The Broken-Eared

This is an installment in the ongoing Vet Tech Tales - Part 2 series.

~~~

“Animal Clinic. How may I help you?”

I always dreaded answering the phone when I was covering for Joan, our receptionist. What If the caller asked a question I didn’t know the answer to? I couldn’t very well refer every inquiry to one of the vets. What if I gave someone the wrong information?

My heart sped a little faster at the pause on the other end. Someone trying to figure out how to ask a question never boded well.

“Yeah, um, I was wondering … do you guys treat Dobermans?”

Perhaps I’d misheard. “Dobermans?” I repeated.

“Yeah, ‘cause, you know, some vets I’ve called say they won’t treat them.”

I blinked. That was news to me. “Well, we see them all the time here. What are you needing?”

“His shots.”

I took down the caller’s name, Rick Juarez, and set up a time. Only after I’d scheduled the appointment and we’d hung up did I stop to think maybe it was this particular Doberman other vets refused to treat. Maybe it was vicious toward other dogs. Maybe it had threatened a staff member or two at other clinics.

As the appointment time approached, I warned the vets about my fears. We steeled ourselves for a potential hostile encounter.

I happened to be at the reception desk when Rick came in. Alone. Without his dog. He scouted the room, seeing only one elderly woman with a Pekingese tucked away safely in a crate. He seemed satisfied and approached the desk to fill out the new-client paperwork. While he was occupied, I stole a surreptitious peek out the window to see if I could catch a glimpse of the dog in his car. No luck.

Rick handed back the completed papers. “I’ll go get Rocky.”

I nodded. While Rick headed outside I ducked into the back to get my coworker, Charla -- just in case. She grabbed a roll of gauze we could use as a makeshift muzzle at need and followed me back to the reception desk.

The cowbell tied to the door frame jangled and Rocky lunged into the room, straining against his collar. When he saw us, his nails scrabbled wildly against the slick tile as he fought the leash to reach us.

Charla and I looked at each other, daring the other to be first to laugh. The black-and-tan monster confronting us couldn’t have been more than 10 weeks old. The puppy yipped in frustration. We knelt beside him to share the kisses the gangly youngster was so eager to give.

In hindsight, Rick may well have heard that some vets would not crop ears – a practice many were ethically against – and assumed that extended to not seeing the breed at all. As it was, Rocky returned to us a couple of weeks later to have his ears reshaped from hound-dog floppy to stiff-soldier erect. 

Rocky’s was the first ear crop I ever assisted with. Later, I would do ear crops myself. Later, there would be many things I did – neuters, dentistry, declaws – that owners never realized weren’t being done by the vet. The laws in Texas at the time stipulated only that treatment and non-invasive surgeries needed to be supervised by a vet, not performed by one. And that was generally interpreted to mean a vet needed to simply be on the premises, not necessarily in the same room.   

Even later, there were many things I refused to do because it finally became clear to me they were not in an animal’s best interest. Ear cropping was one. But until Rocky I had never seen it done.

Once Rocky was sedated, I shaved his ears and lathered them with disinfectant. Dr. Norris marked the cut lines using mainly judgment as his go-by. Then, just as you’d cut a dress pattern from a piece of cloth, he cut the ears to shape. I winced as a thin stream of blood spurted into the air from a wayward bleeder. Using a small pair of hemostats, Norris quickly clamped the bleeder off then began the tedious process of sewing together the edges of the first ear – up one side, down the other, repeat on the second ear. Meanwhile I stood by and sopped up the blood pooling along the unsewn cut lines.

Even well-shaped and well-cut Doberman ears do not immediately stand on their own. The cartilage has to be trained to hold the ears erect. After the ears were sewn, Dr. Norris cut two 2-inch swaths from a thick roll of cotton and handed me one along with a roll of adhesive bandage tape. I followed his lead in wrapping the cotton swath tightly, producing a stiff cylinder about 5 inches long and an inch in diameter. We then tucked the bottoms of the cylindrical forms into Rocky’s ear canals and wrapped the pinnas – the loose flaps of ear – around each form, using gauze to protect the still-raw edges before taping the ear from base to tip around the form. Pieces of tape stretched between the ears held the ears up and parallel to one another at the top of the head.

