All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot
I towelled myself, put on my jacket and gathered up my bottle of antiseptic and the tube of cream which had served me so well.
Mr. Kitson preceded me along the stable and on the way out he glanced over the door in the corner.
“By gaw, she’s goin’ fast,” he grunted.
I looked over his shoulder into the gloom. The panting had stopped and was replaced by slow, even respirations. The eyes were closed. The sheep was anaesthetised. She would die in peace.
“Yes,” I said. “She’s definitely sinking. I don’t think it will be very long now.” I couldn’t resist a parting shaft. “You’ve lost this ewe and that lamb back there. I think I could have saved both of them for you if you’d given me a chance.”
Maybe my words got through to Mr. Kitson, because I was surprised to be called back to the farm a few days later to a ewe which had obviously suffered very little interference.
The animal was in a field close to the house and she was clearly bursting with lambs; so round and fat she could hardly waddle. But she looked bright and healthy.
“There’s a bloody mix-up in there,” Mr. Kitson said morosely. “Ah could feel two heads and God only knows how many feet. Didn’t know where the ’ell I was.”
“But you didn’t try very hard?”
“Nay, never tried at all.”
Well, we were making progress. As the farmer gripped the sheep round the neck I knelt behind her and dipped my hands in the bucket. For once it was a warm morning. Looking back, my memories of lambing times have been of bitter winds searing the grass of the hill pastures, of chapped hands, chafed arms, gloves, scarves and cold-nipped ears. For years after I left Glasgow I kept waiting for the balmy early springs of western Scotland. After thirty years I am still waiting and it has begun to dawn on me that it doesn’t happen that way in Yorkshire.
But this morning was one of the exceptions. The sun blazed from a sky of soft blue, there was no wind but a gentle movement of the air rolled the fragrance of the moorland flowers and warm grass over and around me as I knelt there.
And I had my favourite job in front of me. I almost chuckled as I fished around inside the ewe. There was all the room in the world, everything was moist and fresh and unspoiled, and it was child’s play to fit the various jigsaws together. In about thirty seconds I had a lamb wriggling on the grass, in a few moments more a second, then a third and finally to my delight I reached away forward and found another little cloven foot and whisked it out into the world.
“Quadruplets!” I cried happily, but the farmer didn’t share my enthusiasm.
“Nowt but a bloody nuisance,” he muttered. “She’d be far better wi’ just two.” He paused and gave me a sour look. “Any road, ah reckon there wasn’t no need to call ye. I could’ve done that job meself.”
I looked at him sadly from my squatting position. Sometimes in our job you feel you just can’t win. If you take too long you’re no good, if you’re too quick the visit wasn’t necessary. I have never quite subscribed to the views of a cynical old colleague who once adjured me: “Never make a lambing look easy. Hold the buggers in for a few minutes if necessary,” but at times I felt he had a point.
Anyway, I had my own satisfaction in watching the four lambs. So often I had pitied these tiny creatures in their entry into an uncharitable world, sometimes even of snow and ice, but today it was a joy to see them trying to struggle to their feet under the friendly sun, their woolly coats already drying rapidly. Their mother, magically deflated, was moving among them in a bemused manner as though she couldn’t quite believe what she saw. As she nosed and licked them her deep-throated chuckles were answered by the first treble quaverings of her family. I was listening, enchanted, to this conversation when Mr. Kitson spoke up.
“There’s t’ewe you lambed t’other day.”
I looked up and there indeed she was, trotting proudly past, her lamb close at her flank.
“Ah yes, she looks fine,” I said. That was good to see but my attention was caught by something else. I pointed across the grass.
“That ewe away over there…” As a rule all sheep look alike to me but there was something about this one I recognised…a loss of wool from her back, a bare strip of skin stretched over the jutting ridge of her spinal column…surely I couldn’t be mistaken.
The farmer followed my pointing finger. “Aye, that’s t’awd lass that was laid in the stable last time you were here.” He turned an expressionless gaze on me. “The one you told me to get Mallock to fetch.”
“But…but…she was dying!” I blurted out.
The corner of Mr. Kitson’s mouth twitched upwards in what must have been the nearest possible approach to a smile. “Well that’s what you tellt me, young feller.” He hunched his shoulders. “Said she ’adn’t long to go, didn’t you?”
I had no words to offer. I just gaped at him. I must have been the picture of bewilderment and it seemed the farmer was puzzled too because he went on.
“But I’ll tell tha summat. Ah’ve been among sheep all me life but ah’ve never seen owt like it. That ewe just went to sleep.”
“Is that so?”
“Aye, went to sleep, ah tell you and she stayed sleepin’ for two days!”
“She slept for two days?”
“She did, ah’m not jokin’, nor jestin’. Ah kept goin’ into t’stable but she never altered. Lay there peaceful as you like all t’first day, then all t’second, then when I went in on t’third morning she was standin’ there lookin’ at me and ready for some grub.”
“Amazing!” I got to my feet. “I must have a look at her.”
