Vet Visit from Hell

While hanging out at the hospital with Aunt Helen, I was telling Glynn and Nancy about the vet visit Tuesday and Nancy suggested I put it on the blog. It's way too long of a story but . . .

I was getting worried about my does because Little Sister and Little Sister, Too had been acting like they weren't feeling well for a few days. I suspected they had parasites and that the wormer I had used earlier wasn't working. Also, Alice had developed a golf ball-size cyst on her neck and the little one that had all the earlier problems was developing raw spots on his ears and legs. When I noticed others getting some of these spots, I started getting concerned that when I get back from Santa Fe I would either have eleven dead goats, or horrific medical problems. That's when I decided to check around for a goat doctor. There seemed to be only one that everyone uses, so I had him do a "farm visit" -- that means he comes to you for a hefty chunk of change.

The first thing he does when he gets out of his truck is reach over the fence where I had them confined and grab Little Sister by one of her horns. She of course jumps, pulling him into the fence and breaking a wooden cross post then breaks free from his grasp. I was pretty bewildered when he said he thought he would "get one while the getting was good" because I had told him earlier that my goats were bottle-fed and quite tame. That should have been my first clue.

Well, it went downhill from there. After (and I will try to be delicate here) removing the cyst from Alice's neck (quite gruesome) and sticking a 4-inch needle into her jugular to dispense medication, he said I would have to quarantine her. Keep in mind that I'm leaving next Wednesday and there is no way and no one who could bottle feed her babies. So while I'm wondering what the heck I'm going to do, he changed his mind and said he could go ahead and treat the other does (that's the 4-inch needle part) and then they could all stay together. I said yes. Bad decision.

When he was trying to treat Rose, she jumped at the wrong time causing him to get some of the medication in his assistant's eyes, which stung, making the vet angry and start cursing the goat. The assistant, still trying to hold the goat, which was scared to death by now and struggling like crazy to break free, kept saying "calm down, doc, just calm down, doc . . ." Did I really need a second clue to suspect that this vet was off his meds? I'm thinking this guy is volatile and it was beginning to get just a little frightening. Since I didn't feel like I had many options at this point, I let him continue. Another bad decision.

So now, he starts to treat Little Sister, Too. LS,T jumps and something goes wrong and she starts literally screaming in agony, non-stop, with her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth. The assistant says she is in pain because the medication went in wrong and it was "burning her." By now, I'm in tears and beginning to feel light-headed, so I have to go sit down while the vet gets some saline solution to inject to dilute the medication. Eventually, LS,T stops yelling, lays down, curls up and I'm thinking she is going to die from the trauma. Luckily, we both survived.

He wasn't through yet. He still had to take scrapings from a couple of the goats who had the raw spots and warned me that it would cause them to bleed just a little. For once, he was right and there was no major blood loss from this undertaking. After he finished, he apologized to me and said he gets angry when an animal causes him to hurt one of his assistants. Who is the innocent party here, folks? Can we say anger management.

The next day, I found one of the 4-inch needles on the ground and called the assistant to let her know and ask if all the others were accounted for. She laughed and said one was found sticking through his clothes when they were washed. Needless to say, I was not laughing and very unhappy that she was unaware of what happened to the rest of them.

I'm now treating five goats for five days, treating two of the same goats until I leave and four of the goats are on another med program until I leave. I'm keeping them in the yard so I can get all of them taken care of after work and before dark. Thank goodness for long summer days. Tuesday after the vet left, I was just too pooped to get my tarps out of the shed and cover my deck (I had driven down and back to L.R. to check on Aunt Helen earlier in the day). This meant that by Wednesday morning, my beautiful new deck was covered in "nanny berries."

The goats didn't eat my tomato plants -- until yesterday! Eight big plants with blooms :( At least now I don't have to worry about them getting watered while I'm gone. Finally, the end. Hopefully.