Prologue:

This is from the Archives, this was my first story on this blog, essentially unchanged except for this note. Let me know if there is any difference in the writing, etc. There was no photo with this story.

Posted byd.e.larsen.dvmDecember 15, 2019Posted inPets, Veterinary MedicineEdit Gus and the Manure Pile

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Manure piles were (and still are to some extent) standard fare on Oregon farms.  They were located around the barn somewhere and served multiple uses.  They came in many shapes and sizes.  Smaller places had a simple pile outside a doorway where the barn was cleaned.  Larger farms had more elaborate piles.  In my experience their edges were the easiest place to collect a can of worms for a day’s fishing.  They also were used to dispose of small animals that were casualties during the year on the farm.  They were the ultimate compost piles.

Gus was a typical barn cat.  Well past middle age when I first met him when I came to Sweet Home in 1976.  Gus was lucky to have been neutered early in his life, but still had his share of scraps defending his turf.  He was nothing special, gray tabby in color and not large, maybe 8 pounds.  He lived with his extended family on a small acreage on a hill outside of Sweet Home.  Grandma and Grandpa lived on the “farm”.  Not much of a farm, but enough for a few cows and sheep and a small barn.  The son and his family lived about a quarter mile up the road on a neighboring taxlot.  When Gus came to the clinic he came with Carol, the daughter-in-law.

Over the first few years of practice in Sweet Home Gus was approaching his golden year.  In those times I didn’t see neutered male cats over 15 years of age.  This was before the advent of the feline leukemia vaccine, and diets did not address urinary tract and heart issues.  For barns cats to reach that age was truly exceptional.

One cold winter morning Grandpa hurried into his pickup truck in the carport on the side of the barn.   It was cold and he was anxious to get the truck started.  “Thump, thump” came from under the hood.  Gus had sought the warmest spot he knew of to sleep the night before.  The warm engine block was one of his favorites.  Usually able to scramble out before the engine started, this morning it didn’t work.

Grandpa knew what the noise meant, he had seen more than one cat caught in a fan belt on cold mornings.  He was disappointed when he found Gus, he had been such a good cat.  Gus was a mess, broken leg with bone poking out, left eye hanging out of the socket, several large lacerations and bleeding from his mouth.  In Grandpa’s mind there was only one thing to do.  Picking up a hammer, he made a quick whack to the back of Gus’ head.  Disposal was easy.  Gus’ final resting place was the manure pile on the other side of the barn.

In most cases that would be the end of the story, but remember, cats have 9 lives.  Gus had already used several of his just surviving to this advanced age.  Now he would need to cash in all the others.

Carol had noticed that Gus had not been to his dish on the back porch for several days.  She mentioned his unusual absence to Grandpa.  Grandpa was quiet, knowing the she would have rushed Gus to clinic and spent a lot of money on an old cat.

The next morning, she heard a noise on the porch.  She opened the door and was aghast at the scene.  There was Gus.  Covered with manure, left eye hanging out, broken and torn.  How had he managed to make it to the door? How had he known which door was the one to provide him help? She carefully boxed Gus and headed for the clinic.  Grandpa was outside as she drove by so she stopped to show him what she had found.  Grandpa had no choice but to confess.  He said that the vet could do a better job than him, assuming that Gus would be put to sleep.  In those years, in Sweet Home, if a cat couldn’t be fixed for $100.00 it probably was not going to be fixed.  Gus would surely be well over that figure.

Carol laid Gus on the exam table and related the story.  Gus looked hopeless to me.  She wanted to know her options. Gus was a pitiful sight as he lay on the table, looking cautiously at me out of his one good eye. 

“What are your options, Gus?”  I thought to myself as I pondered the situation.

My initial thought that Grandpa had Gus’ best interest at heart, he just didn’t do the job very well.  I’m not sure that was what his owner wanted to hear.

“We have a lot problems here” I started.  “Contaminated compound fracture of the tibia, fracture of mandible, eye that needs to be removed, broken teeth and multiple lacerations that are very contaminated.  The first question we need to discuss is do we want to put him through all this over the next few weeks?”

