In 1996, as I was graduating, Jim Wight took the decision to scale back his work as a veterinary surgeon in order to write the biography of his father, Alf Wight. It was decided that the practice should take on a new graduate – me – to fill Jim’s full-time role, while Jim continued to work at the surgery two days a week. Jim was a great enthusiast and endlessly positive. I love being around people like that, as it is a contagious attitude. He had a wealth of veterinary experience, and the stories he told were sufficient in themselves to confirm the extent of his talents as a vet. Most of his stories were of his own exploits, but he could equally regale his father’s old tales, with style. He would always describe his clinical cases in elaborate detail, with great flourishes of ‘fantastic’ or ‘amazing’. My favourite of his anecdotes was one where a farmer had phoned to request a visit for a vet to examine his bullock. Apparently it had a lump on its side ‘as big as a colour television set’. The amusement to Jim and to me was the implication that a colour television set was very much bigger than the black and white variety.
When I started in Thirsk, Jim was in the practice on Mondays and Fridays. He was very popular, especially with the older and more established clients who had known him for years, and had often known his father as well. We always knew when he was in the building by the all-pervading smell of pipe smoke, as he puffed away for much of the time. At that time, the practice also provided a veterinary surgeon as inspector at the local turkey factory. The role of the vet was to oversee and uphold the health and welfare of the turkeys before slaughter. This job took up a lot of time and none of us really wanted to do it, because, important as it was, it was both unpleasant and incredibly tedious. It was a great testament to Jim that he continued to cover these monotonous shifts with the turkeys right up until he retired.
As a newly qualified vet, I was brimming with new knowledge and bursting to put it all into action. However, some supervision was often prudent, and Jim was more than happy to help. I had decided to do a tibial crest transposition on a Yorkshire terrier. This is an operation carried out to correct a slipping kneecap. The crest on the front of the tibia (the shin bone), just below the knee, is moved, to bring it better into line so that the kneecap stays in its groove, instead of popping out. It was an ambitious operation for a vet who had only been qualified for five months, and at many practices I would not have been allowed to embark upon it. This kind of thing, though, was not unusual at Skeldale. The philosophy was, and still is, to encourage our new vets to ‘grasp the nettle’ and get involved in more challenging surgery, obviously under close supervision, as this is the best way to learn and progress. In much the same way as Frank had supervised my first caesarean section, twelve months previously, Jim sat back, lit his pipe and prepared to talk me through the procedure.
The surgery that morning was about as tricky as it got for a new vet. It was technically challenging, fiddly and fraught with the risk of serious consequences if things went wrong. However, Jim offered calm and reassuring words of encouragement as I sawed through the top of this little terrier’s tibia, having first drilled tiny holes in it so it could be carefully re-attached in the correct position. He didn’t handle any of the tissues, just as Frank had avoided contact with the cow, for the very same reason, I suspect – that it would have meant foregoing his tobacco. This didn’t matter, though, since his description was so clear. My only concern, as he peered over the surgical site to inspect my work, was that ash would fall into my little dog’s leg and contaminate my sterile op site.
It wasn’t long after I started work that Jim decided to retire completely. It was a shame that I didn’t get the chance to spend more time working with him, as I am sure we would have made a great team. Jim’s role as senior partner was taken over by his long-time friend and colleague Peter, with whom I still work. Peter spent much of his early career working with Jim and when the two of them get together, over a pint or a Chinese meal, or both, the anecdotes flow freely. Pete’s whole existence is devoted to the practice and its wellbeing, and I sometimes fear what will happen when he is eventually worn out and has to retire!
A year after I started at Skeldale, Pete and I were invited to attend a fundraising dinner for a local animal rescue charity, the Jerry Green Foundation. It was held in the Golden Fleece in Thirsk and Fred Trueman was the guest speaker. I was a big cricket fan and loved Fred’s humour. Fred himself had acquired a rescue dog from Jerry Green’s, and did his best to help support the work of the charity. The problem facing us, as usual, was that we were both on call. Pete was on first and I was on second, so theoretically he would take all the calls, and I would help out only if it got too busy or if there was a two-man job. Usually it was folly to go to a social event while on duty, but since it was local and for a charity with whom we worked closely, we felt we should both take the chance.
