Drinking from the Trough Page 15

  Walking was painful, but riding was a joy—once I got on the horse.

  I’d lost a tremendous amount of range of motion, and it was difficult to mount horses for a long, long time. I had been a gymnast, flexible and strong, and a physical education teacher. Being relegated to “handicapped rider” status added to my misery.

  First, I had to step with my uninjured leg onto a stool to reach her back. Next, I used both hands on the saddle to hoist myself up—definitely not cool—and haul myself into the saddle. Marcie stood patiently throughout the whole procedure, waiting in place until I gave her the cue to walk on.

  As I began riding again, I definitely preferred Marcie over Scooter. She was the one horse I could take alone in the trailer and be as safe as a horseback rider could be. I could trust my senior horse who, at twenty-nine, was totally bombproof. Nothing bad would happen to me on Marcie. I liked to ride her alone, thankful for the day and that I was still alive to enjoy it, grateful that I was becoming a confident and joyful rider again.

  I’d hoped to take Marcie on a ride to celebrate her thirtieth birthday, June 1, 2005, but it had been less than three months since my third and final surgery—this one for a total hip replacement—and I hadn’t been cleared to ride yet. Fortunately, my cousin Gail was in town. A good friend of hers in Denver had just turned fifty, and Gail had flown out from Chicago to help celebrate.

  And celebrate.

  And celebrate.

  I’d promised Gail’s mom that I’d get Gail sobered up and home in one piece. I picked her up in Denver after the festivities were over and brought her back to Fort Collins so we could visit for a few days.

  Gail ended up riding Scootsritealong—I teased her about Scooter being her love man—and Earl rode Marcie. I couldn’t ride, but before they left for Lory State Park, I took plenty of photos. My favorite is one of Earl holding Marcie by her lead rope and patting her on the neck.

  I finally was able to ride Marcie myself a few times before heading out on a long road trip in my Mercedes Roadster to Chicago to hang out with Gail and my other cousins and, after that, meet up with my best buddy, Jean, who was in Minneapolis for a vet conference. Jean and I headed west to tour the Laura Ingalls Wilder Homestead in De Smet, South Dakota. The 250-mile trip is usually about a half-day drive, but “traversing Minnesota” became what Jean called “getting hopelessly lost in the vortex of Minnesota.” We did finally get there, glad we were in the roadster and not a covered wagon for all those miles.

  When I returned home, I took Marcie up to ride on one of our favorite trails at Lory State Park. At first, everything seemed fine.

  But she didn’t want to trot, and then a greenish slime poured out of her mouth. Her breath sounds gurgled.

  I led her to Horsetooth Reservoir a few feet away, but she wouldn’t drink. I took the tack off quickly, loaded her back in the trailer, and drove her home.

  The next day, Sunday, she looked a little off. Worried, I treated her with acupuncture and kept an eye on her all day. She wasn’t colicky, but her gut looked empty. That meant it was something else; we just didn’t know what.

  On Monday morning, Marcie didn’t eat her breakfast. She had that look in her eye that said it was time. Earl agreed with me, and I called the equine medicine department at the hospital.

  “We don’t take patients on Mondays,” the receptionist said.

  What? I repeated to her that we had a sick horse and that it would probably involve euthanasia. She finally gave us an appointment.

  The clinician told us that it was most likely a dental or mouth problem. We already knew she had a dental problem—she had the teeth of a thirty-year-old horse, including wave mouth. Wave mouth is an uneven wear of the molars that makes the tooth crowns different heights, which, in turn, can prevent the jaw from moving freely, making it hard for the horse to grind her food properly. It’s a long-term problem that requires routine management, and we already had an appointment for the dental team to come out later in August to work on all three horses. We didn’t want to wait that long for Marcie; she was too ill for this to be just a tooth problem.

  The all-day medical workup included endoscopy to examine her respiratory system, plus turning the scope around to take a thorough look at her teeth. Nothing abnormal showed up.

  Radiographs of her neck and mouth showed the slightest hint of swelling. The clinician thought it might be a tumor in Marcie’s mouth.

