My Patients Like Treats Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Duncan W. MacVean

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: MacVean, Duncan, author.

  Title: My patients like treats: tales from a house-call veterinarian / Duncan MacVean, DVM.

  Description: New York, New York: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., [2018] | Identifiers: LCCN 2017054935 (print) | LCCN 2017058925 (ebook) | ISBN 9781510725683 (e-book) | ISBN 9781510725676 (hardcover: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781510725683 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: MacVean, Duncan. | Veterinarians—Biography.

  Classification: LCC SF613.M28 (ebook) | LCC SF613.M28 A3 2018 (print) | DDC 636.089092 [B]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017054935

  Cover design by Jane Sheppard

  Cover photograph by iStock

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-2567-6

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-5107-2568-3

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Dedication

  To Cruikshank and Charley, kindred spirits, like two peas in a pod.

  Charley crossed the blessed Rainbow Bridge at 5:30 p.m. on November 3, 2012.

  Cruickshank’s story is yet to be told.

  Contents

  Preface

  I. Dogs and Cats Reign

  1. The Dog with No Teeth

  2. Pussycat, Pussycat

  3. Them

  4. Mr. Grey

  5. He’s Never Done That Before

  6. Hey, You Forgot Something

  7. The Maze

  8. A Dusting Off

  9. Gunshots in the South

  10. Houses on the River

  II. Bats, Rats, and Lizards, Oh My

  11. Mr. Black

  12. Ratty Yes, Batty No

  13. Freddy and Friends

  14. Monster at the End of the Hall

  15. Three Little Pigs

  III. Transitions

  16. The Wailing

  17. Atlantis

  18. Cindy in Heaven

  19. Olympic Rings

  20. The Passage Home

  21. Bad Dog—Good Dog

  IV. Healing Arts

  22. Stork Angels

  23. What’s Wrong, Doc?

  Acknowledgments

  Preface

  “What is your favorite experience?”—a question I am often asked and find difficult to answer. There are animals I’ve tangled with that I would just as soon forget, like the huge dog that mauled me over a mere vaccination. Of course, that was offset by a marvelous pig that listened to opera while I trimmed her nails. Most patients and their people are stories, wonderful stories, even when they are filled with pathos or turn out to be surprisingly bizarre. Like most of life’s stories, truth is many times stranger than fiction.

  My encounters have been rich, warm, humorous, and, at times, sad. It is these adventures, relationships actually, that I have endeavored to tell. The events are real, but names and certain identifying features have been changed so as not to compromise my clients’ privacy. But those of you whom I’ve visited will, no doubt, recognize yourself and recall the events. A couple of chapters are comfortable amalgams of two patients and their people in order to more fully cover the issues involved and for educational purposes. In some situations, I disguised the breed or size of the pet, particularly where the telling may be embarrassing to my client and where nosy neighbors might otherwise figure it out. I retained the accuracy of the dialogue to the best of my ability. Any errors in recollection are mine alone. My remembrances may have been filtered by slight tweaking here and there; but the events, feelings, ambiance, and flavors are all there. Often the meaning of reality is brought into true focus through the lens of storytelling.

  The general sense of how veterinarians do house calls and my own specific approaches are revealed through my stories. Additional details regarding the practice of veterinary medicine and house calls are included in the final chapter.

  How did I begin? After leaving my professorship and academic life at Colorado State University in 1988, I moved back to my hometown of Sacramento, California. Wondering what to do with myself and wanting to refresh my clinical skills, I volunteered at various hospitals in the region. I am most grateful to all the local veterinarians who let me observe, practice my skills, and probe them for knowledge.

  I spent my first three years as a veterinarian working with wildlife in the jungles of Malaysia. My pre-veterinary undergraduate degree was in wildlife conservation, with hands-on capturing and handling many exotic species. One of the doctors who helped me with getting back into clinical medicine and surgery suggested that I start a house-call practice. He pointed out that I could start with minimal financial investment and that my wildlife veterinary experience would be useful in dealing with exotic species and fractious pets. I’ve never regretted this career change, which has provided exciting challenges and variety and has been so rewarding in the people and pets I’ve met.

  I’ve been treating and handing out treats to animals in my house-call practice for over twenty-five years now. These creatures in our care are wondrous. And so are their human companions. Our pets protect us, they work for us, they play with us, and they perform for us. And just as importantly, and in many cases more importantly, they aid our health, both mental and physical. Companions—that is what I endeavor to tell about in this book.

  As companions, these furred, feathered, and scaled species are indeed full members of our families. I’ve always had difficulty calling us “owners.” Owners we are not, any more than we are owners of an adopted child. No, we are responsible for them. We are caretakers.

  Who are the caretakers I’ve encountered in my practice? There is no specific classification I can give them. Most are animal lovers, but not all. True caretakers do love their pets. Most have real empathy for their pets, but not all. Some clients are caretakers by default, such as when parents “inherit” a ten-year-old pet parrot (which might live for another thirty to forty years!) when their child leaves for college. One client received custody, when her ex-husband died, of a twenty-year-old green-winged macaw that could live for another fifty to eighty years—and the parrot didn’t like her.

