The Gift of Pets: Stories Only a Vet Could Tell (7 page)

“Do you see a nail on the X-ray?”

I surveyed the film carefully, then shrugged. “I don’t know.”

One of the other doctors took over the interrogation at that point—kind of a good cop/bad cop thing, it seemed. I think it was Dr. Conner, though their names were already fading from my mind under the glare of their mounting displeasure. With an edge of frustration to his voice, he turned to me.

“There’s no nail on the film, Bruce. Clearly this is a case of laminitis. You can tell it by the rotation of the coffin bone here away from the edge of the hoof wall. Can you see that?”

“Oh yeah. That’s pretty cool.” I chuckled appreciatively. I had never seen an X-ray of a horse’s foot before and I found it amazingly exhilarating, despite the fact that these men were clearly becoming increasingly put out with me.

“So what would you do for a case of laminitis this severe?”

“I guess I’d call you guys,” I said, laughing at my ready wit, but slightly concerned when none of them laughed, too. There was another moment of awkward silence before Dr. Evers abruptly stood up.

“Okay, so it seems we’re done here. We’d better hit the road. We’ve got a busy day. I guess I’ll take Bruce with me, unless one of you wants him.” There were no takers.

I followed Dr. Evers to his truck, its gleaming white veterinary box filling the bed. We climbed in and set off on an adventure I had been looking forward to for many weeks. Our first call was to a breeding farm, where we were to perform an artificial insemination on a mare worth many thousands of dollars. The sire was a famous stallion who commanded a stud fee of $75,000. Both horses were on-site at the farm for the breeding and were to be evaluated beforehand by Dr. Evers.

“If both horses are at the farm, why not just let them breed naturally?” I asked.

“Because they are both too valuable to risk injury. It’s as simple as that.”

“Will you need my help, or should I just watch?”

“You can help. First, we’re going to collect the stallion. Then we’ll evaluate for abnormalities under a microscope before infusing it in the uterus.”

None of this made a bit of sense to me. Why in the world would we collect the stallion? Hadn’t he just told me he was right here at the farm? And how would he evaluate the huge horse under a microscope? All will come clear, I thought. I was here to learn from the professionals, after all.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I’ll show you when the time comes. Just remember, though, you have to be quick. Things happen pretty fast in the heat of the moment.”

Once on the farm, Dr. Evers removed from his truck a three-foot-long plastic two-layered sleeve reminiscent of the arm of a thick down jacket. He filled the space where the feathers would have been with warm water. This left a hollow tubelike space between these water-filled layers. He lubricated this space generously with a slippery goo he squeezed from a tube. He attached an eight-inch-long plastic funnel to one end of this contraption, and to that he affixed a large test tube.

“What in the world is that thing?” I asked.

“That thing is what you are going to hand me when I ask for it. It is the most important piece of equipment in this whole process. Handle it carefully,” he said, placing it gingerly in my arms.

The mare was brought into the aisle of the barn and cross-tied with a rope from each side. Dr. Evers carefully examined her, starting at the head but spending most of his time at the other end. His exam included inserting his arm up to the shoulder in one orifice or another—I wasn’t sure which. Apparently, she passed with flying colors because she was soon escorted back to her stall by a groom.

The stallion was then brought out by another stable hand and led to an arena with a circumference of some one hundred feet. It was not clear who was in control of whom, but the groom seemed to have the upper hand, with the help of a leather lead with a two-foot length of brass chain at its end, which was snapped to one side of the halter, looped over the horse’s nose, and passed through the D-ring on the groom’s side of the stallion. Every step or two, the groom would give the lead a quick jerk. This reminded the powerful beast to follow directions despite the surging of his raging hormones. As an experienced stud horse, he knew exactly what his immediate future held.

Dr. Evers carefully examined the stallion as well, concentrating his efforts on the animal’s reproductive apparatus. When he was satisfied that all was in order, he directed the workers to bring the mare into the arena and then positioned me to one side. In my arms I held the odd paraphernalia he had assembled. The effect of the receptive mare on the amorous stallion was akin to adding jet fuel to a Boy Scout’s campfire. He began to dance and whinny, his neck flexed so tightly that his chin nearly brushed his chest, sweat quickly springing to his neck and sides. It was only with the greatest of difficulty that the frantic groom could maintain any control at all on the glistening horse as he approached the mare.

