I dream a lot. Even as a child I dreamt a lot. Sometimes the dreams are hazy and disconnected; sometimes they are clear and logical. Sometimes the dreams are more clear and logical than the craziness of running a veterinary practice! When I first qualified as a vet, the dreams got madder especially when I started to do night calls – the bane of every vet’s life. In the early days, I would lie awake every night that I was on duty so that when a call came in, it was almost a relief to just get up and get on with it. But as the novelty wore off and experience slowly kicked in, I began to develop the practice of ‘automatic pilot’ – I could speak to a client in an apparently coherent manner, dress, drive to the call, carry out whatever function was required in a relatively adequate manner and be back in bed without ever fully engaging myself.
It was a skill that came in very handy when the kids arrived – a big bonus for any parent. Sometimes I would wake up in the morning and it would take me a few moments to decide if the night’s events had been a dream or had actually happened.
One such occasion arose after a particularly long week, where my sleep had been interrupted several times for a few nights in a row. The clients and kids had been particularly imaginative in ensuring that I never got a full night’s sleep just in case I got used to it. Usually this was when the dreams became even more irrational and this night was no exception.
I couldn’t even remember going to bed and was asleep within minutes which was very unusual for me. I’ve no idea what time of the night I slipped into my dream-state to one of those dreams that was at the same time totally illogical but very clear. In the dream the phone rang like an ambulance siren, but when I answered it, the call was from a client from one of the nearby housing estates who I saw on a reasonably regular basis with his two Jack Russells. However, this time it was the donkey that was in trouble. I’d say I could count on one hand the number of donkeys I treat each year, but who was I to argue with my dream-state logic as the client asked me to call out to a donkey in a housing estate who was apparently in great discomfort and frothing at the mouth.
Even in the middle of the day, taking directions is always somewhat challenging for me and I remember well that when I started in my first mixed-animal practice job, my biggest concern was not whether I would be able to manage to calve the cow, but simply finding the cow! On this occasion, I don’t think even the modern joys of Google maps would have guided me to donkey in a housing estate.
Somehow in the typical randomness of dreams, I made my way to the housing estate, driving through back roads and wandering through a maze of houses before I was stopped by a man with a flashlight, guiding me to a corner house. Abandoning the warmth of the car, I followed the hooded stranger to a dimly lit back garden, which expanded into a significant larger space than was apparent from the front of the house. As the back garden became flooded in light, I looked in awe at a meticulously manicured garden, planted on either side with ornate bushes and neatly divided by a tiny pebble-lock path. My gaze followed the tiny pathway of the back of the garden, and there was a little thatched cottage, the dark straw roof in stark contrast to the brilliant white of the rough walls. A tiny red door was the only splash of colour. The top half was open, revealing the dimly lit interior of the quaint abode. Feeling somewhat like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, I cautiously peered in though the opened top half of the door, allowed my eyes to adjust to the light until I could focus quite clearly on a donkey standing in the corner behind an old-fashioned kitchen table and chairs. The dim light, I could see, was coming from the stove in the corner.
‘How are you?’ I asked the donkey, my voice sounding slightly eerie and out of place. I startled when the hooded man pushed past me and went inside.
I could feel the soft rubber of the earpiece of the stethoscope as I auscultated the donkey’s slightly rounded tummy. The eerie silence was broken by spasmodic gurgling in all four relevant sections of the gut, indicating that there was no obstruction or blockage. Magically producing a bottle and some needles and syringes from the large pocket of my waxed jacket, I drew up a reduced volume, to match the diminutive size of the donkey compared to my usual equine clients, and injected the liquid into the jugular vein running the length of his hairy neck. I looked around the small cottage and noticed with satisfaction that there was no feed available which might exacerbate the colic overnight. Leaving the cottage, I closed the half door gently behind me. ‘Nice to meet you,’ I called back the donkey behind me and felt slightly offended that he didn’t reply. As I reversed my steps down the little pathway, I noticed the neatly trimmed bushes on either side that could well have been the cause of his night time indigestion.
My rumination was cut short by the sound of ambulance sirens blaring again, getting louder and louder with each tone. And then I woke, feeling the heavy weight of the duvet weighing me down as I tried to free my arm to knock off the alarm on my phone. As I checked the time, I realised with a start that I had obviously hit snooze a few times, as I was now a good twenty minutes later than I needed to be to get the kids up and off to school. I didn’t have time to dwell on my gentleman donkey in his thatched cottage as I made scrambled eggs and packed lunches in record time.
On the way back from the playschool, I stopped in the local shop, picking the biggest of the still-warm, locally-made scones and within minutes was back in the kitchen, kettle boiling, thickly spreading the scone with butter and jam. I sat down with relief to enjoy a few stolen moments before going over to the clinic. Only when I was biting into the second half did I hear the text coming in on my phone. Feeling slightly irritated that my few moments were being interrupted, I waited until the last mouthful was swallowed and washed down with the dregs of the tea before I reluctantly brushed away the few crumbs and rinsed the tea cup. Only then did I check the phone to see what today had in store for me.
