D. E. Larsen, DVM

“Dr. Larsen, This is Maude, from Brownsville,” Maude said into the phone. “Cookie, my best milk goat, is about ready to deliver. She is so large that she has been down for two days. Can I bring her up to your place so you can look at her?”

“That’s fine, Maude. You just need to know that we are not in the clinic yet,” I said. “We are still practicing out of our house on Ames Creek.”

“I think I can find it,” Maude said. “It doesn’t bother me, and Cookie is used to an old barn, so a garage won’t be a problem for her.”

When Maude arrived, and we got Cookie unloaded, her appearance was amazing. She had been down for two days because her abdomen was so massive, she could not support it standing. I was worried that she might even have a Hydrops Allantois, but I could easily palpate a couple of very active kids in the uterus. 

The only time I had seen Hydrops was while I was in school at Colorado State University, in a cow bred to a Bison bull. In that cow, you could not palpate any fetus. And on C-Section, the calf was dead. Hydrops is common in cows bred to Bison bulls. The Beefalo’s calves come from Bison cows bred to a Bovine bull. 

“We have some decisions to make, Maude,” I said. “If we wait for her to deliver, there is a good possibility that she will suffer significant musculoskeletal injury from being down for such a long time. If we do a C-section, we take a chance on the kids being early. That will mean that all of them may not survive.”

“You say, all of them,” Maude said. “How many do you think are in there?”

“I think a bunch,” I said. “I have seen 4 lambs in a ewe, and she was almost this big. There is about a 1 in 10,000 chance, and it might even be higher in the goat. There are at least 3 kids in there. I think there may be 4.”

“I think I am more worried about Cookie than I am about the kids,” Maude said. “It would be nice to get a bunch of kids out of her, but I want you to know that Cookie is the priority in this event.”

“So, I hear you say that you want to do a C-Section,” I said.

“Yes, that is what I want to do,” Maude said. “When can you do it?”

“Maude, I am just getting started here,” I said. “My days are not full. I can do it right now.”

“Good, can I stay and watch?” Maude asked.

“You are more than welcome to watch,” I said. “In fact, you might be put to work if we have four kids in there. I see you have a couple of bales of straw in the back of your pickup. Is there a chance we could use one of those to bed her down? She would be more comfortable than on the bare concrete.”

“That is what I brought them for,” Maude said. “Let me pull them out of the truck.”

We used one of the straw bales to bed Cookie down in the back of the garage while we set up for surgery. Sandy sets some chairs out for Maude and her driver.

“Once we get set up, things will go pretty fast,” I explained to Maude. “I will roll her up on her back, and we will clip and prep an area in front of her udder. I will make an incision, then we will start pulling kids out as fast as I can. If there are 4 of them, everybody will have a kid to take care of as I close up things for Cookie.”

“I have never seen anything like this before,” Maude said. “I guess I will be okay. At least if there are kids to care for, I will have something to do.”

Paula had everything ready, so we rolled Cooked up on her back. Again, I was amazed at the size of her belly. It spread out in both directions. 

“I don’t think she could roll off her back if she tried,” I said to Paula. “You better tell Sandy to get every spare towel she can find. We are going to spell all sorts of fluid out of this uterus.”

With the abdomen clipped and prepped, I made the incision on the ventral midline in front of the udder. My kids watched from the kitchen doorway, and Maude sort of stretched her neck to see better.

“I thought there would be more blood,” Maude said.

“As long as I can avoid these large milk veins coming from the udder, there should be very little blood,” I said.

I extended the incision through the linea alba, pulled the omentum forward so it was out of the way. Then I reached in to grab the head of the first kid I encountered. I drew this head through the abdomen incision and incised the uterus carefully. 

The kid’s head popped out of the incision and shook. I think she was ready to be out of there. Grabbing her neck, I pulled her the rest of the way through the incision. There was a rush of fluid that came with her. I handed her back to Maude. Maude was waiting with a towel.

“This kid is the same size as a single,” Maude said.

