Saving Skipper, the dog caught by the mowing machine.

April 18, 2012 - PRLog -- Both children were searching their parent’s faces, first their dad’s then their mom’s, their eyes and heads moving back and forth, in unison. Neither said anything. Both reached up, simultaneously, and patted Skipper’s head. The black and white cattle dog raised her head slightly, her tail beat a rhythm on the stainless exam table.

“OK, how about this,” I said. “Let me start the intravenous drip and give her some anesthetic. We’ll treat her for shock and once she’s anesthetized she won’t hurt anymore. If you decide you want to put her to sleep, we can go ahead and do that. The IV and the anesthetic will only cost you a couple of dollars extra.”

“What do you think, Kath,” asked the rancher?

His wife shrugged. “It’s up to you. It’s a lot of money and she might still be a cripple, is that right Doc?”

The boy couldn’t stay quiet any longer.

“Please Dad,” then he clenched his mouth shut.

The little girl chimed in.

“Yeah, please Dad, we have to.”

The rancher sighed. “OK…you guys understand this means no Christmas or birthday gifts this year?”

The boy and girl looked at each other.

“We know,” the boy said.

“Please Doc, make her all better,” the six-year old girl added.

The confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers is a region of the USA steeped in the history of the northern upper plains nomadic tribes, fur traders and mountain men. I joined a veterinary practice there is 1960, directly out of veterinary school. Our clients included townspeople, river valley farmers, high prairie dry-land wheat farmers and ranchers and North Dakota Badlands ranchers, the later doing their best to wrest a living from government grazing leases and their too small homesteads. All were determined, independent-minded folks who expected their veterinarian to be physically tough, knowledgeable about all species of animals, and skilled in the practice of the profession. Our animal patients were the same as they are today, prone to the same illnesses and injuries. They were, for the most part, stoic and never embarrassed by anything they did or that I did to them. The characters in this book are those people, those animals, and that time and place.

# # #

writer/author of "You Can Nail It" a self-help guide for getting into and succeeding in a medical, dental or veterinary school program. Writes veterinary, animal stories, historical novels and a veterinary blog; docdavesvoice.com.