George

 D. E. Larsen, DVM 

Jim waited patiently in the reception area with George lying at his feet. He tried to busy himself, looking at his hand, then out the window. I hurried to the next exam room so we could work George into the busy schedule.

“Dixie, get Jim into the surgery room, and I will look at George as soon as I am done here,” I said to Dixie as we passed each other between the exam rooms.

George was a farm dog, and he sure wasn’t much to look at, but he was a constant companion for Jim.

Jim and Joyce had a small farm out on the Calapooia River. They had a few cows, a few sheep, a lot of cats, and George.

Dixie had George up on the surgery table when I stepped into the room. George was lying with his head stretched out on the table.

“I’m sorry to be such a bother,” Jim said. “I guess I never realized how sick George was. He hasn’t eaten for several days, and I noticed he vomited some water in the yard this morning. Then this afternoon, I saw him take a crap, and it was like brown water.”

I ran my hands over George. I could feel his ribs with no fat covering them, and I noticed a few swollen lymph nodes.

“Don’t worry about the bother, Jim,” I said. “We are happy to work you in when it is something that needs attention. It feels like George has lost some weight.”

“Yes, I noticed that when I picked him up to put him in the pickup this afternoon,” Jim said. “You can’t see that looking at him with all that hair.”

I lifted a pinch of skin up on the back of George’s neck, and it was slow to return to normal when I released it. Opening his mouth, his tongue was shrunken and wrinkled, and his tonsils were swollen and red.

“What do suppose is wrong with him, Doc?” Jim asked.

“George is vomiting and has diarrhea, his lymph nodes and tonsils are swollen, and he is dehydrated and losing weight,” I said. “In my mind, George has salmon disease until I prove otherwise. We can confirm that when we have time to do some lab work.”

“Doc, I think a lot of George, but the facts are we have limited funds to spend on him,” Jim said. “I don’t know how he could have salmon disease, but I don’t think that sounds good.”

“Jim, you live on the river,” I said. “There would be ample opportunity for George to get a bite of dead fish or fish guts, and I would be making the same statement if you lived in the middle of Portland.”

“So, what do we need to be doing for him?” Jim asked. 

“We need to keep him for a few days and treat him with IV fluids and antibiotics,” I said. “He is in the advanced stages of this disease. Over ninety percent of dogs with salmon disease die within ten days of becoming ill if they are not treated. Hopefully, we can turn things around for George.”

“I trust your diagnosis,” Jim said. “Let’s put our money into treatment rather than a lot of lab work.”

“Okay, I will be able to confirm the diagnosis with just a fecal smear at this stage of the game,” I said. “George will need a lot of fluids if he is going to survive.”

“I need you to keep a running tab for us,” Jim said. “I would guess that we will reach a point where we will have to draw a line.”

“If you have a few minutes, I can give you a pretty accurate figure for the first two days,” I said. “But the problem, Jim, is George will not be well in two days.”

Jim looked at the estimate I handed him and shook his head.

“Doc, we will give him two days, but there will be nothing beyond this estimate,” Jim said. “Do your best, but if he is going to die, I will take him home to die, where he will know his surroundings.”

We hospitalized George and placed him on IV fluids and doxycycline. His fecal smear showed large numbers of fluke eggs, confirming the diagnosis. 

***

George somewhat stabilized with treatment, but when Jim came to check on him, he was still quite ill.

“The thing I don’t understand, Doc, is how come they can feed salmon to dogs in Alaska with no problem, but it kills dogs here?” Jim asked.

“It is a complex life cycle, Jim,” I said. “The distribution of the disease extends from northern California to the Puget Sound. Maybe a little further on both ends; I don’t have the latitudes on the top of my head. It also occurs on a similar range of latitudes on the east coast of Siberia. That range is controlled by the presence of a snail involved in the life cycle.”

Jim gathered George up in his arms to carry him out of the clinic. George’s eyes were bloodshot and had mucus in their corners. I doubt if he weighed thirty pounds. 

I patted George on the head as I handed Jim a bottle of antibiotics and wished him luck. I was sure it was the last time I was going to see George.

***

It was probably two months later when Jim called for me to come by and pregnancy check their little blind heifer.