Carol was quick to respond, “We are not going to put him to sleep, not until we don’t have any other option.  I don’t care what it costs. If we have to, Grandpa can log a few trees.  That’s the least he can do after what he did to this cat.”

I knew Grandpa.  He would log his trees for his family or for the Grandkids.  I wasn’t so sure about a cat.

Now we were on to option number 2.  Referral was out of the question. There were no specialty clinics around at that period of time.  If Gus was going to survive it was going to be by my hands only.

“We have several things to do, first we need to sedate him and get him cleaned up, get him on some fluids and antibiotics.”

“The wounds are too contaminated to close; if we clean them up and remove the grossly contaminated tissues, they will heal if he lives long enough.”

“I can probably wire the jaw and remove the broken teeth.  The eye is toast and has to go.”

“The fractured tibia is too contaminated to fix, the ends of the bones are likely dead,  The leg has to go.”

Carol finally spoke, ” I want to save the leg!”

“Can’t be done.”  I responded.

Again Carol spoke, “I want to save the leg, we can try!”

“Okay, we can try, but if it happens it will be a miracle.  And the leg will be short.  We will try.  He will have to stay a few days.  I don’t know what this will cost.”

Carol left, convinced that Gus was going be back to his old self in a few days.  Might take a little longer than that, I thought.

We sedated him with a dose of Ketamine and got him under the spray nozzle in the tub.  After cleaning the manure and dirt, it looked like things were almost doable.  We got him dried off and an IV started.  Antibiotics on board and warmed up a little, he was ready for the first of several procedures.

Putting Gus on some gas anesthesia, we started cleaning wounds.  Shaving hair from the wounds. We removed contaminated tissues and packed with Furacin Ointment (the best topical antibiotic ointment I had at the time).

I worked on the tibia next.  The ends of the bone were dry and brown with debris stuffed into the ends.  I cleaned the wound as best I could.  Calculated that I would have to removed bone from both exposed fragments.  I couldn’t make myself think this was going to be anything but a waste of time. We packed the wound with antibiotic ointment and would do the repair tomorrow.

The left eye was hanging out of the socket and did not require much to remove.  Placed a single suture around the optic stalk and removed the eye.  I could deal with closing the socket later.  

The mouth was clean compared to the rest of the cat.  Gus was missing both upper canine teeth and one lower canine tooth.  His jaw was fractured on the left side and separated at the symphysis (the mid point at the front of jaw were the mandible bones join in a non movable joint).

The symphysis was repaired by passing a 20 gauge wire around the mandibles just behind the lower canine teeth, exiting on the ventral midline where I twisted the ends to tighten the ligature, cut the ends short and buried with a single suture.  The fracture of the mandible was stabilized by wiring around two teeth on each side of the fracture.  Probably will need to do more but later.

The next morning Gus was looking pretty good and actually was ready to get out of here and back to his barn.  We gave him a few laps of gruel and continued the fluids.  We were going to tackle the leg later today.  I still felt this was a waste of time.

With Gus under anesthesia, I went to work on the exposed bone.  To my surprise, I did not have to trim too much bone before I came to bleeding bone.  The marrow cavity appeared pretty clean with the superficial debris was removed.  I repaired the fracture with a threaded intramedullary pin.  Inserted at the knee and threaded down the marrow cavity to the fracture site.  Placed the ends of the exposed bone into normal position and seated the pin into the distal fragment.  This was the common repair at that time.  We will have problems due to the contamination at the fracture site.  I cleaned up the wound as best we could and closed this wound.

Gus was ready to go home for a few days before we started the next round of repair and treatment.

Both Carol and Gus were happy to see each other.  Gus was actually stepping on the fractured leg.  Cats always make surgeons look like they know what they are doing.

