Being the only veterinary practice in the area when I first started meant we were always expected to have a presence or be available at most events that involved animals. This included dog shows and cat shows, the Agriculture and Pastoral Show, endurance riding events, and the races, both trotting and the gallops. Some of these events were a bit of a day out and quite good fun, while others could be a drag and not so enjoyable.
One day which I always looked forward to with some anxiety was when I was the duty vet at the races. It was all because I got off to a rather bad start the first time I was ‘on call’. Alan did not really enjoy horse work too much and Henk was the boss, so because I was the new boy at the Graham Veterinary Club, I ended up doing the job at the first race meeting in Blenheim after I started practice.
We had a few duties at the track, including checking any late scratchings to ensure they had a valid reason for pulling out, and being immediately available during the race in case a horse was injured. Oft en a horse, usually the winner, was selected for swabbing by the stipendiary steward. Our job was to escort the horse to the swabbing box immediately after the race and there collect a saliva sample and a urine sample. These samples would be bottled and sealed in a container and later sent for testing to ensure the horse was not running under the influence of any drugs. Sometimes collecting the samples took a while. Getting the saliva sample was not a problem but trying to get an exhausted, dehydrated horse that had just run a race to urinate could be a problem. There were a few tricks we used including rustling the straw in the box, running a tap and whistling. Some horses were great and gave us a sample soon after they came into the box, while others ran through an awful lot of water and caused one to develop very sore cheeks. Being shut in the box with the horse and the trainer and whistling for an hour while a tap ran continuously oft en meant I ended up very uncomfortable and ready to fill the urine container myself.
After eventually getting the samples we had to be back for the start of the next race, although if we had a reluctant donor we would end up missing the race, hoping that no horse injured itself. Sometimes a horse that the stipendiary steward had wanted to swab was let off because we would still be working on the horse from a previous race. Usually the vet was blamed and the stipe-vet relationship was not always a harmonious one.
David Wood, the Cheviot vet for many years and a great mentor to me, tells a story about one stipendiary steward who really annoyed him by making unreasonable demands, including an excessive number of swabs, having to explain why a post-mortem hadn’t been done on a horse and forcing him to work well past finishing time.
In the bar after the race, David had an opportunity to get his own back.
‘Did you know that when men are in the shower 70 per cent sing and 30 per cent play with themselves?’ he asked the group, and then turning to the steward asked, ‘And do you know what they sing?’
‘No I don’t.’
‘Didn’t think you would,’ said David.
Anyway, my first day at the races was a memorable one for all the wrong reasons. It wasn’t because of the stipe, though; he was a very nice man. Kevin O’Brien, the stock manager at the Vet Club, was also a racehorse trainer, and was in the birdcage during the first race. It was a hurdles race and immediately after the race he came up to me and said:
‘You had better get out there. Quick. They are calling for you. A horse has broken a leg.’
‘Come on,’ I replied. ‘Pull the other one.’ This didn’t happen to a vet graduate during the first race of the first race meeting he has ever been on call at.
‘No, look. I’m not kidding. Look out there.’
Sure enough, on the track immediately in front of the birdcage and grandstand stood a distressed-looking horse on three legs. He had broken his leg on the last hurdle and pulled up just before the finishing line.
I raced to my car next to the birdcage, jumped in and shot out the gate and went all of 10 metres to where the horse stood. I leapt out, pulled on some overalls and had a quick examination of the horse. It was a horrible fracture and for these injuries there is only one outcome. It was an easy decision. I raced back to my car boot where I hunted around and finally found a bottle of Euthatal, a very concentrated anaesthetic that we used for humanely euthanising animals, a 60 ml syringe and a large needle. This took a wee while and involved emptying half the car boot onto the race track.
Meanwhile the crowd in the stand had gone very silent. I was on stage and they were watching as I walked back to the horse, filling up my large syringe with ‘purple death’. Two groundsmen stood ineffectively with a tarpaulin, trying to hide the horse from the crowd in the stand and in the birdcage. I placed the large 14-gauge needle in the jugular vein and then injected the syringe full in, and then topped up with another one but the horse just stood there. After a few seconds he should have quietly buckled at the knees and fallen down dead. I waited and he just kept standing and standing.
The crowd has just witnessed a young, disorganised vet injecting two syringes full of Euthetal subcutaneously in his nervous haste. That is, outside the vein where it was not going to be very effective for quite some time. I had missed the rather large jugular vein and needed to repeat the act. So I sucked up what was left in the bottle and prayed it was enough. I repeated the job after replacing the needle, this time properly in the jugular, and thankfully had the horse lie down and die next to the sledge placed beside him. It was a nervous moment and not a great way to start being a race-day vet.
Following this I spent a good part of the day swabbing horses and generally being rather busy. The last race also involved a swab and it was well after dark before I had finished. I was invited into the committee room after I had reported in, and offered a very welcome drink. Larry, the head groundsman, was also there and in passing I asked him what he did with the horse that I had had to put down.
‘N-n-n-no p-p-p-problem, P-p-p-p-ete. L-l-l-l-yall p-p-p-p—got him.’ Larry had a terrible stutter.
‘Lyall who?’ I replied, suddenly getting an uncomfortable feeling.
‘L-l-l-l-yall M-M-M-M-M-M—’
‘Not Lyall McLauchlan from the hunt.’
‘Y-y-y-y-y—’
‘Oh hell, where’s the nearest phone?’
I eventually found one and Lyall’s phone number and rang him. There was no reply. Now I was really sweating. Lyall was the master of the Starborough Hunt, the local hunt club that had a famous hound pack. They were always on the lookout for meat for the pack and welcomed fresh meat from any source. The fresh meat he had just collected would not do the hounds any good at all.
I kept ringing but still got no reply, so I had to speed out to Lyall’s place where the hounds, were kennelled. It was dark and he wasn’t in the house although the lights were on. I went down to the kennels where I eventually found him. He was on the verge of feeding the hounds a large hunk of fresh horse meat. If I had been a few minutes later, I would have been indirectly responsible for wiping out the whole of the Starborough Hunt pack. The meat of an animal euthanised with Euthatal is lethal to anything that eats it.
Lyall was not impressed as he had spent a good part of the day collecting the horse from the racetrack and then skinning it. However, he was very relieved that we had not wiped out his beloved hounds. We both agreed we deserved a wee whisky. And Lyall’s whiskies were not small.