I pulled into the driveway and stopped at the house before going to the barn. To my complete surprise, George came bounding off the porch to greet me. He was back to his old self. Joyce stepped out of the house.

“Jim will be out in a moment,” Joyce said. “We have the heifer in the barn.”

“George was a complete surprise to me,” I said. “I figured he had zero chance to survive.”

“It looked that way for several days,” Joyce said. “After Jim brought him home, he laid around here looking like death warmed over. One evening Jim was telling me that he would take George out behind the barn in the morning and shoot him. I don’t know if George heard his comments or not, but that next morning George was at the front door, wagging his tail and looking for food. It was just like that, and he was instantly well.”

George followed Jim and me to the barn, and I checked the heifer. She was two months pregnant.

This heifer had been born with tiny eyeballs in her eye sockets. Microphthalmia was a rare condition and could have been genetic.

“It will be interesting to see she has a calf with normal vision,” I said.

“Yes, it will be interesting,” Jim said. “But it doesn’t matter. We will keep it either way. Beth here gets along fine in her pastures.”

George escorted me to the truck, and I patted his head before I left.

Photo by Bojan Popovic on Pexels.

Charlie (a rewrite)

David E. Larsen, DVM

It was a bright sunny afternoon in early June when I pulled up to the gate of the McCubbins’ farm. Frank had a llama with a vaginal prolapse and was close to her delivery date. When I got out to open the gate, I noticed a feral momma cat with a litter of 4 kittens. The kittens looked to be about five to six weeks old. The remarkable thing about the litter was one Siamese cross kitten with long hair. My kids would love that kitten, but the whole group scattered when I tried to approach them.


I continued on to the barn after closing the gate. Frank and his ten-year-old grandson were waiting for me at the barn.


“I tried to catch a wild siamese kitten down at your gate,” I said. “There was a mamma cat with a litter of five kittens, but they were pretty wild.”


“Well, that’s too bad,” Frank said. “We have too many cats around this place as it is.”
Frank’s grandson disappeared without a word.


“The girls tell me you have a llama with a vaginal prolapse,” I said. “That is pretty unusual. I have seen a few of them after delivery, but I haven’t seen one in a pregnant llama. When they occur in sheep before delivery, it is usually due to triplets, where there just isn’t enough room in the belly. Vaginal prolapses are always difficult to manage before delivery.”


“Why is that?” Frank asked. “I would think it would be pretty much the same.”


“Yes, it is pretty much the same, except after delivery, you can just sew things up for a few days,” I said. “Before delivery, if you do that, there is a chance of losing the baby. Most people can’t watch these mammas around the clock.”


“So, how do we solve that problem?” Frank asked. “This isn’t a four hundred dollar calf.”


“Today, I will try a trick not taught in school. It was relayed to me over dinner at a local veterinary association meeting by an old veterinarian over twice my age,” I said. “I was fresh out of school, and he latched onto me when I came through the door. I think he was seventy-two and mostly retired, but he bent my ear all night.”


“I’m not sure I like the word, try,” Frank said.


“That’s why they call this veterinary business a practice,” I said. “Most of what I know and do, comes from trusted practitioners, either in school or practice. We end up standing on the shoulders of many people who have come before us. You just have to trust someone who has spent his life doing the same thing you are doing. I have every confidence that this procedure will work. I probably used the wrong word when I said trick.”


“Okay, I trust your judgment,” Frank said. “And I’m not interested in sleeping in the barn for the next week.”


After carefully washing the prolapsed tissue, I lubricated the mass and carefully pushed it back in place. She did some straining, and it was evident that she would push things out again.


Now for the trick, I washed a wine bottle one last time, rinsed it with Betadine, and lubricated it with KY jelly. I carefully inserted the bottle into the vagina, blunt end first. It would serve as a pessary, preventing the vagina from prolapsing again. When the cervix dilated and the baby entered the birth canal, the bottle would be easily pushed out and followed by the baby. This trick was from the 1930s, but the results were expected to be far better than any modern method.


Once I had the bottle in position, the llama relaxed, and she quit straining.


“What do I have to do with her now? “Frank asked.


“I think you can expect her to birth in the next few days,” I said. “So, you want to keep a close eye on her. There is always a possibility of a uterine prolapse after delivery. In the llama, that doesn’t happen often, and I don’t know if having a vaginal prolapse before delivery increases the chances of a prolapse following delivery or not.”


