My First Ellwood, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

The pup tried to lift his head as he laid on the exam table, but he just didn’t have the strength to accomplish the feat. He let it settle back to the towel on the stainless steel tabletop, resigned to his fate, whatever that may be.

“I don’t know anything about him, Doc,” Paul said. “I was working on the house I am building in Liberty,  he walked out of the brush and collapsed at my feet. I guessed that meant it was up to me to try and save him. I am just happy that you can look at him on a Sunday afternoon.”

Cachexia was one of those words I was forced to learn in vet school. Dr. Kainer, the freshman nemesis, seldom remarked about the words he heaped upon us. Still, he had indicated that we would rarely need to use cachexia in our records. If anything described the condition of this pup, it was cachexia. He was literally skin and bones, and completely out of strength. He was looking for a place to die, or maybe hoping for a miracle.

“Just off the cuff, my guess is his chances are slim to none,” I said. “We will spend a little money to figure out what is wrong with him unless we get lucky. And then treatment is going to be more expense.”

“I have an extra hundred dollars in my pocket today, Doc,” Paul said. “If that will buy him a new start, that would be great. If not, at least we tried.”

This was something I learned early when I came to Sweet Home in the middle 1970s. If you can save them for a hundred dollars, they will do it. If it was going to much over that, there would be careful consideration of the options.

I opened the pup’s mouth, it was almost dry, the saliva was white and mucus-like. This was from extreme dehydration. His tonsils stood out like bright red grapes hanging in the back of his throat. 

As I ran my hands over his body, I could feel every bone. He was like a skeleton covered with skin. He weighed 12 pounds, and as a young mixed pup, he should be over 40 pounds. Every lymph node was enlarged, noticeable enough that I didn’t have to palpate them. His abdomen was empty but gurgled with my palpation. The mercury in the rectal thermometer was just a little over 95, quite low for a July afternoon. A drop of liquid stool hung on the thermometer when it was removed from his rectum. I carefully transferred that drop to a microscope slide.

“I will take a second to look at this under the microscope,” I said to Paul. “If you would, make sure he doesn’t jump off the table.”

“Surely you jest,” Paul said.

I mixed the small sample with a couple drops of floatation solution and put a coverslip on the slide. Under the microscope, a diagnosis was confirmed with just one glance. Nanophyetus salmincola eggs covered the field. This pup had Salmon Poisoning.

“Paul, this pup has a very advanced case of salmon poisoning,” I said. “Actually, I have never seen a case this advanced. Most dogs are dead before they get this bad. I don’t know if we can help him, my guess is we will be throwing your money down the drain.”

“I said a short time ago, I have a hundred dollars to put into him,” Paul said. “You haven’t had to do any fancy blood testing to find out his problem, lets put the rest of it into some medication and see how he does.”

“Okay, we can wing it from here,” I said. “Ideally, we should check to see how his liver and kidney function is doing, but I will put him on an IV, run some fluids, and give him a couple of miracle drugs. We will see what morning brings.”

Working on this unnamed pup by myself was no problem. He did not move a muscle, not even a flinch when I inserted a catheter in his vein. I started a bottle of fluids at a slow drip. Then I gave a dose of Oxytetracycline as a slow IV injection. 

I drew on the experience of a couple of the men whose shoulders I stood upon. Doctor Annes at Colorado State always said that no patient should die without the benefits of steroids. And Doctor Haug from Myrtle Point always treated his salmon poisoning patients with Oxytetracycline and an equal volume of Dexamethasone. I usually gave a small dose of Dexamethasone on the initial treatment for salmon disease. Still, looking at this guy, he could probably benefit from Doctor Haug’s larger dose. I gave the larger dose of Dexamethasone as a slow IV injection.

Scratching his head, I wished him luck and turned to fill out the records. “Name of Pet” jumped out at me from the top of the paper. 

“So, guy, what are we going to call you,” I asked the pup. He sort of raised one eyelid, the first real response I had seen from him. I pondered the name.

“I think you might make a pretty good Ellwood, At least for the next few hours,” I said. “But, I am telling you, Ellwood, you had better get well quick. The ticket is for a short ride. I will be back and check on you after dinner.”

