The Pup

 D. E. Larsen, DVM

I slid my chair back from the dinner table. It had been a long day at the clinic, and Sandy, who also got home late, had made tomato soup from the can and toasted cheese sandwiches. It was a quick and easy late dinner but adequate for us at this hour.

The phone rang as I stood up from the table. I looked at Sandy, hoping she would say to let it ring.

With no response from Sandy, I let it ring until it went to message. It was Leon calling about a pup. I picked up the phone.

“Doc, I’m glad I caught you,” Leon said. “I know it’s late, but we have this new little pup. He is six weeks old and got his head shut in a car door this evening. He ain’t looking so good right now, Doc. We were hoping you could get a look at him tonight.”

“I just got up from a late dinner and was heading to my chair, so you caught me just in time,” I said. “How long will it take you to get to the clinic?”

“We can be there in about twenty minutes,” Leon said. “We are living on Whiskey Butte now, but we will hurry.”

“Okay, but drive safe. A few minutes won’t make any difference for the pup,” I said. “I will be there when you get there.”

I hung up the phone and took a deep breath. “No rest for the wicked, I guess,” I said as I looked at Sandy.

“Do you need me to come with you?” Sandy asked.

“Not really,” I said. “If this is a head injury, there is not much to do. I guess it will either be a euthanasia or a big dose of dexamethasone.”

The night air had a bite to it as I unlocked the front door. It was going to be cold tonight. Maybe even the first frost this fall. I turned on the lights, pulled Leon’s file, and looked up to see Leon pull up out front. He must have flown down the hill.

I stepped out the door as Leon opened his car’s back door. Shana was sitting in the back with the pup.

“The door didn’t close on his head, but it banged him pretty hard,” Leon said. “He really wailed. Shana is feeling pretty bad about things right now. He can’t stand up, and his head sort of spins, and then he falls over.”

“This guy doesn’t look like much of a hound,” I said.

“He’s a Mini Aussi and Mini Beagle mix,” Leon said. “We need a regular dog in the house.”

“Let’s bring him in and get a look at him,” I said. “Have you put a name on him yet?”

“Let’s call him Cash,” Leon said. “We had to buy him, and now this, he is consuming his share of cash.”

We tried to lay Cash on the exam table, but he was so messed up neurologically that he would lie still. We ended up doing sort of an exam with Shana holding the pup.

“Do you think we should be talking about putting him to sleep?” Leon asked.

“I don’t think we should do that tonight,” I said. “I think I should give Cash a big dose of steroids, and we can see what morning gives us. He could just have a bad concussion. We can always put him to sleep if he doesn’t improve with medication.”

“Okay, Doc, whatever you think,” Leon said.

“One of my favorite professors in vet school, Dr. Annes, always said that no patient should die without the benefit of steroids.”

“That sounds good to us,” Shana said. “And maybe something for pain.”

I gave the pup a big dose of dexamethasone and tramadol for pain.

“You can leave him here tonight if you want,” I said. “But he will be all alone. It might be better to just take him home and make him comfortable.”

“My guess is he is going to sleep on Shana’s chest tonight,” Leon said.

“Give me a call in the morning, or just drop by. We will be here at eight,” I said.

Leon was on the phone a couple of minutes after I got to the office.

“Pup is doing great this morning, Doc,” Leon said. “I can’t thank you enough, or maybe I should be thanking that Dr. Annes.”

“Sounds good, Leon,” I said. “You want to give him plenty of rest and no vigorous activity for a couple of weeks. It takes some time for these head injuries to heal. If you have time today, drop by the office, and I will have some pills to keep him on for a few days. And Leon, we all stand on a bunch of shoulders. Dr. Annes was one of many who helped me in this business.”

Cash grew up without any residual effects from his head injury. Sometimes, we see seizures following a significant head injury, but Cash is fine. He has the run of the place. And to top that off, he has a big fan group and his own Snapchat following.

Photo by Shana Olson.

