YES,
WE TREAT AARDVARKS
Stories From an Extraordinary
Veterinary Practice
Other Works by Dr. Robert M. Miller
Books
Natural Horsemanship Explained – From Heart to Hands
The Revolution in Horsemanship – Co-authored with Rick Lamb
Understanding the Ancient Secrets of the Horse’s Mind
Imprint Training of the Newborn Foal
The Passion For Horses & Artistic Talent – An Unrecognized Connection
Mind Over Miller
Handling the Equine Patient – A Manual for Veterinary Students & Technicians
Equine Videos
Understanding Horses
Safer Horsemanship
Early Learning
Control of the Horse
Influencing the Horse’s Mind
The Causes of Lameness
Cartoon Books
Am I Getting To Old For This?
The Second Oldest Profession
Ranchin’ Ropin’ an’ Doctorin’
A Midstream Collection
Websites
YES,
WE TREAT AARDVARKS
Stories from an Extraordinary
Veterinary Practice
ROBERT M. MILLER DVM
INTRODUCTION BY
JAMES HERRIOT
Y
es,
We Treat Aardvarks
©Copyright 2010 by Robert M. Miller Communications
Smashwords Edition
.
Cover Design by Silver Moon Graphics
www.silvermoongraphics.com
Preface
The title of this book is misleading. You see, I never actually treated an aardvark. However a woman once telephoned me to ask if I treated them. I said “yes” and then asked “you have an aardvark?”
“No” she answered, “but we are trying to find one”.
The reason for the extensive exotic animal population in the Conejo Valley was because it had lenient zoning laws and it was close to the Los Angeles County line, commuting distance from Hollywood.
Los Angeles County’s zoning laws were much more stringent and would never have allowed what were everyday sights in Thousand Oaks. Elephants were trained and exercised on an empty lot a block from the main street. Nearby there was a camel breeding farm. Today it is a retirement community ironically called “Camelot”.
Trained lions and tigers normally kept in small wheeled circus cages were walked along the main street on leashes and during the nineteen fifties were actually tied out to oak trees along the town’s main street during the day, an absolutely inconceivable practice today.
When my children were young they liked to play a game. It went like this:
“Daddy, have you ever treated a wallaby?”
Answer: “Yes, several times.”
“Daddy, have you ever treated a Yak?”
“Yes”
“Daddy, have you ever treated a Hyacinth Macaw?”
“Oh sure, several times”
“Daddy, have you ever treated a Water Buffalo?”
“Sure! There’s one at the Moorpark College Zoo named after me. Roberto!”
They never asked if I had treated a two headed calf, but if you will read on you will see that I had.
To Mark and Laurel, with love
Introduction
by
James Herriot
Some ten years ago I was sitting in solitary state in my kitchen in Yorkshire, drinking my morning cup of tea and allowing the world to creep up on me. At the same time I was opening my mail and was totally unprepared for a letter from America which began, "Dear Sir, You are a scoundrel. You have plagiarized my entire life." I almost spilled my tea, and as I read on I found I was being accused of a wide variety of misrepresentations. "The setting of your book was not the Yorkshire dales and moors, it was the mountains and valleys of southwestern Montana. And when you describe how you had to climb through the ceiling to escape from a kicking cow, that was on the Parini place, just a few miles east of here. I remember it too well." I had begun to tremble, and it was not until the writer exploded "Anyway, your wife's name is not Helen, its Dorothy!" that I realized I was having my leg pulled.
The nice man who wrote was an eminent American veterinarian named Harry Ferguson, and it was his humorous way of expressing a fact that is so very true-that the things that have happened to me have happened to fellow veterinarians all over the world.
This has been the source of many happy meetings with my colleagues in other countries. We have swapped experiences, listened to the successes and failures that are part of the veterinary life, and shared congratulations and commiserations. Most of all, we have laughed together, because the life of the veterinarian is spiced with laughter. Animals are unpredictable things, and when they are sick, anything can happen. And whereas a physician's human patients are usually trying to cooperate with him, ours are invariably trying to thwart us at every turn. This state of affairs gives rise to situations that can be embarrassing, humiliating, dangerous, and occasionally terrifying. However, these things, though traumatic at the time, are often funny in retrospect, and it was this aspect of my professional life that motivated me to start writing in the first place. Veterinary practice, of course, has its sad side. Animals are totally vulnerable: they are dependent on us, and it is unforgiveable to let them down. I think it is this fact that engenders the deep pull that they have on our emotions.
Working with animals, despite the regular contretemps, adds up to a rewarding and fulfilling life, which is confirmed by the fact that most vets seem to be happy men. They are, in fact, my favorite people, and their wives, so often acting as animals' nurses, bookkeepers, and general factotums, are the salt of the earth.
Not many veterinarians have taken up the pen to record their varied and interesting lives. Usually they are too busy, or they say they are just incapable of putting it down on paper. Some of them have been kind enough to say that they envied my ability to do this. Well, I don't know about that, but I do know that I envied the gifted R.M.M. when I first opened a book of his cartoons. In fact, I read it in a kind of ecstasy. I just could not believe that these hundreds of brilliant drawings, going right to the heart of our work, could possibly be produced by a man who had to cope with the twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week life I knew so well. With what I can only call a uniquely perceptive genius, he touches on every slant and facet of our profession, and I literally rolled about in my chair, punctuating the belly-laughs with gasps of "Oh yes, that happened to me!" And sometimes, wiping my eyes, I had to admit that even after my forty years at the game, his intuitive skills could still conjure up some aspect that had escaped me. The whole vast spectrum of the veterinary scene is revealed, apparently effortlessly evoked by a few quick flicks of the pen. The grumpy farmer, the lethal patient, and the pampered pets with their whacky, unreasonable owners-they are all there, real, vivid, leaping alive from the pages.
