Chapter Three – Lana Makes A Friend

The seizures weren’t Lana’s only torments. Her life was a daily catalogue of hills and mountains to climb. One morning I came in with her bottle and I was met with a bloodstained muzzle. Lana’s face, even without any eyes, epitomised dolefulness. Her ears drooped and her head sagged sadly as drops of bright red globular blood dripped off her chin. It wasn’t immediately clear what had happened and blood always makes a situation look and feel desperate, so yet again I felt a surge of fear and trepidation rise from my stomach. I put down the warm bottle and went and found a towel which I then wetted.

‘Come on darling, come on Lana, let me see what you’ve done’, I gently soothed.

She lifted her head slightly at the sound of my voice and angled it roughly in my direction. More blood dripped off her chin, it was evidently coming from her mouth but wasn’t a torrent which was heartening. With the wet towel I dabbed at her mouth. She flinched noticeably but whether out of surprise from the touch, the cold or pain it was impossible to say. Gently I tried to clean the area so that I could get a grasp on the situation. There was a very clean, but noticeable abrasion to her lower lip which didn’t look too bad, but then I looked harder and spied the real problem. There was at least one tooth missing from her lower front jaw and quite possibly two. The blood there was darker and congealing and it stood out between the whiteness of the rest of her jawline. No wonder she looked so downtrodden, clearly she had given her face a good whack against the pen and knocked a tooth or two out and cut her lip. Whether that was from an accident due to her lack of sight or the result of one of her seizures I couldn’t guess, what struck me most in that moment was that she was going to have a hard time suckling from her bottle.

I mopped away the blood again. It wasn’t streaming but it was still coming from her lip.

‘Bless you darling you have been in the wars haven’t you’. I swear she nodded a sad agreement to me. Had A A Milne met our Lana first then Eeyore would most definitely have been a young Hereford cow and not a donkey.

There wasn’t a lot that I could do in that moment, I finished cleaning the wound and got some antiseptic on it which again made Lana recoil, then rather than offer her the bottle I thought I would allow her body a little time to recuperate before getting her to sup.

Remarkably, Lana did manage to suckle that day. I tried leaving it as long as I possibly could but when a pitiful, soft lowing began and wouldn’t cease I couldn’t resist any longer. Her enthusiasm and desperation for the comforting milk battled with the clear discomfort the action on her mouth gave her. Her belly won over her pain and she suckled and snorted and tried her hardest to drain the bottle. It was a small victory for her and another clear indication of her wonderful strength of character and determination to face every battle head on and on her own terms.

Two days later Lana had taken another turn for the worse, her head was low and rocking, her ears were down and she had no interest in her morning bottle. I went and found Kelly so that we could put our heads together.

‘She’s definitely not herself,’ Kelly said with concern. ‘And can you smell something?’ she added. Kelly has an extraordinary sense of smell. She can probably smell a gnat breaking wind at a hundred metres. ‘An acrid smell, disgusting, smells like infection to me,’ she said.

There was of course an obvious place where Lana may be suffering an infection, so I gently raised her head to look at her mouth. And then it hit me, a stench that was exactly the same as I had smelled some years previously when a splinter to my thumb had caused it to swell, become agonising and eventually to stink.

The smell poured from Lana’s mouth. I tentatively parted her lips to get a better look inside. And there it was, grey, stinking infection sat on her bottom lip. She must have been in torment.

‘We’ve got to act quickly,’ Kelly ordered, ‘otherwise that will kill her, bless her’. Kelly’s instincts as a nurse took over and without another word her phone was out of her pocket and she was calling the vet. With her characteristic professional explanation of the situation Kelly emphasised the danger that Lana was in, the need for urgency and that cost was not an issue. Within the hour the vet was with us.

This was actually the first time either of us had met anyone from the new practice that we had moved all our animals to and the difference in attitude was immediately palpable. There is a virus striking vet practices throughout the country which is incorporation. More and more private practices are selling out to a handful of ‘the big boys’ who then change the ethos of the businesses from one of care and consideration, to money grabbing and exploitation. We had both witnessed this with practices in Cheltenham, then had been depressed to experience it again when our delightful, small, privately run vet in Ross-on-Wye had sold out. Traditional practices that put the welfare of the animals and their carers first are becoming an endangered species. Fortunately however, with Chase View Vets we had found a gem that would ultimately look after the needs of our residents time and time again.

‘You didn’t call us too soon,’ the vet said quietly as he moved some small packages around in his case, ‘but this should do the trick.’ He brought out a syringe, stuck its needle into a small bottle, cleared any air bubbles by squirting the antibiotics into the air, then deftly and sensitively injected Lana. She barely moved. Any pain that the needle gave her must have paled to the agony of her mouth.

‘Time will tell now,’ the vet said, ‘keep a careful eye on her and if she suddenly becomes worse then call us, anytime, hopefully in a day or too she’ll be back to her normal self, she’s a dear creature isn’t she.’