A Leap of Faith, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Preface: The summer following my sixth-grade year, Dana Watson and I thoroughly explored all the lands between Broadbent and Gaylord and over the hill to Yellow Creek. That covered a circular area of about 15 square miles. We climbed cliffs, traversed Neal Mountain, followed streams, and marveled at the engineering of beaver dams. We were vaguely aware of property lines but had no concept of trespass in those years.

***

I could hear Mom moving about in the kitchen when I laid in bed in the upstairs boy’s room. I nudged Dana awake.

“Dana, I have been thinking that we should go home to your place over Neal Mountain today,” I said as soon as he stirred.

“That would be a good idea,” Dana said. “I could show that large Beaver dam I was telling you about.”

We both bounded out of bed and dressed quickly. It was a cool summer morning with a dense covering of coastal fog. That meant that we had a few cool hours before the fog would burn off and expose the bright sun. But with the morning fog, even the hottest days would only be in the low eighties.

Mom had a plate of pancakes and bacon on the table when we tumbled down the stairs to the kitchen.

“When we go to Dana’s this morning, we are going to go over Neal Mountain,” I said to Mom, more to inform her than to ask permission.

“You two have been that way before, haven’t you?” Mom asked. 

“It is a steep climb, but other than that, it is an easy route,” I said. “Once we cross over onto Mr. Neal’s place, it is all downhill.”

“What does Mr. Neal think about you traveling across his place?” Mom asked.

“We just go down his far fence line,” Dana said. “He wouldn’t say anything, and if he wanted to make a thing of it, we could just cross the fence. It just that there is a lot of brush on the other side of the fence.”

“Maybe I should call your mother,” Mom said. “Just to let her know where you guys are going to be.” 

“They were going to Coos Bay this morning,” Dana said. “She probably won’t be home until after we get there.”

“Okay, but you be careful,” Mom said as we finished eating and headed out the door.

We headed across our upper field on a trot. Our plan was to reach the top of the shoulder on Neal Mountain before the fog burned off. The heat from the sun would make the climb up the steep slope difficult.

We crossed the line fence onto Herman’s and continued up the road to the old mill site. We gave the sawdust pile, left from the mill, a wide berth. Smoke rose from several holes around the parameter of the sawdust pile. 

We knew these sawdust piles burned for years from spontaneous combustion. There were many horror stories of kids getting too close and falling into a burning hole. I doubted the truth of the stories, but not so much as to want to get too close.

We crossed the creek here and rested in the cool breeze coming up the stream. Now it was all uphill to the crest of the shoulder of the mountain.

We took a deep breath and started up the sloop. Dana led the way, almost crawling at times. We used branches to pull ourselves along on the really steep spots. Finally, we hit a well-worn trail, probably made by deer, but we liked to think it was an elk trail.

“Wow, this is so much better,” Dana said. “This is wide enough. It has to be an elk trail.”

The only place I had seen an elk was in the higher elevations of Eden Ridge and Bone Mountain. 

“I don’t know, Dana,” I said. “I don’t think we have elk down here.”

“They could live on this mountain, and nobody would ever see one,” Dana said.

“I bet this is a cow trail,” I said. “We have cows that come to our place, and to Herman’s, from over the mountain. But it doesn’t matter. It makes the trip easier.”

Sure enough, we followed the trail to the crest of the shoulder, and there was a hole in the fence. We threaded our way through the fence and almost ran down the other side. 

When we came to the fence at the bottom of the hill, we were careful in crossing it. These old ranchers would complain if we stretched the wires.

“That beaver dam is up the creek at the bottom of this hill,” Dana said as we continued on down the hill.

There was still a good flow in the creek for mid-June. We followed the stream through some pasture land for about a half mile before coming to the beaver dam. 

This dam was about three feet tall and made with barked tree sections three inches in diameter and four feet long. There was a large pond behind this dam, and the water flowed over the top. This dam was solid as could be. We crossed the creek on the dam, jumping up and down in a few places to test its construction.

“My folks aren’t going to be home until later this afternoon,” Dana said. “Why don’t we go over and climb those cliffs by Gaylord?”

“Maybe we should stop by your house and let them know where we are going,” I said.