My response to that first book was not only emotional, it was visceral. These things touched me so deeply. They not only made me laugh, they filled me with a warm reassurance that there was somebody far away who had been through it all and had not let the things go by, but had lifted them from his life and preserved them for others to see. It’s a funny thing, but much as I love my professional colleagues, the things I like to hear at our get-togethers are not about their impressive and daunting triumphs, but about their embarrassing moments, their awkward predicaments. These are the things that prove we are all fallible, and they comfort me.
When I first took up the manuscript of Yes, We Treat Aardvarks I wondered-could this man possibly weave his spells in another medium? Within a few pages I realized he was twice blessed, and I began to revel in his stories with the same joy I had felt with the cartoon books. Bob Miller writes beautifully, and I was borne along on waves of clean, uncluttered prose, laughing helplessly most of the time. There were other bonuses, too. In this book I learned something of his personal life, and I found that he dealt with the serious and sometimes tragic incidents with the same sure touch he revealed in the humorous ones. My long-held conviction that Dr. Miller is a genius is confirmed by this book for all time.
The mixture is incomparably rich. Birds and bulls, horses, sheep and cats, Dogs, cows, monkeys, mules, foxes, bears and lions. I cannot name them all, but Bob Miller has treated them, and as I read, I reacted with the same incredulous delight as before. The man can do just the same with the words as he does with the pictures, and through- it all runs the strong thread of his love for his marvelous profession. He can write chillingly, too. He has made me afraid of chimps, and I have never had anything to do with those creatures!
Yes, We Treat Aardvarks is a lovely panorama of the veterinary scene, but it is not only for our profession, it is for the whole animal-loving world. This picture of a fine man doing his job with dedication, compassion, and good humor will find a response in the heart of every caring person.
YES,
WE TREAT AARDVARKS
Chapter 1
Springtime brings new life. Grasses green the meadows.
New leaves adorn the trees. In California, where I practice veterinary medicine, wondrous fields of golden poppies and purple lupine paint the hills. New life blesses the countryside.
My home is in an oak-studded canyon. I see a doe with twin fawns. A litter of coyote pups visits my pasture and yodels as darkness falls. The city dwellers know that springtime brings baby animals. They drive out into the country to let their children see the young creatures-infant calves, lambs, and kids. Foals pursue their dams on legs too long but with a grace promising future speed and agility.
To a veterinarian-if he is a country practitioner-springtime means dystocia. The British spell it dystokia. The word simply means difficult labor. And labor it is! Labor for the cow or mare trying to bring forth an improperly positioned offspring. Labor for the veterinarian stripped to the waist, with his scrubbed and lubricated arms inserted to the shoulder into the uterus of the straining dam, trying to straighten out the contorted extremities of the unborn young.
We wince when the calls come. Most of them come during the night if the practice includes a lot of horses, as ours does. Mares usually foal at night. When a mare is in trouble foaling, she is in big trouble indeed. Prolonged dystocia usually means the death of the foal, and the contractile powers of the mare are so great that an unrelieved dystocia often causes serious or fatal injury to the mare.
Large animal obstetrics is, therefore, a routine but difficult part of practice. It is routine because it is common, especially during those spring months when most births occur.
I started our practice, the Conejo Valley Veterinary Clinic. I was the first veterinarian to conduct a private practice in the valley, although one of the larger ranches did have its own full-time resident vet. In those days, the Conejo Valley was a lovely pastoral place, a sea of grass with groves of ancient oak trees in the washes and along the creeks, surrounded by the rugged, picturesque mountains where I have now taken refuge. There were two little towns in the valley: century-old Newbury Park, a former stagecoach stop, and Thousand Oaks, which came into existence during the twentieth century as a highway town and center for breeding and training wild animals. The total population was 3,500.
Today, over 150,000 people inhabit the area-a part of California's incomparable and almost incomprehensible growth. This includes the old stage coach stop of Newbury Park and Westlake Village, a beautiful, planned community built from scratch, from what was once a magnificent cattle ranch. Since Spanish colonization, cattle had watered at Triunfo Creek. Now the creek has been dammed to form a man-made lake lined with weeping willows and gracious homes, and dotted with sailboats.
As the area grew, my practice grew. And grew. There are ten veterinarians now in the practice.
At first I worked out of my car. I equipped my station wagon for large animal calls, and I had a black physician's bag for dogs and cats. I saw them at home and even did major surgery at their homes.
For fifteen years I spent half my time at small-animal practice in the hospital we eventually established, and the other half in the field treating livestock and horses. We also treated many zoo animals.
Gradually, the demands of a growing horse practice led me to devote nearly all of my time to that specialty. I miss small-animal practice. Occasionally I help out in the hospital, and I enjoy it greatly. I still see zoo species in the field, although more of them are seen at the hospital by my associates.
Subdivisions and suburbanization have greatly reduced our cattle population, so I do not see as many cattle these days. Of course, there are occasional sheep or pigs or goats or camels or tigers or guanacos, but our large-animal practice is mostly equine.
Horses have always been my great and consuming love, so I am quite happy, especially since most of the horses I see are fine, well-bred individuals, primarily Thoroughbreds, Arabians, and western breeds.
From a veterinary viewpoint, Thousand Oaks is uniquely situated. Drive fifteen miles in one direction and you are in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Our practice here is a world of show-horse stables, affluent homes surrounded by white fences enclosing valuable horses, and not-so-affluent little homes with fences sometimes made of old bed springs enclosing not-so-valuable horses. Drive in the opposite direction and you are in the farming country of Ventura County, a land of citrus and avocado groves, irrigated pastures, and rolling rangelands. Here we treat pastured horses, cattle, and other farm animals.
Our clients include actors and cowboys, lawyers and trac
tor drivers, hippies and retired navy personnel, poets, circus performers, and prison guards. We live in a social, ethnic, and cultural melting pot, and it is fascinating.
On a bright May afternoon I was called to assist a valuable Arabian mare suffering dystocia. The ranch was in an· area being subdivided, and the mare was in a pasture close to the road. The owner was not at home, and I had been called by an inexperienced and thoroughly frightened friend. After disinfecting obstetrical instruments, I scrubbed up and examined the mare.
