Sometimes in our job you feel you just can't win. If you take too long you're no good, if you're too quick the visit wasn't necessary.
Siegfried once told me he had spent half a morning trying to stuff a uterus up a cow’s rectum. What really worried him, he said, was that he nearly succeeded)
Now then, young man, he cried in the nasal twang of the West Riding. I’m Mr. Dinsdale’s brother. I farm over in Listondale. I put down my equipment and nodded. How do you do? My name is Herriot.
I pulled a packet of Cold Flake from my pocket. Cliff, you’re a marvel. Will you have a cigarette? It ’ud be like givin’ a pig a strawberry, the little man replied,
I had discovered something, discovered something by accident. That ewe’s life had been saved not by medicinal therapy but simply by stopping her pain and allowing nature to do its own job of healing....
I freely admit that I have many times adopted Jim Oakley’s precept of a bloody good gallop, often with spectacular results. To this day I frequently learn things from farmers, but that was one time wh...
His name is Tristan, by the way. Tristan?Yes. Oh, I should have told you. You must have wondered about my own name. It was my father. Great Wagnerian. It nearly ruled his life. It was music all the ti...
He loved the stuff. But unfortunately he couldn’t say Propamidine. In fact nobody on the entire establishment could say it except Charlie the farm foreman and he only thought he could say it. He calle...
As I trailed dumbly up the next flight it seemed strange that we had never said goodbye. We didn’t know when, if ever, we would see each other again yet neither of us had said a word. I don’t know if...
After that first crowded day I retired to one of those green-tiled sanctuaries and lathered myself with a new bar of a famous toilet soap which Helen had put in my bag. I have never been able to use t...
Own. I am sure that is what the family remembered best about me because of the way the mother’s letter began. Dear Vet with the bandaged finger …
You don’t find cows with names any more and there aren’t any farmers like Mr. Dakin, who somehow scratched a living from a herd of six milkers plus a few calves, pigs and hens.
Usually they looked past me hopefully and some even went and peered into the car to see if the man they really wanted was hiding in there. And it was uphill work examining an animal when its owner was...
The dog did not move as the needle was inserted, and, as the barbiturate began to flow into the vein, the anxious expression left his face and the muscles began to relax. By the time the injection was...
That ewe's life had been saved not by medicinal therapy but simply by stopping her pain and allowing nature to do its own job of healing. It was a lesson I have never forgotten; the animals confronted...
Caution is often a virtue, but in your case you carry it too far. It's a little flaw in your character and it shows in a multitude of ways. In your wary approach to problems in your work for instance,...
And there was that letter from the Bramleys—that really made me feel good. You don’t find people like the Bramleys now; radio, television and the motorcar have carried the outside world into the most...
And just then the thin boy yawned. I had labelled him as an ineffectual sort of lad but he certainly could yawn; it was a stretching, groaning, voluptuous paroxysm which drowned my words and it went o...
All young animals are appealing but the lamb has been given an unfair share of charm.
This is Joe Bentley speaking, said the figure on the surgery doorstep. It was an odd manner of address, made stranger by the fact that Joe was holding his clenched fist up by his jaw and staring vacan...