My career really started when I was 13. My great grandfather had a ranch in Young County, Texas. He owned about 400 head of cattle, all Hereford, and about a dozen head of horses. He calved in the fall, hopefully after frost. Earlier calving or a late frost insured the newborn calves would be infested with screw worms, the maggots of tropical flies that ate living flesh, which would set up housekeeping in the fresh, raw navels of the baby calves. The adult flies…

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  We have a very big rodeo in Henrietta ... for a small town. Some say its the third- or fourth-largest in Texas but there are rumors that my countrymen tend to exaggerate. So, in the interest of truth I will let it go at being a very big small-town rodeo. I get to go every night, since a lady from the humane society from the next large town, Wichita Falls, threatened the rodeo board with eternal damnation if a vet wasn’t on the grounds all three nights of the event…

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Today was windy, rainy, and cold. It must have been like today in France in the trenches in 1918. I had to help process a hundred or so wheat-pasture heifers in this slop. Cold feet, numb hands and water that finds it way through your raingear to soak and freeze. I was suffering rather magnificently, though silently, because I noticed the cowboys were just as miserable as I was. Then I noticed Roxanne. Roxanne is a blue heeler that signed on at the Howard ranch from parts…

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  I've noticed the first thing to disappear as one ages is his 20/20 vision. I had been wearing reading glasses for years and had progressed over time from the weakest to the strongest lenses that could be bought off the display carousel at the local Dollar General discount store. But this was frightening. I was accustomed to wearing glasses for reading and for surgery but this time it was different. My vision was, even with glasses perched in place on the bridge of my…

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  My son is recently married and has chosen a career in the U.S. Army. This summer we visited him in Germany where he is stationed for now and met his wife’s family. She is a German and her family is in the professional German army. I won’t bore you with the details, save to say that the German people are extremely polite and we had a very good time. We went to many places that are frequented by tourists and I must say I noticed that just about all the obese people…

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  The phone went off at 11:30 that morning. A retired game warden who used to be a roper before his health deteriorated had a cow down, trying to calve. He is really a nice man who helped me do many things while I was building my clinic. He always refused pay, saying he didn't have enough to do since he had retired. He had several horses at that time plus a fair-sized cowherd. In the intervening years, several medical problems had come up and he sold all his horses save one…

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  I have, at different times in my career, bartered for various things instead of expecting money in some form as payment for veterinary services. I most commonly took hay for vet services. It was a rewarding situation for me; I was able to defray winter feed costs. In turn, my clients were able to use a few extra bales instead of money to pay for a calf pull, a herd palpation job or just about anything else. A certain amount of trust was necessary. The client had to believe he…

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  They have a thing after you graduate vet school called continuing education. Some body of veterinarian organizations or other puts them on and hires speakers, usually specialists in some field and/ or teachers from some university. They serve several purposes. Most states require a certain number of hours each year to renew your license in an attempt to keep your expertise current. Drug companies sponsor them as an easy way to disseminate new product info to groups…

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  Never mind the self-propelled cannon in a turret, mounted on all-terrian tracks that is the chief weapon in many of the world’s standing armies, nor even the metal or plastic storage vessels built to contain various types of liquid. In rural Texas, parts of Oklahoma and a few other regions, a "tank" is a man-made pond with an earthen dam to store water for livestock use, home water supply and recreation. Down here there is little standing water and…

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  Since we veterinarians listen to infinite dog stories every day it seems only fair that we cudgel people with our own dog stories. Fido came in the first time at least 10 years ago. The end of his mandible had been shot away in a scrape with an irate landowner. There wasn't much left, so we trimmed up the mess and he now has a pronounced overbite. He drools a lot, which, believe it or not, some people find unappealing. A few months later he came in after a tangle with a…

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