There are a lot of vet shows out there, on broadcast and cable TV, from the classic All Creatures Great and Small through Dr. Jeff, Dr. Dee, Dr. Oakley, Critter Fixers, The Vet Life – to name just a few. I’ve noticed that for a lot of the ones I watch, the bloodiest aspects seem to be somewhat sanitized.
But not Dr. Pol! Oh, my, no; the bloody filthy struggle of getting large animals through difficult deliveries is presented without blurring or obscuring camera angles. One gets an up-close, unsanitized view of what veterinarians have to do to get the calves and foals out of the mothers, in real barnyard conditions, with the physical labor and danger involved for all involved.
And the show doesn’t sugar-coat the sad truth that sometimes it isn’t a live birth; sometimes the calf or foal is already dead, or dies during the protracted labor, and has to be extracted to save the mother. Even if it means fetotomy – the insertion of an apparatus to dismember the dead fetus in utero if it can’t be extracted otherwise.
Yes. That is a horrible reality of large animal veterinary practice, and I give props to the Dr. Pol show for not flinching from that aspect of the vet’s life. Hard deliveries are difficult to watch, but a lot truer to real life than more sanitized shows.
I’ve observed vets in action over the years handling illness and injury in my own and other horses, though never foal delivery, although I did get to hold the light for my vet during a standing gelding of a yearling. The work I saw them do was tough enough! Including that one time my sedated horse almost toppled over sideways onto my vet…
I’ll take this one step further. I was present at a neighbor’s farm during a difficult calving. The calf was 100% alive. The veterinarian suggested Cesarean section, but the calf’s value was minimal, so fetotomy of the live calf was performed.
Summary
Due to breech presentation, it was impossible to do the preferred live fetotomy procedure, which involves initial decapitation. Instead, the hind legs were cut off and removed first, then the remaining live animal re-positioned and the head removed.
Yeh, that’s really awful, but given how difficult and potentially dangerous to the cow a Caesarean delivery would be, understandable. I take it the vet had tried and failed to reposition the calf – a hard thing to do in any case, and likely impossible if the hind feet were already in the birth canal.
Yeah, repositioning wasn’t possible. It all came down to $$ in this case.
I also herd the story of the veterinarian trying to do a quick calf fetotomy so he could attend his kid’s school event. He hurried and inadvertently had a finger in the cutting loop. Then, instead of removing his arm from the cow he just had the farmer do a quick cut, saving a few minutes but losing a finger.
We were never rural people but my wife was a knitter and became highly interested in sheep and sheep husbandry. Which led to her subscribing and us both reading a very small magazine dedicated to small flock shepherds:
Anyhow, it was quite eye-opening to see the economics-first approach to animal husbandry, even for people who had just a few sheep as a hobby / quasi-pets. Very different from so many suburbanites who’ll spend very large sums on low-percentage treatments on older pets.
My point here is not to say which attitude is “better”; just that they’re hugely different.
I’m just so done watching the shows now.
Some of them go too far into the Vets and their family lives. Feels like a goofy reality show, the kind I hate.
One of the YouTube channels my daughter watches a lot is of a farrier cleaning and restoring cattle hooves. Apparently hoof abscesses are really common. I’ve taken to averting my eyes from her computer screen at mealtimes.
My gf’s farrier comes on a regular schedule every 6 weeks or so to remove shoes, trim hoofs, and replace shoes (a reset). The horses are so good that he doesn’t need help, they just stand in cross ties.
When I come home from work with the dogs and let them out of my Jeep they can smell that he’s been there. They go tearing down to the barn to grab a piece of hoof, which they consider to be a treat.
Can you imagine being able to smell that your SO trimmed her nails?
It’s about the 350-acre farm the family is building. I doubt that there is much vet stuff (or even much Dr. Pol, for that matter). I suspect it is mostly about the farm and focuses on his son, Charles.
Farriers are another group working with live animals that do hard, dirty, and sometimes dangerous work to maintain and improve animal health. I was fortunate to have a wonderful farrier for my horses, and to then have a second equally excellent one after his death (of illness, not workplace injury). All three of the horses I owned over the years were, thank goodness, perfectly behaved for their shoeings.
If you have access to PBS, The Yorkshire Vet — involving a veterinary centre which is the logical successor to “James Herriot”'s practise — has shown any number of bovine and ovine Caesarians, not all of which result in a live outcome. Not to mention shirtless vets and ratchets.
I love Dr. Pol! I’ve just come downstairs where there is a Dr. Pol marathon on in the bedroom. It’s bedroom wallpaper. Very recently right here in CS there was a reality show thread in which we had a short discussion on the VASTLY different yearly incomes of large animal vets and small animal vets.
I remember in the beginning I thought Charles was a little slow. Come to find out he came back home after working in the entertainment business in CA and executive produced the show into existence.
He’s 81 and I worry about him, he seems to be a hard driven-- and driving workaholic. He’ll probably be pulling off his shirt and reaching into bovine assholes into his 100s.
He did! He worked in the entertainment industry in California and thought a documentary about his dad would be good entertainment. Nat Geo thought it would be a great TV show. From the wiki:
He credits his son Charles, who is the series producer, and who successfully pitched the series to National Geographic. According to Pol, Charles counseled him, “Dad, do your work. That is interesting enough. Don’t look at the camera, don’t do anything for the camera.” Pol continues. “… it’s not scripted; it is real.”
Some 30 years ago, one of my sisters moved from being a stablehand in upstate New York to Michigan’s mitten on the promise of becoming a veterinary assistant. Once she arrived in Michigan, the vet’s wife vetoed the idea and sis ended up on Amway’s production line.
I don’t recall if she ever said who that vet was but Amway and Dr. Pol are only about 80 miles apart.
Large animal vets are heroes. I’ve watched my vet float (i.e. file to an even surface) my horses’ teeth when it was five degrees F and the wash water had a skim of ice on it. She thought little of it, it was just another winter farm call. I’ve had my vet out at ten pm to diagnose my ailing horse by flashlight in the pasture. When my horse fell out of my moving trailer, my vet drove out to meet me on the road to bandage and sedate her and get her loaded up to go to the vet hospital. My vet hugged me and let me cry on her, after she had to euthanize my pony, and although I’ve had many an animal put down (and have done mercy killing on my own, of poultry), there is nothing so heartbreaking as watching your horse falling to the grass, dead before they hit the ground. Nothing, so far.
I’ve also ‘gone in’ and turned goat kids in the birthing canal – nothing so arduous as calving though. It is scary and the outcome is always uncertain.
Had my horses trimmed today. My farrier told me she’s pregnant and taking off until September. Couldn’t recommend anyone - the person she’d normally refer me to is moving out of state. Ugh.