Over the next few weeks, Gus became a standard visitor to the surgery room.  We would clean on his open wounds, which were granulating well.  We closed his eye socket and placed an additional wire in his jaw to improve the repair.  On each visit I was more and more cautious on how the leg was healing.  The soft tissues were looking good but I was still skeptical about the bone.  Carol was in great spirits, and I think that Grandpa was getting to come out of the doghouse once in awhile.

Finally, push comes to shove.  Time to x-ray the leg to see how the repair is going.  Gus is still quite a sight.  One eye and one lower canine tooth protruding out on the outside of his upper lip.  Larges patches with no hair, but the wounds are mostly healed.  Probably as good as they would have healed had they been sutured.  He would purr and he was bearing weight on the fractured leg.

The x-rays were better than I expected.  There was some healing but not what was needed.  We would have to try something different.

So at 6 weeks from the time of injury I removed the IM pin.   There was a pretty good fibrous union of the fracture, but no boney union.  The next try was an external fixation device, 4 small pins driven into the bone, 2 above and 2 below the fracture site and bolted to an external pin to fix the bones in position.  A tall order for a cow doctor but I got it done.

Another 4 weeks and we were done.  The leg was healed, Gus was happy, Carol was happy.  I don’t know about Grandpa.  The total dollars are lost to a clouded memory.  Anyway, it was never about the money.

The last time I saw Gus was almost a year later.  Into his golden year now, and with none of 9 lives to spare, he was truly an old cat.  He was in for routine stuff, an abscess on the side of face, (left side, he probably didn’t see the punch coming) and tapeworms.  Still defending his turf and still able to catch a mouse or two. I always wondered about his final resting place.  Was it the manure pile, again?

Posted byd.e.larsen.dvmDecember 15, 2019Posted inPets, Veterinary MedicineEdit Gus and the Manure Pile

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Manure piles were (and still are to some extent) standard fare on Oregon farms.  They were located around the barn somewhere and served multiple uses.  They came in many shapes and sizes.  Smaller places had a simple pile outside a doorway where the barn was cleaned.  Larger farms had more elaborate piles.  In my experience their edges were the easiest place to collect a can of worms for a day’s fishing.  They also were used to dispose of small animals that were casualties during the year on the farm.  They were the ultimate compost piles.

Gus was a typical barn cat.  Well past middle age when I first met him when I came to Sweet Home in 1976.  Gus was lucky to have been neutered early in his life, but still had his share of scraps defending his turf.  He was nothing special, gray tabby in color and not large, maybe 8 pounds.  He lived with his extended family on a small acreage on a hill outside of Sweet Home.  Grandma and Grandpa lived on the “farm”.  Not much of a farm, but enough for a few cows and sheep and a small barn.  The son and his family lived about a quarter mile up the road on a neighboring taxlot.  When Gus came to the clinic he came with Carol, the daughter-in-law.

Over the first few years of practice in Sweet Home Gus was approaching his golden year.  In those times I didn’t see neutered male cats over 15 years of age.  This was before the advent of the feline leukemia vaccine, and diets did not address urinary tract and heart issues.  For barns cats to reach that age was truly exceptional.

One cold winter morning Grandpa hurried into his pickup truck in the carport on the side of the barn.   It was cold and he was anxious to get the truck started.  “Thump, thump” came from under the hood.  Gus had sought the warmest spot he knew of to sleep the night before.  The warm engine block was one of his favorites.  Usually able to scramble out before the engine started, this morning it didn’t work.

Grandpa knew what the noise meant, he had seen more than one cat caught in a fan belt on cold mornings.  He was disappointed when he found Gus, he had been such a good cat.  Gus was a mess, broken leg with bone poking out, left eye hanging out of the socket, several large lacerations and bleeding from his mouth.  In Grandpa’s mind there was only one thing to do.  Picking up a hammer, he made a quick whack to the back of Gus’ head.  Disposal was easy.  Gus’ final resting place was the manure pile on the other side of the barn.

In most cases that would be the end of the story, but remember, cats have 9 lives.  Gus had already used several of his just surviving to this advanced age.  Now he would need to cash in all the others.

