Table Manners for the Old Dog, from the Archives

D. E. Larsen,DVM

   Frank pushed through the door with Harley. Harley was an old yellow lab, very overweight, and suffering from arthritis due to all the extra weight.  

   “I need to see Doc, right away if possible!” he said abruptly. “Old Harley, he is not eating much since Kara passed. I’m not eating much either, for that matter.”

   Frank and Kara had been very close and worked together on their small farm out at Liberty. Harley was always happy to see me when I would make a farm call, but in the office, he knew he was the one to get the shot, not the cows. Today he sort of looked confused, like he was not sure what was going to happen next. 

   “Let’s get a weight on him, and then I will get Dave to get him up on the table,” Sandy said as she started for the scale at the end of the hall.

   “Harley, you have not lost any weight, you still weigh 108 lbs,” Sandy said, patting Harley on the head as she ushered them into the exam room. “I will get Dave, it will just be a minute.”

   I came into the exam room and swooped Harley up with both arms under his chest and belly and landed him on the exam table.

   “One of these days, you won’t be able to do that, Doc!” Frank said.

  “What brings you and Harley in to see me today?” I asked Frank with some concern in my voice. I knew things must be hard on both of them, Kara was the world to both of them.

   “Will, I am telling you Doc, old Harley here is not eating. I tell you that, and Sandy tells me he is not losing any weight. Now, how can that be, Doc?” Frank asks.

   “He must be eating something. Maybe he is cleaning up the grain after the cows.” I said.

  “No! He doesn’t eat a bite of his dog food. The only thing he eats is what he begs from me at the table. Maybe I give him more than I figure,” Frank says.

   I do a full exam on Harley, something I do with every patient. Start at the nose and end at the tip of the tail.

   “Everything looks fine, he just needs to lose some weight, like ten pounds for a starter,” I said as I lift Harley off the table. He is happy now, no shot, and he knows a treat is coming. He snatches the treat out of my hand, and it is gone in a second.

“One thing I never understand about dogs,” I said, “that treat touches his tongue of a tenth of a second, but he thinks it is the best-tasting thing in the world right now.”

   “One thing I never understand about you Vets,” Frank says, “you tell me he needs to lose weight, and then you feed him. Now, don’t you go and try to sell me some of that damn expensive dog food you have. He won’t eat a bite.”

“I won’t sell you any dog food. You just have to stop feeding him from the table. And I give him a treat so he will like coming back here. You know I have some patients who don’t think well of me.”

  “Okay, Doc, I will quit feeding him from the table. But you know, Kara has been gone for over a year now.  There is not a lot of joy in our house, for Harley or for me. Feeding him from the table is something we both enjoy.”

   “I know you guys have gone through a lot in the last year or more, but you want this guy to be around for a while. Don’t kill him with kindness. You eat your dinner, don’t look at him, or put him outside. Then you go outside and throw the ball for him a little. Don’t get so vigorous that he tears out a knee, just a little exercise. Then you sit on the front porch with him while he eats his dinner.” I explain.

   “You think that will really work, Doc?” Frank asks.

   “It might take a few days or a week or so. If the ball isn’t his thing, go for a little walk with him. What you do is not important, just spend a few minutes with him. It might even make you feel better.” I reply. “Now you do that, and then you come back in a few months, and we will talk again while Sandy gets a new weight on Harley. It doesn’t have to be an office visit.”

   As is often the case, it was over a full year before I heard anything from Frank. He had called, wanting me to look at a cow that was not coming into heat. Frank had a small place and maybe a dozen cows. He usually borrowed a bull from one of his neighbors. Not the best practice, but they were all small farms, and most of the herds were very stable. So there was not a significant risk of introducing a reproductive disease. It also meant that he needed to get his cows all bred within 2 cycles, 3 cycles at the most. He had not seen this cow in heat since he picked up the bull almost 2 months ago. If she didn’t cycle soon, she would miss her chance to get pregnant, and Frank would have to send her down the road to the sale barn.

   When I turned into the driveway, I could see Frank and Harley down by the barn. It looked like they had the cow in the small corral. Frank did not have a squeeze chute, we would have to rope her and tie her head. That would make the job a little more difficult.

