when Ayers came back to pick her up at five. 

“Boy, that’s my Nessie” Ayers said. “She is back to her old self already. We can’t thank you enough, Doc.”

“Ayers, Nessie’s spleen had a large ugly tumor on it,” I said. “It will take several days, if not a week, to get results. But, Ayers, this tumor didn’t look good to me.”

“But you got it all, didn’t you?” Ayers asked.

“Yes, that is the good thing about a tumor in the spleen,” I said. “We just take the entire spleen out, so yes, I got it all. But if it is malignant and has already gone elsewhere in the body, we have probably only bought her a few months.”

“Well, like I said before surgery, Doc, if you can give her what time she has pain-free, we will be happy.”

***

The lab seemed to take forever, and I finally called them.

“This is Doctor Larsen in Sweet Home,” I said when the receptionist answered the phone. “I sent some tissues in over a week ago, and I haven’t heard a word out of you guys. I was just calling to check on the status of the tissues.”

“Yes, it has been a long time,” the receptionist said when she retrieved my file. “Let me connect you to the pathologist.”

“Doctor Larsen, this tumor is really unusual to see in a spleen,” the pathologist said. “I would say rare, in fact. I have been hitting the books on this one and doing some special stains, and I am just writing the report now. It looks like it is a schwannoma. These are rare tumors in the dog and exceeding rare in the spleen. Often a schwannoma is benign, but this one looks aggressive to me. I would give the owner a very cautious prognosis.”

“Is there anything else that can be done?” I asked.

“I don’t think there is a word written in the literature on the treatment,” the pathologist said. “There is scare little written period, only a couple of sentences that mention an occurrence.”

“Sort of the luck of the draw,” I said.

***

When Ayers was in with Nessie for suture removal, Nessie was still feeling great, and her incision was well healed.

“Boy, you should see her chase that squirrel out of the manger now,” Ayers said. “I think she is acting like she is five years younger.”

“These dogs are always amazing,” I said. “When I had my appendix out, I didn’t walk upright for three weeks. And Nessie is out there chasing squirrels before her sutures are out.”

“Have you heard anything from the lab?” Ayers asked.

“Yes, this was a very rare tumor,” I said. “It is a big word; it’s called a schwannoma. There is not much written about it being in the spleen. Often a schwannoma is benign, but you remember that I said it didn’t look good to me. The pathologist thinks it is likely an aggressive tumor.”

“How much time do you figure she has, Doc?” Ayers asked.

“I have no idea, Ayers,” I said. “When dogs have the most common malignant tumor in the spleen, they seldom live more than two months. But there is nothing written about this tumor. We just need to take things one day at a time. I like to tell people to count the good days and the bad days. When the bad days outnumber the good days, we should start thinking about putting her to sleep. But dogs are tough, Ayers. This tumor has probably been bothering her for some time, and she only slowed down in the last couple of days. She will probably go the same way, acting normal right up to the end until she can’t go another step.”

 ***

True to my words, Nessie lasted about six months following surgery. Ayers came in to tell me that he had found her dead in the manger that morning.

“I figure she was chasing that squirrel and just fell over dead,” Ayers said with a tear in his good eye. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I guess I will have to tame down that old tomcat that started living in the barn last winter. I have to have something to talk to, you know.”

“I know, Ayers,” I said. “You know, you can always come by here and spend some time telling stories here if you want. And I would bet that that old tomcat will think he is in heaven.”

Photo by Blue Bird from Pexels

The Old Goat

The Old Goat 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I had joined this practice in Enumclaw when I finished school in March of 1975. This was only my second weekend to be on call for emergencies.  

The phone rang as I was helping Sandy clear the table after lunch. It had been a quiet weekend so far, and I had promised Sandy I would go shopping with her and the girls, something I really looked forward too. I winked at her as I picked up the phone.

“This is Doctor Larsen,” I said. “How can I help you?”