  The head of the teaching hospital, an equine medicine doctor Earl and I both knew, was rounding with students near Marcie’s examination room. I showed him Marcie’s X-rays. Then, with my back to his students, I gave him a thumbs-up, thumbs-down gesture, then another thumbs-down.

  He simply nodded his head.

  I knew there was no hope.

  Earl and I signed the papers for Marcie to be euthanized, and she died that day.

  I try to remember that she had an amazing thirty years of life and that I was lucky that she lived her life for more than half of my own. I had Marcie longer than I had my own mother, who died when I was twenty-six. Marcie lived longer than my little sister, Natalie, who was killed by a drunk driver at twenty-seven. I remember all the students Marcie helped, the people who aren’t afraid of horses thanks to her gentleness, and the kids who learned to ride and jump. I remember that it was Marcie who solidified the friendship between Earl and me and Marcie who helped that friendship grow into the joyous married life Earl and I shared.

  Not bad for a hundred-dollar horse. Not bad at all.

  14

  A Matter of Respect

  “What a sweet kitty,” I gushed, stroking the gorgeous fur of Sienna, the seal point Siamese gracing my exam table.

  Dee, the cat’s owner, stiffened and said, “Dr. Carlson, this is not a kitty. This is a cat.”

  My face flushed with embarrassment. I was a new veterinarian, with my own newly opened cat clinic, and I’d just managed to offend one of my first clients. I backpedaled, trying to apologize without making matters worse.

  This isn’t something they teach you at vet school. Vet school teaches you all the technical and medical jargon. How to diagnose and how to treat.

  Not how to talk to clients.

  I was already pretty good at translating the technical medical gibberish into language clients could understand, but it had never occurred to me that calling a client’s full-grown felines “kitties” could be offensive. It was true that Sienna and her companion cat, Daisy, were both well beyond kittenhood. I estimated their ages at twelve or thirteen years, which put them at late middle age to early old age for Siamese cats.

  But my vet school classmates and I always used terms of endearment like “kitty.” I called my own elderly cats “kitties.”

  At the same time, I understood that this was a matter of respect. To Dee, calling her stately Siamese pets “kitties” was disrespectful, as well as inaccurate.

  Dee and her cats left, exams completed. I still felt chastened, and I was certain they’d never come back.

  From the first day I opened my clinic, I introduced myself as Mary Carlson, not Doctor Carlson or Doctor Mary. I was proud of my degree, but I didn’t feel the need to flaunt it; I’m more of a first-name-basis person. I also had each new client fill out an information sheet. One of the questions asked if they preferred to be addressed by their first name or their last.

  Why hadn’t I asked my clients their preferences for their adored felines?

  Especially since one of my own pet peeves is a stranger calling me “honey” or “dearie” or “sweetie.”

  I remembered the phone call from the hospital’s grief counselor after my mother had died.

  Mom had been hospitalized for complications related to Crohn’s disease. Unfortunately, she’d had a bad internist instead of a good gastroenterologist. Her intestine ruptured, pouring its bacteria- and pus-filled contents into her abdomen, causing fatal septicemia. By the time the hospital staff noticed that she’d stopped breathing, she was essentially brain-dead.


  There was no reason for me to go to the hospital; the woman I knew as my mother was gone, even if life support was keeping her body functioning, and I had no desire to see my mother as a corpse. I told the doctor to discontinue her treatment and call me when she was gone.

  He never called.

  So when Mrs. Lyons, the counselor, called, my first question was simply whether or not my mother was dead.

  Mrs. Lyons’s voice was steeped in syrupy, somber tones. “Yes, dear,” she intoned. “She’s gone.”

  I have no idea what followed that; I only remember her overblown sorrow and that she called me “dear.”

  Later, I called her back to ask about Mom’s possessions. I began the call by identifying myself: “Mrs. Lyons, it’s Mary Elson calling.”

  “Yes, sweetie?” That same funereal tone oozed from the phone.

  That did it. I said calmly, “Mrs. Lyons, we’ve never met. I am twenty-six years old. My name is Mary, not sweetie, not honey, not dearie.”