Anyone who has been around salmon poisoning knows that the odor of the diarrhea is most offensive. I have had clients tell of waking at 3:00 in the morning after their dog has had an explosive event in the hallway. Everyone in the house wakes up with a headache from the odor. The same thing can happen in the veterinary clinic, especially in a patient who is so dehydrated that their diarrhea has stopped. When they get some fluids, an explosive event often follows.

After dinner, I was a little apprehensive about opening the clinic door. I hoped I would not be greeted with a clinic filled with a salmon poisoning dog’s pungent odor. No odor, that was good. Now all I needed was for Ellwood to still be alive.

Much to my surprise, Ellwood was up, resting on his sternum with his head up and watching for me as I came through the kennel room door. He was a completely different pup.

“Will, I’ll be, Ellwood, you might just live after all,” I said as I looked him over. “You are so thin, I wonder if you would eat a bite.”

Because salmon poisoning dogs lose their appetite early in the course of the disease. Many will not eat for several days after treatment is started. And there is often some residual vomiting if food is given too soon. But I opened a can of mild intestinal diet food and placed a spoonful between Ellwood’s paws. It disappeared so fast that I almost questioned myself about if I really put it there.

“Wow, one more spoonful tonight, then we will give you more in the morning it this stays down,” I said. I thought I saw a slight wag of the end of Ellwood’s tail as I placed the second spoonful between his paws. Again it was gone in an instant.

In the morning, the bottle of fluids was empty, and Ellwood was standing up, and wagging is tail. I could almost say he was bright and alert.

“You are a sight, Ellwood,” I said. “How can you stand with those muscles of yours?”

I placed several spoonfuls of the canned food in a small bowl. Ellwood wolfed it down and wagged his tail. I put a small pan of water in the kennel, Ellwood lapped it up in short order.

“I think you’re well, Ellwood,” I said. “Never in my wildest dreams would I expect it today, especially on your budget.”

When Paul arrived at the clinic later in the morning, I think he was worried if he was going to have to dispose of the body or if we would do that for him. He was pleasantly surprised to see Ellwood up and wagging his tail.

“I think he had survived the disease,” I said. “He just needed some fluid replacement and drugs. I think you have a new pup.”

“I didn’t expect him to be alive.  I was thinking I was going to have to dig a hole for him,” Paul said. “Do you think he is going to be okay.”

“I am not sure my opinion means much concerning Ellwood,” I said. “I didn’t expect him to live through the afternoon yesterday.”

“Where did you find his name?” Paul asked. “I looked for a tag, and I couldn’t find one.”

“That is just a name that I thought would fit him,” I said. “He is sort of a fighter, a little like an Ellwood I know.”

We fixed Paul up with a special diet, medication, and instructions for the next week. He stood at the counter, with Ellwood on a leash, while I finished calculating the bill. 

Paul noticed my diploma on the wall behind the counter and held his hand out to shake. “Good job, thanks, Ellwood.”

Photo Credit: Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels

Salmon Poisoning Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanophyetus_salmincola

The Cluttered Desk 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

The bell in the hallway rang, and the class was officially over, but Dr. Benjamin was still standing in front of the class as some of the guys were starting to put their notes away.

“Don’t get in a big hurry,” Dr. Benjamin said. “We still have a couple of things to cover.”

This was Clinical Pathology class in our second year of veterinary school. Dr. Benjamin was a lady who maintained complete command of the class. She graduated from Colorado State Veterinary School in 1954. That fact alone said she was a superwoman.

For a woman to be accepted into a veterinary school in 1950, she had to excel in every aspect of life. If she wasn’t a straight-A student, she would be wasting her time applying in those years. But she had to have the physical capabilities to satisfy the strict criteria of the admissions committee. There were probably few criteria for the male applicants, but veterinary medicine was a very sexist profession, and few women were allowed to enter.

“For lab tomorrow, we will be doing urinalysis,” Dr. Benjamin said. “Everyone is to bring their own urine sample. There is to be no sharing of samples. So pick up a sample jar from the basket by the door as you leave today.”

A bit of laughter filtered through the classroom after that comment.

“The other thing we need to discuss is the clutter in this classroom after you people leave in the afternoon,” Dr. Benjamin said. “The janitors have been threatening me daily. So before anyone leaves this room, I expect all the litter on the floor to be picked up. Desks are to be arranged in the same orderly manner you found when you entered this classroom a couple of hours ago. That said, there will be no discussion or comments about my desk.”

