Chapter 2: If I Only Knew...

When I boarded that airplane and flew to Ontario, I was extremely upset about leaving my friends, my family and especially my lover. I realized that I was leaving home for the very first time and I was moving two thousand miles away, so I was actually feeling somewhat homesick even before I reached Toronto. However at the same time, I was elated to be heading off to new territory with the chance to learn to do the one thing that I had always wanted. In other words I was a very confused and unsettled young man.

Luckily for me there were several students arriving at the airport at nearly the same time, all bound for the University of Guelph, so the school had arranged for a bus to transport us there. Without that bus and the guide who rode with us, I would have wasted a lot of time finding my way to campus. Even after arriving there, I wouldn’t have been known enough to have found my way to Mills Hall, the men’s residence where I would be living for the next few years.

When I found my room, I met my roommate and luckily for me, he was a second year student, who was familiar with the campus. After I’d unpacked, he took me out for a short tour to show me around. Only a short distance west of our residence was a three-story brick building, the Ontario Veterinary College, a building originally funded by James Archibald and the place where I would register for most of my classes. Almost due south of Mills Hall was Massey Hall, the library, and the building where I would be working in order to pay for my room and board. After our short walking tour, Jason, my new roomy and I went for something to eat. It was while we were eating that the emotions of the day as well as the long flight caught up to me. I made a long distance phone call home to let Myrna and my folks know that I’d arrived safely, then I went to bed.

During the next month, I seldom had time to be homesick, well except for the time following the letters from home. Actually I received letters from Mom, Dad, my sister and Myrna quite regularly. Those letters stirred up feelings of homesickness at first, but after a few months I’d settled in, so instead of being unsettled by them, I was happy to hear any news from home.

Then one evening, I was called to the floor phone at the residence for a call from Mom. Myrna’s father had been hurt in an accident and Dad had been slightly injured while helping him. Dad wasn’t seriously injured, but Myrna’s dad had been flown to the University Hospital in Edmonton. That was actually the point in time when the letters from Myrna began to grow longer, but they also arrived less often.

Not long after that I heard that our nearest neighbours had moved away. Myrna’s father could no longer work as hard, so they were forced to sell the farm, but had used the money from the sale to buy a smaller place not far from Calgary. My sister gained a fiancé about then and when I went home the next spring for the wedding, I found that my sister and her new hubby had actually managed to buy Myrna’s family’s place with his family’s help.

I saw Myrna and her parents at my sister’s wedding, but since I had a summer job working in Algonquin Park, I was only home for a few days, so had very little chance to spend any length of time with them. In fact over the next year I seldom received letters from Myrna, but my letters to her were just as infrequent, and I never saw her on those few times when I was able to make it home. Then late in my third year I received an invitation to her wedding. I suppose I should have expected it, but I hadn’t and I’ll admit now that I felt somewhat relieved when I found wouldn’t be able to take time off, so I’d be unable to attend the ceremony.

Up until then I’d never seriously dated, but Myrna’s marriage changed my attitude and by the time I’d finished veterinary training, I was married as well. In fact, by the time I moved back to start a veterinarian practice in my old hometown, my wife, Sandra, was expecting. The strange thing was that my son, Donald was born in the same room and even in the same bed where I’d been born. We’d been visiting the farm and I’d been checking Dad’s cattle while Sandra visited with Mom. Sandra had been helping Mom around the house and thought she strained herself slightly when she’d lifted a small box, so she’d gone to the bedroom to lie down for a while.

When Sandra realized that she was in labour, she’d called Mom. Mom called the doctor right away, then called down to the barn to get us. By the time I got there, the baby was on the way. I’ll be honest, Mom managed the delivery while I dithered like a fool. Dad told me afterward that because of my training, both he and Mom expected me to take over, but I simply couldn’t do it for some reason. The doctor got there in time to tie off the umbilical cord, while giving me a rough time, then we moved both Sandra and our new son to the hospital.

