Vets Might Fly Read online

  the adrenalin. I knew only too well that tracheotomy was indicated

  here but I didn't have a tube with me. If the filly did go off her

  legs I should have to start cutting into her windpipe, but I put the

  thought away from me. For the moment I had to depend on the

  adrenalin.

  Beamish stretched out a hand in a helpless gesture.

  "It's hopeless, isn't it?"

  he whispered.

  I shrugged

  "There's a small chance. If the injection can reduce the fluid in the

  larynx in time . . . we'll just have to wait."

  He nodded and I could read more than one emotion in his face; not just

  the dread of breaking the news to the famous owner but the distress of

  a horse-love-as he witnessed the plight of the beautiful animal.

  . . ~ . .

  At first I thought it was imagination, but it seemed that the breathing

  was becoming less stertorous. Then as I hovered in an agony of

  uncertainty I noticed that the salivation was diminishing; she was able

  to swallow.

  From that moment events moved with unbelievable rapidity. The symptoms

  of allergies appear with dramatic suddenness but mercifully they often

  disappear as quickly following treatment. Within fifteen minutes the

  filly looked almost normal. There was still a slight wheeze in her

  respirations but she was loo king around her, quite free from

  distress.

  Beamish, who had been watching like a man in a daze, pulled a handful

  of hay from a bale and held it out to her. She snatched it eagerly

  from his hand and began to eat with great relish.

  "I can't believe it," the trainer muttered almost to himself.

  "I've never seen any thing work as fast as that injection."

  I felt as though I was riding on a pink cloud with all the tension and

  misery flowing from me in a joyful torrent. Thank God there were

  moments like this among the traumas of veterinary work; the sudden

  transition from despair to triumph, from shame to pride.

  I almost floated to the car and as I settled in my seat Beamish put his

  face to the open window.

  "Mr Herriot . . ." He was not a man to whom gracious speech came

  easily and his cheeks, roughened and weathered by years of riding on

  the open moor, twitched as he sought for words.

  "Mr Herriot, I've been thinking . . . you don't have to be a horsey

  man to cure horses, do you?"

  There was something like an appeal in his eyes as we gazed at each

  other.

  I laughed suddenly and his expression relaxed.

  "That's right," I said, and drove away.

  Chapter Thirteen

  L~

  G B J~ ~4 ~/S. ~

  ~ ~, Do dogs have a sense of humour?

  I felt I needed all mine as I stood on guard outside the Grand. It was

  after midnight, with a biting wind swirling across the empty square,

  and I was so cold and bored that it was a relief even to slap the butt

  of my rifle in salute as a solitary officer went by.

  Wryly I wondered how, after my romantic ideas of training to be a

  pilot, I came to be defending the Grand Hotel at Scar borough against

  all comers. No doubt there was something comic in the situation and I

  suppose that was what): set my mind wandering in the direction of

  Farmer Bailes' dog, Shep. .

  Mr Bailes' little place was situated about half way along High burn

  Village and to get into the farmyard you had to walk twenty yards or so

  between five.g t walls. On the left was the neighbouring house, on the

  right the front garden ~l' s farm. In this garden Shep lurked for most

  of the day. - ~4 was a huge dog, much larger than the average collie.

  In fact I am convinced] part Alsatian because though he had a luxuriant

  black and white coat] mo~ something significant in the massive limbs

  and in the noble brown] Shaded head with its upstanding ears. He was

  quite different from the stringy little animals I saw on my daily

  round.

  As I walked between the walls my mind was already in the byre, just

  visible at the far end of the yard. Because one of the Bailes cows,

  Rose by name, had the kind of obscure digestive ailment which

  interferes with veterinary surgeons' sleep. They are so difficult to

  diagnose. This animal had begun to grunt and go off her milk two days

  ago and when I had seen her yesterday I had flitted from one

  possibility to the other. Could be a wire. But the fourth stomach was

  contracting well and there were plenty of rumen al sounds. Also she

  was eating a little hay in a half-hearted way.

  Could it be impaction . ..? Or a partial torsion of the gut ...?

  There was abdominal pain without a doubt and that nagging temperature

  of 102.5 - that was damn like a wire. Of course I could settle the

  whole thing by opening the cow up, but Mr Bailes was an old-fashioned

  type and didn't like the idea of my diving into his animal unless I was

  certain of my diagnosis. And I wasn't there was no get ting away from

  that.

  Anyway, I had built her up at the front end so that she was standing

  with her fore feet on a half door and had given her a strong oily

  purgative.

  "Keep the bowels open and trust in God," an elderly colleague had once

  told me. There was a lot in that.

  I was half way down the alley between the walls with the hope bright

  before me that my patient would be improved when from nowhere an

  appalling explosion of sound blasted into my right ear. It was Shep

  again.

  The wall was just the right height for the dog to make a leap and bark

  into the ear of the passers by. It was a favourite gambit of his and I

  had been caught before; but never so successfully as now. My attention

  had been so far away and the dog had timed his jump to a split second

  so that his bark came at the highest point, his teeth only inches from

  my face. And his voice befitted his size, a great bull bellow surging

  from the depths of his powerful chest and booming from his gaping

  jaws.

  I rose several inches into the air and when I descended, heart

  thumping, head singing, I glared over the wall. But as usual all I saw

  was the hairy form bounding away out of sight round the corner of the

  house.

  That was what puzzled me. Why did he do it? Was he a savage creature

  with evil designs on me or was it his idea of a joke? I never got near

  enough to him to find out.

  I wasn't in the best of shape to receive bad news and that was what

  awaited me in the byre. I had only to look at the farmer's face to

  know that the cow was worse.

  "Ah reckon she's got a stoppage," Mr Bailes muttered gloomily.

  I gritted my teeth. The entire spectrum of abdominal disorders were

  lumped as 'stoppages' by the older race of farmers.

  "The oil hasn't worked, then?"

  "Nay, she's nob but pass in' little hard bits. It's a proper stoppage,

  ah tell you."

  "Right, Mr Bailes," I said with a twisted smile.

  "We'll have to try something stronger I brought in from my car the

  gastric lavage outfit I loved so well and which has so sadly

  disappeared from my life. The long rubber stomach tube, the wo