Rocky would have to wear this helmet gear for 2 weeks before we cut it off to remove the stitches. Then we’d insert new forms and re-tape his ears, which he’d wear for another 4-6 weeks barring infection or an over-active pup scratching or rubbing the contraption off.

When Rick came to pick up Rocky the next morning I noticed the bags under his eyes and an overall haggard look about him. I lifted an eyebrow. “Long night?”

“Yeah. Working.”

“A night shift? That sucks.”

He laughed. “Things could be worse.”

“Maybe. Where do you work?”

“Chippendale’s.”

I knew I was staring. I couldn’t help it. Chippendale’s was a male strip club, the first to open – and only recently at that – in this conservative city of a couple of hundred thousand.  I was barely old enough to get into Chippendale’s doors and here was one of the strippers right in front of me – in the flesh, so to speak.

Only he didn’t look like what I thought one of the strippers might. He had a compact and fit body, that much was true. And his face, with its beginnings of a 5 o’clock shadow, certainly wouldn’t scare anyone away. But when I tried to imagine him rocking it away onstage for a group of screaming women my imagination wasn’t up to the task. Rick just looked normal – and tired. Not like a fantasy guy at all.

It could also be he was pulling my leg. He could just as easily have been a stock boy in a 24-hour store or an attendant for an all-night service station. Maybe “Chippendale’s” was just his come-on line.

“So what’s the tab for Rocky?”

 “Um—” I returned my attention to the business at hand. “Seventy-five dollars.”

Rick nodded, then reached into the deep pocket of his loose-fit jeans and pulled out a wad of bills. All ones.

“Sorry.” He grinned a little sheepishly as he began counting, smoothing out the length-wise creases as he laid the bills on the countertop.

Before that moment it had never occurred to me how strippers spent those tips tucked into their G-strings.

Back in the kennel, l removed a decidedly unhappy Rocky from his cage. I couldn’t be sure if Rocky was more depressed over having been abandoned into our care or being forced to wear the equivalent of a beanie cap – or braces – in public. Even my sugar-sweet “good puppy” couldn’t elicit so much as one wag of his stump of a tail.

When he saw Rick, though, he squirmed in delight, dancing around his owner as soon as I put him down. Daddy! He hadn’t been abandoned after all!

We saw Rocky again to take out his stitches two weeks later, and then, unexpectedly, a week after that. While Rick was at work one night, Rocky managed to scratch the tape off one ear and to dislodge the rolled-cotton form. Not yet built up enough to the point of handling the weight of the erect ear, the cartilage in the middle of the pinna broke down over the next few hours, causing the ear to flop over at the breakpoint. The damage was beyond the ability of tape and forms to correct.

Had Rocky been destined for the show ring, his career would have been over that day. Rick, though disappointed, accepted the outcome with a philosophical shrug. “I only got his ears cropped because everyone does. Give him that fierce Doberman look, you know. But that bent ear makes him look kind of adorable, doesn’t it?”

I don’t think I’d ever been so much in love with a male stripper as I was right then. Any man who could look past the shape of his dog’s ears was pretty much all right in my book.

And another advantage for having him as a client: After a visit from Rick and Rocky, it would be days before we found our cash drawer short of dollar bills.

Collared

This is an installment in the ongoing Vet Tech Tales - Part 2 series, which has recently become more of an ad-hoc feature rather than a regular one (working on that, though!).

For updates on Buffy, the sweet rescue we me last week, please visit Wilkins MacQueen's blog for new pictures and current status. I think you'll agree it's already an amazing transformation!

On Thursday, I'll share what my favorite animal movie and book are for the I <3 Dogs Blog Tour in support of the Pawsibilities R Us rescue organization. Check their blog for this week's prize!

