Ask most vets in practice. They will tell you that many of the best people in the world are animal owners.  From my experience, I have to agree. There are some clients who will do anything to help me.  Many want only the very best for their animals and are appreciative of anything done to improve their lot. Then there are the clients who mean well and try hard, but their animals still go through some rough times. And finally there are a few clients who have no respect for animals; they consider them only as beasts to be used.

Sally is one of those people with the best of intentions. She loves animals and works hard on their behalf, but often things don’t turn out the way she planned.  Sally and her husband, Richard, farm on a small operation west of town.  Richard depends mostly on rented ground to grow cash crops while Sally augments their income by raising a few pigs and calves.  They live modestly and humbly, but with apparent pride in keeping their farm neat and clean. 

Richard is patient with Sally. But he doesn't always agree on how she cares for her animals.  She’s conscientious in tending to her animals’ needs, but her methods sometimes are unorthodox.  It is my considered opinion that Sally is -- as my son suggested at the wise old age of 12 -- “a few French fries short of a Happy Meal.” 

One July day, Sally called to report that her pet Hereford heifer was trying to calve.  When my receptionist asked her how long the heifer had been in labor, Sally gave a vague answer.  She just said that the heifer was down in the woods and “the flies were terrible.”  My secretary dispatched me and my new associate in training.  I could tell from her description that we were headed to a bad situation.  It wasn’t the flies that concerned me; you can expect a swarm in early July. My concern was the rest of the history my receptionist had relayed from Sally.  She said that it had been two days since Sally last saw her prize heifer.  A very docile animal, the heifer was given free rein to come and go as she pleased, with ten acres of rolling meadow land to roam.  Many cows are given that kind of freedom, but it can be risky business at calving time.  In this situation Sally should have been observing her heifer several times a day. 

Fred, my new associate, fresh out of the University was excited to be responding to an emergency call. For the past several days he had been riding with me, meeting our clients, reinforcing the skills he learned in vet school, and learning our territory, practice philosophy and preferred treatments.

While I knew that Fred was well-trained in the obstetrical maneuvers that are necessary during a cow dystocia -- the medical term for difficult calving -- I knew the case we had been called to was likely going to be more complicated than any he had ever experienced.  I also knew he was in for a harsh reality check. Fred envisioned our rolling onto the farm like a 9-1-1 team in our veterinary-equipped truck.  He pictured our catching the heifer with a lariat and then setting up a sort of veterinary MASH hospital out in the field.  (In fact, Fred confessed years later that he had been dreaming we were the veterinary medicine equivalent of Hawkeye and Hunnicut.) 

While we sped toward the farm – without the aid of a siren and flashing lights -- I reviewed with Fred how we would split up the work that needed to be done.  I told him that I thought the heifer was probably down and unable to get up.  However, if she was able to run away, I would rope her with my lariat while he set up our OB equipment. Whether she was up or down, I would put a halter on her.   Fred could do the initial examination.  If he had a firm diagnosis as to the position of the calf, he was to go ahead and re-position it as needed for proper delivery, with the front feet and head together or the back feet and tail in position, if it was a posterior presentation.

If he couldn’t determine the positioning of the calf with certainty, Fred was to invite me to assist in the examination and we would make the decision regarding techniques from there.  Fred agreed with my plan and was totally confident that he could handle his part of the OB procedure. 

In spite of Fred's confidence, I suspected that we wouldn't be lucky enough to deliver this calf as planned.  I knew that any heifer that had been missing for two days more than likely had been trying to deliver her calf the entire time.

Sally was pacing in the yard when we arrived.  She said that the heifer was at the back of the meadow where the honeysuckle bushes and hawthorn trees formed a tangled, thorny jungle.  Sally opened the wooden five-panel farm gate for us.  The bottom hinge was broken, so Sally, a trim, attractive middle-aged woman accustomed to hard work, lifted the gate as she walked it open over the tall, thick grass.   After closing the gate behind us, she joined us in the front seat of the truck. As we drove to the heifer Sally berated herself for not keeping closer tabs on her pet.  I told Sally not to pass judgment on herself because things might still turn out OK.  I kept to myself my personal feeling   that Sally had made a serious blunder.

