Four Front Feet 

 D. E. Larsen, DVM

I slowed as I approached Sudie’s driveway. It was hard to see in the daylight and almost impossible at ten o’clock at night.

Sudie was waiting at the barn and waved when I pulled into the driveway. A late-night call was unusual for Sudie, especially on a Saturday night. She was generally pretty good at watching her cows and calling early if there were any problems.

“Sorry to be calling so late, Dave,” Sudie said as I stepped out of the truck. “This cow was acting a little odd earlier this evening, and I got her in the barn, but she didn’t show any signs of labor until about nine. She is straining hard, and nothing is showing. I figured you would feel better about checking her now rather than at two in the morning.”

I could see the cow in the small pen in the barn. She was straining hard with her tail up and humped up some also. With this much straining, something should be showing.

“Looking at her, she is straining hard enough, and nothing is showing. There has to be a problem,” I said.

“She had twins last year,” Sudie said. “She is a big cow. I guess that helps. She didn’t have any problems last year, but I suppose it is easy for twins to get tangled up in there. Do you want me to put her in the chute?”

“No, I will just put a rope on her and tie her to the corner of the corral,” I said. “That way, if she goes down when I start pulling, there won’t be any problems.”

I crawled into the pen and threw a rope over her head. She was gentle enough, or bothered by her labor, that I could have dropped it over her head. I fashioned a halter by pulling a loop over her nose and then tied her to a corner of the corral with enough slack that she should fall with no problem.

“Hand me that bucket, Sudie,” I said. “Hold it up, and I will reach it and pull it over the top rail.”

Sudie was a farm girl from Arago. Her brother was a high school classmate of mine. During the daylight hours, she taught chemistry and physics at the high school. She was small in structure but an exceptional individual. She hoisted that bucket up to the top rail with no problem.

I tied the cow’s tail to the side and washed her vulva. Then I ran my left arm into her birth canal. There were four feet at the pelvic brim. This was unusual, even for twins. I checked each foot closely, all front feet.

“Well, I have four front feet in the birth canal,” I said. “Now I just have to sort them out.”

“I hope that means twins and not some fetal monster,” Sudie said.

“Four feet in the birth canal is unusual, and a monster is possible,” I said. “But I will spend a minute and figure this out.”

I reached deeper into the uterus and found one head and then another. I pushed one foot back into the uterus and followed it to its head, then moved the other leg of that calf back out of the way.

I slipped a nylon OB strap on the two feet remaining in the birth canal. The cow was staining again as the one calf now had a pathway to escape. I guided the head into the birth canal and gave a tug on the OB strap. The calf almost slipped out on its own.

“Wow! That looked easy,” Sudie said. 

“This gal has tons of room,” I said. “This is a big calf for a twin. He’s a bull and must weigh ninety pounds.”

I reached back into the cow and pulled the second calf’s feet back into the birth canal. The cow was straining hard again as I struggled to get the OB strap onto the front feet.

I recalled the advice the old veterinarian in Enumclaw had given me.

“Sometimes you have to hold those calves in there for a few minutes so it looks like you have earned your fee,” the old vet had said.

I hurriedly slipped the OB strap on the front feet and gave one short pull, and had to catch the calf so it didn’t land head-first on the barn floor. 

“Both calves are bulls,” I said. “That’s good, and they both are large for twins.”

I put my arm back into the cow to make sure there wasn’t a third calf. That was highly unlikely and even more unlikely with the size of these two.

“Why do you check again after two large calves?” Sudie asked.

“For a couple of reasons,” I said. “I can check for any injury to the birth canal and can make sure there isn’t another calf. My Enumclaw boss explained to me one morning how he had checked a cow after delivering a calf, and there was a twin. He wanted me to make sure I always made a final check.”

“Does that happen very often?” Sudie asked.

“No, not often,” I said. “But that very afternoon, we had to return to that farm and pull a third calf out of that cow. It was a dead triplet. The boss had failed to check the cow after the second calf.”

“So you learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of other vets,” Sudie said.

“I stand on the shoulders of many men and women,” I said. 

I cleaned and treated both calves with Bo-Se and applied iodine to their navels. When I loaded everything back into the truck and glanced at my watch, it wasn’t eleven yet.

“Check these guys in the morning, Sudie,” I said as I got in the truck. “Call me if you have any questions or if I need to look at them.”

I would be home, showered, and in bed well before midnight. Maybe I will go fishing at Lost Lake in the morning.

Photo by Rick Monteiro on Unsplash.

Charlie and Betty Land, Foster, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

 Charlie’s horses were pretty well managed, and after the breeding season, there was not a lot to do around the farm. Betty managed to keep their account pretty active.

    “What brings you in today?” I asked Betty when she eased through the front door. Betty was a slightly built lady with black shoulder-length hair. She seemed a little shy most of the time when Charlie was around, but I suspect that she could hold her own in most situations.