  There was a brief moment of silence, and then she replied in a businesslike tone, “Yes, Mary, what can I do for you?”

  Much better, lady, I thought.

  That phone call became family legend. I’d always been Mommy’s Girl, and my small stature meant people often treated me like a little girl. I think that phone call was the first time I’d advocated for myself and openly refused to be treated with disrespect.

  In some ways, the moment I challenged Mrs. Lyons was the moment I officially became an adult. My insistence on being treated with respect translated into the strength to deal with all that follows a parent’s death, from notifying friends and family to filing a wrongful death suit against the hospital (the same hospital where I’d been born and where my father had admitting privileges).

  So I understood Dee’s point about cats, not kitties, and I vowed to never make that mistake again.

  As it turns out, my fear that I’d lost Dee as a client proved unfounded. Perhaps, when, like Mrs. Lyons, I’d corrected my mistake after it was pointed out to me, Dee had decided to give me another try. I’m glad she did; Daisy was my patient through the end of her life, nine years later, and Sienna was my patient for the ten years I operated my cat clinic.

  Teaching science, filling a seat on the board of education for several years, and running a solo veterinary practice at the same time meant hundred-hour workweeks more often than not. After ten years in solo practice, I decided to close the clinic and pursue teaching science full time. With my help, Dee and my other clients found new veterinarians for their pets. Sienna was quite elderly by then. I promised Dee that when it was time for Sienna to go, I would come to her home and put Sienna to sleep at no charge.

  It had been two years since I’d seen Sienna when Dee called. It was a sunny June day, and I was hobbling around in a cast, nursing a stress fracture in my foot.

  I collected my gear and drove to their home. Dee and her husband, John, met me outside in their garden. It was a beautiful setting, with lovely shade trees, blooming roses, and flowering shrubs. Dee gasped when she saw my cast and apologized profusely for causing me any discomfort. I assured her I was fine.

  Dee and John wrapped Sienna in her favorite towel and carefully placed her on a garden bench. I noticed a recently dug hole nearby.

  I administered anesthesia to Sienna, and we all spoke quietly to her until she fell asleep. Then I completed my task.

  Dee brushed Sienna and snugged the towel around her. John placed the little bundle gently in the small grave. We each scattered handfuls of dirt into the grave, and then John buried her. Soon, Dee said, they would plant a new flowering shrub to mark the gravesite. Sienna’s duty now was to support new life.

  Dee and John no longer live there, but whenever I go by that house, I look at the flowering shrub and remember the cat that was not a kitty.

  15

  Eating Disorders of The Wonder Husky

  A healthy diet makes for a healthy dog. I stared at the plastic ID badge, chewed beyond recognition, wishing Tipper the Wonder Husky understood that.

  We’d fed her high-quality puppy food when she was little, three times a day at first, then shifting to twice a day and then to free choice when she was ready. We didn’t feed her tidbits at the table, because begging dogs are bad dogs, and a regular diet of people food can turn a husky into a picky eater. I sighed and dropped the useless badge into the trash. Tipper was definitely not a picky eater.

  When she was old enough, she’d graduated to adult dog food. Doting dog-parents that we were, we fed her occasional, but still healthy, treats, such as dog biscuits and small bits of fruit. That would have been enough for any dog—any dog except Tipper.

  The day before, I’d completed training for my volunteer position at the hospital. As a freshly minted volunteer, I’d received three credit-card-like badges, which I’d put on the table in the family room.

  During the night, The Wonder Husky had eaten one, chewed one to oblivion, and nibbled on the third. I called the volunteer coordinator, sounding like one of my junior high school students: the dog ate my ID badges.

  The next week was Thanksgiving. On Tuesday, as I tried to teach through the haze of a monster migraine, an email for a drawing for two Rolling Stones concert tickets landed in my inbox. The tickets had been donated for a charity fundraiser; whoever won the drawing would pay for the tickets, and the money would go to the charity. The concert was in two days, on Thanksgiving Day. On impulse, I entered. If I won, it would be Earl’s and my holiday presents to each other.