Carol had noticed that Gus had not been to his dish on the back porch for several days.  She mentioned his unusual absence to Grandpa.  Grandpa was quiet, knowing the she would have rushed Gus to clinic and spent a lot of money on an old cat.

The next morning, she heard a noise on the porch.  She opened the door and was aghast at the scene.  There was Gus.  Covered with manure, left eye hanging out, broken and torn.  How had he managed to make it to the door? How had he known which door was the one to provide him help? She carefully boxed Gus and headed for the clinic.  Grandpa was outside as she drove by so she stopped to show him what she had found.  Grandpa had no choice but to confess.  He said that the vet could do a better job than him, assuming that Gus would be put to sleep.  In those years, in Sweet Home, if a cat couldn’t be fixed for $100.00 it probably was not going to be fixed.  Gus would surely be well over that figure.

Carol laid Gus on the exam table and related the story.  Gus looked hopeless to me.  She wanted to know her options. Gus was a pitiful sight as he lay on the table, looking cautiously at me out of his one good eye. 

“What are your options, Gus?”  I thought to myself as I pondered the situation.

My initial thought that Grandpa had Gus’ best interest at heart, he just didn’t do the job very well.  I’m not sure that was what his owner wanted to hear.

“We have a lot problems here” I started.  “Contaminated compound fracture of the tibia, fracture of mandible, eye that needs to be removed, broken teeth and multiple lacerations that are very contaminated.  The first question we need to discuss is do we want to put him through all this over the next few weeks?”

Carol was quick to respond, “We are not going to put him to sleep, not until we don’t have any other option.  I don’t care what it costs. If we have to, Grandpa can log a few trees.  That’s the least he can do after what he did to this cat.”

I knew Grandpa.  He would log his trees for his family or for the Grandkids.  I wasn’t so sure about a cat.

Now we were on to option number 2.  Referral was out of the question. There were no specialty clinics around at that period of time.  If Gus was going to survive it was going to be by my hands only.

“We have several things to do, first we need to sedate him and get him cleaned up, get him on some fluids and antibiotics.”

“The wounds are too contaminated to close; if we clean them up and remove the grossly contaminated tissues, they will heal if he lives long enough.”

“I can probably wire the jaw and remove the broken teeth.  The eye is toast and has to go.”

“The fractured tibia is too contaminated to fix, the ends of the bones are likely dead,  The leg has to go.”

Carol finally spoke, ” I want to save the leg!”

“Can’t be done.”  I responded.

Again Carol spoke, “I want to save the leg, we can try!”

“Okay, we can try, but if it happens it will be a miracle.  And the leg will be short.  We will try.  He will have to stay a few days.  I don’t know what this will cost.”

Carol left, convinced that Gus was going be back to his old self in a few days.  Might take a little longer than that, I thought.

We sedated him with a dose of Ketamine and got him under the spray nozzle in the tub.  After cleaning the manure and dirt, it looked like things were almost doable.  We got him dried off and an IV started.  Antibiotics on board and warmed up a little, he was ready for the first of several procedures.

Putting Gus on some gas anesthesia, we started cleaning wounds.  Shaving hair from the wounds. We removed contaminated tissues and packed with Furacin Ointment (the best topical antibiotic ointment I had at the time).

I worked on the tibia next.  The ends of the bone were dry and brown with debris stuffed into the ends.  I cleaned the wound as best I could.  Calculated that I would have to removed bone from both exposed fragments.  I couldn’t make myself think this was going to be anything but a waste of time. We packed the wound with antibiotic ointment and would do the repair tomorrow.

The left eye was hanging out of the socket and did not require much to remove.  Placed a single suture around the optic stalk and removed the eye.  I could deal with closing the socket later.  

The mouth was clean compared to the rest of the cat.  Gus was missing both upper canine teeth and one lower canine tooth.  His jaw was fractured on the left side and separated at the symphysis (the mid point at the front of jaw were the mandible bones join in a non movable joint).