“No wonder she is as big as a house,” I said as I reached in and grabbed the second kid by the head also.

This kid came out fighting also. And like her sister, she was the size of a single.

“Two girls so far,” I said. “In a couple of years, you’re going to have so much milk you won’t know what to do with it.”

I reached in and grabbed a couple of hind legs in the far uterine horn. I tugged, and they did not move a lot. I felt close. I had one leg from two different kids. Correcting my error, I pulled the third girl out by her hind legs.

“Maude, there is another one in there,” I said. “And this one is another girl.”

Sandy stepped up, with the help of our girls, to take this kid. Maude had the first kid standing already. Everybody was busy now, and there were smiles all around. Nothing like baby goats to make people happy.

I reached in and pulled out the last kid, another girl. 

“This probably sets some sort of a record. Quadruplets, and all females,” I said as I handed the last kid to Paula.

I started pulling as much of the fetal membranes out through the incision as I could. There is no way to take them all out without damaging the uterus. But I would pull out a bunch and cut them off with scissors. We had all the towels and straw soaked with uterine fluids. 

“This is probably going to take as long to clean up this mess as it took for the surgery,” I said, more to myself than to anybody else.

I closed the single incision in the uterus. It was about a six-inch incision. It was sort of amazing that you could drag four kids through that incision. After returning the uterus to a normal position, I closed the Linea Alba with a sliding mattress suture using #2 Dexon. The external incision was closed in a conventional two-layer manner.

“Cookie, you are going to have a flabby belly for a time,” I said as we rolled her off her back and made her comfortable on a clean spot in the straw. She wanted the kids, so Maude started handing them over to her one at a time. It didn’t seem to bother her at all to have all four of them to care for. 

“What do you think we should do with her now, Doc,” Maude asked.

“I think we should milk her out and get some colostrum into the kids,” I said. “It is early enough that leaving the kids with her for the day will probably be the best. I will give her some IV Glucose and Calcium just to give her a little more energy. I am guessing that she isn’t going to be up until morning. I would like like to keep her until then. I don’t know if I can handle the 4 kids running around the house.”

“I will go home for the day,” Maude said. “I have a lot of chores waiting. I will get back here around 5:00 this afternoon if that is okay. I will take the kids home. That is not a big thing. I have plenty of colostrum in the freezer, and I don’t leave the kids with my milkers anyway.”

“That will work fine,” I said. “Then, we will just see what morning gives us with Cookie.”

Cookie was up and looking for both food and a milker when I checked her early the following day. Luckily, Maude pulled into the driveway about when I was heading into the house to give her a call.

“I guessed that Cookie would be up and ready to be milked,” Maude said. “I figured you would appreciate getting her out of here early.

“I think she will be ready for the milking stand by the time you get home with her,” I said. “She should be good to go. I see she passed her membranes last night. Just keep an eye on her, and I will drop by to just glance at that incision in a couple of days. I generally leave those sutures in place for about 3 weeks, just to be safe.”

Cookie healed with no problems, and the kids became a great addition to Maude’s milking string.

Photo Credit: Brenda Timmermans/Pexels

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Parenting is one of those skills learned by trial and error. If you are lucky enough to have role models to pattern trials after, there may be fewer errors. And then, just to complicate the learning process, one usually has a spouse, which complicates decision-making. They often have a different experience base that makes them think they know more than you.

For Sandy and me, things were pretty simple. That is the way it is when you have good kids and good role models. We also agreed most of the time. The only real difference was that I believed that you helped the kids who needed help, and Sandy felt strongly that everything had to be balanced between the kids.

I often silently watched her balance the spending at Christmas. Each gift list had to match, almost to the penny. Everything would be matched until one total had $2.00 more than the others. Then the search would be for three other $2.00 gifts. But you could bet that one of those was $2.50. And it would go on and on, right up to Christmas Eve.

We tried to keep track of the kids’ classroom activities. Sandy was instrumental in selecting teachers. She wanted our kids in the best classrooms, and she was pretty blunt with the principals. I probably helped that I was on the school district’s budget committee and later on the school board.