She was in pain and difficult to restrain. The foal's head was tucked between its front legs and twisted completely around. One of its front feet and one of its hind feet were protruding from the mare's vagina. While the mare strained mightily, I futilely attempted to push the foal back into the uterus so that I could rearrange its extremities.
Across the road from the ranch was a subdivision. Children were coming home from school. Soon parents and children lined the fence along the road. Parents ran home to bring children to witness a miracle of nature. Children ran home to bring parents to see the spectacle. Cars stopped along the road. Traffic piled up. Police cars arrived. People soon lined three sides of the pasture. Cameras clicked. People took motion pictures. Motorcyclists roared up, "Hey Mike, get a load of this!"
With the help of a tranquilizer and an epidural anesthetic, I was able to repel the hind leg. But although I had been working desperately for more than half an hour, I could not recover the missing forelimb, nor could I straighten the contorted neck.
It is rarely necessary to perform a fetotomy on a mare, and I shuddered as I considered sacrificing the still live foal to save the mare. "Let's see, if I sever the head and get it out of my way, perhaps I can bring that left leg up and get this foal out of there." I considered doing a caesarean section and rejected the idea. The mare was exhausted. So was I, for that matter. I strained and grunted and sweated and tried. "My God," I thought, "Will I have to cut this foal up and deliver it piecemeal in front of all these people? All these children?"
More than a hundred people watched my efforts. I was too anguished to look at their faces. If only we could get the mare up to the barn, away from their sight. But the mare could barely stand. In fact, she went down twice. And the barn was hundreds of yards away, up a hill too steep to drive and across a narrow bridge.
Finally I withdrew my numb and aching arm. I stood dejectedly looking at the ground, resting and thinking. Flash bulbs popped. It was dusk. More cars stopped. Newer members of the audience made sympathetic sounds as older members brought them up to date. "Aaah!"
I glanced at my assistant. "What are you going to do?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said sadly. "Try again!"
I tried again. This time I found the missing foreleg. With
difficulty I snugged an obstetrical chain around the pastern. Later I found the foal's nose. With my thumb and forefinger in its nostrils, I held it with a death grip. I manipulated the head and neck around into a normal presentation. position. The foal was huge-too big for the mare. With great effort we started to extract the foal. "We need a man to help pull," said my assistant. Several men quickly scaled the fence and volunteered. A few minutes later a living, breathing foal lay behind the exhausted but saved mare. We attended both mare and foal. When I finally stood up and gratefully looked at the crowd behind the fence, they broke into applause. Filled with relief, I did a comical little bow.
The foal attempted to stand. Dozens of women and children said, "Aaaaah!"
A man came forward. He extended his hand. "You did a wonderful thing," he said. "I never saw anything born before, and she was in such terrible trouble. I'll never forget this as long as I live. My daughter here saw it. It was an amazing thing, what you did!"
"It wasn't that special," I said. "Really! Just a routine OB. A dystocia. It was routine."
And I was right. It was routine. It was just a routine dystocia!
But the man was right too. It was wonderful. I had done a marvelous thing. I saved the mare and the foal, and I had not realized how wonderful it was. There was the pity of it. Because the work had become routine, I was no longer aware that it was wonderful.
I felt ashamed. To participate in the exciting, marvelous things that veterinarians do every day of their lives and not to realize that they were exciting and marvelous-that was a tragedy.
For twenty years I had been treating "routine" cases like this dystocia. It took a crowd of city people to make me realize that there are no routine cases and to vow that there would never again be a routine case for me. That is when I decided that, first chance I got, I would sit down and write about it.
Chapter 2
At eighteen years of age I was an infantryman, and the Second World War was nearing its end. When I returned from overseas duty, I entered the University of Arizona under the G.I. Bill. My major was animal husbandry, in the College of Agriculture.
All during my youth I had devoured books about animals.
Stories about horses and dogs, by writers like Will James and Albert Payson Terhune, were my favorite reading.
The hero of my adolescent years was Carl Akeley. Naturalist, artist, author, explorer, and taxidermist, Carl Akeley and his wife, Mary, made many expeditions to Africa, collecting specimens for America's greatest museums. Akeley developed the art of modern taxidermy, mounting animals in lifelike poses and surrounding them with realistic vegetation accurately portrayed, and with birds and smaller animals indigenous to the region. I read and re-read the Akeley books many times. Brightest Africa, The Lion Is A Gentleman and Lions, Gorillas and Their Neighbors vividly impressed my boyhood imagination. I wanted nothing more than to spend my life as Akeley had, studying animals, living close to them, and seeing their behavior in the wild.
Mecca to me was Akeley Hall in the American Museum of Natural History, in New York City. There, to this day, one may see Akeley's marvelous craftsmanship in a hall full of beautifully mounted animal groups. There, too, one may view Akeley's superb life-sized bronzes. At the entrance to the hall is the sculpted work that moved me greatly the first time I viewed it. It is a group of Masai warriors facing charging lions.
By the time I was sixteen, however, I realized that the Africa that Akeley knew was fast disappearing. He had been the right man, at the right time in history, and my life was going to be different. Just so long as I worked with animals. After school I worked in a pet shop and a kennel. I spent my summers working on farms, milking cows, and harnessing and driving draft horses. I had read Akeley's books so many times that I had acquired a working knowledge of Swahili from the glossaries in the back, but I had decided to study agriculture. I was a city boy, but I wanted to work with animals.
During the post-war summers I found jobs on ranches, first as a horse wrangler, then as a cowboy, and finally as a horsebreaker. The more I worked with horses, the more I loved them. And the more I became convinced that I wanted to be around animals.
IT IS SAID that the most difficult professional school for a student to gain admission to today is the school of veterinary medicine. Well, it was not easy immediately after World War II either. The scholastic excellence now required was not demanded then, but the competition was keen due to the large number of veterans applying for admission.
