Can We Eat Her? From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

“Bart, it’s good to see you. Do you need to talk with Debbie?” I asked.

“If she is busy, that’s okay. I can wait. I just wanted to tell her we would be gone by the time she gets home. We will have dinner ready for her and Lisa. She is just going to have to pop it in the oven.”

“I’ll send her out. They are just cleaning things up a bit,” I said.

“While I’m here, Doc, I have a cow that is laying around a lot. She looks fine, but she has hardly moved in the last few days. I can’t do it tonight, but is there some time in the late afternoon that I could get you to look at her.”

“I could get up there tomorrow. What time do you get home?”

“I can make sure that I’m home by three. It’s easy for me to skip the last load of logs on Friday. Do you know where we are located?”

“I know you are on Whiskey Butte. But I can solve the problem. I will just have Debbie lead the way. I can make it an end-of-the-day call. She will like to leave the clean-up for the others.”

“She’ll like that. She really appreciates this job, Doc.”

***

It was close to four by the time we pulled into the pasture with the cow. It was almost a half-mile up the road from the house. The cow, an older Hereford, was lying down when we approached. She stood up but was reluctant to walk away.

I was able to examine her with no restraint. She had a moderately elevated temperature, but otherwise, the exam was pretty unremarkable. I palpated her ventral abdomen with some deep pushes, checking for pain from a wire. There was no response. Putting downward pressure at the middle of her back caused a definite groan. I waited a moment and then repeated the maneuver. She swung her head at me this time to emphasize her discomfort.

“Her back is pretty painful,” I said. “It’s hard to say what she did. It could be just soft tissue stuff, or she could have broken something.”

“What can we do about it?” Bart asked.

“We aren’t going to do an x-ray. I can give her a dose of Banamine and see if that helps.”

“What does that do?”

“It’s like a big dose of ibuprofen, just an anti-inflammatory medication. If that doesn’t do it, I don’t know. She might be salvageable if that temperature goes down.”

***

I was trying to close down the clinic a little early on Saturday morning when the phone rang.

“Doc, this is Bart. That cow is down and can’t get up. What do you think?”

“I’m not sure there is anything more I can do for her?” I said. “But I can run up and get a quick look at her. We are slow here this morning.”

“I don’t want to impose on your free time if there isn’t anything to be done.”

“That’s fine, Bart. We don’t have any plans for the afternoon, and it won’t take me much time to get a quick look.”

“Why don’t you take your time and have lunch. Then bring Sandy and the kids up for the afternoon. We can barbecue dinner, and the kids can swim in the pool if the sun stays out. We haven’t turned the heater on yet this spring.”

“Okay, but this might not turn out very favorably for the cow. I don’t want to ruin your afternoon with bad news.”

“I’m a big boy, Doc. I’ve shot a cow or two before. If that’s what we have to do, I can deal with it.”

***

The cow was down. With a slap on the rear, she wouldn’t even try to stand. The temperature was improved, just slightly above average.

“I think she has had it, Bart,” I said. “She is pretty painful. It might be best to get your rifle.”

“Do you think we could eat her?” Bart asked.

“Eat her? My first answer is no, she can’t stand and has a temperature plus some Banamine on board. But, I guess it depends on how hungry you are. The meat isn’t going to kill you. It’s just not going to be very good. She has been stressed, down, probably has a significant injury. All of that is going to influence the flavor of the meat. Sort of like eating a gutshot deer that took you a day or to find.”

“That’s a whole lot of hamburger laying there. I think we will go ahead and butcher her out and see if it is any good.”

“Late Saturday afternoon, you’re probably not going to be able to get a mobile slaughter out this afternoon.”

“I’ll get the tractor out. It has the front-end loader attached. I can hang her here and have Daryl come pick her up in the morning.”

“Okay, if you’re going to do it, I will give you a hand. I sort of want to get a look at her back anyway.”