I really wanted to see what had become of that mass of inflammation and tumefaction under her tail and I approached her carefully, jockeying her bit by bit into the bottom corner of the field. There we faced each other for a few tense moments as I tried a few feints and she responded with nimble sidesteps; then as I made my final swoop to catch her fleece she eluded me effortlessly and shot past me with a thundering of hooves. I gave chase for twenty yards but it was too hot and Wellingtons aren’t the ideal gear for running. In any case I have long held the notion that if a vet can’t catch his patient there’s nothing much to worry about.
And as I walked back up the field a message was tapping in my brain. I had discovered something, discovered something by accident. That ewe’s life had been saved not by medicinal therapy but simply by stopping her pain and allowing nature to do its own job of healing. It was a lesson I have never forgotten; that animals confronted with severe continuous pain and the terror and shock that goes with it will often retreat even into death, and if you can remove that pain amazing things can happen. It is difficult to explain rationally but I know that it is so.
By the time I had got back to Mr. Kitson the sun was scorching the back of my neck and I could feel a trickle of sweat under my shirt. The big man was still watching the ewe which had finished its gallop and was cropping the grass contentedly.
“Ah can’t get over it,” he murmured, scratching the thin bristle on his jaw. “Two whole days and never a move.” He turned to me and his eyes widened.
“Ah’ll tell tha, young man, you’d just think she’d been drugged!”
31
I FOUND IT DIFFICULT to get Mr. Kitson’s ewe out of my mind but I had to make the effort because while all the sheep work was going on the rest of the practice problems rolled along unabated. One of these concerned the Flaxtons’ Poodle, Penny.
Penny’s first visit to the surgery was made notable by the attractiveness of her mistress. When I stuck my head round the waiting room door and said “Next please,” Mrs. Flaxton’s little round face with its shining tight cap of blue-black hair seemed to illumine the place like a beacon. It is possible that the effect was heightened by the fact that she was sitting between fifteen stone Mrs. Barmby who had brought her canary to have its claws clipped and old Mr. Spence who was nearly ninety and had called round for some flea powder for his cat but there was no doubt she was
And it wasn’t just that she was pretty; there was a round-eyed, innocent appeal about her and she smiled all the time. Penny, sitting on her knee, seemed to be smiling from under the mound of brown curls on her forehead.
In the consulting room I lifted the little dog on to the table. “Well now, what’s the trouble?”
“She has a touch of sickness and diarrhoea,” Mrs. Flaxton replied. “It started yesterday.”
“I see.” I turned and lifted the thermometer from the trolley. “Has she had a change of food?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Is she inclined to eat rubbish when she’s out?”
Mrs. Flaxton shook her head. “No, not as a rule. But I suppose even the nicest dog will have a nibble at a dead bird or something horrid like that now and then.” She laughed and Penny laughed back at her.
“Well she has a slightly raised temperature but she seems bright enough.” I put my hand round the dog’s middle. “Let’s have a feel at your tummy, Penny.”
The little animal winced as I gently palpated the abdomen, and there was a tenderness throughout the stomach and intestines.
“She has gastroenteritis,” I said. “But it seems fairly mild and I think it should clear up quite soon. I’ll give you some medicine for her and you’d better keep her on a light diet for a few days.”
“Yes, I’ll do that. Thank you very much,” Mrs. Flaxton’s smile deepened as she patted her dog’s head. She was about twenty three and she and her young husband had only recently come to Darrowby. He was a representative of one of the big agricultural firms which supplied meal and cattle cake to the farms and I saw him occasionally on my rounds. Like his wife, and indeed his dog, he gave off an ambience of eager friendliness.
I sent Mrs. Flaxton off with a bottle of bismuth, kaolin and chlorodyne mixture which was one of our cherished treatments. The little dog trotted down the surgery steps, tail wagging, and I really didn’t expect any more trouble.
Three days later, however, Penny was in the surgery again. She was still vomiting and the diarrhoea had not taken up in the least.
I got the dog on the table again and carried out a further examination but there was nothing significant to see. She had now had five days of this weakening condition but though she had lost a bit of her perkiness she still looked remarkably bright. The Toy Poodle is small but tough and very game and this one wasn’t going to let anything get her down easily.
But I still didn’t like it. She couldn’t go on like this. I decided to alter the treatment to a mixture of carbon and astringents which had served me well in the past.
“This stuff looks a bit messy,” I said as I gave Mrs. Flaxton a powder box full of the black granules. “But I have had good results with it. She’s still eating, isn’t she, so I should mix it in her food.”
“Oh thank you.” She gave me one of her marvellous smiles as she put the box in her bag and I walked along the passage with her to the door. She had left her pram at the foot of the steps and I knew before I looked under the hood what kind of baby I would find. Sure enough the chubby face on the pillow gazed at me with round friendly eyes and then split into a delighted grin.
They were the kind of people I liked to see but as they moved off down the street I hoped for Penny’s sake that I wouldn’t be seeing them for a long time. However, it was not to be. A couple of days later they were back and this time the Poodle was showing signs of strain. As I examined her she stood motionless and dead-eyed with only the occasional twitch of her tail as I stroked her head and spoke to her.