When it was clear that the stallion was about to commence operations, Dr. Evers called me close and took from me the six-pound water balloon. With one hand, he grabbed the stallion’s thrusting equipment and diverted it into the lubricated plastic tube he held in the other. That’s what that thing is for! There was intense activity for a few seconds, some loud grunting, and then the stallion was backing away. It was perhaps the most intense, frenetic, and injury-prone event I had ever witnessed. If these two horses were too valuable to risk injury doing a natural breeding, it made me wonder about the value of the veterinarian who had clearly risked life and limb to achieve an artificial one.

Dr. Evers turned on his heels, cradling the contraption carefully in his arms like a newborn. The test tube was now full of a very valuable thick fluid, which he took to a table on which he had set up a makeshift laboratory with a microscope, several test tubes, slides, and papers. For a few minutes, he looked carefully through the microscope’s eyepieces, evaluating the shape, number, and motility of the great horse’s sperm. He even let me look through the microscope at the millions of squirming tadpoles while he made some notes on a pad of paper.

He then sucked up the fluid in a syringe, which he attached to a three-foot-long thin plastic pipette. Guiding the advancement of this tube into the mare’s uterus with a gloved arm inserted into her, he had me infuse the entire aliquot of semen through the tube, depositing it just where it needed to be. It was a thrilling drama for me to play even the smallest of parts in.

In the truck again, Dr. Evers turned to me. “Any questions?”

Any questions? I was brimming with them. Everything that had just happened was completely new to me. Why let the stud mount the female at all if you were trying to minimize the risk of injury? What were you looking for when you studied the sperm under the microscope? How long did the sample remain viable? How were you able to find the right place to deposit the sample in the mare? But my mind froze. I simply could not organize my questions into a logical sequence. And when I opened my mouth, the question that actually came out was one I had not even considered.

“How could you tell when the stallion was … you know … done?”

Dr. Evers’s head sank in apparent disbelief tainted with what seemed like disappointment and he shook it slowly. “You just know,” he said quietly. “You just know.”

The next job was to geld a young horse on the same farm. We drove the quarter mile to the next barn on a tree-lined lane between beautifully groomed paddocks outlined by gleaming white four-rail fences. We pulled up in the stone-paved semicircular driveway and stopped under the heavy beams that supported the overhang by the front door of the barn’s stone facade.

Carrying the necessary equipment down the wide aisle of the barn, whose stall doors bore brass nameplates announcing the four-word names of the horses within, a realization dawned on me. The gulf between these horses and the somnolent animals I was used to dealing with at camp, and between this rarefied air and the camp’s pole barn constructed with rough-hewn creosoted two-by-sixes, was akin to the space between South Central L.A. and Buckingham Palace. I knew nothing of the world these skilled practitioners inhabited every day. It was a humbling epiphany, and intimidating.

In a ring at one end of the barn, several attendants were gathered around an impressive yearling colt, who eyed us apprehensively and circled his groom at the end of a rope. This, I knew, was our patient: a sixteen-hand bay stallion with four white socks and a wide blaze on his nose. He was in beautiful flesh and his coat gleamed with the sheen of perfect health and ideal nutrition.

Dr. Evers laid out several thick ropes and a clean towel, on which he placed some carefully wrapped packs that had been recently autoclaved. He deftly slapped a large-bore needle into the jugular vein of the horse and quickly infused a syringeful of a clear fluid into the vein. Within a couple of minutes, the horse’s anxiety eased and he stood still, his great head sagging. Dr. Evers used the ropes to weave an intricate web around the colt’s legs in just the perfect pattern that a gentle tug on one end tipped him onto his side and prevented him from regaining his feet. Another injection into the bulging vein and the horse went still on the ground, though his eyes remained disarmingly open.

