: The Life of a Yorkshire Vet Read online

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by

  Michael O’Mara Books Limited

  9 Lion Yard

  Tremadoc Road

  London SW4 7NQ

  Copyright © Julian Norton 2016

  Foreword copyright © Jim Wight

  All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-78243-683-6 in hardback print format

  ISBN: 978-1-78243-684-3 in ebook format

  www.mombooks.com

  Dedicated to the memory of Dave Payne, great friend, superb climber, typical Yorkshireman. Died on the Matterhorn, August 1993

  ✳

  And for Anne: thank you for putting up with me, for skilfully fine-tuning my stories and for not cutting out too many of my words

  CONTENTS

  Foreword by Jim Wight

  Introduction

  1 Hard Work and Determination

  2 Anthrax and Appendicitis in Scotland

  3 ‘Job’s a Bad Un’

  4 There’s Nowt Better than a Good Old Cow!

  5 The Evil Salve

  6 Monty Python

  7 Up in the Night

  8 Sabrina’s Dead?

  9 Working with the Herriot Vets

  10 My Other Loves

  11 A Year in the Cotswolds

  12 Back in Thirsk

  13 Foot-and-Mouth Disease – a Return to the Dark Ages

  14 Life in the Protection Zone

  15 The Persistent Itch

  16 Bobby and Harvey the Inflatable Dog

  17 World Records and Team GB

  18 Things Stuck in Animals and Animals Stuck in Things

  19 Changing Times

  20 The Yorkshire Vet

  Acknowledgements

  List of Illustrations

  Foreword by Jim Wight

  My father and I had almost finished a busy evening surgery at the veterinary practice of Sinclair and Wight in Thirsk. There was just one client left to see; he was sitting patiently and, on his knee, there was a large cardboard box with holes in. Rustling noises emanated from within the box.

  ‘I can tell you two things about whatever is inside that box,’ said my father with a wry smile. ‘It’ll be fast … and it’ll bite. You can deal with it!’

  ‘Thanks, Dad!’

  As a practising veterinary surgeon with almost fifty years’ experience of working in general practice, my father, Alf Wight, had observed tremendous changes within his profession. Writing as James Herriot, he had brilliantly documented the ever-evolving face of the veterinary profession. He was a traditional vet – domestic farm animals, cats and dogs – and he faced, reluctantly, having to turn his hand to the ‘exotic’ species, for example rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, tortoises and snakes. He would have been amazed to observe the work of the vets at the Skeldale Veterinary Centre – the modern, relocated veterinary practice in Thirsk – as they tackle the many and varied ailments of so many different species. Their work has captured the interest of viewers nationwide as they watch The Yorkshire Vet television series on Channel 5. This programme has proved extremely popular, and just like James Herriot decades ago, they are a credit to their profession, accurately depicting the busy life of today’s practising veterinarians.

  The profession has endured a barrage of criticism over recent years, with the accusation of vets charging extortionate fees a prime example. It should be remembered that the modern veterinary practice, in satisfying an ever more demanding public, faces huge overheads in providing a comprehensive, up-to-date and first-class service to their clients. This they largely do, and while watching The Yorkshire Vet there is little indication of any financial gain being the prime motivation. Just as James Herriot depicted his profession as the caring one, this television series projects a similar image. Many things have changed since James Herriot’s heyday, but in this respect, not much has altered.

  My father often said that his time in veterinary practice was ‘harder but more fun’. It was certainly physically harder, but in contrast to his day, the modern vet has to deal with an endless onslaught of rules and regulations, with the threat of litigation lurking round every corner. Despite this, the vets and staff at Skeldale maintain an upbeat and humorous approach to their work, something that my father would have applauded. He always maintained that laughter was an essential ingredient of every veterinary surgeon’s day, and there was plenty of humour in his days as a vet, something that is more than adequately recorded in his bestselling books.

  Julian, with whom I worked only very briefly, as I was retiring while he was beginning his time in Thirsk, mentions in his book how he too, over a comparatively short period of twenty years or so, has noticed the great changes in the work of the veterinary surgeon. When I began my time as a vet in Thirsk in 1967, the practice of Sinclair and Wight had between ninety and one hundred dairy farms to visit; now the Skeldale Veterinary Centre has only two or three. The country vet’s life was one of visiting countless small family farms, a time when the vet was almost a member of the family. They were days when a man milking twenty cows could make a decent living; at the time of writing this foreword, a dairy farmer milking ten times that number is struggling to make ends meet.

  Most of our small farms have disappeared, many of them absorbed into much larger enterprises. Family-run veterinary practices have faced similar challenges, with large organizations swallowing up the smaller businesses. I believe it is refreshing to see local practices, like the one here in Thirsk, doing so well and providing an excellent twenty-four-hour, seven days a week, service in the face of so many big takeovers in our profession.

  The Yorkshire Vet series has proved a great success, partly due to the honest and dedicated treatment of the patients, as displayed on the television screen. This is veterinary practice as it really is, and despite the many changes that have occurred since my time as a vet, some things have not changed, and I relive quite a few memories while watching the programme.