“I think I hear you saying that if it happens after delivery, it is easier to handle,” Frank said.


“Yes, if you find it right away,” I said. “But it also can affect her future fertility.”


“I am intrigued about how different generations of veterinarians share information,” Frank said as I cleaned things up and started putting my equipment back in the truck. “How often does that happen?”


“Frank, it is the backbone of the profession,” I said. “Young veterinarians come out of school with the basics but need some direction in applying them. They usually go to work for older veterinarians. Those employers and older colleagues hand down information and skills that never make it to the textbooks.”


“I sort of find that interesting,” Frank said. “I thought it was all book learning from school.”


“The veterinary profession, maybe more than other professions, has a generation gap that is hard to bridge,” I said. “Over the last hundred and some years, the profession has had multiple upheavals. Before the Model T put the automobile in the hands of the working man, veterinarians were horse doctors. There was a horse in every household. Those guys went the way of the bicycle repairmen almost overnight. So the profession became a profession of cow doctors. Horses, dogs, and cats were just sidelines. Then in the 1960s, pets started becoming more of a thing, and horses, dogs, cats, and pocket pets soon became the mainstay of the profession.”


Frank and I were still talking when Frank’s grandson returned carrying the Siamese cross kitten in his hands.


“I went down to the gate, and they were still there,” the grandson said. “The mamma cat was wild, but the kittens hung around. I just called this one, and he waited around long enough that I could catch him.”


“Let me look at him,” I said as I took the kitten from the grandson’s hands. It didn’t take much looking to realize that he was covered with ringworm.


“What are you going to do with him?” I asked.
“I’m going to keep him.” the boy replied.


“That will be fine,” I said. “He will grow up to be a good cat for you. Especially since he was raised by a feral momma cat. She was out there teaching them how to hunt. But, just as a warning, this kitten is covered with ringworm. You want to get that cleared up before you handle him much.”


“What should we do for treatment?” Frank asked.


“If you stop by the clinic, I can give you some shampoo and a couple of pills that you can chop up and give him a piece every day for a few weeks. And if you change your mind about the kitten, I will take him off your hands.”

***

It was probably 2 weeks later when Frank called the office.


“Are you still interested in taking that kitten?” he asked. “I have a grandson who is covered with ringworm. And, by the way, that llama gave birth a couple of days after you worked on her. When I came out to the barn early in the morning, the baby was up and around, and the wine bottle was lying in the middle of the pen. Pretty good trick, I would say.”


Frank was happy to deliver the kitten to the clinic. We named him Charlie, and he was an irresistible kitten.


We started with an anti-fungal bath and topical treatment of Charlie’s ringworm. Even with careful treatment and stern warnings, our kids developed a few ringworm lesions before Charlie’s skin was clear.


Charlie proved to be a super cat. He grew large, measuring nearly 3 feet from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail. He was a ferocious hunter. There was nothing safe in the back of our property.


We had many molehills when Charlie arrived. Before the beginning of his second summer, he had eliminated the entire mole population.


Charlie was very much my cat. I would leave the bedroom window open and unscreened during the night, and Charlie came and went as desired.


It was common for him to bring his trophies and leave them at the foot of our bed. Mice and bats were standard. One night I heard him come through the window, and he jumped up on the bed. This was something that he seldom did. The next thing I knew, he dropped a mouse on my neck. Thankfully it was dead.


During Charlie’s fifth year, he went hunting one evening and never returned. We could only guess at his demise, but it was likely by a wily coyote or a much bigger cat than he, both of which were common on our hill. Charlie’s loss was sad for the whole family, but maybe the most painful thing was watching the return of the molehills the following spring.


I have always held out for the chance that Charlie had found his old hunting grounds on Frank’s side of the hill. Maybe he preferred hunting with his mother.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash.

Ageless Ida and Kitty, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Ida was sitting beside her daughter, waiting patiently, with Kitty nestled in her lap. Ida was my oldest client, a tiny, frail old lady with snow-white hair. She lived by herself, but her daughter, Lila, was close at hand. Lila was no spring chicken herself.

Ida drove until a couple of years ago. She had expressed her disappointment to me when they took her driver’s license away. She was fiercely independent, and she hated to have to impose herself on her daughter.

