Call the vet, p.7
Call the Vet, page 7
‘Brenda,’ I said quietly, ‘nothing can save them. It will be so much worse for you to have to put them down when they’re bigger and you’ve put so much time into them. It’s really best that I do it now.’
She looks intently at the litter.
‘No,’ she says after a long pause. ‘It’s not best.’ I look at Brenda, this little tomboy in a trainee RANA’s uniform, and see there is no point in trying to convince her she is wrong. I know she will regret her decision.
‘Okay,’ I say, ‘we both go to Pat and tell her why you won’t be here.’
‘Bruce, did you have a rough weekend?’ Pat asks when, three weeks later, she arrives for work on the Monday morning.
‘What? Oh, no, I’m just growing a beard.’
‘Whatever for? You’re already handsome as you are.’
‘And look fourteen,’ I answer. ‘Even you told me so. Girls aren’t going to take me seriously if I look like their kid brother. And my clothes. Everyone’s in velvet jackets and flowery shirts. I stick out like a hick.’
‘I don’t mean your beard. You look like you’ve got a hangover.’
‘Oh, that,’ I mumble. ‘It’s not a hangover. I’ve been helping Brenda feed the kittens. Thank goodness it’s every three hours now and we sleep holding them so they don’t roll all over the place.’
‘We sleep with them?’ Pat comments, her eyes twinkling.
Brenda had taken me seriously without my having to grow a beard, but I was not sleeping with her. I had been going over to her place in Battersea every spare evening after work to help her with the kittens, and our relationship was relaxed but remained platonic.
‘We take turns feeding them, then both of us hold the kittens in our hands in a normal position for an hour or so before returning them to their mother. Separately. We do it separately. I’m just helping out.’
‘Hmmm,’ Pat replies. ‘It’s a busy morning but not much surgery so far. Mr Singleton is at the Royal College and you’re seeing the Hoechst rep at lunchtime. Oh, and Professor Levene’s secretary at the Royal Marsden called to thank you for that horse tumour you dropped off for him. It was a melanoma.’
After removing the small growth from the grey pony outside St George’s Hospital, Brian had told me to take it over to the Royal Marsden Hospital on Brompton Road and leave it for Arnold Levene.
‘Levene’s a rare find,’ Brian had explained. ‘He has an unquenchable appetite for information. We send all our tumours to him. I heard about him from Jean Shanks.’
Dr Jean Shanks, a clinical pathologist, owned Jean Shanks Laboratory on Harley Street. We looked after her dog and sent all our blood samples to her human lab for analysis. It would be another few years before veterinary clinical pathology labs became common.
That morning I saw my first case of ‘old dog encephalitis’. The mature black Labrador’s nose looked like dry, browned cauliflower. So did the thickened pads on his paws. His dark stained teeth were cracked and broken, with large pits of missing enamel. I saw at least one dog like Scamp every week, survivors of distemper infection. The changes to their pads and nose leather gave the infection its common name at that time, ‘hardpad’.
Scamp’s damaged teeth told me he had probably been infected with distemper while he still had his baby teeth. Just as using the antibiotic oxytetracycline in pups results in their adult teeth erupting stained bright yellow, infection with distemper virus as a pup results in the adult teeth erupting with badly damaged enamel. That’s if the pup survives its distemper infection. Most don’t.
Scamp was eight years old and apart from the looks of his nose, teeth and foot pads, he had no other sequels to his infection, not even muscle tremors. He had been healthy for years, but now his owners say he is constantly circling or walking into the corner of a room and pressing his head against the wall as if he were trying to relieve an enormous migraine.
‘We know what it is,’ his owners tell me, ‘and we don’t want him to suffer, so we’ve brought him to be put down.’
I didn’t argue. It doesn’t take long in veterinary practice to understand that there is such a thing as a good death. This would be an easy one. More difficult are those that leap on you unexpected, that involve pain or suffering. My baptism was a Yorkshire terrier puppy, screaming in pain after having her head crushed. The damage was so extensive I could see bits of skull bone embedded in her brain. I felt unbearably helpless and thought if that’s how I feel, can you imagine how the pup’s owner feels? Sure, it’s another species. Pets are not our children but we raise them, feed them, care for them, often sleep with them. Can you imagine how vulnerable an owner feels when her pet is in obvious, excruciating pain and there’s nothing she can do about it? But I can do something. I can kill that pet quickly and painlessly. And as horrific as that sounds, that’s also a good death.
