‘I’ll just get my crystal ball,’ he replied, cupping his hands around the imaginary object. ‘Yes, James, I see good old Nevison House … and, yes, there is a scene of high activity. I see flying feet, I hear bad language and … yes …’ he continued, looking directly at my face, ‘I see a bearded figure!’
There was always plenty of humour in the practice as my father enjoyed watching his young colleagues learning the tricks of the trade. One day, one of our assistants, while visiting a group of young pigs suffering from a disease called ‘Bowel oedema’, had injected two particularly badly affected ones that had been exhibiting severe convulsions. Several days passed without his learning the result of his treatment, and this concerned him.
‘Don’t ask!’ advised Alf. ‘A silence means they are either better, or they are dead.’
The young veterinary surgeon who was, naturally, itching to know what had happened, saw the owner of the pigs shortly afterwards, an elderly, bent man, walking along the street. He approached him.
‘Now then, Mr Braithwaite!’ he said. ‘How are those pigs of yours getting on?’
‘Nicely, thank yer,’ replied the old man. ‘Doin’ right well!’
‘Oh good,’ said the assistant, with some relief.
Mr Braithwaite took his pipe out of his mouth and looked at the young vet. ‘Them two you injected died, but ’t rest are awright!’
On hearing the story, my father retorted, ‘I told you not to ask him!’
His advice to me in my early days as a veterinary surgeon was of paramount importance. While I was full of the latest theoretical knowledge, he had the advantage of years of practical experience – and there were plenty of lessons to be learned.
On one occasion in 1970, Alex Talbot (the other assistant in the practice at the time) and I were operating on a Labrador. This big, friendly dog had the unfortunate tendency to consume large quantities of socks, shirts, old trousers – in fact, anything that was soft enough to pass down his enormous gullet.
These unscheduled eating episodes were frequently followed by emergency operations to remove the offending substances and he soon became one of our most valued customers. On this occasion he had feasted upon a long piece of highly-coloured cloth and, having opened his abdomen, we had made several incisions into his intestinal tract but could not remove the cloth in one piece; it seemed to be firmly anchored somewhere. The operation was beginning to assume epic proportions when my father walked in.
‘What’s the problem, boys?’ he asked.
I explained, through clenched teeth, that we had opened up several holes in the dog’s digestive system but that the cloth was still tightly anchored.
He looked at the gaping wound and the perspiring faces of his two young assistants before opening the dog’s mouth.
‘This is interesting,’ he said quietly and began to extract, very gently, a long piece of colourful material out of the animal’s mouth. There seemed to be no end to it as he continued pulling. When he had finally finished, he tossed the entire heap nonchalantly into the waste bin.
‘There was some string attached to the cloth and this was wrapped around his tongue. I don’t think you will have any more trouble!’ He walked quietly out of the room to a deafening silence. It had taken him less than one minute to solve the problem.
‘Why hadn’t we thought of looking in the dog’s mouth?’ I thought to myself. Alex said nothing for several minutes. Suddenly, he swore savagely – twice – and continued suturing.
These were good days in the practice. Business was improving and, with it, the profits. There was an increasing flow of dogs and cats through the old house at 23 Kirkgate, and the farm side of the work had also taken an upturn, with a new scheme to eradicate Brucellosis from the cattle population of the United Kingdom well under way. This meant that there was plenty of work for us all.
My father was observing a great change in his profession as more modern drugs and treatments began to strengthen the veterinary surgeon’s armoury. However, in Donald Sinclair, he still had a partner on whom the passage of time seemed to have had very little effect. Just as in those far-off days of the 1940s, Donald’s fertile brain was continually thinking of ways to earn extra income. One day in the hot summer of 1975, he approached my father and myself with his latest scheme. With the farm stock thriving outside at pasture in the warm sunshine, there was very little work for us. Donald was restless.
‘Alfred! Jim!’ he exclaimed. ‘We should be doing something rather than hanging around! We have wages to pay but the assistants are standing around doing nothing. It won’t do! I have an idea!’
My father’s eyes narrowed. Knowing his partner of old, he wondered what sort of wild ideas were ricocheting around in his brain.
Donald continued with an analysis of the practice finances. ‘Alfred, I have calculated that unless we are making thirty pence a minute, we are going to the wall. We’ll go under unless we start to get busy!’
A spasm passed across Alf’s face. He had heard this so many times before but it still managed to twist his stomach into a knot. ‘Right, Donald,’ he said, ‘what do you suggest?’
‘We’ll start a dog trimming parlour! Think of all those hairy dogs in Thirsk, dragging themselves around in this heat. It will give them a new lease of life.’
There was a pause as my father took it all in. He exhaled slowly before shooting a swift glance in my direction. ‘Okay, Donald,’ he replied. Despite my father’s clear lack of enthusiasm, we all found ourselves, two days later, in the consulting-room with Mrs Warham’s hairy little Pekingese on the table and Donald clutching some huge horse clippers.
The session began badly with Donald ramming the clippers into the ancient electric socket on the wall. This was followed by a loud explosion which delayed matters while a bemused electrician repaired the damage under Donald’s impatient stare. We were soon under way again.
We watched in amazement as Donald hacked furiously at the hairy little creature. The old clippers made a tremendous noise as great clumps of hair flew around the room. My father occasionally tried to tender some advice but his partner was in full cry. Within minutes, the little dog was stripped bald save for his head and tail, and he presented an unusual sight. Isolated tufts stood up from his pink skin rather like cacti in a desert, while the removal of the hair from his rear end threw his hitherto concealed testicles into bold relief.
Donald stood back to admire his work. ‘How about that, Alfred?’ he asked, a trace of uncertainty in his voice.
My father took a while to reply. The dog appeared to be totally unconcerned but I could sense that my father felt a little differently. He stared, mesmerised, at the apparition in front of him. It no longer bore any resemblance to the canine species.
‘Fine, Donald,’ he said, slowly and deliberately. ‘ Youwill return the dog to its owner, won’t you?’
I was, unfortunately, present when Mrs Warham came to collect her freshly-groomed pet. She gazed, open mouthed, at the little creature before her. The bald, spiky body was in stark contrast to the tufty tail with the bright red testicles bulging beneath. The eyes shone happily from the depths of the hairy face. Mrs Warham burst into floods of tears.
Sinclair and Wight’s dog-trimming business drew to a sudden close but there was a satisfactory ending to the story. The summer of that year turned out to be an extremely hot one and Donald’s little patient, bereft of so much hair, enjoyed the best summer of his life – and went on to grow a wonderful new shining coat. Donald had been right; his first and only customer did, indeed, receive a new lease of life.
The fact that some things altered little was quite refreshing for Alf, as he was under pressure to adapt to the ever-changing aspect of his work as a veterinary surgeon. Realising he had to move with the times, he kept well abreast of developments within the large animal side but left the more sophisticated small animal work to his younger colleagues. However, despite his assertions that he was never a ‘real small animal vet’, I was always pleased when he assisted me in performing an operation; his abundance of common sense and care for the patient, together with his deep mistrust of general anaesthesia, ensured that he never took his eyes off the patient’s respiratory rate. As a veterinary surgeon, when in the company of animals both large and small, I always found his presence a reliable and comforting one.