    “This darn cat of mine is peeing everywhere,” she said with some concern in her voice.

 This darn cat was named Foster; he was an old guy. He was approaching the golden year for male cats in the 1970s. I seldom saw a male cat over 15, and if I remembered correctly, Foster was going to be 15 this summer. Betty had found him as a kitten under the dumpster at Glen’s Market in Foster. He pretty much had the run of the place now.

    “Peeing all over the place, small puddles or large puddles?” I asked.

    “Oh, they are large puddles when they are on the floor. He peed on the bed this morning. That is why I am here, it woke up Charlie, and he was none too happy,” Betty explained.

    “Well, let’s get him in an exam room and look at him and see if I can get some urine out of him.”

  Pulling him out of the carrier, I noticed that he was much thinner than he was in the past. There was urine in the kennel.

    “Oh my,” Betty exclaimed, “how could there be so much urine already?”

    “We will get a quick look at this urine first, then I will do an exam,” I said as I drew up some urine from the kennel.

    This urine would do fine for a dip stix, but we would need a better collection if we were going to have to do additional testing. I handed the syringe to Dixie and returned my attention to Foster. He was quite thin, ribs were showing through his hair coat. His eyes had early cataracts, sometimes these old guys just have trouble finding their way to the litter box. He was dehydrated also. My guess was either advanced kidney failure, the most common cause of death in an old cat, or possibly diabetes. I seldom saw diabetes in the cat, but it was definitely on the list.

 Dixie popped into the exam room and laid the results of the dip stix on the counter. A four-plus urine glucose and normal specific gravity just about confirmed a diabetes diagnosis.

   “Betty, Foster probably has diabetes. We need to do some blood tests to make sure and to check his liver and kidney function. Then we need to give him some fluids and get him on a stable insulin dose. He is probably going to have to stay with us a day or two.”

    “Doc, I can leave him for the day, but I don’t want to leave him overnight. If he is going to die, I want him to die at home,” Betty said in a stern voice. I had not heard that voice from her before.

    “We can probably work with that, but I will need to see him every morning for a week or so. We will start off with a pretty low dose of insulin and work it up slowly,” I explained.

 “The other thing we need to discuss is what we can expect with his treatment. He is almost 15, and I don’t see very many male cats older than 15. Diabetes is a difficult disease to live with for people. For people to manage the disease in pets is even more difficult. Top that off and cats are also difficult to treat when they have diabetes. A high percentage of pets with diabetes are euthanized within 6 months of diagnosis, just because of the difficulty of living with the disease.”

 “We will do whatever we need to do to keep Foster alive,” Betty said. “I know he is old, and I know he won’t last forever, but we won’t be the ones to give up on him.”

 With that, we kept Foster for the day. His blood glucose was well over 400, and other blood tests were normal. We gave him 300 ml of Ringers Lactate by SQ injection and started him on a low dose of insulin.

 Betty was waiting at the door every morning with Foster. My guess was the barn chores would wait until his treatment was done. Testing at the time was cumbersome. The first few days, we did both a blood test and urine glucose. Foster was obviously feeling much better, looking brighter, and Betty reported him to be much more active and peeing less. My goal was to get his glucose to somewhere around 200, just to a level he could live with and not have much in the way of a hypoglycemia risk.

 By the third day, we were there. “I think this is the dose we use for a couple of weeks,” I explained to Betty. We had been showing her how to do the injections all week. I want to see him still for a couple of days, just to check his urine glucose and give the dose in the morning, Then we will turn you loose at home.”

 Thursday morning, expecting a quick check, Foster’s urine showed no glucose. Great, so much for a simple case. We drew a little blood. Blood Glucose was 50, pretty low.

    “No insulin for Foster today,” I explained to Betty. “Sometimes, in the cat, we will see a remission or sometimes a fluctuation in insulin requirement. So no insulin today, and we will check him in the morning.”

 Friday morning, and there was still no glucose in his urine. We decided to go the weekend without insulin and recheck on Monday. This might prove to be a complicated case to manage.

 On Monday, Foster’s urine showed a 4+ glucose, and his blood glucose was over 300. So we started over where we left off.

    “That would be great if you could check his urine every morning, but I am not sure that you could get urine out him,” I said. “We will have you check his glucose every morning, give insulin if it is positive, and don’t give insulin if he doesn’t have glucose in his urine. That is not perfect, but we will see how that works. You just call in the mornings and let Dixie know how things are going so she can keep his record up to date.”

    So that was the program, Betty was happy, Foster was delighted, I was hopeful that we would not have a wreck. I could not believe that Betty could get urine every day.

 Two weeks later, when Betty was in for a recheck, I noticed that the daily record was complete. There was a two-day stretch where she did not give insulin. Foster had gained almost 2 pounds and starting to look like his old self.

 “Things look like they are going well,” I said. “But it looks like you are going have to check his urine every day, his insulin demands are just going to fluctuate enough that we have to have a daily check. My concern is, how are you going to get urine out of him every day?”