The symphysis was repaired by passing a 20 gauge wire around the mandibles just behind the lower canine teeth, exiting on the ventral midline where I twisted the ends to tighten the ligature, cut the ends short and buried with a single suture.  The fracture of the mandible was stabilized by wiring around two teeth on each side of the fracture.  Probably will need to do more but later.

The next morning Gus was looking pretty good and actually was ready to get out of here and back to his barn.  We gave him a few laps of gruel and continued the fluids.  We were going to tackle the leg later today.  I still felt this was a waste of time.

With Gus under anesthesia, I went to work on the exposed bone.  To my surprise, I did not have to trim too much bone before I came to bleeding bone.  The marrow cavity appeared pretty clean with the superficial debris was removed.  I repaired the fracture with a threaded intramedullary pin.  Inserted at the knee and threaded down the marrow cavity to the fracture site.  Placed the ends of the exposed bone into normal position and seated the pin into the distal fragment.  This was the common repair at that time.  We will have problems due to the contamination at the fracture site.  I cleaned up the wound as best we could and closed this wound.

Gus was ready to go home for a few days before we started the next round of repair and treatment.

Both Carol and Gus were happy to see each other.  Gus was actually stepping on the fractured leg.  Cats always make surgeons look like they know what they are doing.

Over the next few weeks, Gus became a standard visitor to the surgery room.  We would clean on his open wounds, which were granulating well.  We closed his eye socket and placed an additional wire in his jaw to improve the repair.  On each visit I was more and more cautious on how the leg was healing.  The soft tissues were looking good but I was still skeptical about the bone.  Carol was in great spirits, and I think that Grandpa was getting to come out of the doghouse once in awhile.

Finally, push comes to shove.  Time to x-ray the leg to see how the repair is going.  Gus is still quite a sight.  One eye and one lower canine tooth protruding out on the outside of his upper lip.  Larges patches with no hair, but the wounds are mostly healed.  Probably as good as they would have healed had they been sutured.  He would purr and he was bearing weight on the fractured leg.

The x-rays were better than I expected.  There was some healing but not what was needed.  We would have to try something different.

So at 6 weeks from the time of injury I removed the IM pin.   There was a pretty good fibrous union of the fracture, but no boney union.  The next try was an external fixation device, 4 small pins driven into the bone, 2 above and 2 below the fracture site and bolted to an external pin to fix the bones in position.  A tall order for a cow doctor but I got it done.

Another 4 weeks and we were done.  The leg was healed, Gus was happy, Carol was happy.  I don’t know about Grandpa.  The total dollars are lost to a clouded memory.  Anyway, it was never about the money.

The last time I saw Gus was almost a year later.  Into his golden year now, and with none of 9 lives to spare, he was truly an old cat.  He was in for routine stuff, an abscess on the side of face, (left side, he probably didn’t see the punch coming) and tapeworms.  Still defending his turf and still able to catch a mouse or two. I always wondered about his final resting place.  Was it the manure pile, again?

D. E. Larsen, DVM

We were still struggling to find a house in Sweet Home and were living in a very crowded two-bedroom apartment. We did get a phone line with a number that we plan to use at the clinic. It was almost by accident that we received that number in time for it to be included in the phone book, which was set to be released in the fall. In those days, a phone book listing and advertisement was a lifeline for a new business.

My equipment and supplies continued to arrive daily. The most challenging part of that was knowing what I had available to work with. I was trying to keep a low profile, but the word was out that there was a new veterinarian in town. And Stan, at the feed store, was sending as much business my way as he could.

It was shaping up to be another hot July day when the phone rang. Sandy had just picked up the baby, so I was left with the task of answering the call.

“Good morning, this is Dr. Larsen,” I said into the phone. “How can I help you?”

The voice on the other end of the line was that of a young woman.

“Yes, this is Kathy. I live in Lacomb, but Stan at the feed store in Sweet Home suggested I give you a call,” Kathy said. “I have a calf with a watery eye, and my husband won’t be home for several more days. I was hoping you could get a look at it for me.”