Bart retrieved his tractor and his rifle. 

Sandy and Marilyn busied themselves, getting ready for dinner and watching the kids, and we shot the cow.

It didn’t take long before we had the carcass hanging from the tractor’s elevated front-end loader. Bart was working on skinning the cow, and I examined the inside of the carcass. 

There was an odd swelling on the underside of the backbone on the inside of the carcass.

“It looks like she must have had a significant injury to her back,” I said as Bart looked over my shoulder. I point to the swelling with the knife I had in my hand.

Bart when back to work. He was almost done with getting the hide off the carcass. I reached up and ran my knife down the underside of the spine on the midline.

When my knife sliced through the swelling, it exploded. Spraying my face and beard with thick slightly yellow pus.

“The diagnosis is a spinal abscess, Bart,” I said. “I don’t think you want to eat this cow.”

Bart stepped around from behind the carcass and stifled a laugh.

“You’re quite a sight,” Bart said. “I think you’re going to have to borrow our shower.”

“Look at the hole where that puss came from,” I said. “She must have fractured a vertebra, and then it abscessed. I saw a dog once with similar lesions, but I have never seen anything like that in the cow.”

“I guess I’ll just leave her hanging here and call Daryl and see if he wants to pick her up in the morning. He can send her to the rendering company. That way, Marilyn won’t have to mess with it.”

It was a long walk to the house with a beard full of pus. At least Bart had a shower I could borrow. I offered Sandy a peck on the cheek, but she declined.

It was a good dinner and good conversation, so the entire evening was not a bust.

Photo by Alesia Kozik from Pexels.

Power Line Splice in Yellow Snow, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

The winter of 1968 in West Germany was cold, with multiple ice storms and plenty of snow. I had just been promoted to NCO in charge of the maintenance shop of a remote Army Security Agency Site at Wobeck. 

Located in the middle of an ancient elm forest outside of the village of Schöningen. This site had been operational for ten to twelve years. It was responsible for the electronic intelligence of the Soviet and East German Armies across the border.

We had a small maintenance crew, and most of our work was done on the day shift. Eight-hour days were rare, and we often had one to two guys on night duty. This winter, Marsden was working at night. On this particular night, I had stayed to help with a problem on one of the main operations stations.

The site Operations were housed in a couple of old Quonset Huts. Stuffed with sophisticated equipment, these huts drew a lot of electricity.

Marsden and I were working on this station, and there was a sudden drop in power. Lights dimmed, some equipment clicked off, and there was an odd sound that we didn’t identify at the moment. This was a brief event, maybe a second or two at the most, and then everything was back to normal.

Marsden and I exchanged a puzzled glance. We waited a moment, but when everything returned to normal, we returned to work.

A few minutes later, it happened again. This time we could isolate the source of the sound. It came from where all the power input panels were located in the far corner of the operations bay. 

Marsden and I went over and opened the panel. Everything appeared normal. When it happened again, the sound was that of an electrical arcing. And it was right at our feet.

“That has to be in the power input cable,” Marsden said.

We stepped out the back door into the cold. There were about six inches of snow on the ground. We moved around the corner to where we were outside the wall holding the electrical panels.

We were struck with a strong, unpleasant odor.

“What is that odor?” Marsden asked.

I sniffed again, “Piss,” I said. “Burnt piss.”

The arc happened again as we were standing there. We could almost see the arc this time. It was just under the surface of the snow.

“It has to be the main power cable,” I said. “Let’s get a shovel and see what we can find. We have to fix it tonight, or it will start frying equipment.”

“What the heck is going on,” Marsden asked. He was speaking more to himself than to me.

“It looks like guys are stepping out the back door, and instead of taking a hike to the outhouse, thirty yards across the snow, they are just stepping around the corner and pissing here.” 

Once we found a shovel, we started to carefully dig into the problem.

“Keep your hands on the wooden handle,” I said. 

