The great bane of a vet’s life is the after-hours work. Getting called out from your warm home when you’ve settled in for the night with your family is tough. And it can happen at any time, for hundreds of different reasons. You never know what is coming and all country vets in particular will know that horrible feeling when the phone goes. Who is it? What will they want?
As a new vet working for the Graham Vet Club, before Pete and Pete’s Pussy Parlour was thought of, I had to face my first night on call a month after graduating.
‘Gidday, it’s Les Ham. My heading bitch has a bad rip. Can you come out and stitch her up?’ The voice on the end of the phone was gruff but not unkind.
I met Les and his friend Bill Gibbs at the clinic half an hour later. I unlocked the door, disarmed the burglar alarm and took the two of them and a nice heading bitch into the surgery. She had a huge rip, from her guggle to her zatch, as the hero of The Thirteen Clocks (a book enjoyed by my mother) would say.
‘Barbed wire,’ said Les. ‘Should ban the bloody stuff.’
Les had Clydesdale horses on his sheep and cropping farm in Rapaura, and the sight of four or six of these great beasts in harness with a plough behind and Les on the reins was a joy to behold. Over the next few years I made many calls to see those wonderful animals, mostly good-natured giants, before advancing years made them a bit much for Les to handle. He sold them to various other enthusiasts of his craft, and they were lost forever to Marlborough. He was a lovely, kindly man, invariably polite and appreciative, humorous, and one of those farmer clients I always looked forward to visiting. But all that was in the future.
Back in the surgery, the trusting heading dog allowed me to slip a needle into the cephalic vein and gently inject the anaesthetic. She was asleep in 10 seconds and after intubating her and getting the gas going, I clipped and cleaned the huge skin wound while Les and Bill watched, leaning against the wall of the surgery.
‘Would you like a spot?’ says Les. I very much enjoy a spot now, but not at the age I was then, and I was new at this and needing to concentrate, so I gracefully declined.
‘Well you won’t mind if we do, will you?’
Of course I wouldn’t. So while these two old World War II soldiers watched and yarned and drank half a bottle of scotch, I went to work, stitching up the great tear in the little dog’s skin. These barbed wire rips can be horrendous, and it’s sometimes very difficult to fit the jigsaw together. Where did this bit come from? Can I get this bit over here? Use a tension suture or two, Pete. This was one of the worst. Nearly 30 years later, I still can’t recall a worse tear. And this was my very first solo emergency case. But away I went and an hour later it was all together again. No more gash. Quite tidy actually. The problem was, one nipple, instead of being just to the side of the midline of her abdomen, was neatly placed up beside her hip.
Now everyone, every vet that is, makes mistakes in the heat of the moment, and especially young, inexperienced vets. One of my friends from vet school went to do his first caesarean section on a cow at about the same time. He correctly opened her up, with the cow standing, on the left side, saw a heap of intestines, panicked, said, ‘This is a very strange case,’ and closed her up. He went to the right side, opened her up again, found more intestines, panicked harder, closed her up and opened the left side again (the correct one). He delivered the calf safely, but the farmer would have needed plenty of compassionate humour.
My mistake with the dog left me in a cold sweat. ‘Oh hell, Les,’ I groaned, ‘I haven’t done that right.’
Les was totally unfazed.
‘No worries, Peter. It looks as tidy as my wife’s patchwork quilt. She isn’t going to have pups anyway. That’ll be fine.’ Dear man, I could have hugged him in my professional embarrassment.
We waited round for an hour for the bitch to wake up, and I probably did have a dram then. I really can’t remember. And as the two old boys took the dog off home and I cleaned up and locked the doors, I reflected on my good fortune in finding such an understanding man.
I saw Les and the bitch numerous times — the wound healed well and never caused any trouble. And I became, if I say so myself, a pretty tidy surgeon, and always paid great attention to the presentation of the finished article after that.