It was June 6, 1995, and a heavy morning frost was making life challenging for a newborn. This nice old man, Mr. Hall, was right — she would die without help. My neck could wait, and if I had any snacks, I would eat them in the truck.
From 1990 to 2010, I worked as an ambulatory veterinarian, and I lived in my truck. Four trucks met their mileage limits during that time, but I always drove white three-quarter-ton F250 Fords, four-wheel-drive vehicles with a regular cab and full-length running boards that allowed all five foot four inches of me to reach into the veterinary utility box that lined the eight-foot bed. That utility box, called a Porta-Vet, contained a hidden water tank in the center. The side compartments raised up at a slant, exposing a deep floor near the cab and shelves holding medications and tools toward the rear. On the driver’s side, the deep area closest to the cab held a refrigerator where I kept vaccines, hormones, and antibiotics. Overhead, a roll of paper towels hung from the door. On the floor sat a trash can and a lockbox for controlled substances, such as euthanasia solution, analgesics, and anesthetics. Just above and to the right of the refrigerator sat a covered dish filled with surgical tools: needle holders, scissors, curved needles, hemostats, and forceps. Another slotted compartment farther to the rear contained hypodermic needles, acupuncture needles, syringes, a stethoscope, thermometer, and test tubes for blood collection. On the passenger side, in the section of the Porta-Vet closest to the cab, was a deep compartment where I kept an X-ray machine and a case of intravenous fluid bags. Toward the back were shelves with hoof testers, hoof nippers, an oral speculum, dental floats, deworming medications, and oral anti-inflammatory drugs.
The tailgate of the utility box dropped to provide a work space. The left inside wall of the rear compartment was equipped with switches for lights and a water pump. A hose to the water tank hung next to them on a bracket. A large pull-out drawer held a stainless-steel bucket and a box of ropes and halters; on the right, a small upper drawer contained bandage materials, while a lower drawer transported a computer and printer, each enclosed in padded gun cases.
The truck’s cab interior was always gray. The driver’s side door held sunscreen, hand sanitizer, and snack bars — or so I hoped that June morning. Jammed behind the seat were coveralls, boots, down jackets, vests, and numerous hats and gloves to suit the ever-changing weather. In the early-model trucks, the cellular phone was perched on a post in the center of the floor. (When the first cellular phone company came to town, I won that phone in a contest by writing in fifty words or less why I needed a cellular phone.) Mounted on the hood of each truck was a bronze horse-head hood ornament with a liver-chestnut patina.
My truck was more than a mobile animal surgical office. It was my home away from home.
Mr. Hall’s filly was as cold as the weather. Because neonatal horses do not have the ability to thermoregulate like adults, she was suffering from hypothermia. We needed a place out of the wind to warm her. I spotted an old, abandoned chicken coop, and Mr. Hall agreed. He carried the limp youngster as I led the mare, who followed her baby while voicing concerned grumblings. The door into the coop was short and narrow, and the ceiling of the shed was low — an entrance intimidating to most horses — but the mare entered without balking, following her offspring like a good mother, caring more about the babe than her own safety. Inside, she stood quietly watching over everything we did.
If love means caring about another’s well-being more than our own, then postpartum mares demonstrate the definition of love. Mares can be dangerously protective, but when their babies are ill, they seem to understand that I am there to help. I remember a large bay quarter horse dam who hovered over her recumbent foal for several days. She watched attentively as I treated her colt for abdominal pain. On the third day, exhausted, she collapsed to her knees next to me with a grunt. I looked into her eyes and said, “Please lie down and rest. I’ll take care of him.” She rolled to her side and slept deeply, until her foal suddenly recovered, stood up, staggered over to her heaving side, and struck her abdomen and udder with his front hooves, demanding she rise so he could nurse. She did, and they both lived happily ever after.
Rarely, a mare will refuse her foal, just as some human mothers have trouble bonding with their newborns. That is another emergency — the foal must get the first milk, the colostrum, within the first twelve hours of life to be protected from infection. Usually sedation and restraint of a reluctant mare are enough to get the two to bond. Once the neonate nurses, the hormone oxytocin flows through the mother, and she becomes attached, which is also true for humans. We have the same hormones (oxytocin, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and so on), and the same emotional responses to their effects.
Mr. Hall’s mare showed a strong attachment to her filly, although her engorged udder indicated that the foal had not nursed for some time. I knew the neonate was dehydrated on the inside even though she was wet on the outside. Without the precious elixir of the mother’s milk, hypoglycemia would be another problem. We found a 100-watt lightbulb in the chicken coop to provide heat, and we dried the neonate with towels. I fitted an old down vest on her body with the snaps connecting along her back, and I placed a catheter in her jugular vein to administer warmed fluids. I added antibiotics to the solution of dextrose and electrolytes because foals have very little immune protection and get infections easily. Once the fluids had run and her body heat returned, the neonate began to come to life. She stood with our help, but her head hung down to the ground, eyes closed, as she wobbled, her spindly legs sprawled wide apart. She needed to drink her mother’s milk to survive, but I learned long ago not to push foals to nurse; they just push back, and she might fall. Still, I gently nudged her to the mare, whose udder started dripping milk as she nickered to her baby and nuzzled her bottom. The foal replied with a weak, high-pitched whinny and a tail swish. She moved closer, head hanging below the udder as milk poured from the teats and dribbled over the filly’s drooped ears. She shook her head, wrinkled her brow, and turned her lips down as if she felt annoyed. “Just open your mouth,” I begged. After several long minutes, her whisker-covered muzzle opened, her pink tongue curled and reached up; she suckled without making contact at first, and then, to our relief, finally found the glorious goodness of her mother’s nipple. The pair emanated love. I wondered how anyone could say animals do not experience love.
Although most scientists deny there is any evidence that animals feel love, there is a test to determine who loves you more — your dog or your spouse. Lock each one in the trunk of a car for an hour and find out which one is happy to see you when you let them out. This is a joke, but it rings true.
For a veterinarian like me, who observes animals in intimate situations, it feels intuitively obvious that animals love their offspring.
As I drove away, I thought of the many neonates I had saved, and in the warmth of fulfillment, I forgot about my pain and busy schedule. Then I remembered the precious ones that had died in my hands. My eyes blurred, my throat tightened, and the pain returned.
Veterinarians dance with death daily. When the phone rings outside of normal business hours, we get out of bed and go, not for the reward of money — other professionals with our education level earn much more than we do. Rather, we attend emergencies because we love the beautiful creatures and the ugly ones, too. We want to help them all. Their spirits touch us and bring us joy. At the same time, we have to make peace with tremendous suffering and our failures.
Ambulatory veterinary medicine is far from glamorous. Rather, it is blood in the mud, life-and-death decisions made outside of normal business hours, often during bad weather. Even in a hospital, during the day, emergency work is challenging. I faced this gruesome truth immediately after earning my doctor of veterinary medicine degree. In 1985, I began working at Animas Animal Hospital, where late-night and weekend emergencies were common and stressful, and I started my own equine ambulatory veterinary practice in 1988, which made me the sole person responsible for my client’s animals around the clock. I loved my profession, but I whipped and spurred myself to attend emergencies past the point of exhaustion, and I agonized over the suffering of each animal I attended. My body felt like a sagging ridgepole about to splinter apart in the middle. After years of castrating untrained colts, watching horses thrash in pain, filing horse’s teeth, treating bloody, maggot-infested wounds and pus-filled uteruses, and performing too much euthanasia, I needed a mental diversion to help avoid spontaneous combustion from burnout. At the