Getting through veterinary school was relatively easy for me. Getting into the school was another matter. Although I applied to almost every school in the country, my sights were set on Colorado A&M, now Colorado State University. I was an Arizona resident, and Colorado was the closest school. I loved the Rocky Mountain West.
My first application to veterinary school, after one year of undergraduate work, was turned down because a second year of preprofessional curriculum had just been added to the requirements. I applied again the next year, but was told that I needed additional math courses. The year after that I was again denied admission. My grade average, it was pointed out, was not as high as it should be. In my final preveterinary year, I turned down a position on my school's intercollegiate livestock judging team in order to concentrate on my studies. I made straight A's that year, raising my grade average to a high B. But it got me nowhere.
Bachelor's degree in hand, I decided to move to Colorado and establish residency there, not only to enhance my chances for admission, but also because I planned, at that· time, to reside forever in that skier's paradise.
On my day off from work, I visited the campus at Fort Collins and talked to the Dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine.
"Is there anything I can do to enhance my chances of getting into the veterinary school?" I asked. "I am establishing residency in this state and am working for the Denver County Veterinarian."
The dean was actually a benevolent, personable man, but he looked alarmingly like J. Edgar Hoover, which did little to quell my apprehension. He looked at my records, and then asked, "Why didn't you come up for your interview?"
"I wasn't invited," I answered, surprised at his question. "You didn't get a letter asking you to come up for an in-
terview?"
"No, Sir."
"Alice!" the dean boomed.
A venerable secretary appeared.
"Why wasn't Mister Miller asked to come up for an interview? He was selected as an applicant!"
Alice perused my records, and then explained that a mistake had been made - an omission.
Now, I was thrilled, in fact ecstatic, to learn that I had even been considered. While I gloated over this good news, I suddenly realized the dean was speaking.
" ... terribly sorry about this unfortunate incident. We have already selected the class for the coming school year, but perhaps we can interview you here and now, and you may qualify as an alternate for that class."
"An interview?" I responded. "Now?"
"Yes," he said. ''I'll call the committee together immediately. "
He bustled out to gather the inquisitors while I fought rising panic. I was not ready for an interview that day. I had not prepared myself psychologically. Adrenalin flowed. My hands shook. I noted that my shoes were not shined. I fled to the restroom, removed my undershorts, and buffed my shoes with them with manic vigor, convinced that my future depended upon their appearance, a concept probably incomprehensible to today's youth.
My mouth was so dry I could barely speak or swallow. I drank from the restroom faucet.
Trembling with fear, I returned to the dean's office to face the admissions committee.
The three men who sat there looked, at the time, like the three coldest, most impassive human beings I had ever seen.
There was the dean, J. Edgar Hoover. Dean Floyd Cross, whom I later learned was as kind and sweet a gentleman as ever lived, held his cigarette habitually between his thumb and forefinger, with his palm up. The cigarette pointed outwards, and he puffed at the end nearest his palm. The only person I had seen smoke like that was an SS officer in a World War II movie. He was the one who said, just before he tortured the girl, "Ve haf vays to make you talk!"
The second member of the committee was head of the bacteriology department, Doctor Deem. I learned later what a gentle, decent man he was. But at that moment, all I could see was his lean aquiline features, his furrowed cheeks (dueling scars?) and-no eyes! That's right! He sat facing the window, and the light reflected in his rimless glasses concealed his eyes. It had the same effect the mirrored sunglasses of the motorcycle policeman had.
My terror turned to hysteria as I turned pitifully toward the third and last member of the committee. Perhaps here I would find a kindly academic countenance. No! Doctor Rue Jensen stood there, looking at me grimly. Later, Doctor Jensen was to be one of the teachers I respected most. But now I saw a short, muscular man, the blue shadow of a heavy beard on his cruel face. His hair was cropped short in a crew cut. His arms were sinewy, and in one hand he held-a great, gleaming, razor-sharp cleaver!
Dr. Jensen, a pathologist who had been on his way to the autopsy room to cleave a cow, put his cleaver aside. The interview began. I was so nervous I could hardly speak. I had difficulty concentrating on their questions. Once, I thought I heard screams in the basement.
Then, Dr. Deem did something so simple, so earthy, so American, so rural that I almost smiled, and I began to relax. He pulled out a brown cigarette paper and a can of' Prince Albert, and rolled himself a smoke.
I was not accepted that year. No alternate was needed.
But I did get in the following year. I was on my way toward becoming a veterinarian. Of all the difficulties that route entailed, none was as momentarily intimidating as that day back in 1951 when I faced the admissions committee in Colorado.
"CONGRATULATIONS" said the penny postcard, "upon your acceptance to the Colorado A&M School of Veterinary Medicine. I am a veterinary student and own a house with rooming facilities. Most of our tenants are veterinary or preveterinary students. If you would like to reserve a place, please contact me. The rates are $12.50 per month."
I reserved a spot on what was later to be called The Stud Farm, and I lived there through four years of veterinary education. I can still remember how we protested when, during my final year, the rent was raised to $13.50 per month. A dollar in 1952 bought a luxurious dinner in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Tenants at The Stud Farm lived in the basement, the horse barn, and one even resided in the chicken coop. The horse barn had rooms in what had been the hayloft, and other rooms in the stable area. There was one shower and a sink for the entire barn, which housed nine or ten men. The man in the chicken coop also used our sink and shower.
The room in which I lived was a large one. It had, I suspect, been a foaling stall. It accommodated three students, each on an army-surplus bunk with springs made of clothesline. There was a rug on the floor. When the wind blew, the rug would balloon up off the floor. Under the rug one could find oats and ancient bits of hay. The ceiling planks formed the floor of the hayloft. These planks had shrunk with age, and one could see, through the cracks between the boards, the feet of the boys who lived upstairs. If anyone up there spilled coffee, it dripped on us. In reprisal we would load a hypodermic syringe with ink and squirt it through the cracks in the ceiling. The objective was to stain the socks of the unsuspecting man above.
