D. E. Larsen, DVM
My book, The Last Cow in the Chute, Made it into the Antarctica McMurdo Base Library!
Delivered by my nephew, a geologist, who is down there on a project. Well traveled book.
The Dart’s Glance, From the Archives
D. E. Larsen, DVM
Fred Briggs waited patiently while I was finishing up on my office calls. He always came at the end of the day, maybe because we were close to his home in Albany, but I liked to think because he knew he would have more time to talk with me.
Fred was a salesman for one of the drug companies that supplied our clinic. He was older and had been in the business for many years. I enjoyed his monthly visits, not only for the information he provided and the orders he took but because of the stories he would tell.
Fred knew all the veterinarians on his route. I would guess he had a little card on all of us. What we liked to talk about, what drugs we favored, and what we wanted to do in our spare time.
When the last client left, Fred showed himself back to the pharmacy area and opened his briefcase on the counter.
“Have a story to tell you, Fred,” I said. “I will be with you in a couple of minutes after I finish up in the back.”
Sandy was there to place our order and place the flyers on the new products in a stack to transfer to my desk later.
“I will take them, and he will glance at them,” Sandy said. “I can never tell how much he absorbs with a simple glance, but it must be a bunch. He always seems to know what it’s all about.
“I think a lot of these vets just absorb things by osmosis,” Fred said. “They are always too busy to sit down and read anything.”
“How are you doing this evening,” I said as I shook Fred’s hand. “I have been wanting to tell you about using that new capture drug that you got for me.”
“How did that work out for you?” Fred asked.
“Worked like a charm,” I said. “We darted a bull elk. We have captured him every year for the last couple of years. He gets sort of ornery during the rut, so we saw his antlers off just to keep his pasture mates safe. He killed a little Sika buck a couple of years ago. It was always such a struggle just using Rompun.”
“The sad news is, I hear that they are probably going to pull it off the market,” Fred said. “It’s ten times the concentration of Ketamine and Ketamine is becoming so popular as a street drug, they don’t want it out there.”
“That’s too bad, just when you find something that works and you don’t have to keep it in a safe deposit box, and they pull it off the market,” I said.
“You know when they first started using those capture guns, they used Nicotine Sulfate for the drug,” Fred said.
“That was not a very safe drug,” I said.
“Let me tell you a little story,” Fred said. “One of the Albany vets bought one of those capture guns. I walked into his clinic just as he got ready to go out on a farm call to castrate a 600-pound boar hog. He asked if I wanted to ride along and watch. I figured it would be a good show.”
“A 600-pound dose of Nicotine Sulfate loaded into one of those darts would be dangerous if it misfired,” I said.
“Let me finish. We got to the place, and they had this boar in a small shed. The vet stood at one doorway and sent me around to stand at the other doorway. They had a couple of boards tacked across the doorways, but if this boar wanted to go through them, the boards wouldn’t even slow him down.”
“So here I am, standing in the doorway,” Fred continued. “And this vet aims at the rump of the boar and pulls the trigger. This dart glances off the boar’s butt and sticks in the top of my Wellingtons. Probably would have got me if I hadn’t had on those leather boots.”
“While, a 600 pounds dose of Nicotine Sulfate, you would not have even survived for the ambulance to get to you,” I said. “Would not have made much of a difference. There is no antidote. You would have been a dead man.”
“The face of the old vet was pretty pale as he was looking at that dart stuck in my pants leg,” Fred said. “He thought it was in my leg. That sort of brought that farm call to a conclusion. He was just getting some color back into his face by the time we got back to town. He stopped at the back of the old T&R truck stop and threw that capture gun into their dumpster.”
“And I thought I was the one who would be telling the story this evening,” I said.
“What are you going to be doing this weekend?” Fred asked.
“I don’t have anything planned,” I said. “If this place doesn’t tie me down, I am probably free.”
“I am putting together a float trip down the Molalla River. I thought I would see if I could get you and another vet hooked up with a steelhead.”
The fishing trip was a soaker. No fish, just a lot of rain. But it was a good time. Free time away from the practice was precious in those early days.
