Cold Weather Delivery 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

When I turned off the highway onto Liberty Road, my headlights flashed across a field that was white with a heavy frost. 

“It’s going to be a cold one tonight,” I said to myself as I corrected for a slight skid of the truck’s rear end. “At least Scott Mountain Road will be gravel.”

Pat had said the ewe was in the barn. It won’t be heated, but it will be out of the wind. 

If I had a call for dystocia in a backyard ewe, I could figure it would be a simple problem. Pat has been sheep ranching for many years. When she has trouble delivering lambs, it is probably a major problem. 

I slowed down for the last mile of pavement and made the turn onto Scott Mountain Road with care. The gravel surface was welcome, and it will make the twist on turns on this mountain road a lot safer than if it was paved.

Pat was waiting on her front porch when I pulled into her driveway.

“You will have to park here,” Pat said. “In this weather, you can’t get closer to the barn.”

The cold wind stung my bare arms when I stepped from the truck. I reached into the truck and grabbed my fleece jacket to wear to and from the barn.

I filled a bucket of warm water and grabbed my OB bag. 

“Lead the way, Pat,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on with this gal as we walk.”

“I noticed her with a bubble hanging out of her just before dinner tonight,” Pat said. “We ran her into the barn, got her in a pen, and then went and ate dinner. Nothing had happened when we checked her after dinner. I cleaned her up, like you always show me how to do, and ran my hand into her. All I could feel was a bunch of legs. I felt around awhile, but I couldn’t figure out what was going on, so we figured you needed something to do tonight.”

Pat’s barn was old, and the siding boards were weathered to a steel gray. Pat pushed the door open for me, guided me through it with her flashlight beam, and followed me into the barn.

“Things are a bit cluttered in here,” Pat said. “When you get a little older, there is always something left to do, but the days are just too short.”

Sheep barns were always a bit of a wonder for me. There seemed to be pens everywhere, and there was no specific order to their arrangement.

“She is way in the back of the barn,” Pat said. “You follow me, and I will try to keep the light so both of us can see.”

The barn was only slightly warmer than the outside. Most of the pens were empty, so there was no body heat from the sheep to warm things up. The best thing was we were out of the wind.

I stepped over the fence into the pen, and Pat put a halter on the ewe. I took off my fleece jacket and tossed it over to a couple of hay bales.

After washing up the ewe, I got down on my knees behind the ewe and ran a well-lubed bare hand into her birth canal. As I pushed through the cervix, I ran into a bunch of legs. 

It took me a couple of minutes to figure out what was going on. Then I counted legs.

“I count five legs right here,” I said. “That means we have twins, at least.”

“Twins are great,” Pat said. “But don’t try to tell me that there are triplets.”

“First thing, I need to find a head or a butt,” I said. “Then I can get one of them out of the way and then figure out what’s left.”

I reached deeper into the right side of the uterus and found a tail. I stuck a finger in the butt, and it cinched down on my finger.

“At least there is one of them alive,” I said as I gathered up the hind legs associated with the tail. Once I jiggled the other lambs out of the way, I pulled the hind legs and pelvis of the lamb into the birth canal. With a pull, I delivered the lamb in a posterior presentation.

The lamb landed in the straw and shook his head. Pat quickly dips his umbilical cord in iodine and gives him a Bo-Se injection. Then we shoved him up to momma’s nose. She immediately started licking the new lamb, even as I went back for the next one.

I reached into the left side of the uterus and found another bunch of legs. I fished through these legs and found a head. Grabbing the head like I would grab a baseball, I pulled the head up to the birth canal. Then finding the correct set of front legs, I pulled her with simple traction.

“I think there is one more, Pat,” I said as I pushed her over to the edge of the pen so Pat could take care of it.

“I don’t get triplets very often,” Pat said. “Do you see them much?”

“Triplets are uncommon for me, but I have seen quite a few in sheep, a few in goats, and one set in a cow,” I said. “I have seen three sets of quads, two in ewes and one in a goat.”

“Quads sound like a chore,” Pat said. “I would think you would have to bummer one or two of them.”

“They take a little extra work, but I had them leave them all with their mothers and just supplement them with a little extra milk,” I said. “That worked out well for all of them.”

I reached into the ewe, and the third lamb was lined up, ready to get out of there. Had I talked a little longer, momma would have pushed him. One little tug and he was out.