As if on cue, the attendants began scrubbing the horse’s scrotum and testicles for the surgery. Clearly, they had assisted Dr. Evers with this procedure many times. Dr. Evers opened the packs he had laid on the towel, donned a pair of sterile surgical gloves, and instructed me to do the same. He pulled a scalpel handle out of the pack and attached to it a sharp new surgical blade. Without hesitation, he knelt beside the downed horse and grasped one of the baseball-size organs in his hand. With a quick flick of his wrist, he sliced through the skin and in short order was holding the testicle, which was still tethered to the horse by a thick cord of tissue. He turned to me.

“Can you hand me the emasculator? But be sure to touch nothing but the handles.”

It sounded to me like an instrument of torture, which I guess it was. I had no idea what an emasculator was or what one might look like. I turned to the open packs lying on the towel, looking for something with handles. Everything in the pack seemed to have them, so I reached for a large tool that looked like a pair of pliers and handed it to him, being careful to touch only the finger holes.

“No, that’s a hemostat. I need the emasculator.”

Oh, I thought. He must need something to cut with. I turned back to the open pack and reached for a huge fourteen-inch-long pair of curved scissors. These I extended to him, again being careful to touch only the finger holes.

“No, those are the Metzenbaums. Give me the emasculator. Don’t you know what an emasculator is?” Dr. Evers seemed perturbed.

Wasn’t it obvious that I didn’t know what an emasculator was? I thought. I looked down at him with confusion on my face. He shook his head and nodded to one of the grooms, who pointed to a huge two-handled hunk of shining stainless steel that looked to me like a pair of glorified vise grips. This mean, two-fisted piece of surgical chicanery was so heavy, it almost took two hands to give it to Dr. Evers.

He took it and placed its blades around the inch-thick band of blood vessels and tissues from which hung the testicle. Checking its placement carefully, he then closed its jaws. The testicle dropped to the ground at his feet and the sleeping horse twitched his front legs involuntarily, but still Dr. Evers held the instrument with both hands, keeping it tightly clamped around the bloody stalk. He held it that way for about five minutes before tentatively loosening his grip.

He stood and turned to me with great fanfare, holding up the instrument, which now had blood dripping from its teeth like a predator, and kicked the testicle toward me with the toe of his boot. “Now that is an emasculator!” he said triumphantly. Who was I to argue? The sleeping horse was not the only one who had just been emasculated.

The opposite testicle was dispatched just as quickly and soon we were back in the truck and pulling away from the immaculate farm.

“Do they use a different kind of emasculator at the school nowadays? You didn’t seem to recognize this brand.”

It was true that the strict boarding school I attended was known for ironfisted enforcement of the rules, but I searched my memory for anything used at my high school that might approximate the surgical detonator I had just seen. “I don’t think they even have one at my school,” I replied. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dr. Evers cast a questioning look across the seat at me. I avoided his gaze.

“One last call before lunch,” said my mentor after an awkward pause. “This is just a little laceration on the fetlock of a horse. Shouldn’t take long at all. This horseman is on the other end of the spectrum from the one at the place we just left. He’s a real down-to-earth guy. I think you’ll like him.”

After a few turns, we pulled into the long driveway of a farm with warped, unpainted boards on the fence. The doors hung askew from their hinges and the tops of the stalls had been worn away by a long history of habitual cribbers. Cribbing is a vice that sometimes develops in bored horses that are stalled for long periods of time. They grab the boards at the top of the stall with their teeth and pull, tugging great gasps of air into their stomachs as they do so. Over time, this causes telltale damage to the wood. The taste of creosote will sometimes break this habit, so I was not surprised to see the wood at the tops of the stalls slathered with the strong-smelling tarry substance.

A middle-aged man wearing jeans and steel-toed cowboy boots came out of the barn and welcomed us with a broad smile. With a calloused hand, he swiped a stray strand of dusty hair back over the top of his rapidly balding head.

“Hello, Doug. Mighty fine day we got going, isn’t it?” Dr. Evers greeted him warmly.

“Good to see you again, Dr. Evers. Who is this you got with you?”

“This is Bruce. He’s going to be an equine practitioner soon and wanted to ride along with us for a day.”