Jane raises a vein in Scamp’s front leg and I inject a lethal dose of pentobarbitone.* His heart stops beating in less than a minute and he dies.
‘May I send him up to the college?’ I ask his owners. ‘They’re doing a study on old dog distemper there.’
‘Yes, if it helps,’ I’m told, and as soon as his owners leave, Jane and I carry Scamp’s body down the two flights of stairs to the prep room where it is left on the treatment table.
Brian returned at lunchtime and came downstairs to see what had been booked in, in his absence. Nothing today, and I explained I’d put down the dog because of old dog encephalitis and was harvesting Scamp’s brain for the distemper study at the Royal Veterinary College.
‘Send the owners a letter with your condolences, on headed notepaper. Write it yourself. Don’t type it. They’ll appreciate your sympathy.’
At that time we post-mortemed just about every animal that died. There was and still is no better way to know how disease progresses or what has caused death or disability. These days it is different. I am rarely given permission to carry out an autopsy. People are more squeamish and feel there is a sanctity in the body of their dead pet. People want their pets buried or cremated without the physical body having been ‘abused’ by knife, scissors or bone cutters.
Abdominal and chest post-mortems are relatively easy to cut open and sew shut. Not so brain PMs. The skin has to be cut and parted, then muscles removed until the bony junction between the skull and the atlas, the top vertebra, is exposed. Then the top of the skull is removed with bone cutters, much like opening a trap door. When it goes smoothly and everything gets neatly sewn back in place once the brain has been removed, it is, in an aesthetic sense, just fine. Today, the bone in Scamp’s skull is yielding reluctantly to the scissors-like cutters. It is messy and takes longer than expected. The drug company rep from Hoechst has arrived and I have asked Pat to have him wait in my consulting room, but she replies that he wouldn’t mind seeing a Labrador with its brain being removed so he joins us in the prep room.
‘Johnson,’ he says. ‘How are you?’
‘Bruce,’ I reply. ‘Fine, thanks. Sorry if I can’t shake hands. Is Pat getting you a tea?’
‘No, Sir. I’ve asked Pat to wait until you can join me.’
I am supposed to be concentrating on cutting off the top of Scamp’s skull but can’t take my eyes off Johnson’s black leather shoes. They’re five-eyelet Oxfords buffed so brilliantly they shine like mirrors.
‘I’m impressed,’ I say. ‘I was once a sleeping-car porter for Canadian Pacific Railways but I was never able to get shoes to shine the way you do.’
‘RAF,’ Johnson replies. ‘I was a police dog handler until I left. I would like to be a full-time dog trainer, but there’s simply not a sufficient demand.’
Before coming to London, I had seen the RAF Police Dog Team put on a show of their dogs’ skills at the Royal Agricultural Winter Show in Toronto. German Shepherd dogs obeying commands, attacking baddies, jumping through fiery hoops. It was all very impressive.
‘Why did you leave the RAF?’ I ask, and Johnson tells me the police dog training centre had moved to Essex, and Essex wasn’t for him.
‘How do you do it?’ I ask, about his shiny shoes, not dog training.
‘Yellow duster, high-wax boot polish, water, elbow grease, beeswax.’
He looks at my feet. Having dropped wearing sandals, I am now wearing a pair of brown slip-on penny loafers with dimes inserted in their top pockets. They very much need a shine.
‘In your business, you might want to just give them a good application of brown shoe wax, a proper brushing, then apply clear floor polish. I’d suggest Johnsons.’
There is mischief in his eyes and I develop an instant liking for the man. Although we share pints at the Nag’s Head over the two years I remain at Pont Street and I go to one of his evening dog training classes a few weeks later in Maida Vale, I never ask Johnson’s first name. He never offers it.