Parent-teacher conferences were a little boring. One of Brenda’s teachers commented once that she wished the parents who needed to hear from her would attend the conferences like we did. And we really didn’t have to attend, because it was always the same. The kid is doing great.

It wouldn’t have taken much for me to skip a conference or two, but that wouldn’t fly in our house. So it was a little shocking when we sat down with Mr. Looney, Dee’s second-grade teacher.

“I have a little concern with Dee’s reading,” Mr. Looney said.

“A little concern?” I replied, almost in shock. “What kind of concern are you talking about?”

“I have the class divided into three reading groups,” Mr. Looney explained. “Dee is in the top group, but she is at the bottom of that group. I am thinking we should move her into the middle group. What do you think about that idea?”

Sandy and I exchanged glances. We were a little new to this, but we had not had a kid in the middle group of anything.

“So, how do you measure the standings in the group?” I asked. “Is it a competitive thing, or what?”

“I measure the workbook scores and how they progress through the book,” Mr. Looney said. “I really don’t try to make it competitive. Most kids do well working at their own speed.”

“Well, we Larsens are not afraid of a little competition,” I said. “Let me see if I can build a fire under Dee before you move her. It might take a week or two, so talk to me before you make a move. Does that sound okay?”

“Sure, we have most of the year in front of us,” Mr. Looney said. “I will give you a call in about three weeks.”

“Other than her reading, she is doing okay, I assume?” I said.

“Yes, she is a pleasure to have in the class,” Mr. Looney said.

Sandy grabbed my arm as we headed down the hall toward Amy’s third-grade classroom.

“What do you have in mind when you talk about building a fire under Dee?” Sandy asked.

“I think this ranking system sounds a little passive,” I said. “Dee is competitive by nature. We just need to make the thing more competitive without interfering with Mr. Looney’s system. I’ll think on it a bit.”

***

The following evening, I sat down with Dee.

“Mr. Looney said he was thinking about moving you into the middle reading group,” I said. “What would you think about that?”

“I wouldn’t have to listen to Bobby anymore,” Dee said.

“Who is Bobby?” I asked.

“He thinks he is so smart because he is at the top of the group,” Dee said.

“I have a deal for you,” I said. “You get ahead of Bobby in your reading group, and get to the top of the group, and I will give you twenty dollars. Do you think you can do that?”

“It’s pretty easy reading,” Dee said. “I just don’t like to listen to Bobby. I can get to the top pretty easily. And twenty dollars is a lot of money.”

“Yes, it is. But here is the rest of the deal,” I said. “You can’t tell anyone. Not Mr. Looney and none of the kids in the class. If you tell anyone, the deal is off.”

Dee left for school in the morning with a new resolve. Then I had to deal with Sandy.

“Don’t you think it will be a little hard for her not tell anyone?” Sandy asked. “I mean, most kids can’t keep a secret.”

“It will be good practice for her,” I said. “She might need a security clearance someday. So, how much do you know about what I did in the Army?”

“Not much, other than drinking a lot of beer,” Sandy said. “And what about the other kids. How are you going to even things up.”

“The other kids aren’t about to get shuffled to the middle of the class,” I said. “This is just between Dee and me. If I match it with the other kids for doing nothing, it will distract from the win for Dee.”

“What if she can’t do it?” Sandy said. “Maybe she needs some help.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” I said. “Remember, she’s a Larsen; she will be able to do it.”

***

Mr. Looney called me at the clinic a few weeks later.

“I don’t know what you did, but Dee is doing really well in her reading,” Mr. Looney said. “She is moving up in the group and keeping a close eye on where she stands. I will definitely keep her in the top group.”

And it seemed like no time before Dee came home and reported that she was at the top of her reading group.

“Bobby doesn’t brag so much anymore,” Dee said.

“Before I pay you, I will speak with Mr. Looney, just to make sure where you stand in the class,” I said.

I stopped by the school during a break the next day. Mr. Looney was glad to speak with me.

