Vet Tech Tales: The Early Years (2 page)

Maybe if I had stopped to think about the small wrinkles beginning to line my mother’s face or the stray gray hairs beginning to peek out from between her chestnut ones, or stopped to think about her parents making their inevitable march into the sunset, I wouldn’t have confronted her. She didn’t like to think about death.
Didn’t want to think about it.
It wasn’t bad parenting skills that drove her to substitute life for death. Rather, it was her own fear, her own denial of it that caused her to react the way she did. It wasn’t just me she was protecting; it was herself as well.

Vulnerable, exposed, she turned away and disappeared into the house.

I can’t be sure, but I think that’s the day, at 49, my mother looked life in the face and began to die.

In the Company of Dogs

Despite having only a handful of pets of my own throughout my childhood, I wound up with more four-legged friends in the neighborhoods where I grew up than two-legged ones. Moreover, I had empathy with most beasts and "a way" with animals that my father admired but never really understood.

Wherever my love of animals came from, it obviously wasn't from Dad. Dogs seemed naturally distrustful of him. There was a Doberman from his youth remembered with particular loathing that ripped his britches and left scars on his back cheeks. As he would tell it, the dog, sitting behind an ornamental picket fence, barked at him every day as he passed on his way to school. One day, he decided he was tired of being barked at and launched a brick at the dog. Never mind the dog was on its own property. Never mind Dad could have simply walked on the other side of the street.

The brick missed. The dog, sailing easily over the fence, didn’t. For 20 yards Dad dragged the dog down the street, the dog firmly implanted in his butt. At last he was able to clamber onto a parked car and the dog, having proven who
was the alpha male
that day, returned home.

A short time later a policeman, called by a nosy neighbor, showed up, persuaded the boy down from the car and led him to the house where the dog lived. A woman answered the policeman’s knock.

“Ma’am, do you own a big Doberman?”

The woman eyed the boy whose hand clutched at his torn and bloodied britches. She nodded.

“Well, seems the dog attacked this young lad here.”

A black-and-tan head peered out from behind the woman’s leg. The dog growled. “Officer, Brutus would never attack anyone.” The woman stared pointedly at Dad. “Not unless he was
provoked
.”

The policeman tousled Dad’s hair. “Son, you didn’t do anything to provoke the dog, did you?”

Solemnly, Dad shook his head.
“No, sir.
I just threw a brick at him, that’s all.”

It was clear Dad must have been carrying his brains in his bitten cheeks that day. Or maybe it was simply that Dad may have been a lot of things when he was young, but a liar wasn’t one of them.

“You did
what
?” The officer slapped the tousled head. “Sorry to have taken your time, ma’am. As for you, son, I encourage you to find another route to school from now on.”
  

Dad took the policeman’s advice, but he held a grudge against the entire canine species forever after.

~~~

One summer when I was 12 I helped Dad distribute advertising flyers for his company. We
criss-crossed
the city going from neighborhood to neighborhood, leaving leaflets on hundreds of doors. He would go down one side of the street and I would go down the other, trying to stay cheerful in the face of scowling homeowners who didn't seem to appreciate the terrific real estate opportunity we had to offer.

Invariably I marched in the company of dogs. Blue heelers, poodles, labs,
Yorkies
, collies – I never questioned why so many dogs were allowed to roam the
neighborhoods,
I simply reveled in their company.

"No! No!
Git
!"
I quickly got used to Dad's commanding voice, often raised over the growling of dogs of every conceivable size. From little mops of
Malteses
to long-legged Danes, they growled at him and he chased them away.

"Hey, puppy, puppy!"
I'd call, and the growling brute terrorizing Dad would come bounding over – tail wagging, tongue licking and eager to follow me from house to house to house, only to threaten my dad again if he dared cross the street to check on me.

In the company of dogs I felt safe and protected. In the company of dogs I was confident and assured. In the company of dogs I was accepted.

~~~

In high school, with college closing fast, I registered for as many accelerated math and science courses as I could, thrilled to know there was a respectable career where I could make a living being around the creatures I loved.