“Doc, this is Joe, and I have an old goat that I just bought at the sale, and I think he needs some help. Could I get you to look at him this afternoon?”

“Old goats aren’t worth much,” I said. “Are you sure you want to pay an emergency call to have him looked at this afternoon?” 

“He is a neat-looking old guy,” Joe said. “If I can help him, I would like to do it.”

“Okay, I will meet you at the clinic,” I said. “How long is it going to take you to get there?”

“I’m waiting in the parking lot right now,” Joe said. “I have the goat in the back of my pickup.”

“It will only take me a few minutes to get there. We don’t live far,” I said.

Joe was right about the goat being a neat-looking old guy. If he had been wild, his horns would be a trophy. They were more than a full curl.

I grabbed my stuff and climbed into the back of Joe’s pickup. This old goat was skin and bones and covered with lice. And when I opened his mouth, he didn’t have a single incisor tooth.

“Joe, did you look at this old guy before you bought him?” I asked.

“Nobody bid on him, Doc,” Joe said. “I got him for five dollars. I figured I couldn’t go wrong.”

“Do you have any idea why he was being sold?” I asked.

“I guess I didn’t give that any thought,” Joe said.

“The owner was selling him so he wouldn’t have to be the one to bury him,” I said. “I would say he was on his last leg, but he probably left that leg back at the sale barn. 

He doesn’t have any incisor teeth, and he is skin and bones and is covered in lice. If we do a fecal exam, he is probably wormy as hell. It doesn’t matter much what we do today, this old guy probably isn’t going to live to see summer.”

“So if you worm him, treat his lice, and give him something to pep him up, do you think that will give him a chance?” Joe asked.

“Joe, the parasitism is there because of his debilitated body condition. It is the end result of his poor condition, not the cause,” I said. “We can take care of those things, but he still doesn’t have any teeth upfront. That means he can’t eat grass or hay, and there is no chance he can browse on the brush.”

“You don’t sound like you want to treat him,” Joe said. 

“I think it borders on being cruel to keep this guy going,” I said. “Joe, there are worse places to be than dead.”

“Do you think if you treated him and I took him home and fed him grain, that he would have a chance?” Joe asked.

“You’re grasping at straws, Joe,” I said. “If I treat him, will you agree to bring him by the clinic at the end of the week for a recheck? And, if he isn’t showing improvement, then we put him to sleep.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Doc,” Joe said. “By the time I pay this call and then the recheck, I could have bought a young doe.”

“You could have looked in his mouth before you bought him,” I said. “That old saying about a gift horse has cost people more grief than anything else. I would say the only thing worse than a free horse is a five-dollar goat.”

“Okay, Doc, you win. I will bring him by next week,” Joe said. “What are we going to do for him today?”

So now I had worked myself into a corner. Nowhere in my training or experience was there anything dealing with the geriatric care of a toothless old goat. I could not believe that anything we could do would buy this old guy any more than a few weeks or months.

“I’ll give him a dose of Resorb. That is some oral fluids mixed with some energy stuff,” I said. “Then I will give him an injection of Levasole for his intestinal parasites and powder him for lice. He will need a little more than grain. You will need to pick up some pelleted feed. Alfalfa pellets, if they are are small enough for him to eat. I don’t know; you might end up feeding him rabbit pellets.”

“You think that will work?” Joe asked.

“When you say work, I am not sure your expectations match up with this old guy’s situation,” I said. “I think this guy is going to die. If we do nothing, that is going to happen this week. We might buy him a month or two if we do all of this. I will be amazed if he makes it through the summer, but who knows.”

Now I just needed to figure out how to get a half-gallon of Resorb into this old goat. I didn’t have a speculum that I could use on a goat, and I didn’t have a drench gun. I was stuck with using an esophageal feeder that we used on calves. This was a plastic tube with a rounded bulb on the end that would prevent the feeder from entering the windpipe and would deliver two quarts of liquid into this old guy’s rumen. 