“I have always heard that in twins with mixed sexes, the females are sterile,” Pat said. “But that doesn’t seem to be a problem with lambs.”

“Yes, it is almost always a problem in cattle, but it’s rare in sheep,” I said. “It probably occurs less than one percent of the time in sheep.” 

The lambs were shivering when I stepped out of the pen, and my wet arm was suddenly icy.

“You might need to rig up a heat lamp for this bunch tonight,” I said. “It is going to get pretty cold tonight.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Pat said. “We don’t have electricity in this old barn. But there is an outlet in the shed behind the house. I will have to string a couple of extension cords together, but I think it will be fine.”

I washed up with the warm water in my bucket that was no longer warm, I pulled on my fleece jacket, and it felt a little warm. The truck heater is going to feel good.

***

It was several weeks later when Pat stopped by the clinic.

“You should see those lambs,” Pat said. “They are growing so fast and doing so well. I am so glad for your suggestion of leaving them all with mom. I had to supplement them a little for the first couple of weeks, but that was all. I would be feeding a bummer for another month.”

Photo by Matt Brown on Pexels.

KP, Basic Training, Fall 1965, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I was up and through the showers and lacing my boots when the Fire Guard came into the bay to wake up the KP crew. We had to be in the kitchen by 5:00 AM. I was in the kitchen waiting for the cooks and the rest of the KP crew a good 15 minutes early.

Most of the guys hated the shift that ran until 7:00 PM. I had decided that nobody was going to work harder than me while I was in the Army, and this was just another day. And just like a day at work, time passes faster if you are working rather than sitting around watching the clock.

The assistant cook was the first to arrive, and he was surprised to see me already there. We started getting set up to cook breakfast. It was interesting to be mixing pancakes for 200 guys, and the scrambled eggs were also mixed from powder.

By the time the cook came through the door, we had the bacon ready to go into the oven. The oven was hot, and the griddle was fired up. Just about all he had to do was to start cooking.

“Are you the whole crew today?” the Mess Sergeant asked me. His voice was gruff, and his frown wrinkled his entire forehead. He wore a little white sock-like cap to cover his bald head.

“I was up early, Sergeant,” I said. “The others should be along any time now.”

When the others did arrive, the Mess Sergeant barked out instructions with practiced repetition. The milk dispenser needed to be filled, and the juice set out. Coffee needed to be made. He was assigning chores as fast as he could, and the assistant cook was trying to give instructions fast enough to keep up. It was a system that was used to make guys useful, even though many of them had never been in a kitchen.

“Who wants to mix the pancake batter?” the cook asked.

“Larsen had that mixed before you got here,” the assistant said. “And the eggs are mixed, and the bacon is ready for the oven.”

The cook looked at me and scowls. “Have you been a cook?” 

“No, Sergeant, I was just here early and needed to keep busy,” I said.

Breakfast went off with no problems. We were each assigned to serving positions or other chores like keeping the milk dispenser full or moving dishes from the collection area to the dishwasher.

When breakfast was over, we started cleaning up and then getting ready for lunch and making desserts for tomorrow’s dinner. The cook was pretty good at keeping everyone busy and ruled with a loud voice and a frown.

“Larsen, you wash the vegetable steamer,” the cook says as he points the sizable stainless steel steamer that was anchored to the floor. This was a large tank, maybe 100 gallons.

I jumped right to it. Having made cheese in Myrtle Point for 4 summers, if there was something I knew, it was how to scrub stainless steel. I didn’t wait for any instructions.

I dumped a good couple of handfuls of powdered detergent into the steamer and started filling it with water. With a large scrub brush, I mixed the soap with the water and turned on a little steam to warm the water. About that time, I felt the presence of the cook, more than seeing him. He was standing at my left shoulder.

“What the hell have you done?” he boomed into my ear. “Did you put soap into my steamer?” He continued before I could answer. “Nobody puts soap in my steamer.”

I looked at him, and then I looked back at the steamer, everybody in the kitchen was watching now. 

“How long have you used this without washing it?” I asked. I knew I probably had made a grave error by talking back to this guy. Still, I probably had him over the barrel because it was supposed to be washed.

The cook looked at me, red-faced, eyes narrowed, and breathing hard. Then he looked at the steamer.

“If they taste soap in their peas tonight, I will have your ass, Larsen,” he bellowed.

“I have washed more stainless steel than you will ever see in your life,” I said. 

