Animals – A day in the life of …

The pager went off at 7.35am. It was a dog with off and on gagging. We met at the clinic at 8.30am and were finished by 9am. I then saw the three small animals booked in, one needed a short anaesthetic for a minor ailment. However, the nurse told me there was a cattle beast salivating and shaking its head that needed seeing and there was the owner of a horse coughing up green stuff that I had to ring and there was a cat with a sore ear that the owner felt needed seeing that day.

So, we admitted the dog and decided I would go first to the cattle beast and the nurse would let the others know I would call when I returned. At that point a call came in, in the opposite direction, for a cow “down and thrashing”. So I headed there first and the nurse would ring the farmer with the salivating, head-shaking steer. This journey involved waiting at the country’s worst intersection. Underway again, the hands-free phone rang. The nurse said there was another farm call, in a different direction, where two heifers needed calving assistance and, while the owner was not too worried, there was a dog urinating blood. Now I was worried about how my ability to meet my obligations was falling apart. I said I would go to the calving after the down and thrashing cow and could she tell the waiting clients what was happening and ask them to seek veterinary help elsewhere if they could not wait.

About this point I heard a siren behind me and I looked ahead for a place to pull over so I could let whoever had more urgent business than me go passed. It was 10.30am. But a police car pulled up behind me. I had no idea what speed I had been travelling at, picking up subliminal cues from around me. I said how busy I was but the officer pointed out that the road was wet, there were a lot of entrances off it people could pull out of, and very close to the road edges were lots off deep ditches that would make any car that strayed into them roll. That was why the speed limit had been reduced to 80km/hr. As I looked back at the deep ditches beside the road I had just travelled I had a vision of a tombstone …“David Haugh, veterinary grunt. Killed In Action 20-7-22.” But I knew no one else would see it as an emergency, first responder tragedy.

As it turned out, only two more calls, which only involved calling farmers, came in after that for the rest of the day. By the time I had seen the thrashing cow, the calving heifers, the steer with photosensitivity, the cat with the sore ear, the dog urinating blood and rung (sometimes repeatedly) the owners of the horse coughing blood, the calf with a broken leg and the cow sick with mastitis, it was almost dark. The dog waiting for the tiny op had long been collected by its owners. I switched to plod mode, put petrol in the car and food in my tank, then went back to the clinic to make a cup of tea, write up histories and accounts, and prepare the three lab samples I had, ready for collection on Monday, then headed home to get sleep, ready to serve the next day. It was 10.20pm.