Dr. Benjamin’s office was across the hall from this classroom. To say her desk was cluttered was a gross understatement. It was covered with books and papers in piles nearly three feet high. She maintained one tiny space in the center of the desk that would accommodate a notepad, but that was the only open flat space in her entire office.

Everyone knew her desk was cluttered because her entire office was the same. There were boxes stacked here and there, books stacked in front of the bookcases. It was so bad that she couldn’t close the door, so everyone knew the status.

Dr. Benjamin gathered her stuff and prepared to depart as everyone stood up to tidy their space.

“Now, don’t forget your urine samples tomorrow,” she said as she paused at the door. “If you don’t have one, you will not get credit for the lab unless you can come up with a sample quickly.”

“That will be fun,” I said to Ben and Chuck. “Packing a urine sample around all morning for the afternoon lab.”

This was in 1972. Our class had eighty-four students. There were eight women in our class. That was almost an unheard-of number. The classes before us would have two or three women, four at the most. There could have been a couple of the women who had a B on their record, but all eight were exceptional students. The profession was changing very slowly.

***

When everyone started into the lab, everyone had their little jar of urine. Dr. Benjamin was waiting at the front of the lab as we got situated at our lab tables. 

With eighty-four students, this was a large laboratory. There were rows of lab tables, with four students in each row. There was space between the tables where you moved between rows to look at other students’ samples or microscope slides.

Dr. Benjamin covered the basics of a urinalysis. The dipstick, the specific gravity, color, turbidity, and other components of the process. What she wanted to spend most of her time on today was obtaining and analyzing the urine sediment. 

Everyone was busy getting their urine sample into the centrifuge so we could start looking at the sediment. Suddenly there was a commotion in the row behind us. Everyone’s attention was diverted to the unrest.

While this was happening, one of the guys emptied a vial of bull semen into one of the women’s urine samples. He had got the vial from the bull farm this morning, and the commotion was a planned diversion. When the deed was done, everyone returned to their work.

The guys behind us shared their row with one of the class’s more popular and self-confident gals. They were all quick to share their microscope slides with each other and were waiting for this gal to get her slide under the microscope.

Once she looked at the slide, her face reddened briefly. Then she stood up and let the guys, giggling now, look at her slide. 

“All right, who’s the culprit?” she asked in a stern voice. “I’m no dummy; I know bovine semen when I see it.”

There were laughs all around, and the plot was explained. That was the end of the stunt.

I don’t think Dr. Benjamin was aware of the goings-on. I am sure that today, things would turn out differently. Possibly, even resulting in an expulsion.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash.

Please! 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

The sun was bright, and not a cloud in the sky as we headed east out of Fort Collins. I was with Dr. Hopkins, a second-year resident, and we were on a farm call to check on a group of cows.

This was the first summer quarter that Colorado State Veterinary School conducted. The plan was to have a quarter of the class on break during each school year term. That way, the student load in the clinic would be reduced so everyone could have more hands-on experience. I jumped at taking this summer and having my free quarter during the spring term. That way, I could start work three months early. I needed the money.

I enjoyed working with Dr. Hopkins. He was a cow doctor, which was my goal in this profession. He was a big guy, probably younger than I was, probably by a couple of years. 

“We have to about ten cows to check today,” Dr. Hopkins said as he turned south onto a country road several miles out of town. “These are all rechecks. This guy had an old veterinarian doing some work for him for the last couple of years. This whole group of cows had retained membranes last fall, and the old guy manually removed those membranes.”

“Dr. Ball says that is something we should no longer be doing,” I said.

“That right,” Dr. Hopkins said. “But you will find out that is easier to talk about than it is to do. All the older practitioners are still cleaning these cows. It is probably a significant income producer for them. You will get a lot of kickback from the older veterinarians and their clients if you try to convince them that it is better not to manually remove those membranes.”

“Anyway, these cows all had uterine infections that were hard to clear up. So here we are in July, and hoping that they are finally pregnant.”

“We have almost lost a year with them,” I said. “I would guess if they are not pregnant at this point, it will probably be best to salvage them.”

“Yes, we are probably at that point already,” Dr. Hopkins said. “Sending them to the sale pregnant increases their value. Otherwise, they are immediately sold as hamburger. They may end up there either way.”