   Frank’s farm was neat as a pin. Spoke of his German roots. There was nothing out of place, any manure in the corral would be quickly picked up and placed in the manure pile at the back corner of the barn. When Kara was alive, I would have to be watchful when I was working on a cow. She would be picking up manure as it fell, I would have to dodge the pitchfork as best I could. The house was close to the road. It was a small house with a large front porch, painted off white and with new black shingles on the roof. The yard was large, both front and back, and unlike the majority of farmhouses around here and where I grew up, the front door was used as the main entry. Today I noticed a new car, a little blue Ford, parked outside the garage behind the house.

   Frank and Harley were quick to greet me when I pulled up to the corral. I opened the back of my truck and pulled out the rope.

“How are things, Frank?” I asked. “It looks like you and Harley are a little brighter than when I last saw you at the clinic. Harley is trimmer, too.”

   “Yes, things have been going pretty good lately. Old Harley expects me the throw the ball a little every night, just like you suggested, Doc. I think it’s has helped us both,” Frank said.

   “Let’s get this cow looked at,” I say as I crawl over the fence with my rope in hand. I toss the lasso at the cow as she turns to the left to avoid the throw.  The rope neatly falls over her head. I pull it tight and throw the free end over the fence to Frank.

  “Take a wrap around the post there and take up the slack as I pull her into the fence,” I say as I start to pull the cow toward the fence. She probably has a name, I think to myself. She is tame, almost seems halter broke, and getting her snubbed up the post is not a problem.

   “Give me some slack, Frank, and I will get a loop around her nose, so she doesn’t choke herself,” I say.

   Frank lets out some slack, and I pull a loop of the rope through the lasso and loop it over her nose. This essentially makes a halter and prevents the noose from tightening around her neck and choking her.

   “Okay, Frank, if you could grab that other rope in the back of the truck, I will sideline her so I can do a rectal exam without chasing her rear end.”

   Frank hands me the rope, and I thread it around her neck and between her front legs, so when I closed the loop with the quick release latch, it includes her right front leg. This also is to prevent her from being choked if she struggles. I string the rope down her right side and take a wrap around the next fence post. When I pull it tight, it holds her left side against the fence. This will allow me to do a thorough rectal exam with my left arm. I am right-handed, but we were trained to use the left hand for rectal exams, so your right hand would be free to make notes or whatever is necessary.

   “What’s her name?” I ask Frank.

   “Kara called her Flossy. She was a favorite of Kara’s. That’s one reason I am anxious to get her pregnant. Will, in reality, it probably doesn’t matter Doc, I wouldn’t sell her anyway,” Frank explains.

   I pull the fingers off a plastic OB sleeve and pull it on my left arm. Then I put on a latex exam glove on my left hand. Then I pull the fingers off another OB sleeve and pull in on. This will give me full digital sensitivity and protect my hand and arm from manure. 

   After applying ample lube to my gloved hand, I grasp Flossy’s tail with my right hand and ease my left hand into her rectum. I remove several handfuls of manure from her distal colon. Then I insert my hand and arm up to my elbow. Then I sweep my hand over the brim of the pelvis. This is going to be an easy exam. The uterus is full. Flossy is pregnant, judging from the size of the cotyledons, those ‘buttons’ where the bovine placenta attaches to the uterus, I would say she was 4 months pregnant. I remove my arm and pull off the sleeves, being careful to turn them inside out as I remove them.

   “That was quick,” Frank says.

   “What is the most common reason a cow doesn’t cycle?” I ask Frank.

   “How the hell do I know, that’s why I hired you,” he replies.

   “Flossy is pregnant, probably 4 months along,” I say.

   “Impossible, there hasn’t been a bull on the place since last year,” Frank says emphatically.

“There is no question about the pregnancy, and time will confirm that. Just have to wait about 5 months. So there had to be a bull here somehow. Are you sure a neighbor’s bull didn’t jump the fence?” I said.

   “No way, there is nothing here except the cows and a couple of steers. They are getting near market weight,” Frank replies.

   “How were the steers castrated?” I ask.

   “I banded them when they little, they are about 2 years old now,” Frank replied, a little defensive now.