I sat back down and re-read the text a few times before it sank in. ‘Thanks again for calling out to the donkey last night. He passed droppings about an hour after you left and looks right as rain now. Let me know what I owe you and I’ll drop it in later today.’
As I said, sometimes my life is crazy and my dreams are so clear it becomes difficult to separate life from reality. That, combined with chronic exhaustion and an innate ability to take and follow directions, assess a clinical case and drive back home and get to bed without ever really waking up are probably typical patterns in the life of the few who attempt to combine on-call veterinary practice with three young children.
It was a few nights later, having a cup of tea with John, that it began to make a little more sense. John being John, knew the retired father of one of the last remaining thatchers who had been a friend of the owner of the donkey who worked in a local drugs company but did a bit of building work on the side. The little cottage was an old cow shed that had been left at the side of a field when the housing estate had built and the thatcher and the builder and taken upon themselves to renovate it into a traditional style cottage. I assume the donkey was only housed in it for my benefit that night, but still feel a little put out that he hadn’t the decency to bid me good night after my efforts to help him through his ordeal.
As I said, even when working in mixed practice, donkey calls were uncommon, and even more so when I was, supposedly, now treating only small animals so it was unusual to get a call to a donkey later that same week but this time I most definitely wasn’t dreaming.
Edward was a regular patient. Nobody could ever quite work out how old he was. I had visited him a few times before we worked out that myself and Edward had in fact first met many years previously in my student days. Every Christmas the Mansion House in Dublin hosts a ‘live Christmas crib’. I can’t remember if there was a live Mary and Joseph or a baby at all, but I well remember the wooden crib that was erected each year to house the donkey and sheep, and a random assortment of other animals that participated. Thousands of kids from Dublin and further afield remember the excitement of going to see these animals each year as one of the highlights of the Christmas season.
As veterinary students we were asked to volunteer to work shifts to supervise the animals and answer any questions the passers-by might have and – realistically – to protect the animals from the potentially excessive interest. I did it a few years in a row and well remembered the quiet old donkey who stood patiently in the corner, never over-engaging with his audience, always polite and never putting a hoof out of place.
It was many years later when I was called out by a neighbour who had been involved in renting animals to film companies to examine the donkey, who was slightly lame. Having dealt with the lameness, we sat down for a cup of tea and I began to tell Karen, the owner, about the student days looking after the crib animals. Her smile broadened into a wide grin before she eventually broke into a loud laugh.
‘That,’ she announced, ‘was Edward.’ It turned out she had taken over the care of Edward from his previous owner, the infamous Joe Gallagher, after he passed away. He was now living out his retirement, munching his way through a lush field in Ashford. It took me a while to be convinced that it was the same donkey, as Edward had been an old donkey when I first knew him many years earlier. After that we tried to ascertain his actual age, but we could never pin it down. Edward, it appeared, was timeless!
It reminded me of the time a local horse man had lent us a horse on long loan. Although standing at sixteen-two, Humphrey was quiet enough for not only myself, but also for the kids to sit up on, as Robo, the diminutive pony, had way more attitude than size. It was on Humphrey, that Fiona, at the age of five, had invented what became known as ‘the giggling trot’, as she would break into squeals of delighted giggling every time he broke into a trot.
Humphrey was retired from his hunting career, but still enjoyed leisurely hacks through the local woods and particularly enjoyed looking after the kids. His ability to look after his rider was remarkable and he seemed to sense when the kids (or more commonly myself) were veering to slip sideways; he would drop a shoulder or adjust himself in way to rebalance the most awkward of riders. When I asked his owner how old he was the reply was somewhat vague. One afternoon, as the kids were riding Humphrey around the front grass, an elderly lady and her grandchild were walking back with their dog, as our road was a common walking loop in the summer evenings.
‘Oh!’ she cried out in great delight. ‘Is that Humphrey? He was the first horse I learned to ride.’ I didn’t dare ask her how many decades ago that was not wanting to offend either herself or Humphrey. Even though Humphrey enjoyed his retirement with us to a ripe old age, he still came nowhere near Edward the donkey’s age. At one stage we worked out that he was well into his forties. At the time when all microchipping of equines, including donkeys, became compulsory, Karen asked me to make a passport for him and microchip him. Paper work was always my dreaded part of the day and although I did eventually insert his microchip one day when I was over with him, it as many months later before I finally got around to filling in the necessary documentation for her to pass on to the Horse Board for registration. A few days later I received a call from the same board and instantly wondered what I had filled in wrong or forgotten to fill in. ‘There seems to be a problem with an application for a passport you have sent in to us,’ came the efficient voice on the phone.