There was a gas heater in the room, but not being suicidal, we turned it off at night and crawled beneath mounds of old army blankets. When it was twenty degrees below zero outside, the temperature in our room would drop to ten above. Fortunately, such temperatures are infrequent in Fort Collins.
College Days, the annual spring campus celebration, was highlighted by a parade and an intercollegiate rodeo. There was also a Whiskerino Contest. The contest winner, in those smooth-shaven and crew-cut college days, was he who grew the most luxurious and striking beard.
Jack was a freshman preveterinary student. He lived at The Stud Farm when I was in my third year of veterinary medicine. As College Days approached, Jack stopped indulging in his once-a-week shave. After several weeks, a fungoid fuzz adorned his chin and upper lip. One night we veterinary students came home late from a meeting. Jack greeted us and said, "Hey, you guys know all about drugs. Is there something that will stimulate the growth of hair?"
"Certainly," I said. "We use a special formula to encourage the growth of hair on show cattle. Why?" My fellow students, immediately sensing an opportunity, nodded in . agreement.
"It's called Hair-Suit," one offered inventively.
Jack dug his toe into the rug, stirring some oats around, and confessed, "It's this beard! I grew it for the Whiskerino Contest, but as you can see, I'm not going to have much to show for the effort. I thought if you guys knew of something... "
"Say no more," said Val Farrel. "We'll go right back to the pharmacy and get some for you!"
"Gee," said Jack, "I hate to impose on you, but I sure would appreciate it!"
At midnight Val and I went back to the hospital. We filled an ointment tin with a depilatory cream used to remove the hair from rabbits before they underwent abdominal surgery. We added a bit of methylene blue dye. We labeled it HairSuit and added "To stimulate hair growth, massage in cream, leave ten minutes, and then wash off with soap and water."
Jack was asleep when we got back, but the next afternoon, alerted to what was to transpire, the whole Stud Farm had gathered in my room under the pretext of having a country music festival. While guitars strummed and a fiddle squealed, Jack appeared.
Given the "hair grower," Jack smeared the blue ointment all over his face and worked it in while we pretended to ignore him, choking back laughter. When he went to the lone hallway sink to remove the cream, we crowded after him. He diligently lathered a wash rag and wiped away the cream. His beard and mustache came with it. All that was left was his smooth skin, dyed blue.
Several days passed. Then Jack came to see me. "I can see the humor in the prank you fellows pulled on me," he said. "No hard feelings. My beard was a failure anyway." Then a tear glistened in his eye. "But I don't want to go through life without a beard. Isn't there any kind of an antidote for that stuff?"
That night I conferred with my cohorts. "Jack thinks his beard is lost permanently," I explained. "He wants an antidote."
"He has a right to an antidote!" exclaimed Gene Taylor.
"Let's give him a solution of silver nitrate. If he applies it indoors, then goes out in the sun, his skin will turn black."
Saturday afternoon our gang, including Jack, went to the Dew Drop Inn, a local joint that served 3.2 beer. There, in the dim recesses of a corner booth, we quaffed and joked and fraternized while Jack dutifully applied the silver nitrate to his face. The label read "To restore hair growth, apply like shaving lotion every hour."
As we walked home later, we were disappointed to note that Jack's face looked the same: basic pink with a faint methylene blue tint. Apparently our silver nitrate solution was too weak. However, we were soon heartened by Jack's
surprised voice. "Hey, my fingernails are all brown!" .
"Oh, Oh!" I stepped back, wiping my hands on my pants.
"It's paronychia pigmentosa!"
My associates recoiled in horror.
"Paronychia pigmentosa? My God! That's the earliest sign of Rocky Mountain leprosy!"
Jack looked at us sideways, and then sneered. "Come on, you guys! You must think I'm gullible!"
Chapter 3
I was no longer a youth. I had been a bachelor and a student for a long time, but in my senior year of veterinary school, both of those roles were about to end. I would soon be a graduate veterinarian, a doctor of veterinary medicine, and I would soon be a married man. During my final year, I met Debby, who was one of 700 women students at Colorado A&M. I had noticed her on campus that year-a pretty, shy girl with a sweet smile, short dark hair, and long shapely legs, but she looked so young that I assumed she was a freshman. after all, could a senior veterinary student, a war veteran, date a freshman girl?
At a college rodeo, I watched her ride in the women's barrel race. A formidable competitor, she rode aggressively, one with the big quarter horse gelding, a roping horse she had borrowed and taught to run the barrels. I learned too that she was a senior student, twenty three years of age, and had transferred from a Texas school to compete on Colorado's national champion collegiate rodeo team. When I asked her for a date, she accepted, and a romance bloomed . We learned that we had important compatabilities. We both had an overwhelming love for animals. We both loved the out-of-doors, riding, skiing, and being close to nature. We shared a philosophy of a life of gentleness, of kindness to our fellow man and other living things, of tolerance for other people's values, and a fascination for other cultures.
Debby's father was a physician-a general practitioner whose entire life had been devoted to his practice. She knew, better than I, the demands of medical practice, its rigors, its unrelenting hours, and the perversities of the public the practitioner served. She viewed marriage to a country veterinarian with some apprehension, but nevertheless, we were married soon after graduation. Our love of animals has been an important bond over the years. Our life has been filled with an abundance of dogs, cats, mules, horses, ponies, and goats.
It is good that veterinarians' wives love animals. How could they otherwise tolerate the irregular hours, the late dinners, and the nights, weekends, and holidays with a husband on call unless they empathized with the sick and injured creatures needing their husband's skill? But sometimes this love of animals can be carried too far. Debby, for example, has a special affinity for injured animals lying along the highway.
Shortly after we were married, she gasped as we were
driving one day and said, "Did you see that?"
"What?"
"That black dog lying by the shoulder. It was run over" "Was it alive?"
"I don't know. I think so. It looked like it was breathing.
Let's go back."
I turned the car around.