Photo by Brett Sayles from Pexels
Lie Still and He Won’t Touch You
D. E. Larsen, DVM
Rocket was a small horse, size-wise. But he was opinionated and spirited. And he was determined that he was going to win the battle.
“I don’t know, Kay,” I said. “I think I am going to have to tranquilize Rocket before I am going to be able to float his teeth.”
“Doc, I really don’t want to do that,” Kay said. “Don’t we have another method to take care of his teeth?”
“Not really; Rocket’s mouth is sort of in rough shape,” I said. “He has a lot of sharp points on the worn edges of his teeth. His eating is only going to get worse if we don’t file those down.”
“Okay, go ahead, but not with a tranquilizer,” Kay said.
“Maybe if I use a twitch, I can get it done,” I said.
“Oh, I hate those things,” Kay said. “I watched another vet float a horse’s teeth once, and he just held the horse’s tongue to one side and did the float with no problem.”
“Yes, it can be done like that, with some horses, but not with Rocket,” I said.
“Would you just try before making a zombie out of him for the afternoon?” Kay asked. “I realize he is high-spirited, but I have been working with him, trying to make him more manageable.”
I looked at Nan, and she shrugged her shoulders, knowing that I was usually a sucker for giving in to client pressure.
“Are you going to use the speculum to hold his mouth open?” Nan asked.
“If he is unrestrained, that speculum just makes things more dangerous if he starts throwing his head around.”
Against my better judgment, I figured I would give Rocket a chance and try to float his teeth without restraint. That would prove to be a poor decision.
“Nan, you hold on to the side of his halter and keep your left hand on his shoulder with a stiff arm,” I said. “That should keep you clear of any problem if he acts up.”
With that bit of advice, I turned Rocket’s head slightly toward me, reached into his mouth with my left hand, and grabbed his tongue. He objected for a moment, but then with some soft voices, he calmed. Holding his tongue to the right side of his mouth, I slid the float file into his mouth and took a stroke on his left upper teeth.
Rocket was done being a good horse. He threw his head from side to side. I pulled on the float to remove it, and he drew back hard. This pulled me in front of him.
I instantly knew I was in jeopardy. One of the basic rules for working on a horse is to be in the right place at the right time. To accomplish that, one had to be in the right place all the time. Now I was in front of a fractious horse.
Rocket instantly struck at me with his front feet. He caught me with both hooves, one on each shoulder, and I was knocked flat on my back.
Rocket lunged forward, and I was completely under him. Nan struggled to gain control of the horse and move him off me.
I had always been told that it was important to lie still and trust that the horse won’t step on you if you were ever in this situation.
It only took a brief moment, and Nan had Rocket moved to the side, and I rolled clear. I stood up, brushed myself off, and walked to the back of the truck.
Nan joined me at the truck. With shaking hands, I drew up a hefty dose of Rompun, a potent tranquilizer.
“You’re not going to kill him, are you?” Nan asked.
“No, I’m going to kill him, but that might not be a bad idea,” I said.
I was through talking with Kay about how to handle her horse. I stroked his neck to calm him a bit, and then I inserted the needle into his jugular vein and delivered a full ten ccs of Rompun in an IV bolus.
When given IV, Rompun takes effect rapidly. In a brief moment, Rocket’s nose was nearly touching the ground.
With Nan’s help, I lifted his head high enough to finish floating his teeth. With this chemical restraint, the procedure was completed in a few minutes.
“Sometimes a dose of a tranquilizer is the safest thing for both the horse and the operator,” I said to Kay as I handed her the lead rope. “Rocket will be pretty sedate for an hour or so. Just let him stand in the corral by himself, and he will be fine.”
On the way back to the clinic, I explained to Nan how I had laid still, and the horse didn’t touch me.
“I don’t know,” Nan said. “I was so excited and concerned about getting the horse off you. I guess I didn’t notice.”
***
The next morning when I stepped into the shower, I noticed bruises in the shape of hoof prints all up and down my body.
So much for the ancient wisdom. My adrenalin rush had been so intense I never felt a thing.
Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash.
Memoirs of a Country Vet 