We lived and worked in my hometown for about twenty-five years. In that time, Sandra and I raised a son, grew apart, then divorced. Those years of slogging around in the snow and slush during the prairie winters had its effects on my health though. I was starting to find it harder to keep clear of bronchial infections. So, after the divorce, I sold my practice in the old hometown, then moved out to the west coast.

To my surprise, my son soon joined me there. He’d trained as a vet as well and I soon learned to depend on him, a lot. In fact I felt that he might be growing into a better vet than I had ever been. Inside of a year we went into partnership with each other and bought out an established veterinary clinic on the Saanich Peninsula, north of Victoria.

Being on Vancouver Island meant that the weather was a lot better than it had been on the prairies and since we expected to do a lot less large animal work, I was certain life would be a lot easier. However once we had set up a clinic, the local people soon got to know that we knew our way around the treatment of horses. That was when we discovered there were a surprising number of horses in the area. So, we soon developed a decent business while dealing with the various riding stables and the general horse loving community on the peninsula.

I’m not trying to imply that we only had dealings with horse people. In fact most of our patients were family pets - dogs, cats, and all manner of other small animals. Actually after the visit of one young woman with an old basset hound, my son seemed dreamy eyed for two days. When I asked him about it he couldn’t explain, other than to say that she was pretty and that she’d impressed him a lot. To be honest, since he’d always been a bit shy, I hoped she’d come back soon and that he’d ask her out. Let’s be honest, I felt he needed a woman in his life.

Late one afternoon we got a call from M & J stables, one of the few pony breeders on the island. We’d never been there before, but somehow they had heard of us and wanted us to look at an old mare of theirs in hopes that we could help her. My son was still learning about some of the quirks of equine medicine and we weren’t busy, so he asked to come along and I welcomed his company.

When we drove onto the little farm, I was impressed before I even stepped out of the car. The little farm was clean and neat, the buildings were well mainained and even the paddocks looked well cared for. We’d hardly gotten stopped when a lovely young woman stepped out of a barn door and headed our way.

“Dad, it’s Jean, the woman I was talking about, the one who came in with the dog,” Don whispered, then fell silent.

I could see why he’d been smitten with the young lady. She was certainly easy on the eyes and when she spoke to us, her tone was polite and friendly. She was impressing me even more as she explained about the mare while leading us inside the barn, then to a box stall that held one of the oldest and thinnest horses I’ve ever seen.

“Two days ago, she looked fine, old and a bit thin, but healthy. Now she won’t eat. She won’t drink. It seems almost as if she’s given up,” Jean explained quietly, her eyes brimming with tears.

As a rough gauge to tell a horse’s age, you often look at its teeth. A horse’s teeth keep growing as it ages, but at the same time, it wears its teeth down by chewing. The teeth of an older horse have to be trimmed so that back teeth don’t ‘float, ‘ but as the teeth are worn, or trimmed down, they develop a different shape, so the front teeth gradually protrude. One glance in this horse’s mouth told me that this horse was extremely old, perhaps as much as thirty years. That’s ancient for a horse.

Don was taking the old mare’s temperature, then listening to her breathing and heart beat with a stethoscope, while I’d been checking its nostrils, mouth and eyes. Then I looked at the overall condition of the horse. The old mare was extremely thin and her breathing was laboured, yet by looking at her coat you could tell that she was suffering from a recent condition.

I had the feeling there was something special about that horse though. Then suddenly, I realized that I recognised the markings of that old chestnut mare, but if so, I hadn’t seen her for many years. I turned slowly to look closely at the young woman.

“If woman wearing a skirt were to try to get on this mare’s back, would she still kneel?” I asked quietly.

“Even with her bad knees, she’d probably still try. That is if I’d let anyone near her wearing a skirt,” I heard a voice from behind me.

It was Myrna. She still looked good; older, more mature, and somewhat heavier, but I’d gained much more weight than she had. She was still a beautiful woman. I turned and stepped toward her, reaching out both arms, hoping for a hug. I wasn’t disappointed.