   “You must have missed a testicle on one of them. That is a common error, you think have both testicles in the scrotum, then when you release the rubber band, one testicle slips through the band is above the scrotum. The majority of retained testicles will not be fertile, but in reproduction, 100% certainty is difficult to obtain,” I explain.

   “That is sort of academic now. Flossy is pregnant, and you might find you have one or two the other cows calving early this year. The steers with be at market soon, so that issue is fixed. Next Spring, give me a call and I will show how to castrate young calves with a knife. That solves this problem as long as you can count to two. Plus, you end up with some nice mountain oysters to fry up,” I say.

   “I don’t know about mountain oysters. We have enough problems with regular stuff around here anymore. Peg has been doing the cooking lately,” Frank says.

   “Peg?” I ask.

   “Margaret McFadden, we call her Peg, me and old Harley,” Frank replies.

   “Yes, I know Margaret. Her and Hank used to come into the clinic. I think Hank died a few years ago,” I say.

   “My neighbor talked me into going to the Senior Center downtown. You know, a man can’t walk into that place alone without being jumped on by half the old women in the place,” Frank says as he explains their meeting. “Anyway, Peg was sort of quiet, like me. We hit it off pretty well. She has been coming out here and trying to get things straightened out.”

  “So that must explain that new little car up at the house,” I say.

  Peg was a short woman, thin but rather striking for an older lady. Her gray hair still had streaks of black in it, giving a hint to her jet black hair as a younger lady. Her facial features were almost stern until she smiled. If she had a defect, it was the prominent mole on the right side of her jaw. I often found myself looking at it rather than at her eyes. I am sure it bothered her some because she would usually cover it with her hand when she was talking. I often wondered why she didn’t have it removed.

“Yes, that is Peg’s car. She doesn’t like to ride in my old farm truck. She is sort of a city girl, you know,” Frank says. “For the most part, we get along fine. We have been talking about getting married, or at least living in the same house. But you know what they say, a skinny woman probably doesn’t like to cook. You go into a restaurant operated by a skinny woman, and you get good salads,” Frank said.

   “You might have to do the cooking, Frank,” I said

  “Now, I’m not saying anything about her cooking, but she sure cured old Harley from begging at the table,” Frank says.

Photo by superloop on Unsplash

Libby

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Our fascination with Silver Persians started in Enumclaw. The clinic had a client who raised Silver Persians and shipped kittens all over the country. She even had some international clients.

She lived in a large house. The people lived in the upper stories, and the cats, I don’t know how many, lived in the basement. When a litter of kittens was ready to ship to their new owners, the lady would bring them into the clinic to be bathed, fluffed, vaccinated, and whatever was needed.

These kittens were essentially feral. They had almost no human contact in their large basement living space. We always had to give them a small dose of ketamine so they could be handled.

“How many cats does Audrey have?” I asked Ann as she was bathing the last kitten.

“I’m afraid to ask,” Ann said. “We send out nearly a dozen litters a year. I have no idea what her basement must look like.”

“I’m not sure I would put up with this kind of work,” I said.

“It pays the bills,” Ann said. “You wait. When you have your clinic, you will have your share of cat ladies. They are everywhere.”

“How much does Audrey get for these kittens?” I asked. 

“She sells them for seven hundred dollars plus expenses,” Ann said.

“That is unbelievable,” I said. “That’s a month’s wages or a lot of people.”

“I think most of the people she sells these kittens to don’t have to worry about the money,” Ann said.

“I wonder what they think about paying that kind of money for a feral kitten?” I asked

“They probably can’t find kittens of this quality anywhere else,” Ann said. “And kittens this age tame down quickly.”

When Audrey came in to pick up her kittens, she had another cat in a carrier.

“I got this cat back,” Audrey said. “I sold it to a lady in London, and after its six months of quarantine, she could not get it tamed down. If you want to neuter it, you can have it. It is too old to sell, and I don’t have a situation to tame him down.”

I was quick to take her up on the offer. That evening, I neutered the young cat and declawed him at the same time. I taped his hind feet and took him home.

At the house, he was okay when he was in a box, but put him in an open room or try to handle him, and he would go wild. After a couple of days, we returned him to the clinic. Ann kept him in a cage for several months, and he tamed down and became an excellent clinic cat.