“So, we are nine months into their milking year, and if they are only two months pregnant, that will mean another five months of low-yield milking,” I said. “You can’t afford to feed one of these Holsteins for an extra five months with enough milk to pay their way.”

“Exactly, so we will check these cows; if they are not pregnant, they go to hamburger,” Dr. Hopkins said. “They should also go to the sale barn if they are pregnant. Unless there is some overriding reason to hold them over. Some special genetics, or great milk production, are acceptable reasons to hold a cow over. Being a favorite cow should not be a good reason.”

By the time we finished the discussion, Dr. Hopkins had turned the truck into the barnyard. Ted was waiting for us as we pulled up to the barn.

“I have these gals waiting for you,” Ted said. “But, you know, I’m not sure it is worth checking these gals. They are so late; they are all going down the road anyway.”

“We were talking about that on the way out here,” Dr. Hopkins said. “The only value will be they are worth more than hamburger prices if they are pregnant. They might fit into someone else’s program.”

“Okay, let’s get it done,” Ted said. “I’m a little curious if all your work ended up with pregnant cows anyway.”

Ted had all the cows locked in stanchions, so the pregnancy exams didn’t take long. I went down the line first, and Dr. Hopkins followed along to check my work for the first few cows. I felt a little sorry for those cows. Dr. Hopkins’s arm was much larger than mine. 

Every cow was pregnant. That was pretty good, considering the history.

“I wish I had started using you guys a year ago,” Ted said. “I hate to see this group go down the road, but I guess what’s done is done.”

“You have enough replacements that you won’t notice the loss for long,” Dr. Hopkins said.

“Yes, I know,” Ted said. “My wife wanted you to stop at the house when we were done here.”

We were just getting to the truck to start cleaning up when Ted’s wife showed up with her horse in tow.

“I was hoping I could get you guys to worm my horse while you were here,” Jane said.

“I’m a cow doctor, Jane,” Dr. Hopkins said. “I’m not sure you will want me to worm your horse.”

“I know, but it will take weeks for me to get one of those horse doctors out here,” Jane said. “I trust you with anything.”

“I’m not sure I have the right stuff,” Dr. Hopkins said. He was trying hard to get out of working on this horse.

“Please!” Jane said. “Would you please do this just for me?”

Hopkins looked at me and sighed.

“I tried,” he said under his breath. “I hate this horse.”

We dug around in the truck and came up the stomach tube for a horse and a dose of worm medicine. Dr. Hopkins pulled a twitch out of the back of the truck.

“Oh, could you try doing this without the twitch,” Jane said. “Please! Those things look like the hurt.”

“That is what they are supposed to do,” Dr. Hopkins said. “They keep the horse worrying about their nose and not what I am doing.”

“Please!” Jane said, pleading.

“Okay, we will try, but there are no promises,” Dr. Hopkins said.

I grabbed the horse by the halter and leaned against his shoulder. The horse threw his head up as Hopkins reached over my left shoulder and grabbed his nose. I reached up and grabbed the horse’s ear, pulling his head down. Hopkins held on to the halter and started the stomach tube into the horse’s nostril.

The horse reared a little, lifting me off the ground. As I came back down with my feet on the ground, the horse violently threw his head to the side, striking Dr. Hopkins. 

The blow knocked Dr. Hopkins to the ground, and he rolled a full twenty feet down a slope. He was shaking when he got back up and returned to the horse.

“Get the damn twitch,” Dr. Hopkins said through cinched teeth.

I retrieved the twitch from the truck and grabbed the horse’s nose with my hand through the chain loop. I slipped the noose onto the nose and twisted the loop tight.

“Tighter,” Hopkins said. “I hate this damn horse.”

I took another half-turn on the twitch.

The horse stood still, with his eye watching me, as Dr. Hopkins placed the stomach tube and administered the dose. He pulled the tube, and I released the twitch. I handed the lead rope back to Jane.

“I’m so sorry,” Jane said. “I guess those twitches are for naughty horses.”

“We use them a lot,” I said. “They really keep everyone safer, even the horse.”

We got cleaned up and back in the truck, with Dr. Hopkins not saying much. As we pulled out of the driveway, he relaxed a little.

“That’s why I do cows,” Dr. Hopkins said. “It’s not the horses so much; it’s the women who baby them. The horse is a dangerous animal if it is undisciplined.”

Photo by Elina Sazonova on Pexels.