Publisher's Synopsis
As a kid I looked forward to the times a veterinarian would come to my family's small farm to treat a sick or injured cow or horse. I was intrigued by the way the doctor would handle the animals and thrilled when I was asked to help. Knowledge, physical ability, competence and kindness, not only to the animal but to me, all describe my impression of what I saw. How great it would be if I could some day do what they did.
Those experiences planted the seed that evolved into my becoming one of them, a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, and enabled me to spend over half a century doing what I loved to do: work with animals and take care of their health needs. This book is filled with true stories about some of the more memorable experiences with animals--and people involved with them--during my career as a veterinarian: relieving pain, diagnosing, and treating various ailments and injuries. Following are a few examples of stories that I have included in this book: The dog wasn't injured as the mother and daughter thought. She was terminally ill with a deadly disease that could spread to people and the three of us had been exposed to it. The horse was known to be a man-killer in Mexico. He hated men (but loved women and children) and I needed to pass a stomach tube on him to treat his colic. I feared for my life. Fracture repair on an alligator. The foreign body in the dog's stomach was an unexpected item. What ! Judy was caught between a pack of coyotes and the business end of a gun and probably had only a few days left to live in the wilds of Kansas....until we found her. Honey limped into my exam room on three legs. Her left front leg was useless because of the severe displacement in the carpal joint just above her foot. Her young life had been rough but started getting better on that very day. She was the most intelligent dog I have ever known and became an important member of our family. The night I shared my bedroom with a rabid dog. Without the rabies epidemic there was a good chance I would not have survived financial issues early in my career. I had three encounters with the deadly disease and, fortunately, the first one occurred at a time when I was barely making ends meet and considering scrapping my plan to start my own practice. The increased workload and income that resulted from that one case of rabies gave me a chance. It seems appropriate that I give credit to the disease by naming this book after it.