“I hear you are twenty dollars poorer,” Mr. Looney said. “When Dee checked the last time, and I told her that she was at the top of the class, she said, ‘Ha, now I get twenty bucks.’ I’m not sure I have seen that before, but with her, it has completely changed her character in the classroom.”

I paid Dee her twenty dollars, and she never looked back. She continued to excel in the classroom and in the sports arena.

Many years later, I missed my bet. When we attended her PhD dissertation defense at the University of California, San Diego. I struggled to follow the topic. It was on the arborization of neurons in the developing brain.

I should have given her another twenty-dollar bill. 

Photo Credit: YM on Unsplash.com.

Post Script: Twenty dollars in 1980 is about eighty dollars in 2025 dollars.

D. E. Larsen, DVM

“Company D, Private Drake speaking, can I help you,” Bill answered the phone on a snowy Christmas Eve in 1965. Bill and I were pulling CQ duty for Company D, a duty company for troops waiting for school at Fort Devens.

We were a couple of lucky ones; we were permanent CQs. We were given private squad rooms in the old World War Two barracks that were housing an overload of troops in the big build-up of Vietnam forces. We worked in 24 hours shifts, with 48 hours off.

“Yes, I know a couple of guys who would be interested,” Bill said.

“What are you getting us into now,” I asked? I was not expecting an answer, but Bill was always quick to volunteer my services.

“We can meet you at Battalion Headquarters by 8:15. We don’t get relieved until 8:00, but we should be able to make that schedule.”

Bill hung up the phone and looked at me with a big smile on his face.

“We have a Christmas dinner to go to tomorrow,” Bill said. “We have to be in Class A uniform and meet the Battalion CQ at Headquarters by 8:15.”

“Where are we going,” I asked?

“Does it matter? It is going to be better than eating Christmas dinner at Con 4 and sleeping for most of the day.”

At 6:00 in the morning, Bill and I took turns going to the barracks, showering and changing into our Class A uniform. When we were relieved by the next CQ crew, we walked through the snow the half a dozen blocks to Battalion Headquarters.

I imagined that we looked somewhat like Mutt and Jeff. Bill was 6′ 4″ and had a heavy black shadow on his face even though he had shaved a couple of hours before. And I was trying to match his stride, and I had to stretch to measure 5′ 8″.

The Battalion CQ was a Specialist 4, who had been in the Army for several years. He was waiting at the doorstep and fell in with us.

“We meet them at the main gate in 15 minutes,” Stan said.

Bill and I were mismatched on height, but we were both in good shape and trim. Stan was taller than me and quite well rounded.

“The main gate is over a mile,” Bill said as he lengthens his stride. I was used to matching his long stride, Stan sort of looked like a young kid who had to take four steps and then run four steps to keep pace.

By the time we reached the main gate, the snow was probably close to 4 inches deep. Mr. Terhune was waiting across the street in his VW van. He was with a couple of preteen boys. Getting into the warm van was a welcome relief.

We drove to their house in Groton, some 4 miles distant. The Terhune’s had 4 kids. The oldest was their daughter, who was a freshman in high school, and 3 younger boys. We had dinner, which Bill jumped right into the kitchen to help prepare. Then we spent the afternoon talking and drinking more than a little wine. 

Having just pulled 24 hours of duty, a full day of eating, and topped off with ample wine, I was asleep before my head hit the pillow that night. But it was Christmas to remember, and the Terhune’s remained friends and a place to escape to for the entire year we were at Devens.

Christmas in Korea was a different event but just as memorable. I arrived in Korea in the middle of September 1966, and I was well adjusted to the country by Christmas. Stationed South of Seoul, at Camp Humphreys, I spent a lot of my free time at the orphanage that we supported in An Song.

A group of us spent Christmas Eve at the orphanage. Following dinner, the group of elementary kids continued my lessons in Korean. The little girls were very serious about this instruction. They would frown when the boys were hysterical over my pronunciation of even the simplest words.

We did a Santa for the kids with toys purchased by the guys at the 177th. The kids all went to midnight mass, and so it late when they got to bed. 