"It looked like a Labrador retriever."
We drove back only to find a discarded black inner tube. "I don't think I can save it," I said.
Over the years, I have turned back to aid a score or more inner tubes. Most were damaged beyond help.
Wild animals hit by automobiles are also the object of
Debby's compassion. A typical scene goes like this:
"Oh, no!" Debby exclaims. "What did you see?" I ask.
"A coyote, poor thing, hit on the highway!" "Yes, I saw
it."
"Do you think it was still alive?" "No, it was dead."
"How can you be sure?"
"It was flat and red."
"But how do you know it was dead?"
"If it were alive it would have snapped at the buzzards.
Didn't you see six or seven buzzards all around the top of the coyote?"
"Yes!" Then, after a long pause, "I think one of the buzzards had a broken wing."
On one occasion, we simultaneously spotted a yellow cat by the side of the road. It was supporting its weight on its front legs, hind legs awkwardly drawn forward, and it had a hump in its back.
"Did you see that poor cat?" cried Debby.
"Yes. It must have just been hit. Looks like its back or pelvis has been broken."
I turned the car around and reached the cat just as it finished its bowel movement. It covered the feces with sand, stared at us hostilely, and disappeared into a culvert.
The most humiliating of these roadside Samaritan adventures occurred when my wife screamed, "Oh, Bob, stop the car! It's a collie, and he's still alive!"
"Are you sure? Maybe it was a sable-and-white inner tube."
"No, please! I saw it! A collie! And it moved. It's alive!"
Wearily I stopped and backed up several hundred yards to find a hippy, with a long mane and shaggy blond beard. He was curled up roadside, stoned into oblivion, fifty miles from the closest town.
"I told you it wasn't an inner tube," said Debby. "I was partly right."
"You were also partly wrong," I pointed out. "You said it was alive. I think it's been dead a long time!"
"Yes," she agreed. "It smells badly decomposed."
Chapter 4
After we had graduated and been married, Debby and I moved down to Arizona, my previous home. There we discovered an old adobe house on a ranch east of Tucson. I was employed at an animal hospital not too many miles away, and we were happy to find the snug little house for rent. It had been the original ranch house on this working ranch, and the new owner had built a sumptuous new residence for himself.
There were several other homes on the place. In one of them, next to the adobe we had rented, an old vaquero, Enrico, lived in retirement. His life had been spent working for this ranch, and the new owner had kindly let him continue to live there. He spent his days dozing in the sun, or in the shade, depending upon the temperature.
Our house had no heating system, only a fireplace in the
living room and the oven in the kitchen stove. The oven, like Enrico, the ranch, and the adobe, was venerable. I carried my bride, Debby, over the threshold in September. The mornings were still warm, so we had no occasion to light the oven. After a few days, Debby decided to bake. I was away working when she lit the match. The explosion blew the oven door apart. Debby wasn't hurt, but her face was blackened. She ran outside. Enrico sat next door, rocking.
"The oven!" Debby cried. "It exploded! Did you hear it?
It blew up!" She gesticulated excitedly.
Enrico beamed at her. His few remaining teeth, either snaggled or gleaming gold, were revealed by his broad smile.
"Si!" He nodded. "Eet's a nice day!"
Our next home was even less prepossessing. When we moved to Thousand Oaks, California, that sleepy little village had two places available to us. There were log cabins at the Redwood Lodge Motel and a garage in town that had been converted to a one-room apartment. The motel wouldn't allow pets, so Debby and I and our Australian shepherd dog, Wendy, a crippled and nearly hairless former patient we had acquired in Arizona, moved into the garage.
We stored our things in boxes under the bed. As a result, the legs of the bed were off the floor. In one corner, a curtained-off area served as a bathroom. In another corner, a sink and an old stove marked the kitchen area. The stove looked remarkably like the one that blew up in Arizona.
"When are you going to use the oven?" I asked Debby
after a few weeks.
''I'm afraid to light it," she admitted.
"I'll light it." I offered.
I used up a box of kitchen matches before I learned the
trick. The secret was to turn on the gas, wait ten seconds (I would count, "one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three," and so on) and then drop a lighted match into a hole over the burner. The oven would then ignite, with a soft "whomp."
After a year in the garage, we bought a little house. It leaked badly in the rain, but it had a yard for our dog, a pasture for our horse, and an oven with a pilot light that worked perfectly.
Mr. Moore, our former landlord, came out to see me one day while I was on a call next door to see a neighbor's horse.
"Good to see you, Doctor," he said. "I hope you and Mrs. Miller are happy in your new home. I'd like to ask a favor of you. I rented the garage to an elderly couple after you moved out. They don't know how to light the oven, and I haven't been able to figure it out either. I remember that you had a system. When you've finished with the horse, would you mind coming over to show us how?"
"Sure," I agreed, and as .soon as my call was completed I went next door. Mr. Moore introduced me to a white-haired couple in their eighties.
"Daddy can't survive without his biscuits," the old lady explained, "but I can't light the danged oven!"
Her husband added wrathfully, "Ain't had biscuits since I moved! I've got to have biscuits with my morning coffee!"
"It's simple!" I said. "It took me a while to find the right
combination, but once I learned, it never failed."
The old man took out a match.
"Turn on the gas," I suggested.
He turned on the gas.
"Now don't light it immediately. The gas will blow the match out," I explained. "Wait ten seconds and then light it."
"Ten seconds?" he asked.
"Yes," I answered, "count to ten!"
"One, two, three, four ... " "No, no!" I corrected him. "Not so fast! Count seconds, like this, a thousand one, a thousand two, a thousand ... "
"What?" the old man demanded. "A thousand seconds?
What are you talking about?"
"No," I explained patiently while the gas hissed. "You
say a thousand one, a thousand two to count the seconds."
"Why can't I use my watch?" he demanded. "Okay, fine!" I agreed. "Use your watch!"
The old man fumbled for his watch, adjusted his bifocals,
and started to count, "One, two, three ... "
When he came to ten, I said, "Now! Now light the oven!" "Now?" he asked.