  Many people assume that the majority of house-call clients are shut-ins or elderly. That was not the case with my clientele.

  My most common clients, no matter what part of town they lived in, were busy working people with several pets, who preferred the efficiency and convenience of having a house call as opposed to hauling the brood, one by one, to a veterinary hospital. They found that, with so many animals averaging out the added fee of a home visit, the cost wasn’t much different from what a hospital would charge for the same services and meds.

  A common visit for me consisted of annual checkup
s for dogs and cats, which included physical examinations and routine vaccinations. It often went like this—

  Pushing my way through the front door so the dog(s) or cat wouldn’t run outside. Dogs and a curious cat sniffing my pant legs and my medical satchel. Some dogs scratching at my bag to get at the treats sequestered there. Skittish cats scurrying away to another room or under some piece of furniture. Questions from kids wanting to listen to heartbeats through my stethoscope. Holding, or restraining, often struggling, to keep a wiggly dog or nervous cat in place so I could inject the vaccines. Often having my client help, and sometimes having to teach how to hold, which might require fetching a dog’s collar or scruff a cat’s loose skin between the shoulder blades. I can’t count the number of times I had to explain how scruffing does not hurt the cat and how natural it is since it is the way momma cats move their kittens around. Doing the exams in a well-lit area (a challenge in homes where the lighting is poor; sometimes I did this out in the backyard if there was still daylight or by flashlight if it was dark). Many times conducting the exams while I knelt or lay down at pet level. Frequently, I got the “While you’re here, Doc, could you also take a look at Peaches? She’s not due for shots, but she’s been scratching at her ears a lot lately.” All of these could happen in a single day’s visits.

  Those types of visits were the more typical. And they could be exciting, even before ringing the doorbell, anticipating what lurked behind the door. Many times the experiences might start out in a typical fashion and then turn out to be a comedy or tragedy or just plain creepy. In the following chapters, I open the door for you to peek in on my world as a traveling vet.

  I

  Dogs and Cats Reign

  “A dog iz the only animal kritter, who luvs yu more than he luvs himself.”

  —Josh Billings

  “Thousands of years ago, cats were worshiped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this.”

  —Terry Pratchett

  1

  The Dog with No Teeth

  One boiling summer day, I was driving to Rio Linda, a small town northwest of Sacramento, on an emergency call to see a dog that was reportedly hemorrhaging from the neck and rump.

  The heat was rising in waves, with houses at the distant end of the road forming shimmering double images reflecting off melting pavement. It is easy to get around town as the streets are sequentially numbered and laid out in a more or less rectangular grid. However, finding a particular address can be a challenge. Many of the houses don’t have numbers on their mailboxes, on the street, or on the houses. Some don’t have mailboxes, and many houses are set back a ways from the road.

  Rio Linda became populated in the 1930s by immigrants from midwestern and southern Dust Bowl states. Advertisements promised rich California farmland. The migrants arrived only to find that the soil was a mere two- to six-inch veneer over impenetrable hardpan, in which only weeds and a rare stunted tree could survive. Even so, these rugged latter-day pioneers erected homes and raised families, forming a colony that some called poor white trash—but actually was a proud, tenacious people struggling to provide for themselves and their families. They built their small, handcrafted homes out of what was available and put down their roots in the hardpan.

  Land and housing in the area are still among the least expensive in the state, partly because of the soil, frequent flooding due to overflowing creeks, and lack of a significant tax base. Some homes are upscale; most are not. Many of the residents are would-be farmers with small acreage, housing livestock, horses, chickens, and the usual cats and dogs.

  I slowed down as I came to each house that didn’t have an easily visible address. My sudden slowing to a crawl as I strained to make out a faded mailbox number upset a fellow in a pickup behind me. The driver honked, but as I didn’t speed up, he took out his irritation at this slowpoke by honking and spinning wheels past me, giving me the ol’ finger, and yelling some profanity I didn’t care to make out.

  Just as I was getting a headache trying to figure out the numbers, I found the place, sitting between houses reading 1640 and 1680. Yep, 1660 it must be.

  I pulled into the dirt driveway, up to a gray prime-patched Mustang on blocks and an engine hanging on a hook from a pulley in front of a doorless garage. Some chickens scratched in the driveway, clucking in satisfaction at pecking a bug or piece of corn while others squawked out back of the garage. The air was scented with a confusing mixture of sweet bird feed and sour grease. All manner of car carcasses were corralled inside the corrugated metal walls of the garage, an obvious add-on to the ’30s vintage wood-frame house. A workbench lined the wood wall that was the north end of the house. Handy, well-used workman’s tools were scattered over the dark, oily surface of the bench.