  In this book, Julian gives a realistic insight into life behind the scenes at Skeldale Veterinary Centre, a turbulent life of triumphs mixed with disappointments. James Herriot said many times that he felt he was the greatest vet on earth one minute, only to feel a total idiot the next. This is adequately illustrated in Julian’s book and, as the reader will realize, it has done nothing to dampen his enthusiasm. His love for his profession is very clear; the elation following a successful case, his despair when things do not go to plan, together with his outspoken views on such important topics as tuberculosis and foot and mouth disease.

  Shortly following my father’s death, a statement from the British Veterinary Association read, ‘James Herriot’s scientific and technical approach to his cases may well be outdated, but his caring and compassionate approach to both patient and customer is most definitely not’. The vets and staff at Skeldale Veterinary Centre are carrying forward that James Herriot tradition of compassion and care into the modern age. Long may this continue.

  Jim Wight, BVMS, MRCVS, author of The Real James Herriot

  Introduction

  The pregnant cow had no intention of going into the cattle crush inside the barn. She wasn’t used to being handled by humans, having spent most of her life out on the moor, and we had been struggling to catch her for
half an hour. Eventually we managed to lasso her and get a halter on, but she still stubbornly refused to go in to the rusty old crush, so we had to make do with just tying her to it, via the halter. The poor girl was giving birth, but her calf was enormous. There was no way it could be born without a caesarean section.

  It was hard to see what I was doing in the gloomy light of the barn, but apart from the well-aimed and unpredictable kicks from my patient, the operation was going smoothly. The calf was sturdy and full of vigour, and was soon rolling around in the straw looking for its mother. Then, just as I was about to start suturing everything back together, disaster struck.

  The cow jumped in the air. Both the cattle crush and the halter were old and worn out, and the halter quickly gave way. The cow, unaccustomed to being in a barn, raised her head, opened her eyes wide and charged, looking either for revenge, her calf, or a means of escape. There was a large open doorway in the barn, and this offered a clear route to the moorland beyond. If she chose escape, she would be loose on the moors with her uterus dangling from the large hole in her left flank, through which her calf had been delivered. This would be a catastrophe. The farmer and I could only stand and watch, as the cow chose her fate. She stopped her charge and looked out at the moorland, then turned back to look at her calf. Thankfully, her maternal instincts were strong. As she settled with her baby, we managed to fasten her up again so I could suture her uterus and her flank and finish the operation.

  I drove back home that evening as the sun was setting, feeling very lucky. It was a great story, and reminded me of a conversation I’d had with my English teacher, Mr Clough, many years before.

  ‘Well, Julian,’ he had implored, ‘if you are determined to become a vet, will you promise me one thing – you will, at least, write about being one?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do, sir,’ I assured him. Inwardly, I suspected that this was highly unlikely. I had yet to sit my GCSE examinations and could only dream of a place at veterinary school. The path to becoming a veterinary surgeon was beset by many hurdles, and it seemed ludicrous to imagine that I could become both a vet and an author.

  But twenty-eight years later, hurdles negotiated, here I was, a veterinary surgeon, working in a wonderful mixed practice in my beloved North Yorkshire. It was, in fact, the practice where the most famous vet of them all, James Herriot, spent his working life, and from where he penned the iconic books that inspired a generation of veterinary surgeons. I thought myself pretty fortunate. Life was good, but very hectic. Work was tough and busy, I was training to compete for the GB triathlon team, had two very sporty boys, and a wife who was also a vet and also very busy. We had many balls to keep in the air. After being called out during one night at 2 a.m., 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., to replace uterine prolapses in three different cows (a heavy and dirty job), I remember thinking that I could not possibly fit anything else into my life.

  So, when the practice was approached, by Daisybeck Studios, about the possibility of making a television series called The Yorkshire Vet, we all had mixed feelings. It would be a lot of extra work for everyone and we would be putting the practice, our clients and ourselves on public display. But I thought it could be a fun and different way of approaching the summer’s work. It would be a good advert for our modern but traditional mixed practice, and our links with James Herriot could not be overlooked. So we agreed to be filmed over the summer of 2015, with enthusiasm from some of us, and hesitation from others.

  What followed was one of the most challenging periods of my professional life. Being filmed felt like doing two jobs at once, and I had thought doing just one was pretty hard. However, the series proved to be more popular than any of us would have dreamt, and soon the cameras were back, to start filming for a second series. Minor (very minor) celebrity status followed. I was asked to open a shop selling Christmas trees, I had a ‘selfie’ taken with the fishmonger in the market square and modelled shirts for a local clothes retailer. I was even recognized as I queued at the check-in desk at the airport and my eldest son temporarily thought I was a cool dad, rather than an embarrassing one. Although I was still just doing what I had always done, things had definitely changed and soon the chance arose to write a book, so I was able to follow the advice of my English teacher at last.

