Free Every Living Thing by James Herriot Page B

we’re on a hiding to nothing here and Mottram is going to love us even more when he finds we’ve been in at the death of his beloved horse. Colics are nasty things at any time, always dangerous, even the straightforward ones, and I’d like to bet that this one will have some complications.”
    The house was just outside Scanton and our headlights picked out an avenue of chestnut trees leading to an impressive bulk with a fine pillared doorway. We drove round the back and found Lumsden waving us with his torch into a cobbled courtyard. As we drew up he turned and ran quickly into a lighted loose box in the corner of the yard. When we followed him we could see the reason for his haste. And it was a frightening sight. My stomach lurched and I heard a soft “Oh, dear God!” from Siegfried. A big chestnut horse, head hanging, staring-eyed and lathered in sweat, was stumbling round the box, buckling at the knees, doing his best to throw himself down and roll, which, as any vet knows, can cause torsion of the bowel and inevitable death. The young man was hanging on desperately to the halter shank and urging the animal to keep walking round the box.
    Lumsden looked about sixteen, but as a qualified veterinarian he had to be nearly ten years older than that. He was slightly built and his naturally boyish face was pale and exhausted.
    “Very good of you to come,” he gasped. “I hate to get you out of bed, but I’ve been fighting on with this job all day yesterday and all day today, and I’m getting nowhere. The horse is worse if anything and I’m about knackered.”
    “That’s quite all right, old chap,” Siegfried said soothingly. “James will hold the horse for a minute while you tell me what you’ve done.”
    “Well, I’ve been giving Istin as a laxative, chloral hydrate, to relieve the pain. Largactil, and a few small shots of arecoline, but I’m frightened to give any more arecoline because there’s a hell of an impaction in there and I don’t want to rupture the bowel. If only he’d pass a bit of muck, but there’s been nothing through him for over forty-eight hours.”
    “Never mind, my boy, you’ve done nothing wrong, so don’t worry about that.” Siegfried slipped a hand behind the animal’s elbow and felt the pulse. Then as the horse staggered around he reflected the eyelid and examined the conjunctiva. He looked at it thoughtfully before taking the temperature.
    “Yes…yes…” he murmured without changing expression, then he turned to the young man. “Would you slip into the house now and get us a bucket of hot water, soap and a towel. I want to do a rectal.”
    As Lumsden hurried out, Siegfried swung round. “By God, I don’t like this, James. Lousy, weak pulse—can hardly detect it—brick-red conjunctiva and temperature one hundred three. I don’t want to put the wind up this young chap, but I think we’re on a loser here.” His eyes widened. “And Mottram again! Is there such a thing as a jinx?”
    I didn’t say anything as I hung on to the struggling animal. A weak pulse is a particularly ominous finding in a horse and the other things pointed to a complicating bowel inflammation.
    When the young man came back, Siegfried rolled up a sleeve and pushed his arm deep into the rectum. “Yes…yes…bad impaction, as you say.” He whistled softly for a few moments. “Well, first, we’ve got to relieve his pain.”
    He injected the sedative into the jugular vein, speaking gently to the horse all the time, “That’ll make you feel better, old lad. Poor old chap,” and followed this with a long saline infusion intravenously to combat the shock, and antibiotic for the enteritis. “Now we’ll get a gallon of liquid paraffin into him to try to lubricate that lot in there.” Quickly he pushed a stomach tube up the nostril and into the stomach and held it there as I pumped in the oil.
    “Next, a muscular relaxant.” Again he gave an intravenous injection.
    By the time he had