Eeking Out a Living

"If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember, this whole thing started with a dream and a mouse."


(Courtesy of epiclol.com)

Or so Walt Disney said. And in many cases I have to agree with him, especially the mouse part...because in my case the mouse part's connected to the house part, and the house part's connected to, well, the stuff of nightmares.



This led to a couple of notable discoveries, the development of previously unknown skills, and, after almost two decades, a nicely remodeled house.

First the discoveries:

By some accounts the main portion of our house is approaching 140-150 years of age. Another way to look at it is that it's seen the turn of two centuries. Understandably, precious few things retain their original integrity after that many seasons, and, with the exception of the petrified oak beams in the basement which aren't going anywhere in the foreseeable century, the house is among them. My point is, at the time of purchase, the house was something significantly less than mouse-proof. We discovered this when cold weather set in and presumably chilly mousies began migrating in with alarming frequency. Which is to say any more often than never.

The house had been repeatedly remuddled over the years, a fact glaringly in evidence as we undertook our own updating, revitalising, and mouse-proofing projects. We learned pretty quickly that a seemingly simple project inevitably led to the discovery of four more that needed tending to before the original endeavor could be completed, and often not in the usual manner. "Level,"  "plumb,"  and "square" must have been relative terms back in the late 1800's, (as in distantly related and frequently disowned step-cousins.)

This is one reason I came home for lunch on a summer afternoon when the girls were young to find a hole in bathroom wall.
A wall-sized hole.
Looking into the backyard.
It had started  as a simple, smallish, pre-hung window replacement.

Similarly, there was the late October evening during a partial roof reshingle gone awry in the time-management sense when it started to snow. In the dining room.

In retrospect, given the regularity with which we breached the exterior of the house, it's little wonder the wee critters helped themselves indoors on occasion.

(This book by Jennifer Grant, Elizabeth and
Cathy Crown suggests my house-sharing
cats aren't alone.)

The other significant discovery was that my house cats were woefully deficient in the mouse-catching department. How bad were they? They were so inept that if, after significant effort, time, and a complete absence of collaboration, they did manage to nab a furry grey beastie, they subsequently lost it. I should note, they never "lost" them in easily accessible places. No, my non-lethal felines virtually invited them to reside in places like the lazy boy rocking chair. I know this because they were astonishingly more adept at mouse-watching than mouse-catching, sort of like pointers instead of retrievers.                                         


Which is what led to the perfection of a previously unsuspected skill set. Perhaps because I am acutely aware of the potential for disease and the designated animal professional in the family, (not to mention vermin-averse), I became the best mouser in the house. I do not especially relish the title but somebody's gotta do it. In my case, 'it' initially involved a towel placed over the furry interloper who was then transported across the street to a more rodent-suitable field. (Color me guilty of residential profiling if you must but I make no apology for the fact that they were all summarily relegated to the corn field entirely without due process.) By the time my youngest daughter woke me one morning with a shriek and the words, "Mom, I need your mouse-catching skills," and I walked out the door with the mouse less than 30 seconds later I had graduated to merely lifting them by the tail...saved on laundry!

Thankfully, it's been awhile and with a bit of luck my mouse-nabbing endeavors have ended.
Anyone interested in a nicely remodeled and mouse-proofed 3-bedroom ranch in the country??

Weird Things That Worked



(Courtesy of moxie.mislitter.com)

Two of the the best aspects of practicing veterinary medicine are the interesting variety of cases and creative options for treatment one has. Unlike human medics who, whether for fear of liability or lack of opportunity and creativity, seem rarely to deviate from well-tested and prescribed standards of care, veterinarians frequently venture off the beaten path. This isn't to say we don't have standard treatments and well-documented outcomes, but many of us have them in addition to a bag of tricks and a toy box full of improvised tools.

I've already written about Bea the Standardbred trotting filly and re-purposing concrete rebar as a splint. On the other end of the weight spectrum, I've reshaped a wire clothes hanger to stabilize a tibial fracture on a chihuahua puppy. And many a syringe casing sliced in half length-wise and custom-padded has been applied to an avian leg fracture. Animals have a remarkable ability to heal with a little help and enforced rest of the injury.

Some of my most curious cases have involved what are politely termed dietary indiscretions. Other descriptions include "garbageitis" or the shocked, "She ate WHAT ?




(Courtesy of Mydogatewhat?)

In particular, there was the cocker spaniel known for eating rugs. Things usually passed uneventfully but unfortunately one of her taste tests involved a floor covering with very sturdy jute backing. Apparently undeterred by the toughness of her snack, she doggedly persisted and managed to ingest a significant amount of  rug before discovery. However, the jute proved superior in the end because she required surgery.

And that's where it got interesting.

Foreign body removal is a somewhat routine endeavor in canine medicine. Usually, the offending material is located, a minimal incision is made to retrieve the object(s) which can usually be 'milked' along to the opening, and some portion of the gastrointestinal tract is sutured back together. Occasionally the non-food item will cause enough injury that removing a portion of bowel is necessary. This is a more involved procedure with additional risks for infection and poor healing but still frequently encountered. 

(Spay hook, courtesy of studydroid.com)

This little cocker was another case altogether. She'd eaten so much rug that over a foot of her small intestine was so tightly packed with a mesh work of fiber that it wasn't moving in the least. Despite being somewhat distended, the bowel looked healthy and I really didn't want to do a resection. I also didn't want to make multiple incisions along that much bowel. Then I spied the spay hook in my surgical pack. Long and narrow with a smooth hook on the end, it was the perfect instrument to snake up and down the small intestine from one central incision without risk of damaging the intestinal lining.