  ‘It will be easy,’ the publicity people said, ‘we will just send a ghost writer. You cannot possibly work, film for a second series and write you own book’ (and also train for the Patrouille des Glaciers, a ski mountaineering race through the highest mountains in Switzerland, for which my team and I had just got a much-coveted place). But then, I thought, it wouldn’t be my own book. My wife, Anne, agreed to help me. She had some experience writing for newspapers, so we decided upon a strategy. I wrote, and Anne bent and battered it into shape.

  James Herriot brought veterinary medicine and Thirsk to the attention of the world. I hope he would recognize and enjoy my version of both. And Mr Clough, I have saved a copy for you!

  1

  Hard Work and Determination

  It seems to me, that the way life develops is a mixture of fate, luck, hard work, determination and making the most of the opportunities that come your way. I don’t know whether it is simply good luck that these opportunities appear, or whether it is one’s ability to make the most of them. However, as I sit in the dark kitchen of our house, having woken up at 5 a.m. to start writing this book, in the same street that Alf Wight, who wrote under the name of James Herriot, the world’s most famous veterinary surgeon, lived for much of his working life, the feeling of destiny is strong. The story of how I became a vet and how I ended up at Skeldale Veterinary Centre in Thirsk, on the edge of the North York Moors, feels similarly preordained.

  I did not come from a farming background, or even a rural one, as many aspiring veterinary surgeons did at that time. Far from it, in fact. I was born and brought up in the coalmining town of Castleford, in industrial West Yorkshire. If my choice of career was determined by my birthplace alone, then I should have become a rugby league player, as Wheldon Lane, where Castleford Rugby League team played, was only a short walk from our house. But, while I loved watching the game, I had no talent whatsoever for playing it. I did, however, have plenty of exposure to animals from a young age, because my grandfather kept a smallholding where he reared pigs and turkeys and he also ran a small boarding kennel. My grandparents lived just ten houses up the street from us, so even when I was very young, I would take myself up there at every spare opportunity to help out. They also bred Bedlington terriers. Nowadays, these dogs are neatly trimmed and take pride of place in the show ring, but back then they were tough dogs for rabbiting and catching the rats that were attracted to the pigs and their food at the bottom of the garden. I loved these dogs and I can still remember being able to stand next to Judy the Bedlington terrier when I was small. I could rest my face against her soft, woolly fur and breathe in that unmistakable smell of dog that I now encounter on a nearly daily basis.

  My mother was a pharmacist and worked in several of the independent chemist shops in Castleford. I would sometimes have to go along after school to wait for the end of her shift in the dispensary. I watched her counting tablets and measuring out medicines in her clinically clean white coat. Again, I can remember the smell – a mixture of hospitals and chemistry labs – and I was captivated by the process of dispensing these medicines, all for the purpose of treating illness in the patients for whom they were prescribed. So, even at this early age, some seeds were set in my mind for a future career, which must surely involve animals and medicine. And so, as I got older and began to do well at school, particularly in the sciences (my father was a chemistry teacher, so I had no excuses), I began to consider a career as a veterinary surgeon. Undoubtedly, the TV series All Creatures Great and Small, based upon Alf Wight’s books, which starred Christopher Timothy as James Herriot and Robert Hardy as Siegfried Farnon, was instrumental in my decision. It was on television at about six o’clock on a Sunday evening, and was r
egular viewing for the whole family.

  At this time, I was also an enthusiastic runner. Most of my weekends were taken up with cross country or fell races all over Yorkshire, often in the Dales or the Moors. I loved it, and it became my passion to head to the hills at every opportunity. It did not bother me one bit if the weather was cold, raining, windy or snowing, just as long as I could get outside, into the fresh air and the spectacular scenery for which I was developing an affinity. As it transpired, it was an affinity that would only get stronger. The combination of my love of animals and an overpowering passion for the outdoors made a career in veterinary medicine the obvious choice. Thinking back, I guess the olfactory stimuli of pigs, Bedlington terriers, pharmacies and fresh air was the perfect combination to set me on this path.

  I have a photograph of me, as a reticent thirteen-year-old, standing under an archway at Pembroke College, Cambridge. I am wearing one of those plastic macs that nobody wears any more, which afford limited protection from the rain and zero protection from the cold. I loved that mac, though, because it was my running top, and my first piece of proper sporting clothing. Its back was invariably splattered in mud, which left indelible marks, but I used to wear it everywhere. Anyway, I came to be posing for a photo under this archway because my family had taken a day trip to visit Cambridge, one Easter holiday. Parking in Cambridge was (and still is) very difficult but my father had found a parking spot on Trumpington Street and, as we embarked on our tour around the town, Pembroke College was the first one we visited.

  Cambridge is a wonderful place, especially at Easter because the college grounds are bursting with spring flowers, and after walking under that archway there was the most beautifully peaceful courtyard, crammed full of crocuses and daffodils. I immediately set my heart on coming to this place for my university career. As there were only six universities at that time that offered veterinary medicine, I actually didn’t have too much choice over which one I applied to, but within Cambridge, I could apply to any one of about twenty-five colleges. However, there was no question in my mind that Pembroke was the place for me, and so it turned out …