 “That is no problem, I just have him pee in a coffee cup,” Betty said with no expression, just like that was something everybody would do. 

 Betty was able to manage Foster for another 3 years with this simple program of monitoring. Consistently during those years, Foster would have several days each month where he would have no need for insulin. We could have managed him closer and done away with those days, but I am not sure that his quality of life and the quality of life for Charlie and Betty would have been improved.

Photo by Ave Calvar on Unsplash

The Round Robin 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Deacon opened the letter carefully, she was hoping to be able to reuse the envelope. Inside there were four small sheets of paper, she removed them almost reverently.

“You kids come in here and I will read the letters,” Deacon said “And bring your little brother.”

“He can’t even talk,” Larry said. “Why does he have to listen to the letters?”

“That is how he will learn to talk,” Deacon said as Linda was arranging the chairs around the kitchen table.

“I don’t think he will ever talk,” Linda said.

It was 1943 and World War II was in full force. On the Home Front, gas rationing was one way everyone could participate in the war effort. Frank and Dolores (Deacon) Larsen were living up Coos River, out of Coos Bay. A trip to Myrtle Point to visit with family required save ration tickets to allow enough gas to for the trip. It also distracted from the Home Front effort to help the war effort.

Catching Creek was heavily invested in the war effort. Stan Felsher was missing in action in The Philippines, actually dead at the time but that was not confirmed by the military. Bob Lundy was on a flight crew in the Pacific. The Bartlett boys, Gene and Phillip were in the Navy. Gene was on a ship and Phillip was flying a fighter in the Pacific. Ernie was in flight training in Texas to fly bombers. The Home Front was their way of supporting those young men by actions, rather than just words.

In response to this forced isolation, the large Davenport family adopted  a plan the titled The Round Robin, that was a common mode of communication during those dark years of war.

Some would start a letter and include all their family news, maybe some local gossip, war news and the like. They would mail the letter to a family member. The second person would add their letter to the envelope and send it on. By the time the letter made it around the family, it was a treasure trove of information. Not quite the same as a family dinner at Grandmas, but the best substitute they could devise.

With the kids all seated around the kitchen, Deacon started to read the letter. Actually, she read it to herself and paraphrased it for the kids.

“Grandma is sending a package to Uncle Ernie in Texas,” Deacon said.

“Mom, Why is Uncle Ernie in Texas?” Larry asked.

“He is learning to fly airplanes to fight in the war,” Deacon said. “And Aunt Lila and Uncle Robert are planning to go to San Diego to work building ships for the war.”

“When is the war going to be over?” Linda asked as she helped Gary out of his high chair.

“We don’t know how long it will last,” Deacon said as Gary toddled off into the front room. “That is way it is with a war. We just never know when it will end.”

“When do we get to go see Grandma again?” Linda asked. “I miss her.”

“We have to save our gas ration so we have enough gas to go visit,” Deacon said. “It is over thirty miles to Grandma’s house, and they need most of our gas for the men fighting the war. You want Uncle Ernie to have enough gas for his airplane, don’t you?”

“Yes, but it’s hard not being able to see Grandma,” Linda said. “Are you going to tell everybody about how good Gary is walking now.”

“Yes, that will be a good thing to add to the letter,” Deacon said.

“And tell about Dad bringing home a branch from the huckleberry bush where he works,” Larry said.

About this time there was a loud crash in the front room and a squall from Gary. Everyone rushed in to find Gary in the middle of a pile of boxes that Frank and Dolores had stacked in the corner.

“I wonder how high he got be they all came tumbling down?” Linda said.

“That’s the second time he h

as fallen from his climbing,” Deacon said. “I would think he would learn to keep his feet on the ground one of these days.”

“He just seems to be a slow learner,” Larry said.

“You kids take care of your brother,” Deacon said. “I will write our notes on the letter and get it ready to mail. I just hope I still have a stamp in the drawer.”

Deacon penned her notes on the back of the last slip of paper and carefully folded it and placed it in a new envelope. She addressed it to Duke and Jean Davenport, and placed a three cent stamp on the envelope.

“Larry, you take this out and put it in the mailbox before the mailman comes,” Deacon said. “And make sure you put the flag up so he will know there is a letter to send.”

“How come a letter cost three cents?” Larry asked. “The postcard we got yesterday from Auntie Dee only had a penny stamp on it.”

“You can only write a little note on a post card, and this letter contains a lot of those notes,” Deacon said. “Now, you hurry out to the mailbox so we don’t miss the mailman. The sooner this letter is mailed, the sooner we will a reply with all the other messages.”

It would be a long week before the same letter would make its second appearance with all the notes from everyone in the family. And Grandma would be starting a new letter.

It served its purpose, probably not as functional as a zoom meeting, but for a couple of three cent stamps, the Larsen family were kept informed of all the goings on the entire family group. And Gary grew up with acrophobia.