On Christmas morning, we loaded everyone up and took them to Camp Humphreys for Christmas dinner with the entire company. Before dinner, all the staff and the older kids had the opportunity to take showers in the barracks. That was probably the best present we could give them. Then dinner in mess hall and entertainment in the club. All the kids were well worn out when we loaded them onto the trucks for the trip home.

The next morning the young kids were hanging all over me. It was apparent the kids didn’t want us to go. The staff was still in a state of euphoria from their day at the company compound. But we loaded up in the trucks for the drive back to the company. I opened the window and shouted goodbye, in Korean, to the kids.

“Annyeong,” I said. The boys almost rolled on the ground, but the girls laughed and waved.

 The drive back to base seemed longer than usual as we rolled down a dusty dirt road lined with dry rice paddies. My mind did drift back home with only a twinge of homesickness.

My experience in Germany was different still. I arrived in Germany in the middle of December 1967. Even though I had friends from Fort Devens, I really had no time to settle into an off duty routine before Christmas. My first Christmas in Germany was spent on the base at Rothwesten. Christmas dinner at the mess hall was well done and accompanied by some German carolers. The evening I spent at the NCO club, again filled with entertainment. It was less than ideal, but it was a pretty good day.

Christmas in 1968 found me in Schöningen, a small village on the East German border. I was stationed at Wobeck, a significant border listening post with about 70 of us stationed there. Christmas here was super. The town went all out on their decorations and festivities. There was a Christmas spirit everywhere. 

We had a major Christmas party at the ‘Swing Club’ in the Banhof Hotel. The club was not supposed to make a profit, so it had to give away a lot of booze to make sure the books came out even for the year.  Needless to say, there were a few drunk GIs.

A couple of us were invited to Christmas dinner at Howey and Holley’s house. Wives were a recent addition at Schöningen. Before this time, only men without dependants were stationed there. Holley was the best cook that I had seen since my mother. Howey was very drunk at the end of the party, and we had to help Holley get him into the car.

They lived in Wolsdorf, a little village a few miles out of Schöningen. They had an upstairs apartment in a new house, still finishing its construction. It was built on a hillside, and there were three stories with a high porch to the entry on the middle level. The steps and porch were new and not completely finished. There was no railing on the steps or porch.

When we arrived at 1:00 for dinner, Holley was slow to answer the door. She looked like she had was running on empty.

“Are you okay,” I asked? “You look like you have been cooking all night.

“I feel like it. We had quite a time last night,” Holley said. “And my night was just starting when we left.”

“You know, we can find a place to eat in town,” I said. “You don’t have to wear yourself out to feed us.”

“I should have had you guys help me get Howey home last night,” Holley said. “Let me tell you the story.”

“When we got to the house, it was not too hard for me to get him out of the car. And I sort of kept him against the wall as we struggled up the steps to the porch. We made it up here with no problem. I stood Howey up on the porch, turned around, and unlocked the front door. When I turned back around, he was gone. There he was, ten feet below, spread eagle in the snow and mud.”

“Is he okay,” Schniedewind asked? “That is a long way to fall.”

“He was too drunk to get hurt. But that was just the start of it. I had to get him up out of the snow and mud, back up the stairs, and then up the stairs to the apartment.”

“It looks like you made it,” I said. 

“Yes, I made, but there was a trail of snow and mud all the way. There was mud on the wall coming up the stairs. You know how the Germans are. They would kick us out of here for such a mess. So there I am, in the middle of the night, mopping the porch and washing the wall. It seemed like I no more than finished, and it was time to get the turkey into the oven. It was certainly a Christmas Eve that I won’t forget in a long time.”

About this time, Howey makes his entrance from the bedroom. He was fresh out of the shower but still feeling the effects of the party. We greeted him. Holley didn’t have much to say to him.

The dinner was excellent, as was expected from a cook like Holley. But the tension between the couple put a little chill in the air. Schniedewind and I made a pretty quick exit following dinner.