Pat calls downstairs that the body man has arrived. With Scamp’s brain in a glass jar of formalin, I ask Jane to sew up his scalp skin, let me know when she has finished and I’ll help her put his body in a hessian sack, ready for the body man to pick up. I stay out of the way when the knackerman comes in his filthy brown overall, trailing the smell of death. I once saw him throw the hessian body bags in the back of his truck, then unwrap a sandwich from its wax paper and eat it. Without washing. With massive black flies surrounding him. At that time I didn’t know that the body man collected for renderers, who supplied rendered agricultural animals to pet food companies for tinned dog and cat food. I knew that cats were collected for their skins. I was told they were shipped to Poland and turned into gloves. It didn’t enter my mind that the pet food my patients ate might include rendered dog and cat.
Johnson has booked a visit because he wants to convince us to switch from the dog vaccine we are using, Burroughs Wellcome Epivax, to his company’s vaccine Maxavac. He has two trump cards. If we use his vaccine, he will supply us with ongoing disposable needles and syringes. We can retire the glass syringes. Even better, his vaccine is in rubber-topped vials. I’ll never cut my fingers again from sawing, and breaking in half, those glass vials.
‘What about “blue eye”?’ I ask.
Preventative dog vaccination was and still is a profound life saver. But those first vaccines could cause problems. I had read that some live distemper vaccines could revert to infectious forms and cause lethal brain inflammation – encephalitis, like Scamp suffered from, but within months of an inoculation rather than years after infection. I knew that the hepatitis component of the vaccine I was using caused ‘blue eye’ in some dogs, a fluid swelling or oedema to their corneas. With most dogs the corneal oedema lasts no more than two weeks, but for some dogs the condition lasts longer or is complicated by ulcers.
‘We use a slightly different virus in our vaccine,’ Johnson explains. ‘CAV-2 rather than CAV-1. It is CAV-1 vaccines that cause blue eye.’
‘And encephalitis?’ I ask.
‘We use the Onderstepoort strain of distemper virus in Maxivac and are confident it cannot cause post vaccinal encephalitis. Dr Fogle, you are obviously knowledgeable and interested in the science of vaccines. I’ve invited several London vets out for early drinks this evening. Mr Singleton tells me he’ll be taking calls this evening. Would you care to join us?’
I hadn’t asked anything remotely scientific but liked being told I was knowledgeable. I wondered why Brian would be taking calls but not enough to see that evening drinks had in fact been engineered by him.
‘Where and when?’ I ask.
I arrive at the basement bar in the Nag’s Head on the dot at 7.30 pm. The room is even smaller than upstairs, low ceilinged, narrow and with an inviting coal fire on the back wall. It is late autumn and the nights have closed in. The temperature has suddenly dropped into the 40s, not cold by what I am used to, but in London’s damp climate it feels bone-chillingly bitter. I am happy to see the roaring fire in the fireplace, with Johnson and three other men standing in front of it.
‘Dr Fogle, what would you like to drink?’ Johnson asks.
‘Bruce. Call me Bruce. A Guinness, thanks.’
I have no appreciation of warm English beer and prefer a cold pilsner, but have developed a fondness for the burnt flavour of a creamy-headed dark Guinness, especially on a cold evening in as inviting a pub as the Nag’s Head. The others are drinking English beer, except the oldest, who has a Scotch in his hand.
‘Do you know each other?’
‘Hi, Keith, John, Mike,’ I say to the three vets I know, then turn to a new face, a round-headed, round-eyed older man with curly dark hair that is just starting to fade away. I can see it will eventually make an early exit from his head.
‘Bruce, meet Frank Manolson. He’s a fellow Canadian of yours. And a wonderful writer. His surgery is on the Kings Road.’
‘What the fuck are you drinking?’ Frank asks as we are introduced.
I’ve mentioned I was raised in an extended family that never swore. I really didn’t hear swearing as part of normal conversation until I moved to London. Frank’s language offends my ear but there is no attitude in his voice, certainly no anger or condescension. There is surprise, an almost innocent incredulity. ‘What on earth are you drinking?’
‘Come with me,’ Frank says and we walk over to the bar.
‘A J&B, barman,’ he says, and when it is poured we walk back to the vets around the crackling fire. ‘Have that, then your stout.’