“We are still just getting settled in, and I really have not started practicing yet,” I said. “But this sounds like something I could handle. In fact, if it isn’t too bad, it might wait until your husband gets home.”

“If you have the time, I would really rather get it looked at,” Kathy said. “This is our first calf, and my husband is really attached to it already. We are just getting started, and we only have six cows.”

“Okay, I have plenty of time,” I said. “You are the first call this morning. Give me some directions to your place.”

“That is sort of difficult,” Kathy said. “Growing up around here, I know the back roads like the back of my hand, but I don’t think I can give you directions that will get you here without going all the way around on the main road. Why don’t I meet you where the road turns off the highway to Waterloo? Then you can just follow me. I will be in an older yellow pickup, and my ten-year-old son will be with me.”

“That will work fine, I know the spot,” I said. “When do you want to meet me?”

“I will meet you there in thirty minutes,” Kathy said.

The moment I hung up the phone, Sand was ready with her critique.

“You didn’t discuss fees or payment with her,” Sandy said. “And I know you are following her; you didn’t get her address or even her phone number. If she doesn’t show up on time, we won’t even be able to call her back. And you didn’t tell her to have the calf caught. All in all, you will make a poor receptionist.

“Well, I have nothing but time right now,” I said. “My guess is things will work out. And I think we have a girl coming for an interview tomorrow. Even if we are not set up to start working yet.”

“Just so I know if someone else calls, how long will you be gone?” Sandy asked. “Do you even know where Lacomb is from here?”

“If, by chance, the phone rings again, schedule anything in the afternoon,” I said.

Of course, everything Sandy said was spot on. I had coached her well, and her office experience was going to help us survive. I kicked myself for not following my phone policies, but how bad could it be? I was most worried about finding my way home if Kathy couldn’t articulate directions.

I loaded the few things I needed into the back of our station wagon. Things would be better when I get our truck and vet box in a couple of weeks. When I put the rope in the car, I had to untie the cord holding the coils. It was brand new and very stiff. I hope I don’t have to try to use this thing today, I thought.

Kathy was waiting for me when I made the turn towards Waterloo. I tried to memorize every turn as I followed her through a maze of backroads. We pulled into her driveway, and I glanced at the speedometer, almost twenty miles. I had hoped to limit my practice area to a ten-mile radius.

Kathy drove out to a pasture gate. Her son jumped out and opened the gate. We both drove out into the pasture. It looked like a five-acre pasture with cows and a calf standing in the far corner, watching us. There was no corral, so there was no way to get the calf into a smaller area. This wasn’t going to be fun.

“How do you think we are going to catch the calf?” I asked when Kathy got out of the truck.

“He is pretty tame,” Kathy said. “My husband just walks right up to him.”

“That was before a stranger came into their pasture,” I said. “My guess is we are going to have a rodeo. And my rope is brand new and stiff as a board. But I will try walking up to them first.”

I got my rope out and straightened it out. The loop would work if I could drop it over his head, but there was no way I could throw this rope.

We started out toward the small herd in a group. I was surprised that they remained calm as we approached.

“I can pet the calf most of the time,” Kathy’s son said as we got close.

“Okay,” I said. “You go ahead and see if the cows let you pet the calf. Then you come right back to us.”

The boy walked up to the calf and scratched its back. The mother cow had her eye fixed on me. As soon as the boy started back to us, the herd took off for the far corner. If I had a decent rope, I could have caught the calf.

“What are we going to do now?” Kathy asked.

“If we get this close again, I can lasso the calf with no problem,” I said. “The problem is the rope is too stiff. If you don’t mind, I will drag it behind the car and do a few loops around the pasture. Then it should be softened enough to throw.”

We walked back to the car, where I tied the rope to the trailer hitch. Then, I drove to a wide circle in the pasture, away from the cows. After three loops, I checked the rope and deemed it satisfactory to use.

“Okay,” I said to Kathy’s son, “We are going to do the same thing again.”