“My brothers don’t care,” Dana said. “And it would take us twice as long to get to the cliffs. Let’s just cut across these fields.”

And off we went, again at a trot. We were at the base of the cliffs in no time. These were exciting cliffs. This solid rock wall was pockmarked with shallow caves halfway up the cliffs. Some said it had probably been on the edge of an ancient ocean.

We went from one shallow cave to the next, almost in a stair-step fashion. There was a deeper cave in an indentation of the cliff wall. We climbed up to it and found that it went about ten feet into the rock wall before narrowing to an impassable passage. We found some bugs on the walls of this cave. They were nearly an inch long and were strange-looking. Sort of like a cross between a long sowbug and a grasshopper. When we would try to catch them, they would jump at us like a grasshopper. That was enough of that, and we went on to explore more of the cliff.

That is when we found it. We could see what looked like a nest of a hawk or eagle on the ledge above us. We needed to get onto that ledge.

The problem was, the ledge was sort of an overhang. We tried several approaches but could not get up to the ledge. Finally, Dana climbed onto my shoulders, and he could then pull himself up to the ledge. Then he laid on his stomach and extended his arms where I could just reach them. With Dana pulling and me digging for every toe hold, I finally made it up to the ledge also.

This ledge was was five feet wide and had a shallow cave on the cliffside. What we had thought was a nest may have been one at one time. But it was long abandoned at this time. We looked at every crevice, thinking we could maybe find an arrowhead or something. 

After spending nearly a half-hour on the ledge, we thought it was time to get down. Suddenly, the overhang loomed largely.

“I don’t think we can get down without falling,” I said as I looked at the smaller ledge below us. The ledge we were on hung out a foot or two beyond the ledge below us.

Dana laid down and looked. “There is no way we can land on that ledge.”

“Now, what are we going to do?” I said.

“Nobody is going to miss us until dark,” Dana said. “And then they are going to be looking on Neal Mountain, not here.”

We sat and pondered our situation for a time. Then it was time to do something. Anything was better than nothing.

“Let’s start looking for another way down,” Dana said.

I went to the right side, I could see a route up to another ledge. Maybe there would be another way down from that ledge.

Dana went to the left side and disappeared as he crept along on a narrow ledge that ran along the cliff wall. I waited for his report before climbing up to the next ledge.

Suddenly, Dana called out from below. He was on the ground.

“Just follow that little ledge around the corner, and you can jump to the top of a fir tree,” Dana said. “Just grab the branches and slide down the outside of the tree. The last branch will put you almost to the ground.”

I started around the ledge with my back to the cliff wall. It seemed to get narrower the further I went. When I was across from the tree, I stood on my heels.

The top of the fir tree was just a little higher than my head, and it was a full thirty feet to the ground. Dana came back to coach my jump.

“Jump hard, and you will catch the tree about five feet below where you are standing,” Dana said.

“Jump hard,” I thought. “How the hell do you jump hard?”

I squatted down by sliding my butt down the wall to give my knees some flex. Then I exploded into the air with outstretched arms. When I slammed into the tree, I grabbed an armful of branches.

I stayed put for a moment, clutching the branches to my chest.

“Now, just relax and slide down the branches,” Dana said, reminding me that I was still twenty-some feet from the ground.

I relaxed my grip, and to my surprise, I slid down to the next set of branches. After that bit of a confidence builder, I slid all the way down, with the last large branch lowering me to the ground.

“See how easy that was?” Dana said.

I smiled and wiped my hands on my shirt. Pitch, I was covered with pitch. There was almost nothing on earth that I hated worse than pitch. That is, except for squash. I really hated squash.

“I have pitch all over me,” I said. “I hate pitch.”

“That’s alright,” Dana said. “Dad has some soap that will take it all off with no problem.”

We started off toward Dana’s house. 

“I wonder how long it would have taken them to find us?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Dana said. “But I don’t think we should be telling anybody about this.”

Photo by D. E. Larsen, DVM

Know What You Know 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Sandy came back to the treatment room and leaned against the door jam. I knew her well enough to know that her stance meant bad news.