After moving to Sweet Home, we were excited when our babysitter, Jean Light, offered us a Silver Persian cat. Her mother had been given this cat by a friend who could not keep it. We were happy to accept Libby.

As a young cat, she fit into our household perfectly. It wasn’t long before the thought of having Persian kittens became a topic of discussion. Another friend, another Ann, offered us the use of a Persian tomcat that was being cared for by the local humane society.

We borrowed the tomcat when Libby came into heat, and our learning experience began. Libby was all claws when the tomcat showed her any interest.

“What are we going to do?” Sandy asked.

“Give her a few days, and nature will take its course,” I said.

The rest of the day and that evening, we were treated to any number of catfights in the living room. The other cats in the house were upset, also. This tomcat was not the most sociable individual.

That night, sometime after midnight, I woke with what I first thought was a headache. This tomcat had peed between the headboard of the bed and the wall. The odor was overwhelming. Sandy woke up shortly after I was awake.

In many cases, this would be no problem. One would just have to move the bed and clean up the urine. In our case, the process was a little complicated. We slept on a waterbed. It was a major operation to move the bed, even a couple of feet.

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

“I think we are going to sleep on the hide-a-bed for tonight,” I said. “I can get up early and drain the waterbed mattress. Then we can clean up the mess and refill the mattress. I think we will position the bed a little further from the wall this time.”

The next day we cleaned up the mess and returned the tomcat to the humane society.

We learned that Libby found the wondering tomcats much more to her liking. A couple of months later, Libby gave us a litter of long-haired kittens who would grow into beautiful cats. Libby’s kittens became popular, and we allowed her to have several litters.

In her last litter, we kept a couple of her kittens. They were large fluffy cats named Chester and Howard.

After that last litter, I spayed Libby. 

After her spay, she became much less lovable. She hated to be groomed, to the point of being nothing but claws and teeth when someone would try to brush her.

Her hair would mat, and once or twice a year, she would make a trip to the clinic. I would sedate her and clip her hair coat, and she would go home mostly bald. Her hair coat would come off in one piece, like a sheep’s fleece.

As time went on, Libby became more and more antisocial. She began to live away from the house, only coming by for her meals a couple of times a day. She would spend the rest of the time in the neighbor’s small barn.

She started to have urinary tract infections, and medicating her was a monumental struggle. We would have to keep her in the clinic for weeks at a time. She would almost run to her barn when we would bring her home, and it was not long before her urinary tract infections progressed to kidney failure.

Libby did not survive long once she had kidney failure. I felt she was happy as a mother, and she lost her social self when that was taken away. Her legacy was in the beautiful kittens that survived many years beyond her.

Photo by Bianca Vogt on Pexels.

One Sore Foot

D. E. Larsen, DVM

It was the middle of August, and we hadn’t seen any rain in weeks. You could almost taste the dust in this small pasture.

Bill Sieg looked down at me.

“Do you think he will fit in the chute?” Bill asked. “I haven’t tried to put him in it yet.”

We were in a small pasture behind the barn, and we were looking at Bill’s oldest herd bull. He was a massive Brangus bull. He probably tipped the scales at close to a ton.

“He is a pretty big bull,” I said. “Your chute should be wide enough, but this guy is tall. He might have to squat a bit to get under the tailgate.”

“I called that guy with one of those tilting chutes to see if he could look at this bull’s foot,” Bill said. “He didn’t think he could fit him into his chute. And even if he could, he wasn’t sure he could get it tilted with the bull in it.”

“That foot is pretty sore,” I said. “He doesn’t even touch it to the ground.”

“Oh, he touches it down a little when he gets excited,” Bill said. “But he is not interested in moving around much. The good thing is we’re done with the breeding season. But I don’t want to lose him because of a sore foot.”

“Well, let’s try to put him in the chute and see what I can do for him,” I said. “We might get lucky and find something simple.”

Bill had dogs, but they were bird dogs, springer spaniels, not cow dogs. I walked out around the bull to get him headed to the corral. His head was up, and he shook it at me, but he made no effort to move. Even still, I was in dangerous territory.

I picked up a couple of dirt clods and threw one, hitting the bull on his butt. He moved, reluctantly, toward the corral. The corral was small enough that he was in the crowding alley once he was in it.