We approached the herd, and Kathy’s son walked up to pet the calf. The cows took off toward the other corner. This time, I threw a perfect loop and caught the calf. I quickly tied him to a fence post and had Kathy’s son calm him down while I went for the car.

The calf’s left eye was watering enough to have the side of his face a little wet. I looked at it closely, and I could see a grass seed peeking out from under the third eyelid. I called Kathy’s son over to look.

“Look closely,” I said as I held the calf’s head steady. “See the end of that grass seed?”

“Is that little thing causing the problem?” He asked. 

“If that was your eye, you would think you had a rock in your eye,” I said.

It only took me a few minutes to apply a few drops os topical anesthesia to the eye and remove the grass seed. The cornea was scratched slightly, but there is no big ulcer yet. I injected antibiotics into the upper eyelid, cleaned the calf’s face, and sprayed it with fly spray. We let the calf go, and he was slow to walk away.

“It looks to me like you should join a 4-H club and take that calf to the fair next year,” I said to the boy. He smiled, but did not respond.

“You made that look easy,” Kathy said. “Did I do the right thing having you look at him?”

“Yes, that eye would have been a mess if you had waited for your husband to get home,” I said. “It will all be healed when he gets home now. But you guys need to come by and talk with me in a few weeks when we are more settled. You need to build a small corral in a corner of this pasture.”

I got home with little problem and found that I would have ample opportunity to learn the back roads over the next few years. The biggest problem was that Kathy provided Stan and the community with a glowing report on my abilities with the lasso. 

***

It was several years later when I was talking with an older veterinarian at a continuing education meeting at Colorado State University.

“I had a veterinarian tell me the other day that he threw away all his ropes,” I said. “He said his life was much easier since then.”

“Hell,” the old veterinarian said. “If I threw away my rope, I would starve to death.”

Photo Credit: Amber Kipp on Pixels.com.

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I read the question again, this time carefully. 

This was a typical multiple-choice test that we had in Dr. Cheney’s Parasitology class. There was a question and usually five answers. You were to select all the correct choices. One incorrect selection, or failing to choose a correct choice, and the entire question was marked wrong.

They always seemed to throw a negative in the mix somewhere. The negatives were my downfall. For some reason, my mind would not read a negative. I assumed that it was because I lived with a positive attitude. 

My test-taking strategy was to go as fast as possible. My first impression was always the most reliable, and I never looked back over my answers. 

I suffered for that when there were negatives in the question or the answers. To me, that was just the cost of keeping my stress level low. Finish the test quickly, and then go have a cup of coffee while the rest of the class struggles. In four years, I was always the first one done with any test.

“Where are the likely locations you will find fleas?” That was the question. I am not sure I remember all the choices, but most were in the house. Like on the carpet, along the baseboards, on the dog’s back. And then there was the stickler, outside in the grass.

Now, you should know that I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. Veterinary school was located in Fort Collins, Colorado. I had been around fleas my entire life. And if you looked really hard, you might find a flea in Fort Collins, but not many more than that single flea.

If you remember those flea collars that were said to be effective for six months. I have little doubt but that the testing to certify those six months of effectiveness was done in Denver. Of course, like Fort Collins, there are very few fleas in Denver.

I read the question one more time time. I remembered Dr. Cheney stressing in his lecture that the flea resided in the house. I never spent this much time on a single question before. I made my selection, including outside in the grass, and moved on.

Again, I was the first to turn in my paper and leave the room, but it didn’t take long for others to follow. I had spent too much time on that one question. But that was over now, hopefully never to be discussed again, certainly, not over this cup of coffee.

***

First thing Monday afternoon in Parasitology class, Dr. Cheney handed out the corrected tests and asked if there were any questions or discussion.

I scanned the results quickly. Sure enough, my answer on the location of fleas was marked wrong. I always hated listening to some of the class nerds argue over a test question. After all, one question, right or wrong, was not going to influence my grade one bit. But this needed some discussion. I raised my hand.