“Sue is on the phone,” Sandy said. “She has been trying to get her Dobermans to breed, and her male will show no interest. She wants you to do an artificial insemination for her.”

Sandy knew I hated to deal with artificial insemination in the dog. In well over ninety percent of the cases, the request was because the male was not getting the job done.

So, what is the best way to get the male dog to perform? You take them to the worst place in the world, in their opinion, and expect things to be better. Take them to a vet clinic.

“You know what I think about that, don’t you?” I asked Sandy.

“Sue is begging on the phone,” Sandy said. “She has been trying all week, and she is about at the end of her bitches fertile period.”

“Okay, I will give it a try,” I said. “Schedule her at the end of the day when everything is cleared out of here, and tell her there are no promises.”

There was a story in our class in vet school where a couple of the guys were working at a clinic in New Mexico. They were trying to collect semen from a small dog, and there was no way the dog would do it. The story goes that the guys took the female and threw her into a kennel with a group of dogs. She got bred, and apparently, nobody was aware of the breeding.

“At least Burno is a good dog,” Dixie said.

“Yes, he’s a good dog,” I said. “But the last thing I wanted to be doing at the end of the day is masturbating a damn dog. And I can assure you, Burno won’t be thrilled with the idea either.”

The pending appointment cast a cloud of doom over me for the rest of the afternoon. I kept thinking I needed to find somewhere to send people who wanted this service, but it was such an infrequent request that I never got that done.

Finally, we had an empty clinic except for Sue, who was waiting with Burno and Bella in the reception area. Burno looked like he was ready to leave any time.

We brought both dogs into the exam room, and I did a quick exam on Burno and collected a vaginal swab from Bella.

“What does the swab tell you?” Sue asked.

“When the bitch is in her receptive period, the vaginal epithelium cells on the slide will all be cornified cells,” I said. “This is just to check to make sure Bella is still in estrus.”

“Burno shows zero interest in her,” Sue said. “Does he have a problem, or what?”

“It’s hard to tell,” I said. “They are together all the time. Maybe he just doesn’t like her. Or maybe it is just inexperience. Sometimes, these guys just need to run with boys for a time or two. Sort of like a dirty movie. The problem we have now is in collecting semen from a reluctant male who would rather be any place other than the dreaded vet clinic.”

“How are we going to do this?” Sue asked.

“It might work better if you waited out front,” I said. “At least for the first try. If I can’t get anything out of him, you can come back and try to help.”

“Okay, but I am guessing that I will be paying for your time even if nothing happens,” Sue said.

“This might be one of the most difficult situations I deal with in this clinic,” I said. “I don’t do it for the fun of it.”

Dixie and I took Burno and Bella to the back of the clinic. We couldn’t get Burno to even look at a Bella, let alone have romantic thoughts. I tried some manual stimulation on Burno with no results.

“What about the electroejaculator?” Dixie asked.

“That might work, but we’re not going to try it here,” I said. “You have to put the dog under anesthesia to do it. We would have a lot of expense for a backyard litter. We are not going to get anything done here. I will talk with Sue and see what she wants to do.”

Sue was on the edge of her seat when I went out front. She sprang to her feet before I said a word.

“Can I come try to help?” Sue asked.

“Yes, you can try,” I said. “But Sue, this isn’t going to work. We are just spinning our wheels here. Burno is not interested in any of it.”

Sue almost ran back to the dogs. The next thing I knew, she was down on the floor talking with Burno. I didn’t know what was going to happen now. I glanced at Dixie, and she shrugged her shoulders.

This went on for another fifteen minutes, and we tried manual stimulation again with no effect. I finally called an end to it.

“This isn’t going to work, Sue,” I said. “I don’t have any suggestions for you except to try to get Burno some experience before the next heat cycle.”

Sue left with her two dogs, disappointed, I am sure.

“The first thing in the morning, we are going to get on the phone and find a clinic, somewhere close, probably Eugene, that will take our referrals for this job. I know what I know, and it isn’t masturbating dogs.”

Sandy smiled but did not respond.

Photo by Alexas Fotos on Pexels