The meal was enjoyable and then came the after-dinner speeches, and the time for raising money. Right at this point, just as Fred was lighting his first cigar of the evening, Pete’s beeper went off. It was a call to a nearby farm to see a cow, down with milk fever. As junior, I offered to go, so Pete could enjoy his coffee and the rest of the speeches. He didn’t argue, and I made my apologies and scuttled off to see the cow. The farm was nearby but it took me a while to complete the job because the farmer was in the middle of milking. Most farmers milk their cows at about five in the morning and again twelve hours later at five in the evening. While this is the normal way of things, there is no special reason it has to be done so early in the morning, and Alan, who ran the herd single-handedly, was the type of bloke who liked a later start to his day. Consequently, he would still be in the milking parlour at nine in the evening, which is why he was still milking when I arrived.
Once he had finished, and I had treated the cow, I washed up and headed back to the Fleece to hear the rest of Fred’s stories. The evening was nearly at a close and when I met up with Pete again he had a painful smile on his face and he confessed that he rather wished he had gone to see the cow after all. Pete is not a man who parts with his hard-earned cash readily and, after I had left, the main fundraising part of the evening began. This involved various rounds of bidding and a game where large amounts of money had to be pledged. As I said, Fred was a vigorous supporter of this animal charity and had done a good job of boosting their coffers, in large part thanks to Pete, who ended the evening with a somewhat lighter wallet than he had expected. As the archetypal Yorkshireman, an expensive evening out is never one of Pete’s favourites.
The practice is very busy, so Pete and I rarely get time to work together on clinical cases. Obviously there are the hours that we spend on the business side of running the practice, but these are no substitute for the rewards of working on a challenging case with a colleague. However, when there is a colt to be castrated, Pete and I often join forces, as it is a procedure that we always do with two vets, one to supervise the anaesthetic and one to do the operation itself. Some veterinary surgeons castrate colts under sedation, using local anaesthesia only, which allows the horse to remain standing. This is much quicker and allows equine vets to do many in a morning. To do the procedure with the colt lying down under general anaesthesia is more involved, but we have always found it to be the best way to avoid complications. Under the right circumstances, it can be a rather relaxing hour. We try to do the operation on a clear, sunny day in spring, free from mud or flies that would contaminate the wound, and if the operation goes well and the horse recovers from its anaesthetic without event, you can imagine how pleasant it can be, sitting in a sunny field waiting for a sleepy horse to emerge from its slumbers.
While castrating a colt is very straightforward if all goes according to plan, when things do not go smoothly, absolute disasters can occur. This is especially so if the animal has not been handled sufficiently, and is jumping and kicking while we are trying to inject it with sedatives, or if the colt has grown into a boisterous stallion. Heading out to do such a procedure is daunting.
On one particular occasion, the job had been postponed several times, because Pete and I could not get there together and the farmer, who also kept show jumpers, was insistent that it should be done by the two of us. Pete is very experienced with horses. My usual role on this farm was castrating two-year-old bulls that had been missed by previous owners – not the best job either! The farmer’s insistence that only the two of us in combination should undertake the operation ought to have set some alarm bells ringing.
We arrived on the farm in thick fog. The conditions were far from ideal for castrating a colt. It was damp in the air and very muddy underfoot but the farmer was not prepared to let this chance pass, and directed us to the paddock where our patient was waiting. The sight that met us as we rounded the corner made our hearts sink into our muddy boots. The field was covered in mud rather than grass, the air was thick with fog, and through the gloom we could just make out the form of an enormous horse, with its head stretched out as if it were trying to pull away from something. In the fog, it looked like a beast from a Greek legend. It was clearly a stallion with several years of growth and strength and not at all the benign yearling we had been expecting. The beast had been caught with a lasso, which was around its neck, with a long rope attached, about 20 metres away, to a JCB digger. Usually a horse being prepared for surgery would be standing in a stable, restrained with a head collar and a short lead rope, and held confidently by its competent owner. In this case the rope was very long and the thing on the non-horse end was only capable of keeping hold of the horse by virtue of its size and solidity. It seemed an impossible task to get anywhere near this wild creature. Every time we tried to pull it closer, the horse would charge around the JCB tangling us dangerously in the rope.