‘Really?’ I replied, trying to feign surprise.
‘Yes, you have sent us an application for a donkey, and from the date of birth you have listed, that would make him in his mid-forties. There must be some sort of a mistake.’
‘Ah, not at all,’ I replied, relieved that for once it wasn’t me that had messed up. ‘That’s Edward you’re talking about. Sure he’s probably older than I am. If there is a mistake,’ I continued, ‘it’s probably that we’ve underestimated his age!’
Despite his years, Edward enjoyed remarkably good health apart from an intermittent skin condition and a bit of a tight back. Neither condition was in any way life threatening, so instead of waiting for a call, I would just drop in whenever I was passing to visit him. I nearly had the message saved on the phone. ‘Is Edward at home’, that I would send when I was on the way. His itchy skin always responded well to a mite injection, while his back responded well to a deep massage so that it became a habit that every time I called, he would be waiting, body quivering in anticipation as soon as he heard the car, for the lumbar muscle massage that would loosen out his left-hand side. As I pushed deep into the back muscles, his head would drop and his ears would flatten out horizontally so he almost looked like an old-fashioned bike with handlebars. His eyes would almost roll with relief as he felt the tight muscles release and he would stand with his lower lips twitching as though in a trance for a few minutes afterwards. To be honest there were a few late night call outs that responded so well to massage that I think half the time he feigned stiffness.
But the most recent call did concern me. I was in the bath late one night and when I got out I saw three missed calls and four texts from Karen. Although it seemed that Edward would live forever, I always dreaded the call that would surely come someday.
The phone picked up on the first ring.
‘He’s in a bad way,’ Karen told me in subdued tones. ‘He looked okay out in the field this afternoon. I only put him out for an hour or two because it’s so cold. He had his rug and seemed happy enough when I stabled him this evening, but when I went over to lock up for the night, he hadn’t touched his feed and he’s lying down and won’t get up.’
I didn’t bother waste time replying, but got in the car and drove the few short miles to him. I was in the stable with him before I had had time to register what was going on. When I got to Edward, although he was lying down, he looked quite pleased to see me, his ears acknowledging my late night visit. I checked his gums, his heart rate and his gut – all seemed well. There were no fresh droppings in his stable, but I knew Karen was meticulous in picking them up and sure enough on questioning, she said that she had cleaned out a pile in his usual corner while waiting for me to arrive. I had to ask a few times before Edward shifted himself and stood up, but he was clearly able to stand and shuffled around the box reasonably well considering his age and the lateness of the cold winters night. Feeling bad, stripping him of his warm rug, I carefully felt along his back muscles and certainly those muscles on his left hand side were tight and he did his usual act of quivering and rolling his eye as I released them.
I was so caught up in the examination that I hadn’t noticed Karen’s ashen face as she stood silently by, as though expecting the worst.
‘I can’t honestly find anything wrong with him,’ I said, breaking the silence.
We threw ideas back and forth for a few minutes as we watched him, but nothing really jumped out at me. Karen was apologetic, but I assured her I would rather call out to Edward on a hundred false alarms than have anything wrong with him.
We chatted for a few more minutes as I rugged him up again. He lay straight down, which was unusual, and despite my lack of clinical findings, we were both still concerned. Although I could find nothing wrong, he was clearly acting out of character and at his age the only certainty was that he couldn’t last forever.
It was only on the way back out of his stable that I noticed something that I couldn’t believe I had walked straight past on the way in – clearly my semi-dreamlike state and my concern for Edward had blinkered my focus. Edward’s stable was part of an American-style barn. Years ago, Edward and his companions had been the stunt men, the business had evolved from renting animals for films to renting props for films. Part of the building was used for storing the props so you never knew what you would find when you walked in. If ever you were looking for some really random item that you had no idea where to source, all you had to do was ask Karen as she would disappear into the shed and invariably come back with it.
On this occasion, I gasped as I opened the door of the stable – in the dim light and almost walked into a real, life-sized coffin parked outside his stable door.
I deal with life and death in animals on a regular basis and I have no issues with any severity of illness in people, but I have a total aversion to dead people, ghosts, graveyard or anything of that nature. John often used to slag me when he would sense me getting anxious at the graveyard of a funeral saying, ‘It’s the live ones you want to watch, not the dead ones!’
But no matter how you want to rationalise it, parking a coffin outside the door an ancient donkey was just going too far. Karen was semi-amused as I berated her in no uncertain terms about poor Edward’s trauma. Although I refused to help her move the offending article in the early hours of a dark night, not wanting to have nightmares for the rest of my life, she did promise to get it moved early the next morning as soon as the others were up.
She still thinks I was joking about it causing his apparent collapse, but I wasn’t! The next morning, the coffin was moved to the neighbouring shed, and Edward got up and ate and went about his business as usual.