~~~

 

It wasn’t long before the veterinary clinic became the epicenter of my life. No longer just a job or a career, working there became a vocation that consumed me. Every other weekend off turned into every weekend on. Paying straight time meant Dr. Norris didn’t much care who was there in the clinic at need – only that someone was. And since I demonstrated not just enthusiasm for the back kennel work but an aptitude for the “medicine” part of the veterinary medicine profession, the vets began to use me in other capacities around the clinic as well.

At first I assisted with prepping dogs and cats for surgery, shaving them down and disinfecting the surgical sites then stretching them out on the surgical table and tying them into position using bits of cord slipped around their paws and looped around a series of hooks attached to the table’s edge.

I also learned not just how to set up fecal samples to test for parasites, but how to distinguish between the types of microscopic eggs to determine what kind of worms a dog or cat might be carrying.

I watched, absorbed and recorded, determined to be as useful as possible outside the kennel area.

But learning the nuts and bolts of how to do medicine was a very different process from understanding how to work with the animals and owners to practice medicine.  

When Chewbacca came through the door, I was reminded again that my job didn’t exist because there were animals in need but because there were people who cared whether an animal was in need or not.

The year-old brindle pup that walked into the exam room could have been a magnificent boxer. He certainly had the frame and size to command a double-take. Instead of lean muscles and a confident look, though, he came to us with a xylophone ribcage and warm brown eyes that pleaded for nothing more than a little attention.

Despite Chewie wearing a studded leather collar, his person, Steve, had looped a piece of rope around his neck and was using the makeshift lead to guide him along.

When I stooped down to lift the underweight dog onto the exam table, Chewie cowered. Though his paws didn’t move, he shifted and flattened away from me, clearly expecting that I was going to hurt him. The flayed skin and deep wounds around his neck certainly looked painful, and my first thought was that he had been in a dogfight.

“There’s a good boy,” I reassured him as I moved carefully to gather him close. His stump of a tail twitched once in hope.

“He’s my neighbor’s dog,” Steve said as I placed Chewie on the cold exam table where he began to tremble. “I got the guy’s permission to bring the dog in but honestly he doesn’t deserve to have him back.”

One up-close look and I had to agree. Steve was using the length of rope as a lead not out of convenience but from need. The open wounds around Chewie’s neck weren’t bite wounds. Much of the inch-wide studded leather collar was embedded in the dog’s thick neck.

No doubt the collar fit fine when it was first buckled onto a new two- or three-month-old puppy. Over the months, however, the pup had grown and the owner had never thought to adjust the collar or apparently even notice anything wrong. How could anyone live with an animal and not notice? Or if they did notice, not do something to rectify it?

An embedded collar is an indicator not of someone briefly distracted by a family emergency but of ongoing and deliberate neglect. That the wound was trying to heal around the collar told us the it had been too tight for weeks if not months, slowly eating into the flesh.

“I’ll have to sedate him to cut the collar out,” Dr. Norris told Steve. “Which one of you will be responsible for the bill?” A cold-sounding question to be sure, but a practical one given the circumstances.

Steve sighed. “That would be me, I guess. But tell me, if I do pay for this, am I obligated to give the dog back? By law, I mean?”

“Chewie still belongs to your neighbor. If he won’t surrender the dog voluntarily you’ll need a court order to take him away.” The look Dr. Norris gave Steve was long and deliberate. “At least legally.”

I stroked the big boxer’s head to distract him while Dr. Norris administered the sedative. Cutting out the collar proved tricky. Chewie had no extra folds of skin along his neck to stretch over the open wound, which in some areas was an inch-and-a-half wide since the vet had to cut deep into healthy tissue to ensure infection wouldn’t set in. We put a loose bandage around Chewie’s neck to protect the raw areas that couldn’t be sutured closed. The wound would be painful for a couple of weeks while new skin and scar tissue grew in, but I was pretty sure Chewie would agree the short-term suffering was more than worth the trade-off over what he’d already been through and what the future would have held otherwise.