To make the scene even more ridiculous, the radio in the JCB cabin had been left on, and the music drifting out of the open window was the Bob Marley song ‘Three Little Birds’, which blithely reassured us not to worry about a thing. We were not quite as confident as Bob was that every little thing was, in fact, gonna be all right.
Slowly but surely, however, we managed to shorten the rope so the horse was close enough to handle. The next challenge was to inject it with the right dose of sedative. If we couldn’t do this, the rest of the procedure would be a disaster. I drew up a strong dose. Once this was in, the horse would become sleepy, but at this stage it was still very wild. It was also very, very cross at having been lassoed and pulled right up to the digger by its neck. I had to be accurate, quick and brave. Luckily, on this occasion, I was all three of these things. Once the horse was sedated, it was time to give the general anaesthetic, again by injection. This is another point at which things can go wrong. On one occasion I was castrating a colt with Tim. He had to climb on a stepladder to be able to inject the sedative into its vein. Despite appearing to be nicely sedated, just as I was about to give the anaesthetic, the sleepy horse looked up, bolted straight across the field and made its escape. Today, if the same thing happened, our horse would burst through the rickety fence and land in the slurry lagoon, which was right next to the operating area. We didn’t want that to happen. Thankfully the intravenous injection went in perfectly. After this, as the anaesthetic takes effect, the horse usually wobbles around for a minute or so, before becoming unconscious and sinking to the ground. This has to be carefully managed, to prevent injury to the animal or the handlers. The proximity of the slurry lagoon was still causing us real worry, as we needed to detach the horse from its JCB to allow it to go down safely.
In days gone by, before the routine use of the safe and effective injectable anaesthetics we use today, Mr Sinclair and Pete would perform this procedure using the famous horse chloroform face-mask, which is still in the display cabinet at the practice, next to the ‘evil salve’. At that time it was Peter’s job, as the junior vet, to get the horse asleep. The canvas mask would be put over the horse’s face and nose, and chloroform, a liquid anaesthetic, would be poured onto an absorbent cloth or cotton wool, in the part of the mask nearest the horse’s nose. There was little regard paid to the correct dose; it was simply poured in. Once the mask was filled, the horse would be left to wander around a large field, followed by vets and assistants with buckets of water and surgical equipment, waiting for it to fall over. Wherever it fell was the site to perform the operation and it could just as easily be a ditch or an orchard as a flat area of dry, grassy field.
Luckily for us, our drugs had a quicker effect and, after staggering for a few moments, the horse went to ground half way between the digger and the lagoon, so this particular disaster was averted. After this, the surgery was actually the most straightforward part of the morning. We positioned the horse on its side with its uppermost leg pulled forwards to allow Peter to perform the castration. The main concern was that the anaesthetic was sufficiently deep to prevent this leg from twitching or kicking, as the first object it would have met would have been Pete’s head. As vets, we have to have quick reactions, but these were not needed today, as the job went perfectly from here. Each testicle was clamped off with special clamps called emasculators, applied to the cord to crush and cut it simultaneously. The blood vessels were ligated and the testicles removed. The only bit to remember during this procedure is to apply the clamps the right way up, otherwise the blood vessels are not clamped and the horse bleeds to death. This very much focuses the mind, but the adage we were taught at vet school, ‘nut-to-nut’, always helps – it reminds us that the nut on the clamp faces towards the nut on the horse!
As the surgery was completed, everyone involved breathed a collective sigh of relief. It is always preferable for a horse to recover from general anaesthetic as slowly as possible. If it gets up too quickly, it can stumble around in its confused state. Ketamine is used as the anaesthetic and it can cause hallucinations if the pre-op sedative wears off too quickly – and who knows what hallucinations horses experience. Thus, the final part of the job is to supervise the recovery. Everything is not over until the patient is safely standing with slightly spread back legs, nibbling on grass, or in this case, peering optimistically at the mud. It took about twenty minutes for the patient to get up and, as the tension of the morning passed, we chatted amiably to the farmer, caught up on some gossip from the village, and thanked our lucky stars that the animal had avoided the slurry lagoon.