I was able to drive the truck to within about twenty feet of the heifer as she lay stretched out on her side.  Her front half lay under honeysuckle bushes, while her back half extended out from the briars, providing us unhindered access for our OB work.   I got the halter and worked my way through the honeysuckle  branches to place the rope on the heifer’s head and tie her to a nearby tree.  When I saw her eyes, pallor and her lack of response to placing the halter on her head, my worst suspicions were confirmed: she had probably been trying to calve for the full two days.   

In the meantime, Fred set up our equipment and pumped warm water from the reservoir in my truck to wash the heifer in preparation. I saw Fred reel backward as he got the first glimpse of what he was about to clean up, Fortunately he didn’t vomit or get the dry heaves.

Dried blood and calf membranes, dark and leathery like a mummy's skin, were being feasted on by flies that swarmed like killer bees in a science fiction movie.  The calf's nose and feet protruded from the birth canal. 

Fred leaned on the truck hood while I proceeded to wash the area around the heifer's birth canal and spray the cow with an aerosol insecticide to kill the flies and maggots I then conducted a pelvic examination and determined that the problem delivery was not caused by a malpositioning of the calf. Rather, the heifer had needed only some additional traction on the calf's legs to help the delivery along.  Two days earlier, this would have been a simple delivery.

I really needed some assistance to complete the delivery, but Fred was still hanging back, feeling ill. (You could say he was being non-productive in more than one sense; he had skipped lunch, so he was now over by the truck with a fit of the dry heaves.)

I barked at him, “Fred, help me out here!” Normally I don’t come across like a drill sergeant, but if Fred was going to make this his profession he was going to have to face the unpleasantries and get with the program.  It was important for him to get past his first bad case, if he were to handle another one like this by himself.

Truth be told, the stench and flies made me uncomfortable, too, when I let my concentration drift from the job at hand.  But I couldn’t afford to let my associate see anything less than a professional in my behavior.

After attaching OB chains to the calf’s legs, I asked Fred to help me deliver the calf with traction.  By hand, I could get the calf to budge only a couple of inches.  I showed Fred how to make a pulley mechanism out of the lariat and attach it to the bumper of the truck.  Both of us pulling on the lariat attached to the calf's feet made the delivery much easier.  It took only five minutes, and the heifer didn’t appear to be injured by our manipulations.

I told Fred that many cows recover from a delivery of this type without any other assistance, but this one had already suffered greatly, having been poisoned by the calf’s dead tissue for two days. This cow’s chances were poor.  Out of ear shot, Sally stood behind the truck crying her eyes out over her pet and heaping every kind of recrimination that she could on herself.

To rehydrate the heifer, I got the large volume fluid administration set out of the truck. It was capable of administering five gallons of ringer’s solution at a time. But just as Fred was preparing the cow’s neck for an intravenous injection in the jugular vein, the heifer breathed its last.

There was nothing left for us to do. I really was disappointed to lose the heifer, but I was more concerned for Sally.  It was all she could do to handle both the guilt for her negligence and the loss of her dear pet.  Fred was speechless.  He was at a loss for what to do with this woman crying uncontrollably.  I asked Fred to load up the equipment while I talked to Sally.

I explained to Sally that I was nearly as upset over losing the heifer as she was.  She told me that it wasn't my fault; it was all her fault for being so careless.  I agreed that it would be great if we could turn the clock back two days and handle the situation differently. Since that wasn’t possible, I told Sally, she needed to remember that she had done everything she could to help her heifer once she realized the cow was missing.  She had searched until she found her and then called our office. It might not have been much consolation, but her heifer had the best medical care available at that moment.

Sally said that she still felt bad for Gwendolyn, but she understood and agreed, we all had done our very best by the heifer when we realized her plight.  Until that very moment I hadn’t known her heifer's name.  After we dropped Sally off at her house, Fred and I headed for the office to get a shower before our next stop.  As we drove, Fred told me that he would never forget this case and that he was especially impressed by the way I had comforted Sally.  In truth, it hadn’t been difficult to speak to Sally as I had. She really did love that creature, and her intentions were great even if her attention to the cow’s real needs were not.

After a few minutes of pensive silence, I turned to Fred: and asked: “Can you imagine someone naming a Hereford heifer Gwendolyn?”