The moral of the story: High fiber diets aren't always ideal.

Brenna the Golden Retriever had an interesting resolution too. This was one of those attempts to prevent significant additional expense and also due to a dietary "oops." Brenna liked to eat rocks.

(Have I mentioned my doubts about the intellectual capacity of some canines yet?)

She'd been a bit off of late and given her history an abdominal x-ray seemed in order. We saw what looked like pebbles in various stages of transit, none of them seemed large enough to cause a problem. The medium-sized fish hook in her stomach was a different story.

We discussed referring Brenna for endoscopy to remove the fish hook, less invasive than abdominal surgery but still pricey. Watching and waiting was a nail-biting option and has been known to lead to a good outcome but if the hook left the stomach the chance of it perforating the intestines was a concern. That left abdominal surgery or inducing vomiting, both of which had drawbacks. Anesthetic risk, healing time, the possibility of infection and expense of surgery versus the hook lodging in and possibly perforating the esophagus, which would be much more complicated to manage. As we discussed our options Brenna sat wagging her tail, happy to be off the x-ray table and sniffing around for a treat.

There was the answer to the dilemma. She really would eat anything.

After a little more discussion, I mixed up a slurry of canned food and water, soaked several pieces of roll cotton in the resulting slop and offered them to Brenna who gleefully gulped them down. She completely obliged my plan to feed her enough cotton to engage the fish hook. Brenna was perhaps a little less delighted a few minutes later when she vomited into a large and strategically placed basin, but finding the fish hook in the resulting mess was cause for the human participants to rejoice. I used this same technique a few years later with another dog who'd eaten a disposable razor, blade and all. Curiously, the second dog was also a Golden Retriever.

Sometimes what goes down must come up.

Cat...Got Your Tongue?

For a  rural veterinarian emergency calls are often part of the job. It's not unusual for my phone to ring late at night or on a Sunday afternoon. However, after 23 years in practice even the emergency calls fall into a few categories and I usually know before I see them what to expect and what I'll need to do to ensure a good outcome.

(Courtesy of collegehumor.com)

There are the various traumatic injuries of  hit-by-car cases, the vomiting and diarrhea for a week that becomes an emergency after midnight, seizure disorders, urinary blockages, and c-sections.

The other consistent feature of emergency calls is that if they aren't horses, they're dogs. For horses, it's typically colic or fence wounds. I attribute this to the well-known fact that domestic horses are accidents looking for a place to happen, and they're very diligent in their search. Horses can get hurt in a padded room, which is why they recover from anesthesia whenever possible wearing a helmet, under close supervision and in a padded room.
(If you think I'm exaggerating or the picture above is an anomaly, check out the stories on this Horse Forum site, which has an entire heading entitled "Stuck in the fence.")

Dogs are just prone to doing dumb things like chasing large vehicles, eating all manner of things they shouldn't, and fighting fang and claw for a scrap of food or patch of turf. 

In most cases, the cause of the injury or illness is obvious.

So Daphne's emergency call was especially unusual. Daphne is a young adult barn cat. She's one of the lucky ones, carefully supervised and well-cared for despite her outdoor habitation. It was that careful supervision that occasioned an emergency call one spring weekend. Her owner, Joanne Robb, was on the way through the barn for a horseback ride and, as was her habit, checked on her Barn Lions. She noticed Daphne's tongue, "hanging out." From the sound of her voice I knew it was serious and we agreed to meet at the clinic as soon as possible. A quick exam revealed that Daphne's tongue had multiple lacerations, the most serious of which irregularly transected 1/4 to 1/3 of the tip, leaving it attached on the left side by a few millimeters. Her owner was still shaky from concern and adrenalin, the carrier was a bloody mess, and although certain it wasn't life-threatening, I was completely puzzled as to the cause of the injury. Daphne, inscrutably Sphinxish, purred.

Ya gotta love barn cats!

In addition to the most serious full-thickness laceration, there was another sharp, v-shaped wound further back on her tongue. It looked as if it had been pulled into a piece of machinery, something no self-respecting cat would ever allow.

(Courtesy of Icanhascheezburger)

What was clear was that Daphne needed some reconstructive surgery. The challenge was to debride the wound while preserving blood supply and giving her something she could eat and groom with. I sutured the smaller laceration first, carefully trimmed the damaged right tip and then angled the left edge around front. When I finished, tiny knots studded the top and underside of her tongue but the margins aligned nicely and I was hopeful.

She recovered well from anesthesia despite seeming a bit puzzled to awaken wearing a soft Elizabethan collar to prevent her from licking something rough or pawing at her tongue. The next morning she happily ate her breakfast and seemed so unfazed by the zig-zag of her tongue that I feared she'd work the knots out of the sutures before they were due to dissolve in 10-14 days. Fortunately they held long enough and on recheck she seemed as good as new. Despite a congenial purr she remained mum on the source of her tongue-slashing.

For an interesting look at what a tongue actually does when a cat drinks, see this MIT news story. It may not be what you think.

Adopt a Shelter Cat Month may be past but there are still plenty of cats and kittens at your local adoption center, please consider taking one, (Or three!), home today.