Chewie stayed with us 10 days, gaining nearly a pound a day. Charla and I fussed over him in our spare time and cheered him on to health. Slowly the magnificent dog he could have been became the magnificent dog he truly was.

Steve came by daily to check on Chewie’s progress. It was clear he was invested in the pup in more than a monetary sense – even more than a simple humanitarian sense. As their bond grew closer in the days following, there was no doubt that given the choice in all the world, Chewie would choose to be Steve’s dog. Chewie was responsive and loving toward me and Charla, but when Steve came to visit, his gaze followed Steve as they did no other. After all he’d been through and with hope so close, if he had to be returned to his former owner, I wasn’t sure Chewie would survive the heartbreak.

“He won’t go back,” Steve vowed to me about a week in. “I have an uncle in Lubbock who’ll take him, if it comes to that.” I nodded. Just because something’s legal doesn’t always mean it’s right.

In the end the neighbor proved reasonable and signed the dog over to Steve. I felt so proud that I had played even a small part in the two of them walking out the door together.

This, I felt sure, was what veterinary medicine was all about.

Priorities

This is an installment in the ongoing Vet Tech Tales series. These Tales are usually Friday features -- except when I forget to actually schedule one to appear on Friday. Oops.

~~~

It takes a special kind of person to work with animals. Having an affinity with them and loving them are prerequisites for a career with them, of course, but it doesn’t end there. My first paid day on the job had underscored the basic things that would be required of me if I were truly serious about continuing to be an animal care worker.

Only as the days turned into weeks and then into months did I fully come to understand that working with animals meant working for them too. Veterinary medicine at its core is a service industry, and one in which the balance between doing what’s best for an animal must always be weighed against what the owner wants, what they can afford and what they perceive to be the relationship between their family and their pet.

After just a few days on the job I considered myself an expert on pet owners. Clearly there were only three types: those who loved their pets and treated them like household members, those who neglected the animals in their care and those who outright abused them. At 17 – having grown up in a nice, middle-class neighborhood in the folds of a nice, middle-class family – it was easy to define neglect rather loosely. Any animal that wasn’t pampered and indulged was obviously being neglected. Why the majority of owners were even allowed to keep a pet was beyond my rose-colored judgment. At 17 and brimming with idealism, distinguishing levels of gray was a skill I’d yet to fully develop.

So when Ms. Crane walked in with carrier in hand and a hint of panic in her eyes, I knew only neglect could turn the once-pristine face of her tiny Persian kitten into the hairless, scabby-looking mess it was now. I prepared myself to be outraged, as indignation rather than empathy seemed the easier emotion to conjure.

On closer inspection, once I’d pulled the purring ball of fluff out of the carrier, I saw it wasn’t so much the entire face affected but maybe just the muzzle. And maybe only around the top of the kitten’s nose and across her upper lips.

The ginger-colored kitten purred in my hands while Dr. Norris eyed the lesions. “How long has she been losing hair?” he asked.

Ms. Crane hesitated. When she did answer, she wouldn’t meet the vet’s eyes. “Maybe a week?”

Aha! Guilt and hedging. My suspicions were confirmed.

Dr. Norris flipped off the exam room lights and shined an ultraviolet Wood’s lamp onto the kitten’s face. A few of the hairs surrounding the lesions fluoresced with a tell-tale green glow. “Yep, what I suspected. Ringworm. I’d like to do a culture to be sure, though.”

Ms. Crane shook her head. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

I shuddered. Not only had Ms. Crane waited a week – a week! – to bring her kitten in, she wasn’t going to let Norris confirm the diagnosis.

Gripping the kitten under her forelegs, I swung her out at arms’ length as Norris flipped the lights back on. The kitten’s back feet dangled in mid-air as its purr-motor throttled into high gear. To its delight, I jounced it a bit, and even Ms. Crane cracked a smile as the kitten danced in the air above the exam table.

Such a sweet and funny kitten deserved far better than the life of neglect it seemed destined for.

“Do you have children or other pets at home?” Norris asked. “You probably know ringworm is transmissible to humans and other animals.”

Ms. Crane nodded. “I have a 6-year-old daughter. She and Bonnie are inseparable.”

“Well, they’re going to need to be separated for a while.”

“A little late for that.” Ms. Crane’s voice sounded tired and flat. “I told her not to handle Bonnie so much. It’s my fault really; she’s too young to know any better.”

“Just because she’s been exposed doesn’t mean your daughter will get ringworm,” Dr. Norris pointed out. “But you’ll want to consult with your pediatrician to be sure.”

“That’s just it.” Ms. Crane’s expression twisted to match her rueful sigh. “There was an outbreak of it at my daughter’s school. I’m pretty sure she’s the one who gave it to the kitten. I wanted to bring Bonnie in earlier, but my mother-in-law broke her ankle last week and we’ve been helping out at her house, and I knew the ringworm wasn’t life-threatening, and we’ve all been exposed already anyway, and, well, poor Bonnie just got pushed down the list.” She threw the still air-dancing kitten another half-smile.

I lowered Bonnie to the exam table and she immediately pounced on a stray pen cap that spun out of her claws and across the cold laminate. Grudgingly I had to concede the kitten didn’t appear to be overly suffering as I flicked the pen cap back toward her and she batted it back to me. Bonnie was a happy, well-adjusted kitten with a little girl at home who apparently adored her. The only thing standing between Bonnie and her visit to the vet was a list of other priorities.

Sometimes kittens come third.

And sometimes, as in Bonnie’s case, it’s okay for kittens to come third. Just as it’s sometimes okay for children to come third. Or for the rest of the family to come third. When life is full of priorities, dispassionate triage is often necessary. Hard decisions and delays aren’t the hallmarks of neglect. Prolonged indifference is.   

It wasn’t long after Bonnie that I saw my first case of true neglect. That’s when the ground beneath my 17-year-old idealism shifted, creating new continental formations that readjusted my thinking forever.