I closed him into the alley and pushed him toward the chute. With Bill on the headgate, the bull squeezed under the tailgate and lurched toward the headgate, and bill caught him perfectly and leaned with all his weight on the bar to squeeze his massive neck.

I hurried and closed the tailgate and pulled the squeeze closed as hard as I could. We dropped the side panel to allow access to his feet. He was holding his right front foot up enough that I could easily slip a rope onto it and tie it up so I could work on it. I was a little surprised at the total lack of resistance to my efforts.

I did an initial exam of the foot. There was no foot rot and no foreign body between the claws.

“He acts like he knows we are going to help him,” I said. “I don’t find anything simple. I will grab my hoof stuff and see what I can find. These hoofs are almost as hard as steel this time of the year. Hopefully, I can trim this one a little.”

I ran to the truck and grabbed a medicine bag and my hoof bag. 

I squeezed hard on the lateral claw in several locations with the hoof tester. There was no response from the bull. Then I moved to the inside claw. With the hoof tester on the end of the toe, I squeezed. The bull bellowed and bounced the entire chute. 

I stood back a minute, thinking he could tip the chute over.

“I think you found something,” Bill said with a snicker.

I went back to work with the hoof tester. This time I put a squeeze on the middle of the inside claw, there was no response, and it was the same on the rear portion of the claw.

“I think he has an abscess on the tip of the toe on the inside claw,” I said. “The good thing is these will usually heal rapidly once they are opened and drained. The bad thing is I have to try to dig in the sole of this foot, and that is going to be hard.”

I ran a file over my hoof knife before I started, but even with a sharp edge, I couldn’t dig into the sole of the hoof. Next, I took the hoof trimmer and loped off the tip of the claw. The bull jumped a little, and pus sprayed in all directions. It smelled bad.

“Boy, that’s rank,” Bill said. “You must have found the pus pocket.”

“Yes, I’m going to clean this up a bit, but just getting that open is going to make him feel a whole lot better,” I said. “You can imagine how much pressure the pus was under by how it sprayed when I nipped the tip off his toe.”

I cleaned up the abscess and medicated it topically. I wanted to release his foot to see how he was standing on it, but I restrained myself, knowing it would be difficult to pick it up again. 

“I have a new thing that I am going to try on this,” I said.

“I’m not too sure about new things,” Bill said. “I sort of like doing things the old way you do them.”

“I’m going to epoxy a wood block on the bottom of his good toe,” I said. “That will keep this sore toe off the ground while it is healing. He should be a lot more comfortable.”

“Okay, that sounds like something that might help him out awhile,” Bill said. “But are we going have to get him in again to take it off?”

“The box says it will just wear off,” I said.

I retrieved the block and the epoxy mix from the truck. It was pretty straightforward. I just mixed up the epoxy to a thick consistency, spread it on the sole of the good claw, and seated the block onto the epoxy. 

We waited for the epoxy to harden, and I released the rope so the bull could stand on his foot. He seemed to enjoy having his foot on the ground.

I loaded him up on some long-acting sulfa boluses. That was a chore, but this guy was pretty gentle for a bull.

When everything was done, it was time to let him out of the chute. It was more difficult to release him than to catch him, but he finally sprung out of the open head gate.

He took a couple of steps and turned to look at us. I liked to think he was saying thank you.

Then on his next step, the wood block snapped off and flew through the air.

“I guess that wasn’t made for a bull his size,” Bill said. “I hope that wasn’t expensive.”

“My expense, Bill,” I said. “I don’t charge for trials that don’t work. My problem is that it comes in a two-pack, and I either have to find a gentle cow to try it on or throw the other one away.” 

“My guess is you would be better off just throwing the stuff in the trash,” Bill said.

I opened the gate and let the bull back into the pasture. He was limping but walking on his foot.

“He looks a whole lot better,” Bill said. “Do you think that will heal up okay?”

“I think he will be fine,” I said. “Getting that abscess open allows him to go from holding that foot up to walking on it with only a slight limp.”

The bull healed well, and when I dropped by to check on him the following week, he was walking normally in the pasture.

I took Bill’s advice and threw the other block in the trash. It seemed like a good idea, but it was probably thought up by some guy who had never worked with real cows.

Photo by Tony Mucci on Pexels.