Dad drove the truck up to the shiny new vet clinic and we sat and waited for the vet to finish castrating a bull over at the old clinic. This was not the same vet who had put the cast on. He's a young guy, just a couple of years older than me. In fact, I went to high school with his brother.
When the vet finally arrived, he took a look at Dopey in the trailer and decided to just do the procedure on the trailer. He went inside to get the anaesthetic ready and Dad told me to get in the trailer and calm Dopey down. Dopey was not impressed at being cooped up in the trailer and was borderline panicked by that point. So, I climbed in and talked to Dopey. Once he calmed down a bit, I got closer and petted him until the vet came to give him the sedative. I stayed in the trailer then and watched Dopey as he slowly got woozy. He fought the sedative as long as he could, and finally stumbled, then collapsed on the floor.
Once Dopey was incapacitated, the vet cut the cast off. I could smell something slightly putrid as the cast came off. Once it was off, the vet examined the leg. As he lifted it up, I could see a spot on the back of the leg that did not look healthy. The vet saw it at the same time I did and uttered the phrase you never want to hear, especially when you've already lost a few calves: "Uh oh." He informed us that there was a break in the skin, which had probably been too small to see when the cast was first put on, and that the bone was infected.
As the vet examined the wound and cleaned the pus out, the smell got worse. There isn't much that grosses me out, but that smell...that was disgusting. I had to turn my face away and get some fresh air a couple times. It was hours before the lingering smell finally left my nose.
There are a few options for Dopey. We decided to have the vet put the cast back on as a splint, leaving room for some air to get to the wound. We'll also treat him with antibiotics for a few days. If the leg doesn't get better in a couple weeks, we'll have the vet amputate it and Dopey can hobble about on three legs.
I'm thinking that Dopey will be okay. When I was unloading him from the trailer back at home, there was a gap between the trailer and the barn. Dopey still seemed a bit woozy, so I left him standing by the trailer door and went in search of a piece of plywood to make a bridge. I had finally located a sturdy piece and dragged it over to the trailer when I saw Dopey, cast and all, take a flying leap from the trailer into the barn. All that was left for me to do was drag the plywood back to the shed, take the truck out of the corral and bring in Dopey's mom. He's going to be okay.