We kept our greeting short though, our main interest at the moment was the old mare. Even though we stood side by side, our eyes were on her daughter and my son as they examined the horse. However as I stood beside Myrna, I found one arm had crept behind her in a gentle hug while one of hers had slipped around my waist, holding me just as gently. It felt very comfortable.

I glanced at Myrna’s face and found her gaze meeting mine. Her eyes rolled toward the horse for a second, then lifted to meet my gaze again, silently asking a question. I couldn’t bear to give her false hope. So, I slowly shook my head. I was certain that we were going to have to put the old mare down, afraid she had something incurable and knowing she was in pain. Even if we could cure whatever she had, she was just too old to recover from anything that would knock her condition back like this.

Don and Jean took some blood and sputum samples for testing while we watched. Then Don suggested that he take Jean and the samples back to the office. He could test them while Myrna and I caught up on each other’s lives. I was still thinking about it when Myrna jabbed me in the ribs.

“Please?” she murmured. “You and I need to talk and I think my daughter needs a break away from the stables as well.”

“Mother!” her daughter complained. “I can’t leave Star when she might need me.”

“Oh for goodness sake!” Myrna snapped, but then smiled at her daughter. “It’ll do you good to get away from here for a while. We’ll keep an eye on old Star.”

I had to smile as I watched my son being led toward his car by a beautiful woman.

“Is she like you used to be?” I couldn’t help asking.

“Nowhere near as patient,” Myrna answered softly. “But that’s not really surprising, she’s had to put up with me for the last twenty-one years and I’ve certainly grown a lot less patient as time went by, so she’s absorbed bad habits from me.”

I wanted to know more, yet I knew that right then wasn’t the time to ask, not unless Myrna opened up first. She was silent as we watched the car drive out of the driveway, then she turned to me and I could see the tears in her eyes. “Tell me the truth, my horse is in pain, isn’t she?”

“Yes, she is,” I answered, realising that’s I’d been right in waiting to ask about anything else.

“And you don’t think there’s any cure, do you?”

“There isn’t. At the most we can keep her alive, but now that she’s deteriorated this far, I’m afraid that we’d just be prolonging her pain.”

“Well, we can’t have that. Do you have enough barbiturates with you to put her out of her misery?”

I nodded silently. We always carried a large vial of Sodium Pentobarbital with us. It wasn’t a nice thought, but we’d learned that sometimes there was no prior warning before we’d have to euthanise a large animal. As soon as she saw my nod, Myrna opened the door to the box stall wide and gently rubbed her hand on the old horse’s muzzle.

“Come on old girl, let’s go for one last walk.”

The old horse struggled a bit to get moving, but once she was outside she seemed to know exactly where she wanted to go. Myrna wasn’t leading her, that horse had a goal in mind. Myrna dropped back to walk at my side with tears streaming down her face.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I simply draped an arm around her shoulder and hugged her gently. Myrna’s arm snaked around my back and she hugged back tightly. She was openly crying now, but her pace never faltered as we kept up with the horse.

The old mare reached a gate, and we had to open it for her, then she carried on. We were going up a slight grade and the old mare’s pace faltered, but she staggered on wearily, finally stopping on the crest of a knoll near a pair of large white stones. Then after a short pause she seemed to try to take one more step, but instead she dropped to her knees, then slowly collapsed and fell to her side.

I lowered my case to the ground and quickly pulled out a stethoscope to listen to her heart beat. It was ragged but still there. One glance at Myrna’s face told me that this was where she wanted the old horse to finish her days. I opened my case again, taking out a large syringe, a long needle, and the bottle of Sodium Pentobarbital. In only moments, the job was done.

The old horse seemed to relax and for a moment she seemed to breathe easier, then her breath became shorter, shallower, and finally stopped altogether. Listening through the stethoscope, I could hear the heart beat for a few seconds more, then that too ceased. I looked up at Myrna’s tear streaked face, nodding my head slightly to let her know that Star was in no more pain.