~~~

Next Tale: "Collared" -- why there really are some people who should never be allowed to have animals.

Vet Tech Tales: The Early Years Now Available as an Ebook - Only 99 Cents

You may have noticed something different about the blog today: All the Friday Vet Tech Tales have been removed.

That's because the Tales have all been gathered up and published in ebook form exclusively on Amazon!

On Friday, January 6, I'll start posting the new Tales that will appear in Volume 2, so you'll still get to see them here first -- and for free.

Meanwhile, you can pick up Volume 1: The Early Years for just 99 cents. It has 17 Tales that run about 100 pages, plus a bonus 2 chapters from my medical thriller SECTOR C that features a female veterinarian as one of the main characters. Note that SECTOR C does have some sad animal deaths, so may not be a good choice for someone sensitive to that. I can, however, assure you no animal was actually harmed in the making of the book (although a couple of dogs did complain about being horribly neglected while I was writing it) ;o).

Vet Tech Tales: The Early Years is available in English in all of Amazon's Kindle stores:
Amazon.com - 99c
UK - 86p
Germany - 99e
Spain - 99e
France - 99e

Vet Tech Tales - A Sneak Peek

For those of you who don't know, I'll be releasing the Vet Tech Tales as a series of ebooks over the coming year.

You can continue to read them for free right here most every Friday, but I'll also be collecting about 20,000-25,000 words (80-100 pages) worth of Tales into their own volumes to be released one per quarter in 2012-ish. The first book, which will include all the Tales on the blog so far plus next week's Tale that wraps up my first day on the job, will be released mid-month. It'll have a holiday price of just 99 cents.

After next week, I'll take a short holiday break from posting Tales on Fridays, then start back in posting weekly Tales on January 6.

I hope you're enjoying reading these Tales as much as I'm enjoying writing them!

At the top of the post is a sneak peek at the covers for the first two volumes in the series. I don't have the pleasure of knowing the kitten on the cover of Volume 1, but the pup on the cover of Volume 2 is my own irrepressible Loki. Once Volume 2 is released in Mar/Apr, I have a feeling I'll have a model cover diva on my hands!