Village Horse Doctor Read Online Free

instruments in my apartment. Each time I drove into town, I went to the drugstores to see if I had any calls. The word began to get around that there was a horse doctor in town, and I began to pick up some emergencies and light practice.
    About two o’clock in the morning my phone rang and it was a very fastidious old woman who after some persuasion had caused me to do some surgery on her poodle dog. I had explained to her that the dog could not have any food for about twelve hours, but never in my practice did I ever say that any animal could not have a drink of water. Now this two o’clock call was to tell me that Charm was crying for a drink of water and would it be all right for her to have some. I hadn’t been to bed very long and I wasn’t too happy about Charm and her drink of water, but I thought better than to cuss this precise old social woman out and I just as well could have a little fun out of it.
    In answer to her question, I asked, “Do you have any distilled water in the house?”
    She said, “No, I don’t have,” just as though she kept it all the time and this was the first time that she was out.
    I said, “Put some water in a pan and boil it for about thirty minutes, let it set until it’s cool, and then it will be all right for Charm to drink all she wants of it.”
    Well, she was so grateful for my consideration of Charm’s health, she said she would boil the water immediately. I figured that by the time she got the water to boil and sat up waitin’ for it to cool, maybe she could go to sleep and wouldn’t hear that dog cry and maybe I could get some sleep too.
    By now my general practice had gotten to be rather steady, and all the early spring diseases and surgery were keeping me busy. It was time to begin doing the usual amount of spring surgery, mostly castrating young horses. As usual, ranchmen looked up the signs of the Zodiac before they ever came and asked me to work on their young horses. I never looked at the “signs” but I could always tell when they were supposed to be “right” because three or four different ranchers would want to make appointments to castrate their horses all about the same time.
    I went to Guy Rochell’s ranch one morning, and he had lots of good help to rope and tie as many as three horses down at a time. Guy carried my bucket of solution with my instruments in it from one horse to the next, and I carried my sulfa powder in a bottle in my hip pocket. Everything worked real fast and none of these horses had any unusual problems and from ten thirty till noon we caught, castrated, and turned loose twenty-seven head of horses.
    It was good, sunny, dry weather and fresh green feed had grown enough for horses to fill up on it. I knew from the luck we had in the surgery and the medication I usedthat these horses would have to have gotten well without the slightest complication.
    I was still new in the country and was hoping that my professional reputation was improving. I saw Guy Rochell standing in front of the Stockton Pharmacy talking with several other ranchers and thought that this would be a good time to get some complimentary remarks. As I walked up and shook hands, I said, “Mr. Rochell, how have the horses done? Did they swell any?”
    Guy rared back and wrinkles formed over his nose, and in a complete expression of disgust and high tone of voice, he said, “Did they swell? Did they swell? They swelled the mares in another pasture.”
    Not too long after this, Bud Calhoun called and wanted me to come out to his place and castrate a two-year-old colt that he was very fond of. His place was just north of town in the irrigation valley that was watered by the natural flow of Comanche Springs. Bud made a business of repairing windmills, pulling sucker rods, and doing whatever was necessary to keep water flowing in the big pastures of the ranch country, and this farm where he lived was not his full-time work.
    When I drove up, he had one man who worked for