"Yes!" I said. As we both peered into the oven, he struck a match.
The blast threw us both back against the wall. Mr. Moore and the old lady, on either side of us, recoiled in terror. For a moment there was a stunned silence. The oven was lit. The hair on my arms was singed. I looked at the old man. His glasses were askew.
"Well," he gasped. "To hell with the damned biscuits!"
Chapter 5
Debby and I had roamed California, looking for a place to set up practice. As we entered the Conejo Valley on Highway 101, I was captivated by the beauty I saw. Here was a valley of grasslands, green and undulating in the March wind. Gnarled and sturdy oak trees lined the draws and studded the rolling foothills, and the horizon was lined with dark mountain peaks. Beautiful horses-Thoroughbreds, Standardbreds, and Quarterhorses-ran in whitefenced pastures, and everywhere, in all directions, fat cattle grazed in the fields.
Conejo means rabbit in Spanish, and the valley was nicknamed for its abundant rabbits, but the original name for the area, assigned by the early Spanish as they ascended to that plateau from sea-level, was Las Altagracias-the graceful highlands. How well named this valley was, this gentle and pastoral place. How far removed it seemed from burgeoning Los Angeles, only an hour's drive away.
The Camino Real-the King's Highway-the original Mission trail developed by the early Spanish ran the length of the valley, connecting the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles with San Francisco, four hundred miles to the North.
Thousand Oaks had motels and restaurants lining the old highway, forming a single, twisting main street several miles long. It was an unincorporated, shabby, misshapen community that had grown up to dominate the Conejo Valley, with a population of twelve hundred souls, but it was not the town itself that attracted Debby and me to the area. It was the valley, rich in livestock and horses, but even more exciting, as we drove through the village, was a great barn labeled "Louis Goebel-Importer and Exporter of Wild Animals." I saw a garishly painted "World Jungle Compound" and a sign that read "Lion Farm." There were circus wagons parked in empty lots. Elephants were staked in fields, lions and tigers chained to oak trees.
"Jungleland!" declared a sign. "Admission One Dollar.
See Wild Animal Movie Stars."
I was thirty years of age, recently married, broke, and out of a job, but I had come home.
We found a telephone book, a slender volume of just a few pages marked "Thousand Oaks, Newbury Park, Lake Sherwood and Surrounding Communities." There were only 3,500 people in the entire valley. I turned to the yellow pages at the back of the book and looked under "Veterinarians." The only names listed were in communities outside the area. The Conejo Valley had no practicing veterinarian.
"This is the place!" I said to Debby.
"Yes." she said. "This looks like the right place."
ONE SATURDAY NIGHT, after we had lived in Thousand Oaks for a few months, a community dance was held in a circus tent, set up on the Jungleland parking lot. I marveled at the unusual variety of townspeople. There were the Jungleland and circus folk, the ordinary variety of small· town people, a sprinkling of writers and a movie director from Lake Sherwood, a couple of film stars who owned ranches in the valley, cowboys from the horse farms and cattle ranches, and hillbilly types, some of whom lived in run-down town residences, and others who had come down from the hills. The crowd included movie star Joel McCrea, cowboys Gerald Davis and Buster Naegele, horsewoman Belle Holloway, horseshoer Pete Kelley, cattleman Bob Elders, tiger trainer Mabel Stark, and, of course, many others. As Debby and I looked at the colorful residents of Thousand Oaks, she said, "I wonder if there is another town with such an assortment of characters?"
Suddenly I realized that this was our town, the community we had chosen to live in, to build a practice in, to grow with, to rear children in; where we could work with animals and their owners for the rest of our lives. We were young and hopeful, and oh what adventures lay ahead.
Having read Carl Akeley's Lion Country many times, I was familiar with the nighttime roaring pattern of the African lion. Now, living in Thousand Oaks, I thrilled nightly to one of nature's most stirring serenades. Forty African lions resided at Jungleland, a few short blocks from our home. The roaring, as Akeley described, began softly, each roar louder and' stronger than the preceding, a rhythmic ritual that evoked some primeval memory in my being, because as the sound of forty lions roaring in chorus reached a crescendo, the adrenalin coursed through my body, and I was wide awake from a deep sleep. The crescendo having been reached, the roars rapidly diminished in volume and in length, finally terminated in a soft coughing sound. The boyhood dreams Akeley's books had inspired in me years before, of listening to the sounds of the veldt from a safari tent, were being realized in my new California veterinary practice. Daily I worked not only with domestic animals, but with exotic species of all kinds.
Once when I came home of an evening I found a truckload of ostriches parked in front of my house.
Another time a large male orangutan escaped from Jungleland one night and made its way to the back door of a neighbor's home. It tapped softly at the door. The lady of the house, answering the knock, was appalled to find herself facing a 400-pound pot-bellied demon covered with long red hair. Slamming the door and locking it, she hysterically telephoned for my assistance, but before I arrived the demonic looking but gentle orangutan had been docilely led home by Jungleland personnel.
Not long after we had settled down, we acquired a second dog, an egomaniacal Dalmatian named Keno. Keno was the self-appointed guardian of our property, and a ring of the doorbell brought him to the door with ferocious enthusiasm. Toenails clattering on the linoleum, breathlessly barking his outrage, Keno would sprint to the front of the house, and when we opened the door an inch or two to see who was there, he would rave and shriek and try to force his bulk through the crack. Normally we would ask the caller to wait while we put the dog out in the back yard.
One evening, as Debby and I sat watching television, the doorbell rang. Keno leaped up and attempted to hurtle towards the door, barking savagely. Due to the slippery linoleum on the floor, he accelerated gradually, even though he was running at top speed. Consequently, we both reached the door at the same time. Opening it a crack, I started to lean forward to peek out and see who was there. Keno abruptly stopped barking, whined, and putting his head down and his tail between his legs, retreated to the corner with an expression of apprehensive embarrassment on his face. Puzzled, I opened the door. There stood Ralph Helfer, later to become a well-known wild animal trainer in the entertainment world. The young man held a leash at the end of which was a full grown African lion. "I got a sick lion," he said, "is the doctor in?"