Kitty was an old tabby cat with a white blaze and a white chest. The record did not have a birth date for Kitty. That meant the girls probably disagreed with Ida’s guess. Maybe I should resolve that issue today.

Ida slapped at her daughter when Lila tried to help her stand up with Kitty. She also refused the helping hand offered by the girl showing her to the exam room. She ambled toward the exam room with measured steps and cradled Kitty in her arms.

“Kitty’s has not been feeling well for several days,” Ida said as she carefully positioned her on the exam table. “I had to crawl under my bed to get her this morning.”

I had to take a moment to process that statement. I am not sure I could crawl under a bed to retrieve a cat, and I am a young man. Imagining this frail little lady crawling under her bed was difficult to conjure up in my mind.

“Ida, you shouldn’t be doing that at your age,” I said. “You should get one of your grandsons to help.”

“They are always busy, and Lila is in worse shape than I am,” Ida said. “Besides, if you quit doing things for yourself, pretty soon, they stick you in one of those prisons that they call all sorts of fancy names today.”

“That’s pretty good advice,” I said. “Let’s look and see if I can find out what is wrong with Kitty.”

“Kitty is very old, she is 26 years old now,” Ida said.

“That is pretty old for a cat, are you sure of the date?” I asked.

“David, I got her as a kitten for my 70th birthday,” Ida said. “I should know her age. I named her Kitty because cats never pay attention to a name but always come when you call kitty.”

“I had no idea she was that old,” I said. “I don’t think I have seen another cat near that age. I did have a client who moved here from California with a 17-year-old cat. That cat aged 2 years every 3 months, according to the owner. It was 25 when he died a year later.”

“I have a picture of Kitty and myself at my birthday party,” Ida said. “That was the last birthday party I allowed Lila to give for me. They are sort of silly for old folks. They just use them as an excuse to take their picture with you. Just because you might not be around next year.”

Kitty was lying on the exam table, unmoving through all this discussion. I petted her head and then ran my hand down the length of her body. There was a bump when I cross her abdomen. I felt closer. It was a tumor, the size of an orange.

I looked at Ida, and she had a tear on her cheek.

“I felt it last week,” she said. “I prayed it would go away, but that didn’t help.”

“Sometimes, we can remove these with surgery,” I said. “That might be difficult at Kitty’s age.”

“No, I told her I wouldn’t let you do any of that to her,” Ida said, tears streaming down her cheeks now. “I don’t know what I am going to do without her, Doctor. She is all I have to talk with now, all my friends are long gone.”

Ida was purposely avoiding the discussion of euthanasia. I knew it had to be discussed, but I wanted her to bring it up. Maybe that wasn’t going to happen.

“You should get a new cat,” I said. “We could find you a kitten.”

“That wouldn’t be fair to the kitten, David,” Ida said. “I am not going to be around forever, you know.”

“You could have your Granddaughter help pick her out,” I said. “She could know that it would be her responsibility when the time came.”

“That might be a thought,” Ida said. “But what are we going to do with Kitty? I don’t want her to suffer.”

“Is she eating at all?” I asked.

“She has been under my bed for 3 days,” Ida said. “That is why I had to crawl under there to get her.”

“I think she waiting to die,” I said. “Maybe it is time we talk about making that an easy process for her.”

“Yes, I think that is what I thought when I called Lila this morning,” Ida said. “Then, I can take her home and bury her beside her favorite place in the back yard.”

“You should get one of your grandsons to help you with that chore,” I said.

“The ground is still soft, David,” Ida said. “I am not helpless. That is something I would like to do privately.”

“It will only take a moment for me to put her to sleep,” I said. “You can wait out front if you like, and we can bring her out in a small box.”

“I think she will like to be looking into my eyes when she goes, I will wait right here,” Ida said. “And I will take her home wrapped in her blanket. She would like it that way.”

And that is precisely how it was done. Ida carefully wrapped Kitty in her blanket and wiped a tear from her eye before gathering her into her arms.

“Thank you, David,” Ida said. “I will think about that kitten.”

I watched as Lila helped her mother out the door. Ida slapping at her as she tried to hold Kitty.

That was the last time I saw Ida. Her obituary was in the paper a few months later.

Photo by Belén Rubio from Pexels