“You have a question, Mr. Larsen?” Dr. Cheney asked.

“Yes, why is my answer to question fourteen marked wrong?” I asked.

“If you had taken adequate notes, you would have learned that fleas reside on the animal or in the house, not outside,” Dr. Cheney said.

“That may be the case in Colorado, but that is not the case in Oregon,” I said.

“Can you show me a reference to that fact?” Dr. Cheney asked.

“Over twenty years of life experience,” I said.

One classmate, also from Oregon, raised his hand. Dr. Cheney pointed at him.

“I agree with Dave,” Chuck said. “There is ample evidence of fleas living outside in the grass in Western Oregon.”

“I’m sorry, your answers are both wrong,” Dr. Cheney said as he continued with the class discussion.

***

It was several years later, during a very hot and dry summer in Sweet Home, when the flea problems became almost insurmountable.

Dogs, along with a few cats, with flea allergy dermatitis, consumed over half of my clinic time. The biggest hurdle in solving the problem often involved convincing the owner that the dog had fleas. Then the hassle we had to go through in those years to get the flea population under control was expensive and arduous.

I started discussing my flea control recommendations with one client early in my practice in Sweet Home. Most clients were reluctant to jump through all the hoops necessary. They want a quick fix.

“You have to do more than just a flea collar,” I said. “Flea collars work great in Denver, but there are few, if any, fleas in Denver. When I was in school at Colorado State, I never saw a single case of flea allergy dermatitis. Around here, that little cloud of protection that the flea collar is supposed to provide is usually two feet behind the dog.”

“Doc, you don’t have to convince me about flea control,” George said. “We moved here from New Zealand. In New Zealand, many people would wear flea collars around their ankles to keep from picking up fleas when they were outside.”

“I have heard similar stories around here,” I said. “That is a little drastic, but the important thing is to follow a program to eliminate fleas from the pet’s environment. That usually means using a flea bomb in the house after vacuuming and repeating the process in two weeks. The vacuum stimulates the eggs to hatch; the bomb will kill the fleas and larvae, but not the eggs. That is why you have to do it twice. At the same time, you have to treat the pet with a shampoo and dip, or a good spray. And you have to spray the yard also.”

“That adds up to a little expense,” George said. 

“Yes, but it is cheaper than dealing with a constant flea exposure when you have an allergic pet,” I said.

***

A couple of weeks after that conversation, Fred Briggs visited the clinic on his monthly rounds. Fred was my favorite salesman.

“I have a new product line that will make your job a little easier, Doc,” Fred said. “Vet-Kim has come out with a complete line of flea control products. Everything is well labeled, and the program for flea control is well explained with a handout.”

“That sounds good,” I said. “I spend a lot of time explaining flea control. If we can shift that to the front desk, it will help me out a lot. Let’s look at the products.”

Fred set out his display. I picked up a large spray bottle that caught my eye.

“Yard and Kennel Spray,” I said under my breath.

“Yes,” Fred said. “It comes with a good explanation sheet.”

“Do you suppose I could have you send one of these to Dr. Cheney at Colorado State?” I asked.

“I know the salesman who calls on the vet school there,” Fred said. “I bet I could get him to hand a bottle to this Dr. Cheney. What’s the deal?”

“It goes back to a test question, years ago,” I said. “If you can get it done, that would be great. Just add it to my account.”

“Do you want your name on it, so he will know who sent it?” Fred asked.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” I said. “If Dr. Cheney has a good memory, he will know. If he doesn’t remember, it doesn’t matter.”

***

It was three weeks later when Fred called and asked to speak with me.

“I just wanted to let you know my friend delivered the spray to Dr. Cheney,” Fred said. “He said that it took a few minutes, but Dr. Cheney was able to tell him the whole story. It seemed to be the only time a student had told him he was wrong. “

***

Epilogue: With the advent of the new array of flea control products, the old regimen is long gone and faded from most memories. I doubt that you can purchase a flea bomb for the house today.

Photo Credit: Arthur Uzoagba on pexels.com