The occasional coyote made me giggle as he scooted across a field, looking over his shoulder as though trouble were on his tail. A bobcat, a bachelor band of elk, or a family of deer crossing the road at times caused me to hit the brakes. Drives to ranches were adventures into fantasylands of hidden canyons and mysterious ravines where cell phone service was lost. A tourist once told me, “You live in a postcard.” To which I replied, “And I drive each day in the mud, dust, and snow that keep everyone else from living here.”
My home is in La Plata County, a community full of colorful characters: ranchers whose families have lived here for generations, Native Americans, mountain hermits, Hispanics, and nonlocal people who moved to the country from cities. The stories I share about these people are true; at least, this is the truth as I remember it. Only the names of people, animals, and some places have been changed to protect privacy. One group of folks who live here, not found in cities, are cattlemen who breed livestock in small family-run operations. Their relationship with the animals they raise for income is often misunderstood. Humans and beasts depend on one another; one does not survive without the other. The rural life itself is foreign to many. The jobs of the mobile large-animal doctor intertwines with the country ranch life, and both involve hard physical work caring for beasts that can be dangerous. The veterinary workforce has evolved to focus more on pets in cities, and a shortage of rural veterinarians creates challenges for folks living in the country.
Today, in 2017, I spend most of my time practicing traditional Chinese veterinary medicine (TCVM) from my home office using acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicines. I now drive a VW Toureg when I attend to horses and llamas. I gave up emergency work in 2010, but I still end up treating an occasional wreck for a neighbor, friend, or desperate person who can find no one else to help. The evolution of my practice occurred gradually, but in 1995, it was aided by my interactions with two women who unknowingly set me on my course of discovery and inspired me to study the spiritual nature of animals — a young professional and an elderly local rancher, a Buddhist and a Baptist with contrasting views.
“I’m a Catholic Buddhist” was the first thing Margaret told me. “The two are not mutually exclusive. Catholicism is a religion, and Buddhism is a practice, a philosophy.”
In November, Margaret called because her elderly dog, Jaws, a vicious biter, was deathly ill and unable to stand. The end was near, but Margaret’s Buddhist practice prevented her from electing euthanasia. Her teacher, the rinpoche, had told her not to kill. As a Buddhist, she had vowed to refrain from taking the life of any living creature. Furthermore, bad Buddhist monks reincarnated as dogs. Since Jaws could have been a human in a former life, or could become human in a later one, it was better for him to suffer his karma in this life so that he could have a better life in his next incarnation.
This philosophy was new to me, but I agreed to see the dog at Margaret’s home and try to alleviate his struggle and help him pass. The reason Margaret called me was because she had heard that I used acupuncture to treat animals, and she hoped I might be more sympathetic to her dilemma. She did not want her pet to suffer.
Margaret and her daughter lived thirty-five miles away in a small mountain village. Snow-packed roads forced me to drive slowly to a little cabin in the woods.
I entered the house to find a dismal scene. The old terrier lay sprawled out in the middle of the floor, penned in by boxes and furniture. His coat reeked from urine and feces, since he soiled himself, being unable to stand. He looked miserable to me. The only cheery thing in the room was Margaret’s smile. It was ever-present, like the serene smiles of Buddhist monks. Her gray eyes glimmered with a sense of peace and joy rather than the stressed-out glare most people express when facing the death of their pets.
“Would you like a turkey sandwich?” asked her plump daughter. The odor of urine dampened my appetite, and I declined as I tried to piece together the dog’s medical history. With each question I asked, the two women responded with long stories of irrelevant information about their family history. Margaret’s smile persisted in spite of the tales of her cruel father, a bitter man whom Margaret cared for up until his death, a situation now repeated with Jaws, who had been her father’s dog. Margaret described her devotion to her father as a way to cleanse her karma.
“He was horrible to you, Mother. I feed Jaws turkey; is that okay?” the daughter asked me. “I have a thyroid condition,” she added, patting her thick neck. “Are you sure you don’t want a sandwich?” She pulled a tray with an entire turkey on it from the refrigerator.
“No, thank you,” I replied, gratefully examining a copy of Jaws’s blood work. From this, I understood that he had Addison’s disease, or hypoadrenocorticism (a lack of cortisol and other hormones from the adrenal gland), which was a sequela to Cushing’s disease, or hyperadrenocorticism (an excess secretion of hormones from the adrenal gland). He was being kept alive with the steroid medication prednisone.
Since this was my first attempt at treating a dying Buddhist land shark, I proceeded with caution. I carefully slipped a muzzle over his nose. “You’re okay,” I said to calm him. “Good boy.” His eyes watched mine with uncertainty as I collected blood and performed acupuncture, but he never tried to bite, which told me he did not feel well enough to make the effort. I had just completed acupuncture training with the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society (IVAS), and I knew that properly placed needles would balance hormones, relieve pain, and improve circulation of blood and energy. I hoped it would provide some comfort to the dog until I had time to analyze the blood chemistry values. I left Margaret’s house with two vials of blood and a turkey sandwich.
It took several days to grasp the meaning of the relationship Margaret had with her dog, the religious implications of the final days, and how to best help them both. At last, we decided to stop giving the prednisone to Jaws, hoping he would pass quickly and gently, which he did overnight.
The telephone woke me, as usual, and I wasn’t surprised by the request. It was still November, the time of year when ranchers kill their geriatric horses.
A raspy voice said, “Doc, this is Polly Parsons. I have an old horse I need you to put down.”
“Is he old?” I asked, not quite awake.
“He’s about twenty.”
I knew a lot of horses more elderly than that, so I asked, “Is he sick?”
“No, he’s not too bad. I just don’t believe in letting him get old and suffer.”
Polly was a gray-haired rancher, a born-again Baptist, and in her mind this was the most humane thing to do. Ranch horses do not have warm barns with heated water tanks; they live like wild animals, out in nature, and if nature takes its course in winter, those “long in the teeth” get skinny, weak, and die. Ranchers like Polly preferred to “put down” their horses rather than leave them on pasture to weather the snow and bitter cold.
Each year, cowboy poets gather in Durango to spin yarns and narrate poems. I’ve heard more than one express the idea of killing old horses so they don’t have to suffer. The story line of such a poem goes something like this: The cowboy goes out to shoot his old friend Buck. He aims his gun and looks down the sight into his friend’s eyes, and then he remembers the times when the horse was his only friend out on the trail. The horse saved the cowboy’s life more than once by protecting him from a cliff, a mean bull, or a deep bog. The two had covered a lot of territory together, and now the time had come to let him go. Then the cowboy notices that Buck doesn’t really look that old. Maybe he has his birth date wrong; he’s in good