He stood and looked at me for what seemed like minutes. I was expecting to catch his full wrath. Finally, he took a deep breath and relaxed his facial expression. “We will let them decide,” he said, pointing out to the dining hall. Then he turned away and got back to other tasks.

I scrubbed and scrubbed on that steamer. Swirling the brush around, I was hanging half over the rim into the tank. By the time I was done, sweat was dripping off my eyebrows and my nose. I drained the tank and rinsed it several times. During this whole process, I could see both the cook and the assistant cook watching me. Plus, the other guys on KP.

When I was done, the cook came over and looked at the steamer. It glistened compared to its old self. He nodded in approval.

“Now, if you’re so good at scrubbing, you can scrub all the garbage cans,” the cook said.

I am sure he thought this was a punishment. It sort of reminded me of the rabbit story when Brier Rabbit begs not to be thrown into the brier patch. Every fall, I would scrub hundreds of milk cans, cleaning them for winter storage. A few garbage cans were nothing.

I was outside, enjoying working in the sunshine. I had water flying and cans spinning as I washed the cans and set them out to dry in the sun. I noticed the cook watching from time to time. I think he was a little upset that I was enjoying myself.

Then one of the other guys in the platoon, who was cleaning the storeroom, came out with a bunch of empty bags and cardboard. He handed them down to me to put in the dumpster. I took the load and tossed them in the dumpster.

“I have one more load,” he said. “You can take a break for a minute while I grab it.”

I grabbed the bags, and this time they were cumbersome and heavy.

He smiled, “Payback for the ass-chewing,” he said. “Put the heavy one in one of those clean garbage cans, and we will pick it up tonight.”

I looked at the heavy bag. It contained a whole bunch of bananas, stem and all, enough for the entire platoon.

Dinner went without a hitch. Nobody complained about soap in the peas. We cleaned up and were thanked by the cook. 

“You guys have been a good bunch,” the cook said. “I think you will do well in this man’s Army.”

It was nice to get back to the barracks and get through the shower. I was in clean clothes when the guy who had stolen the bananas came by motioned toward the door. 

It was close to dark, and the two of us exited the rear door and ran across the back yard. We grabbed the bag of bananas from the garbage can, turned, and ran back across the yard with the bag carried between us.

We felt like we just put one over on the cook. We had bananas for the whole platoon.  We burst through the back door and almost ran over Sergeant Lopez. 

Sergeant Lopez was the DI for the 4th platoon. He had lost his wife to the meningitis epidemic currently at Fort Ord, and he lived in the company barracks. His room was right by the back door.

Here we are, standing at attention against the wall with a bag of stolen bananas between us. We both think we are dead.

Sergeant Lopez says, “Ah, what have we here?” He peeks into the bag.

We knew we were dead now.

Lopez smiles, looks down the hall, and shakes his head. “I didn’t see a thing,” he says as he turns and heads for his room.

The whole platoon had 2 or 3 bananas each. The trip back to the dumpster with the peelings was just as scary.

Our opinion of Sergeant Lopez changed that night.

One Big Hot Spot

 D. E. Larsen, DVM

The early morning air was warm and unusually humid as I loaded into my truck to head to the clinic. This was going to be a hot day, and I just hoped I wouldn’t have some dog with a heat stroke today.

“The good news is there isn’t much going on this afternoon,” Judy said when I leaned over the front counter to look at the appointment book. “We should be able to leave early before the day warms up.”

When Dixie came through the front door, her immediate concern was the daily schedule.

“I’m hoping we have an easy afternoon,” Dixie said to Judy.

“I am trying to keep things open,” Judy said. “They say it will be a hot day, and you know how hot it gets in this clinic.”

“Yes, I am going to get the backdoor open and start the sprinkler on the roof,” Dixie said. “That will keep things cool until two or three this afternoon.”

Dixie opened the garage door in the back of the clinic. With the front door open, it provided a nice cool breeze through the clinic. The sprinkle on the roof kept the clinic from heating up until later in the afternoon. The water running off the roof was hot already.

“I didn’t schedule any surgeries today,” Judy said. “That way, we won’t be stuck here recovering a patient in this hot weather, and we can fill those hours with any clients that call this morning.”

The morning was busy, and Judy did a good job fitting the entire day into the morning.

“I think we will be out of here at one if we work through the lunch hour,” Dixie said. “That will be great. I have plenty to do this afternoon.”