With some careful digging, we uncovered the large buried power cable coming into the building. And then we found the problem. There was a splice in the cable just as it entered the building.

“Why would they put a splice in that cable?” I asked.

“My guess is they had some German contractors doing the electrical work, and they couldn’t go inside. So they ran the cable to this point, and the Army guys spliced it to the cable on the inside,” Marsden said.

I wiggled the cable with the shovel, and we were showered with sparks as the lines arced between themselves. Looking close, we could see that the tape between the lines had broken down with the moisture of the snow and the piss. The lines started arcing. We would have to redo the splice tonight.

“These jokers have no idea how lucky they are to be alive,” Marsden said. “Can you imagine the jolt if a stream of urine was hit with one of those arcs?”

“We are going to have to shut the site down for a brief time,” I told the NCO in charge. “We are going to have to repair the main power cable coming into the building.”

“There is no other option?” Sargent Duke asked.

“We can’t do it without turning off the power out front at the generator shed.”

“Okay, give us a few minutes to wind things down and make sure the comm center is not in the middle of a transmission.”

“Do you think I should call Lieutenant Lee?” I asked.

“No, if it is only going to be a few minutes, there is no need.”

We turned the power off, and then, with the aid of a few flashlights, we were able to clean up the cable and wrap the individual wires with rubber tape. These wires were the size of my thumb. When we had the individual wires wrapped, we covered the entire splice with rubber tape and electrical tape.

Everything worked fine when we turned the power back on. The site was down for less than twenty minutes.

“Sargent Duke, we are up and running,” I said. “All you have to do is make sure everyone uses the outhouse instead of pissing around the corner of the hut. And make sure they know how lucky they are to be alive if they were the ones doing it.”

“Let’s leave this open so we can recheck it in the daylight,” I said to Marsden. “I would guess the powers that be will want to make any final decisions about what to do.”

“They can discuss it all they want,” Marsden said. But short of replacing the whole cable, there is not much else to be done.”

“Now, the only thing we have to worry about is finding enough water around here to wash up. I think I am going to enjoy the shower tonight.”

One Big Hot Spot, From the Archives

 D. E. Larsen, DVM

The early morning air was warm and unusually humid as I loaded into my truck to head to the clinic. This was going to be a hot day, and I just hoped I wouldn’t have some dog with a heat stroke today.

“The good news is there isn’t much going on this afternoon,” Judy said when I leaned over the front counter to look at the appointment book. “We should be able to leave early before the day warms up.”

When Dixie came through the front door, her immediate concern was the daily schedule.

“I’m hoping we have an easy afternoon,” Dixie said to Judy.

“I am trying to keep things open,” Judy said. “They say it will be a hot day, and you know how hot it gets in this clinic.”

“Yes, I am going to get the backdoor open and start the sprinkler on the roof,” Dixie said. “That will keep things cool until two or three this afternoon.”

Dixie opened the garage door in the back of the clinic. With the front door open, it provided a nice cool breeze through the clinic. The sprinkle on the roof kept the clinic from heating up until later in the afternoon. The water running off the roof was hot already.

“I didn’t schedule any surgeries today,” Judy said. “That way, we won’t be stuck here recovering a patient in this hot weather, and we can fill those hours with any clients that call this morning.”

The morning was busy, and Judy did a good job fitting the entire day into the morning.

“I think we will be out of here at one if we work through the lunch hour,” Dixie said. “That will be great. I have plenty to do this afternoon.”

I was finishing the last appointment at twelve-thirty when Georgia came through the door with her Saint Bernard, Nana.

“I know I don’t have an appointment, but something is terribly wrong with Nana,” Georgia said. “I am hoping you can see her.

“We are just finishing up for the day, but I think the doctor has time to look at her,” Judy said.

Dixie showed Georgia and Nana into an exam room. “Something doesn’t smell good with Nana,” Dixie said. “How long has she had a problem?”