  To my right, the front yard was surrounded by a five-foot-high chain-link fence. Some grass, mostly bare dirt. A stunted Sacramento cottonwood tree stood on the street side of the yard. It was the only shade. The cottonwood was shedding, providing white flocks of floating floss to form snowy drifts along the fence and to land like dander on all that came near.

  I braced as I stepped out of the comfort of my air-conditioned car into the oven outdoors. Zipping up my smock and grabbing my medical bag out of the backseat, I stepped around the Mustang and turned toward the gate. Caution had taught me to approach slowly and wait until I was sure the way was not guarded by a “nice” dog. Sometimes I’ve entered a yard where the caretaker has assured me how nice the dog is that I was coming to see, only to be greeted by a snarling, slobbering mass of canine muscle looking more like a creature out of a movie like Alien. Other times, it has been the “other” dog, the one not mentioned but sharing the same premises.

  Out of the front door of the slatted-frame house ran a barefoot woman in a blue and white tank top and a thin pink skirt that tightly snugged her trim body. As she quickly approached, I noticed emblazoned across her bosom an emblem denoting the event of the year in Rio Linda—the Little League parade, picnic, and festivities heralding the initiation of the season of team play.

  She was in her twenties or early thirties, tall, maybe five-ten, waving her arms above her head, shaking.

  “Oh, Doc, ah’m so glad y’all ’s heah at last. My dawg is bleedin’ somthin’ terr’ble.”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Dennis, we’ll see if we can just fix him up fine.” Inhaling deeply, trying to find something personal to comment on to make connection, “By the way, I like your accent. Where are you from?”

  She seemed to settle at this. She shook my hand while opening the creaking gate that could have used a little WD-40. Her pretty face visibly relaxed, dark brown eyes dancing, a wide smile lit up between her high cheekbones like a sun breaking through a storm cloud. “Well, thank ye. Ah’m from Tenn’ssee, up in the Noaweast hilly paht.”

  The line of her lips hardly concealed a straight row of teeth with a few gaps that winded an occasional whistle between certain words. She started telling me her account, assisted by Italian-like hand animation. Her Alaskan malamute, Randy, was in the front yard that morning when she came outside to throw some corn in the driveway for the chickens. “He’s jus’ sittin’ thar, blood all ov’r his nick, and sittin’ in his haunches in blood. I grab ’is collar and yanked ’im insahde t’ th’ kitchin, ’n washed his nick and rear end. He still got blood on’ im, Doc. Ya gotta do somthin’.”

  The wooden boards of the stairs to the front porch were loose, some warped, and a few boards were missing. The white paint was faded and cracked; the curtain in the porch window to the right of the screen door was fluttering out through a break in the glass. A standing fan was whirring like a propeller beyond the curtain. Beside the fan was a couch that was sagging with age and comfort in what looked like a living room area. Through the torn screen door that was flaked with fluffy white cotton, I could see a straight hallway down to what looked like another screen door at the back of the house. Light shined on the dark wood floor. Framed pictures hung straight and orderly on dark walls
.

  “Bring Randy out here on the lawn where it is well lit. I should be able to see his wounds real good out here.”

  She ducked inside for a few seconds and then appeared on the porch, bent over, holding the malamute by his collar. She dragged him across the porch like a mop, down the stairs, and onto the grassy part of the yard. “Now y’all sit ’n mind th’ doc. He’s heah t’ help ya.”

  With that, she let go, and the dog just sat there, long, thick, sleek gray coat and panting with tongue drooping out. Clean teeth, two or three years old, ears erect, steel eyes attentive.

  I looked Randy over and palpated his body, feeling for swellings and wet spots. There were two streaks of blood staining the fur about halfway up the front of his neck. I couldn’t detect anything out of place or abnormal on any other part of the body. Lifting him up from his sitting position, I saw a smudge of red on his rump but didn’t detect any wounds there. I peeked under his belly and tail. Intact male. No injuries underneath.

  “Mrs. Dennis, I’m going to get my electric razor out of the car to shave his neck and take a look at the wounds. All I’ve found so far is blood on his neck. Maybe the smear of blood on his rump is just blood that fell to the ground that he sat on. Do you have an electric outlet nearby that I can plug into? And can you get me a pan or bucket of tap water?”

  “M’be ya kin use the lahght cord from the grahj my hubby uses t’ work on his cahrs.” Then she ducked inside the house for the water.

  I retrieved the electric razor from my materials-and-supplies box in the trunk. I took the extension cord leading up to the frame of the Mustang, plugged it in, and took it through the gate as far as the cord let me.

  She came out shortly with steaming water. I told her, “Good. Set th’ bucket over thar next t’ the fence.” I blushed. Dern, I was beginning to sound like her. My internal dialogue flurried through my skull. No, not mocking, my mind defends, just connecting with her through identifying language, you know. Oh, crap, rebuts my heart, you just blurted it out. Be yourself, man. All right, I got caught up in the middle of the colorful language of the moment. Not so bad.