“I’m afraid she’s just the same, Mr. Herriot,” her mistress said. “She’s not eating much now and whatever she does goes straight through her. And she has a terrific thirst—always at her water bowl and then she brings it back.”
I nodded. “I know. This inflammation inside her gives her a raging desire for water and of course the more she drinks the more she vomits. And this is terribly weakening.”
Again I changed the treatment. In fact over the next few days I ran through just about the entire range of available drugs. I look back with a wry smile at the things I gave that little dog; powdered epicacuanha and opium, sodium salicylate and tincture of camphor, even way-out exotics like decoction of haematoxylin and infusion of caryophyllum which thank heavens have been long forgotten. I might have done a bit of good if I had had access to a gut-active antibiotic like neomycin but as it was I got nowhere.
I was visiting Penny daily as she was unfit to bring to the surgery. I had her on a diet of arrowroot and boiled milk but that, like my medicinal treatment, achieved nothing. And all the time the little dog was slipping away.
The climax came about three o’clock one morning. As I lifted the bedside phone Mr. Flaxton’s voice, with a tremor in it, came over the line.
“I’m terribly sorry to get you out of your bed at this hour, Mr. Herriot, but I wish you’d come round to see Penny.”
“Why, is she worse?”
“Yes, and she’s…well…she’s suffering now, I’m afraid. You saw her this afternoon didn’t you? Well since then she’s been drinking and vomiting and this diarrhoea running away from her all the time till she’s about at the far end. She’s just lying in her basket crying. I’m sure she’s in great pain.”
“Right, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Oh thank you.” He paused for a moment. “And Mr. Herriot…you’ll come prepared to put her down won’t you?”
My spirits, never very high at that time in the morning, plummeted to the depths. “As bad as that, is it?”
“Well honestly we can’t bear to see her. My wife is so upset…I don’t think she can stand any more.”
“I see.” I hung up the phone and threw the bedclothes back with a violence which brought Helen wide awake. Being disturbed in the small hours was one of the crosses a vet’s wife had to bear, but normally I crept out as quietly as I could. This time, however, I stamped about the bedroom, dragging on my clothes and muttering to myself; and though she must have wondered what this latest crisis meant she wisely watched me in silence until I turned out the light and left.
I had not far to go. The Flaxtons lived in one of the new bungalows on the Brawton Road less than a mile away. The young couple, in their dressing gowns, let me into the kitchen and before I reached the dog basket in the corner I could hear Penny’s whimperings. She was not lying comfortably curled up, but on her chest, head forward obviously acutely distressed. I put my hands under her and lifted her and she was almost weightless. A Toy Poodle in its prime is fairly insubstantial but after her long illness Penny was like a bedraggled little piece of thistledown, her curly brown coat wet and soiled by vomit and diarrhoea.
Mrs. Flaxton’s smile for once was absent. I could see she was keeping back the tears as she spoke.
“It really would be the kindest thing…”
“Yes…yes…” I replaced the tiny animal in her basket and crouched over her, chin in hand. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
But still I didn’t move but stayed, squatting there, staring down in disbelief at the evidence of my failure. This dog was only two years old—a lifetime of running and jumping and barking in front of her; all she was suffering from was gastroenteritis and now I was going to extinguish the final spark in her. It was a bitter thought that this would be just about the only positive thing I had done right from the start
A weariness swept over me that was not just due to the fact that I had been snatched from sleep. I got to my feet with the slow stiff movements of an old man and was about to turn away when I noticed something about the little animal. She was on her chest again, head extended, mouth open, tongue lolling as she panted. There was something there I had seen before somewhere…that posture…and the exhaustion, pain and shock…it slid almost imperceptibly into my sleepy brain that she looked exactly like Mr. Kitson’s ewe in its dark corner. A different species, yes, but all the other things were there.
The young couple looked at me doubtfully for a few moments then it was the husband who spoke.
“Don’t you think she has been through enough, Mr. Herriot?”
“She has, yes she has.” I ran a hand through my rumpled uncombed hair. “But this won’t cause her any more distress. She won’t know a thing about it.”
When they still hesitated I went on. “I would very much like to try it—it’s just an idea I’ve got.”
They looked at each other, then Mrs. Flaxton nodded. “All right, go ahead, but this will be the last, won’t it?”
Out into the night air to my car for the same bottle of nembutal and a very small dose for the little creature. I went back to my bed with the same feeling I had had about the ewe; come what may there would be no more suffering.
Next morning Penny was still stretched peacefully on her side and when, about four o’clock in the afternoon, she showed signs of awakening I repeated the injection.
Like the ewe she slept for forty eight hours and when she finally did stagger to her feet she did not head immediately for her water bowl as she had done for so many days. Instead she made her feeble way outside and had a walk round the garden.
From then on, recovery, as they say in the case histories, was uneventful. Or as I would rather write it, she wonderfully and miraculously just got better and never ailed another thing throughout her long life.
Helen and I used to play tennis on the grass courts near the Darrowby cricket ground. So did the Flaxtons and they always brought Penny along with them. I used to look through the wire at her romping with other dogs and later with the Flaxtons’ fast growing young son and I marvelled.