Not that I had often seen the inside of an animal clinic with my own pets. Every penny in our household was carefully watched and there were no frivolous expenses. My parents dutifully had what few outdoor dogs and cats we were eventually allowed to keep vaccinated yearly. And if there were any chance the animals might be carrying something contagious to people, my folks had them checked out. But spaying and neutering and treatment for most ailments
was
simply not in the budget.

Mother doctored as best as she knew. Unfortunately, her knowledge was limited and she didn’t bother with much research. Of course, 35 or 40 years ago, no one had the easy access to information we do now. My family prided
ourselves
on the set of 24 rather anemic encyclopedias kept on display in the living room.

When an outdoor tom contracted feline leukemia, my mom treated him with Tylenol, a drug which causes severe liver damage in cats. Little did she know that the medication she was giving was ravaging his body just as thoroughly as the
feleuk
was, hastening him to an early
death.

That kind of wisdom fed my keen ambition to understand more about biology and physiology. I wanted answers to all the why’s circling in my brain like vultures. My high school years only sharpened my resolve to be a vet. I had read all the career books on the subject, but what I really wanted was some practical experience. A small taste of what veterinary medicine was really about.

In my sophomore year, I got the chance to find out.

Of Spotter Bulls and Cherry Eyes

When a veterinary chapter of the Explorers – a career-oriented affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America -- formed in my area, I jumped at the chance to be a part of it. We met at various animal clinics a couple of times a month, dividing our time between small animal clinics and large animal ones. Sometimes we met for a lecture, but more often than not, it was to see a surgery being performed. Incredibly, there I was at 15 watching veterinarians cutting into living flesh and getting a step-by-step account of exactly what they were doing and why. Slicing open fetal pigs in biology class couldn’t hold a candle to this real-world experience.

The first surgery I attended was at a ranch where a vet was turning bull calves into “spotter bulls.”

We sat on a corral fence while Dr. Bentley, dressed easily in jeans and hat and boots, brought out the surgical tools he would be using. “Any of you know what a spotter bull is?” he asked in a thick Texas drawl.

I looked around at the dozen or so avid faces next to me, hoping I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know. No one raised hand or voice.

“Well, getting a cow bred by the right bull takes some pretty good timing. Mostly, if you’re using a breeding bull, it just isn’t very practical to leave it in with a group of cows and hope nature takes its course. Not when your Christmas money depends on that cow calving. Besides, most of your larger ranchers artificially inseminate anyway. Now, cows are in estrus for only a short time, and if you miss your window of opportunity, you’re losing money.

“So what we’re going to do is take four little bulls and, instead of castrating them and making them into steers, we’re going to give them vasectomies. That way, they’re infertile, but they still make testosterone, which means when a cow comes into heat, they’ll mount her. That tells the rancher he’d better get moving and get that cow legitimately bred.”

I hoped the sun sliding off to the west was bright enough to hide my blush. Not only had I never been on a working ranch before, I had never been around such frank talk about a cow’s sexuality. At my house, sex, whether between human or non-human animals, was a taboo subject. In fact, my parents apparently agreed between themselves to let the school be responsible for any sex education because I never got “the sex talk” from either of them.

I watched Dr. Bentley and
a ranch hand, Lou, catch
and tranquilize the first bull, then lay it on its back. When the scalpel flashed in the dying sun, I wondered how I would react when it bit into flesh. In only a moment, the blade was through the first layer of skin, and Dr. Bentley was explaining that it would take a second cut to open the testicle cavity completely. A couple more cuts, a few sutures, a slug of penicillin and it was over. Lou was already tranquilizing the next bull.

I sneaked a peek at my fellow Explorers, catching the odd sideways glance of others doing the same. We exchanged brave smiles,
then
turned our attention back to the second bull down for the count. Three and four quickly followed. In less than 45 minutes Dr. Bentley had given four bulls a special purpose in life.

By the time the last stitch was put in, bull number one was already back on his feet, blinking slowly at his audience, clearly trying to figure out what had just happened. I stretched a hand through the corral fence and touched his shoulder. He swung his head toward me as if hoping I might have some answers. I
tched
my tongue at him a few times in what I hoped was a soothing way. The bull, however, seemed rather bored with it and stumbled over to be closer to his “spotter” pals, already starting to get their feet under them as well.