The lion recovered, and he too became famous - the star of a motion picture, "Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion."
Chapter 6
I am a sound sleeper, so I did not immediately wake up when the telephone rang, even though it was close to my head. Debby jabbed me and sleepily mumbled "telephone" in my ear as it rang for the second time.
"This is Colonel Thornton," a distraught voice said.
"Prince is worse. I can't get him up any more."
Twenty minutes later I drove up to the stable at the Thornton ranch. The light was on in Prince's stall.
"If there is one chance in a million to save this horse, I want you to try" said the Colonel. "He was in the Olympics, you know, before you were born."
"No, I was already alive during that Olympics, but I would have been too young to remember," I responded.
The Colonel looked up at me. The horse's great head was cradled in the Colonel's lap, the muzzle gray, the lips hanging slackly open, revealing gums colored purple with approaching death, the eyes clouded with pain and toxicity. Colonel Thornton's face looked curiously childlike, streaked with tears.
"He'll be thirty years old next month" said the Colonel.
"You can't imagine what a great horse this is-what a noble, great horse. I remember him from the Olympics. A three-day horse, that's a grueling event, you know. I never dreamed he'd be mine. He was given to me a few years ago, and he is remarkable. Still sound! Still willing! Still jumping! Never refuses! Never does anything wrong!"
Colonel Thornton was U.S. Army, retired, a veteran of two wars. It was awkward to see him sitting there in the straw bedding, holding the dying gelding's head, crying like a little boy. Two days earlier, the Colonel had left the feed room door unlatched, and the horseI'll call him Princehad wandered in and eaten his fill. The old fellow was just used as a lesson horse now, to teach children the rudiments of English riding. The Colonel had opened the first English riding school in the Conejo Valley, prematurely, I guess, because it eventually failed financially. Prince, long retired from competition, was so gentle and reliable that he was allowed to wander about the premises at will. That's what he was doing when he found the feed-room door open. During the night the old horse had consumed much of a sack of barley. By the time the Colonel came down to the stable to feed the horses at dawn, old Prince was already rolling on the ground, in pain from colic.
"How much grain did he eat?" was my first question.
"I don't know," the Colonel answered, anxiously. "I can't be sure, but it couldn't have been more than twenty· five pounds."
"Are you sure?" I said. "It's important!"
"Yes," said the Colonel. "Twenty-five pounds! Maybe less!"
"Is he used to grain?" I wanted to know.
"Oh yes," said the Colonel. "He works every day, and gets at least two pounds at each feeding."
"Then," I said, "we have a chance, but he looks so bad, as if he had consumed a lot more than twenty-five pounds. He really looks bad. Maybe it's his age."
For the next two days I returned to the stable repeatedly to administer to Prince. I did everything for him that can be done in a case of this kind, but I knew from the start, although like the Colonel I would not admit it, that the old horse was doomed.
By the evening of the first day, he had foundered. In addition to the abdominal distress the poor beast now suffered excruciating pain in his feet, the principal target of the enigmatic disease known as founder.
"It sounds very bad," I told the Colonel in the middle of the night when he telephoned.
"Please come again," he had implored. "He is in terrible pain." I went and stayed with the suffering horse and the tired, guilt-ridden man until nearly dawn.
"I don't think there is much hope," I said. "Even if he were to survive, his feet are ruined. He is in terrible pain. Is it right to let him go this way?"
"Doctor," the Colonel said quietly, "I want this horse to live, and if there is a ghost of a chance, I want you to keep on trying. I've been a military man all my life. I don't surrender, and this horse, if he could talk, would tell you that he won't surrender. He's a fighter, as game as any horse I've ever known, and he's like me. We'd rather die than surrender."
Reluctantly, I went on, doing all I could for Prince, to control his pain, and futilely trying to reverse the process that was destroying his life. Now, after two days of suffering for the horse, the Colonel, and myself, Prince could no longer stand. He no longer thrashed and cramped and rolled with pain. Groaning periodically, he just lay there, with labored respiration, lips parted, the long old yellow teeth showing. The old warrior was dying.
The Colonel bent over to speak. "Come on old boy! You can do it! You're not through yet! Oh, what a gallant old man you are! You'll see this through!"
I shook my head. The Colonel was refusing to face up to the situation. He had made a mistake, a novice's mistake, in leaving the feed-room door unlatched. Now, guilt-ridden, he could not admit that his carelessness had led to the imminent death of this horse that he loved.
I put my hand on his shoulder. "Colonel, it's time to face reality," I said softly. "It's time to render your last kindness to this horse. Let's end his pain."
The Colonel looked up at me. He had not slept for two nights. His eyes were reddened with fatigue and sorrow. He searched my face, and then he said, "I've always wondered if there is a God. Now, I know! There can't be! God could not let a poor innocent animal suffer this way."
Then, he buried his face in Prince's mane, and broke down, weeping convulsively, like a child. Tears streamed down my own face as I saw this man, a retired officer, commander of men in battle, in this state.
"I'll get the anesthetic," I said, patting his shoulder, and went out to my station wagon to get the drug. Before I could finish loading the syringe, however, I heard a wail from inside the stall, and I knew it was all over. Prince had died.
A day later, the Colonel telephoned. "I want to thank you for your efforts," he said. "I spent the morning on the tractor, digging a hole to bury Prince in, down in the pasture, under the oaks. I feel bad about one thing, and I want to own up to it now. When I told you that Prince had not eaten more than twenty-five pounds of grain, I knew that wasn't true. You see, he tore open a full hundred-pound sack of grain, and when I found him in the morning, there was only about twenty-five pounds left in it. I wasn't completely honest with you, as you were with me. I don't know why I didn't tell you the truth, but I want you to know it now."