Keith, Mike, John, Frank and I talk about cases, about difficult clients but mostly about Brian, whom they respect a lot, as I do, but are also intimidated by, as I am.
‘He’s asked us to form an emergency night and weekend rota,’ Keith casually mentions to me.
‘Yes, that’s one of the reasons we’re here,’ Johnson adds. ‘Mr Singleton asked me to be an independent arbiter in case you want to ask an outsider what he thinks.’
‘Well, as you’re here, what do you think?’ I ask, and Johnson says he can see no possible reason why we don’t form a rota.
‘My clients won’t come back when they see the fucking facilities the rest of you have,’ Frank says.
‘Swings and roundabouts, Dr Manolson,’ Johnson says. ‘I suspect it will all average out.’
‘It’s too far for my clients to travel. Halfway across London,’ adds John, whose surgery is in Holland Park. ‘I can’t see it working. I appreciate Brian asking me, but I’ll opt out.’
Johnson turns to Keith. ‘Mr Singleton tells me you take each other’s calls when needed, so I imagine you’re in?’
Keith puffs on his cigar and nods in the affirmative.
‘And you, Mr Gordon?’
Mike also nods his approval.
‘Dr Manolson?’
‘I’ll have to think about it,’ he replies. ‘Let’s have another drink.’ We go for another J&B and Guinness, and when we return to the roaring fire we both sit on the same small side table.
‘When did you graduate, Frank?’ I ask.
‘Fifty-one,’ he answers.
‘And how did you end up on the Kings Road?’
‘I was meshuganah,’ he answers. ‘I sure as fuck wasn’t going home.’
‘Where’s home?’ I counter.
‘A hundred miles outside Medicine Hat. Arse end of nowhere. Would you live in a got farlazn place like that?’
‘Meshuganah. Got farlazn. Frank, are you Jewish?’ I ask.
‘Fucking right,’ he replies. ‘Ham on rye Jew. Same as you.’
I smile at his accuracy. ‘So how did you graduate from Guelph in ’51? They didn’t accept Jews until 1960.’
‘The registrar was a sodding bugger. On my application, for Religion I wrote “Cattle”. He saw my address was the Circle M Ranch. It never entered the bastard’s mind that a cattle rancher was a bloody Jew.’
Sodding. Bugger. Bloody. Frank may be a fellow Canadian but he was swearing like a Brit.
‘Did you come here from Guelph?’ I ask.
‘Via Rome,’ he says. ‘I worked for the Food and Agriculture Organisation before I came here. That’s how I became a writer. I couldn’t find a job when I got here. Thought I’d be a small animal vet but couldn’t remember a damn thing about dogs, so I made an alphabetical list of what I thought I’d need to know. Abscess. Boil. Canker. Distemper. Turned it into a book, D is for Dog. It sold well and Pelham the publishers wanted another, so I wrote C is for Cat. Now I’m writing a sex book. My Cats in Love. Have another drink.’
‘At Guelph, I edited the university newspaper,’ I tell Frank. ‘I’d love to write.’
‘Money for old rope,’ he says. ‘Pour yourself a drink. Hit the keys. Don’t forget your carbon paper. Get a damned good editor. Everyone thinks you’re fucking brilliant.’
‘So the rota,’ I continue. ‘If you’re in, we’ve got enough vets for Monday to Thursday. That means you’re on call one night a week and one long weekend a month. You know I won’t steal your clients.’
‘I trust the others, but you’re a landsman. Can I trust a shmuck like you?’
‘What do you think?’ I say to him. He doesn’t answer that but instead says, ‘Why are you working for Brian?’
‘He offered me a job and Jim Archibald told me it would be good for me to make my mistakes thousands of miles from home.’
Frank puts his arm around my shoulder and puts his head close to mine. I can see in his eyes that he’s had several J&Bs before I arrived.
‘You need to visit my surgery to see how much fun you can have. I need a good vet. Come and visit.’
* Pentobarbitone is an anaesthetic now rarely used for anaesthesia. I used a modification of pentobarb called thiopentone routinely for general anaesthesia.
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