“I noticed her smelling this morning,” Georgia said. “I was so hot yesterday, and she suffers in the heat anyway. I just assumed she was just hot when she was scratching yesterday.”

Nana’s odor had filled the room by the time I stepped into the exam room. I took a deep breath.

“Nana is an interesting name,” I said. “Where did you come up with it?” 

“Nana was the family Saint Bernard in the Peter Pan movies,” Georgia said.

“Let’s see if we can find where this odor is coming from,” I said. “How long has she had a problem?”

“I noticed her scratching a little yesterday,” Georgia said. “I just figured it was the heat, but this morning she really smells.”

I knelt down to look at Nana. She was far too large to lift onto the exam table for just an exam. I ran my hands down her back, and her skin was moist over her shoulder blades. 

“I think I have found the problem,” I said as I parted her hair to look at the skin. A large area of infected skin was on the middle of her back. “I think we need to clip some hair to get a better look at things.”

“I hate to have her hair clipped,” Georgia said. “Are you sure that needs to be done?”

“What is going on with Nana is a moist skin infection,” I said. “The hair mats down a little, and the infection just grows. We need to remove the hair and clean up the area. Then with some antibiotics and other medication, things heal up pretty fast in most cases.”

We started clipping Nana’s hair in the middle of her back. The skin was painful, sore, and covered by a thick layer of yellow pus. We extended the area of the clip, looking for the edge infection. Nana was an excellent patient. She never complained through the whole process.

“Look at the size of this hot spot,” Dixie said as she finally reached the edge of the infection, almost up to Nana’s neck and back to the middle of her back. “I don’t think I have seen anything this large.”

“And it looks like it extends down her sides,” I said. “It looks like someone poured a bucket of pus on the middle of her back.”

When we finally finished clipping hair, the area covered looked like the area that a saddle would cover. Several strips of infection extended Nana’s sides, almost to the bottom of her rib cage and down the sides of her legs.

We scrubbed the area with Betadine Scrub. Then after a rinse, we applied some Furacin Ointment and hydrocortisone cream. 

“We are going to send you home with some antibiotics and prednisone. I expect this to heal rapidly, although there are a few spots where the infection is pretty deep, and they might scab over.”

“What caused all of this, Doctor?” Georgia asked. “Was it something that she ate?”

“I could be a food allergy, but the dermatologists say that food allergies are real rather rare, unlike what the dog food companies try to say,” I said. This often starts from a reaction to something, and maybe just a flea bite. Controlling fleas this time of the year is just about impossible. I hear new medications are on the horizon that will help with flea control.”

“How can a flea bite cause something like this?” Georgia asked.

“It is not just a simple flea bite. It is the allergic reaction to the bite,” I said. “Or the reaction to some other allergen, the dog scratches a bite, the skin oozes some moisture, that mats the hair down. A skin infection quickly follows in this heat, and the lesion just grows. This is by far the largest hot spot I have ever seen.”

“So she is going to be okay,” Georgia asked.

“Yes, I think she will feel much better in the morning,” I said. “We should plan to check Nana on Monday, just to make sure everything is coming along okay. Then it is just growing some hair back.”

Nana’s tail was wagging as she went out the door.

“I was so glad we didn’t have to sedate her,” Dixie said. “I could just see our free afternoon melting away.”

“I turned the phone over to the answering service,” Judy said. “I hope everyone has a good weekend. It is supposed to be cooler by Monday.”

***

Nana was a different dog when she came through on Monday afternoon. Bouncing in the door, tail wagging and nuzzling Dixie, she led her and Georgia back to the exam room.

“I think she knows you guys helped her,” Georgia said. “She feels so much better, and there is only one small scab on her back.”

“Looks like we are home free,” I said as I looked at Nana’s skin. “The inflammation is mostly resolved. There is nothing more to do now except finish the medication, and then Nana can grow some hair.”

Photo by Olga Dudareva on Unsplash.