So I mixed up the Resorb and filled the bag connected to the esophageal feeder. I handed the bag to Joe and instructed him to hold it as high as possible when I got the feeder tube inserted and opened the clamp on the hose.

I thought I would have no problem getting this feeder tube into this old goat. Boy did I have some things to learn.

Here we are in the back of a pickup with shakey side rails, the old goat, Joe, and myself. The old goat has figured out that things will not be to his liking. Joe is no young buck, and he is holding this bag of fluid that is connected to this esophageal feeder that I plan to shove down the old goat’s throat.

I pushed the goat’s butt into the corner by the passenger side of the pickup bed. Joe doesn’t quite know where to stand. I try to position him in the other corner on the driver’s side, not wanting him near the tailgate where he could fall. 

With everything in position, I grab the goat by the horns. This skinny old goat, on his last leg, was having nothing to do with this business. I was surprised at his strength. But at thirty years of age, I was no weakling. I pressed his neck against the side rails with my hips, and with my elbow between his horns, I lifted his nose up with my left hand. 

I pulled on the tubing to get more slack, and Joe bumped into me as he repositioned himself. I insert the esophageal feeder tube into the goat’s mouth with my right hand. 

All hell broke loose! The goat bleated and bucked as if he was being strangled. Joe was right behind me now, and I nearly knocked him off his feet as I struggled with this bucking goat.

And then there was a loud crunch. A really loud crunch.

I pulled the feeder tube out of the goat’s mouth. He had bitten off the plastic ball on the end of the tube, and there was just a jagged end now.

“What happened?” Joe asked.

“He bit the end of the tube off,” I said as I held up the plastic tube for Joe to see. “And he swallowed the plastic end.”

“What do we do now?” Joe asked. “Is he going to be okay?”

“If you remember from your comics, goats eat tin cans,” I said. “This won’t bother him. It will just settle in his reticulum and stay there. The reticulum is the little pouch in the front of the rumen that catches things like this. It is just going to make getting this fluid into him a heck of a lot harder.”

I considered removing the plastic tube and drenching the old goat with the tubing coming out of the bag. But considering the trouble I had with the esophageal feeder, I didn’t think that would work. 

“I think we are going to do this the old-fashioned way,” I said to Joe, who was looking a little concerned about the situation.

I got a bucket and emptied the fluid out of the bag into the bucket. Then I started to fill a sixty cc syringe out of the bucket. While I struggling to maintain the old goat cornered and fill the syringe, the goat sniffed the bucket. I moved it in front of him, and he stuck his nose in the bucket and drank the whole thing.

“I think he is smarter than the both of us,” Joe said as he watched the goat drink down the Resorb.

“Yes, he probably likes it,” I said. “I will send you home with a box of packets, and you can give him one twice a day.”

I gave the goat an injection for worms and powdered him for lice.

“You need to powder him once a week for the next month,” I said. “This powder kills the lice but not the eggs. Remember to pick up some pellets to feed him, and I will check him next week.”

***

Joe was right on time for his appointment on Friday morning. Although he was still skin and bones, the old goat was still with us and looked a little brighter.

“I have named the old guy,” Joe said. “I call him Billy. He eats grain and those rabbit pellets really well, and he just sucks down those buckets of Resorb. I think he is doing great.”

“I agree, Joe,” I said. “Billy looks like he is going to be with us for a time. Just don’t get your hopes up about celebrating Christmas with him.”

***

I lost track of Joe and Billy for a time and assumed that things must be going well. It was in late November when Joe came into the clinic to let me know that Billy had passed away.

“He was doing pretty well all summer and fall,” Joe said. “But he never seemed to put on any weight, and when the weather turned cold these last couple of weeks, he just seemed to give up. But I want to thank you for helping me give him a few good months. And you were right; I ended up spending a lot more than the five dollars I gave for him.”

Photo by Boris Hamer from Pexels.