I was finishing the last appointment at twelve-thirty when Georgia came through the door with her Saint Bernard, Nana.

“I know I don’t have an appointment, but something is terribly wrong with Nana,” Georgia said. “I am hoping you can see her.

“We are just finishing up for the day, but I think the doctor has time to look at her,” Judy said.

Dixie showed Georgia and Nana into an exam room. “Something doesn’t smell good with Nana,” Dixie said. “How long has she had a problem?”

“I noticed her smelling this morning,” Georgia said. “I was so hot yesterday, and she suffers in the heat anyway. I just assumed she was just hot when she was scratching yesterday.”

Nana’s odor had filled the room by the time I stepped into the exam room. I took a deep breath.

“Nana is an interesting name,” I said. “Where did you come up with it?” 

“Nana was the family Saint Bernard in the Peter Pan movies,” Georgia said.

“Let’s see if we can find where this odor is coming from,” I said. “How long has she had a problem?”

“I noticed her scratching a little yesterday,” Georgia said. “I just figured it was the heat, but this morning she really smells.”

I knelt down to look at Nana. She was far too large to lift onto the exam table for just an exam. I ran my hands down her back, and her skin was moist over her shoulder blades. 

“I think I have found the problem,” I said as I parted her hair to look at the skin. A large area of infected skin was on the middle of her back. “I think we need to clip some hair to get a better look at things.”

“I hate to have her hair clipped,” Georgia said. “Are you sure that needs to be done?”

“What is going on with Nana is a moist skin infection,” I said. “The hair mats down a little, and the infection just grows. We need to remove the hair and clean up the area. Then with some antibiotics and other medication, things heal up pretty fast in most cases.”

We started clipping Nana’s hair in the middle of her back. The skin was painful, sore, and covered by a thick layer of yellow pus. We extended the area of the clip, looking for the edge infection. Nana was an excellent patient. She never complained through the whole process.

“Look at the size of this hot spot,” Dixie said as she finally reached the edge of the infection, almost up to Nana’s neck and back to the middle of her back. “I don’t think I have seen anything this large.”

“And it looks like it extends down her sides,” I said. “It looks like someone poured a bucket of pus on the middle of her back.”

When we finally finished clipping hair, the area covered looked like the area that a saddle would cover. Several strips of infection extended Nana’s sides, almost to the bottom of her rib cage and down the sides of her legs.

We scrubbed the area with Betadine Scrub. Then after a rinse, we applied some Furacin Ointment and hydrocortisone cream. 

“We are going to send you home with some antibiotics and prednisone. I expect this to heal rapidly, although there are a few spots where the infection is pretty deep, and they might scab over.”

“What caused all of this, Doctor?” Georgia asked. “Was it something that she ate?”

“I could be a food allergy, but the dermatologists say that food allergies are real rather rare, unlike what the dog food companies try to say,” I said. This often starts from a reaction to something, and maybe just a flea bite. Controlling fleas this time of the year is just about impossible. I hear new medications are on the horizon that will help with flea control.”

“How can a flea bite cause something like this?” Georgia asked.

“It is not just a simple flea bite. It is the allergic reaction to the bite,” I said. “Or the reaction to some other allergen, the dog scratches a bite, the skin oozes some moisture, that mats the hair down. A skin infection quickly follows in this heat, and the lesion just grows. This is by far the largest hot spot I have ever seen.”

“So she is going to be okay,” Georgia asked.

“Yes, I think she will feel much better in the morning,” I said. “We should plan to check Nana on Monday, just to make sure everything is coming along okay. Then it is just growing some hair back.”

Nana’s tail was wagging as she went out the door.

“I was so glad we didn’t have to sedate her,” Dixie said. “I could just see our free afternoon melting away.”

“I turned the phone over to the answering service,” Judy said. “I hope everyone has a good weekend. It is supposed to be cooler by Monday.”

***

Nana was a different dog when she came through on Monday afternoon. Bouncing in the door, tail wagging and nuzzling Dixie, she led her and Georgia back to the exam room.

“I think she knows you guys helped her,” Georgia said. “She feels so much better, and there is only one small scab on her back.”

“Looks like we are home free,” I said as I looked at Nana’s skin. “The inflammation is mostly resolved. There is nothing more to do now except finish the medication, and then Nana can grow some hair.”

Photo by Olga Dudareva on Unsplash.