  And I won! I paid for the tickets when they were delivered to the house that evening. I put them on the table, well out of Tipper’s reach.

  The next morning as I was getting dressed, Earl came upstairs and informed me that Tipper had eaten the tickets.

  The kittens, brothers who usually restricted themselves to stealing pens and pencils and depositing them around the house, must have slid the tickets off the table, providing tasty and expensive morsels for The Wonder Husky.

  Everyone who heard what had happened said that since we were veterinarians, we should just cut our dog open to retrieve the tickets. Thanks for the advice! This wasn’t Red Riding Hood, where a simple slice to the belly would release Grandma whole and unharmed (ignoring for the moment that things didn’t end well for the wolf in that story). The tickets were ordinary card stock; Tipper’s stomach had already turned them into mushy gunk. I called the Pepsi Center box office in Denver and explained that our dog had an eating disorder. They graciously printed out new tickets for us to collect at will-call.

  One Super Bowl Sunday (one of two the Denver Broncos won back-to-back—yes!), it was warm and dry. Seventy degrees in January in northern Colorado is a gift! I decided to take advantage of the fine weather to clean Tipper’s dried-out dog pen. I raked and raked, making piles to shovel later.

  I spied one doglog that seemed a little different. I looked closer. The grayish color turned out to be from currency in the dried feces. I went inside and asked Earl if he was missing any money. He said yes, eight dollars had gone missing from the table in the family room.

  I pulled on a pair of exam gloves and broke the dried pile apart. Sure enough, there was a five-dollar bill and three singles—intact. Tip had grabbed the bills off the table and gobbled them down whole. They must have tasted pretty good for her to eat four bills. I was impressed with how rugged paper money had to be to make it through undamaged, at least where dogs were concerned. I’d fed a dollar bill to my horse, Marcie, once, to see what she’d do. She ate it and completely digested it. I was glad I hadn’t tried that experiment with a fifty!

  I washed the bills in the sink with Dawn dish detergent, dried the crumpled wad in the sun on a paper towel, pressed the bills flat with my hands so they would smooth out, and put them in a plastic sandwich bag.

  Earl didn’t want anything to do with the currency—it was only eight dollars, he pointed out—but the next day, I had to make a bank deposit anyway. So I includ
ed the four semi-smooth bagged bills that had gone completely through Tipper’s alimentary canal. I attached a note saying what had happened, just to give a giggle to the bank employees, dropped the bag and note into the drive-up pass-through, and asked the teller for fresh bills.

  The teller wasn’t amused. She seemed puzzled. She paused for a few moments, then finally said over the intercom, “Uh, ma’am, I don’t think we can take these from you.”

  I told her they were legal currency—clean, bagged so no one had to touch them—and that I had a right to exchange them. I told her that if she wished, she could deposit the amount into my account and send the bills back to the United States Treasury. I said, “There’s no harm in a little money laundering,” but I don’t think she got the joke.

  The teller sounded a little queasy as she asked me to wait while she talked with her manager. I imagined her holding the bag gingerly by its corner, as if afraid the contents would escape.

  The answer came back: yes, she could deposit my, er, Tipper’s money. I’ve wondered ever since if the bank added “What to do with currency found in dog doody” to the new teller training manual. I hope so.

  Not all inappropriate eating has such an easy or funny ending.

  Dog parks—public fenced areas where dogs are allowed off-leash to run around, play, and socialize—are loved by many people, including those who live in my city. Nowadays, almost all of our community park plans include one. Huskies are friendly and sociable, so it seems as though a dog park would be a perfect playground for them.

  Dog parks are a great idea, but they are often good business for veterinarians. Mishaps—some minor, some major—are common.

  At one of our local dog parks, a presumably kindhearted person left behind a lot of small, soft toys for dogs to play with. Tipper ate one so fast that I doubt she even chewed it. I took her home pronto and made her vomit up the toy so it wouldn’t block her stomach or intestines. If I weren’t a vet myself, I would have faced a substantial bill for veterinary services. As soon as I’d taken care of Tipper, I called the city’s parks department to tell them of the problem, and they sent a crew out to pick up the soft toys.