Yet again we were in that twilight zone of waiting on Lana to have the strength to overcome an affliction, desperately hoping that all would be ok, fervently wishing away the hours to her recovery, ever fearful that we could be wishing away her life and that this new issue would be the one that would take her.

With all her ailments, indeed with all the ailments that afflict any of the animals with us, we both take a keen sense of responsibility and therefore guilt seems ever to rest on our shoulders. It has become essential for our own mental healths that we hold pragmatic minds, and when one of us starts losing pragmatism then the other steps up to hold fast, and be the strength that is needed. Nevertheless, however stoic you may be in your pragmatism, it isn’t a shield to your own mind, your own imagination and your own sense of guilt. In virtually all situations, precious creatures could have been saved if one of us had acted slightly differently, perhaps been more observant, more careful, more foresightful. If I had not forgotten to take out the watering can from the budgerigar aviary then the little bird wouldn’t have investigated it and wouldn’t have drowned. If I had been more observant I would have noticed that one of the cats was not themselves earlier and perhaps he wouldn’t have had such an ordeal under the scalpel. If we had wrapped duvets round every part of Lana’s pen then perhaps she wouldn’t have struck her face so hard, lost her teeth and then got such a nasty infection.

We beat ourselves up every time that a ‘what if’ situation occurs. And all bad situations are ‘what if’ ones. Something could always have been done differently. We could always have been better. But we’re not perfect, we make mistakes and there are consequences. I am constantly chastising myself for not getting it right, I don’t forgive myself, but what I also do is vow that from every error, misjudgement, lack of attention, I learn and we learn and therefore that some little soul down the line will benefit from our experiences and past failures. Making the same mistake twice is unforgiveable, but making a mistake and learning will work in the interests of all that stay with us, those here presently and those that we have yet to meet.

But guilt does still weigh heavily.

Lana did improve. Rapidly. Within twenty four hours or so she was almost back to her usual self, within forty eight hours, apart from the gap in her row of teeth, you wouldn’t have known she had been so ill. Again we marvelled at her strength and if it were at all possible we loved her even more for it.

It was now the middle of winter, the nights were long and cold and the days usually gave only a small respite to get some much needed fresh air circulating. Lana was growing, getting stronger, enjoying her music, but was still so vulnerable. We mentally set small targets. No longer did we just look to the next morning, or even the end of the week, we started saying things like ‘if we could get her to Christmas then the days will start getting longer, we’ll be through the worst’, and then ‘we just need to get her to the spring, we’ll then be able to get her outside properly, if we can get her to spring that will be a real result.’

We had started, when the weather suited, to take Lana out for very short walks on a rope – a new lesson for me trying to work out and then remember how to put a calf halter over her head. You would think that this wasn’t a difficult operation and that a reasonably intelligent individual would grasp it first or at least second time. It took me a considerable number of times more than two to get it consistently right. Kelly always seemed to do it perfectly, but I always seemed to get it upside down or on the wrong side. Lana would always know. Even though she had never had a halter on in her life before, she knew when I had screwed up and you would almost hear her sigh in desperation, disappointment and judgement on me. But she liked her short walks. Just up the drive to begin with, slowly and with one of us talking gently to her, or perhaps with Ellie, one of our first wonderful volunteers who has been an absolute treasure.

Ellie applied to volunteer with us in our first year when she was still at school and has become one of the family in many ways. It is always a delight when she turns up to help, but it’s even better when she brings her camera with her. Ellie, since we’ve known her, has always had a wonderful eye for a photo. Many of the pictures that we use on our socials, website and publicity are hers. With her natural eye, patience and inherent skill she can conjure up the perfect shot, framing her subject exactly as she wants it to be seen.

Lana therefore got to know Ellie’s gentle voice as well as Kelly’s and mine, and she also learnt the voices of the chickens that would explore into the garage whenever the door was up. Gradually her world and the sounds in it were expanding. Then she made a real friend.

Arthur, our supposedly wild, barn cat, had been desperately ill and so when he returned from his two nights at the vets’ he was in no state to return to his outside life immediately. So, in a warm, open crate we put him into the garage along with Lana to recuperate. Arthur soon learnt that the most snuggily, warmest, cuddly place to be in the garage was not in his crate with its blankets, but in the straw nestled up to the big, furry shape of the young cow that inhabited it. Neither of us saw the initial introduction that Arthur made to Lana, we have no idea if she was startled by his sudden presence, or smelled him advancing, or heard his gentle purring. However she made his acquaintance, the morning after we saw them both, lying peacefully in the straw. Lana was on her side, perfectly relaxed with her legs stretched out, Arthur was by her stomach, his paws gently kneading into her, his claws flexing ever so gently. They both seemed perfectly happy, perfectly at ease and contented and delighted to have made each other’s acquaintance. For both of them it was definitely good for their health and recuperation.

Arthur would remain with Lana throughout the worst of the weather and helped her undoubtedly through each night. As each day and week and then month passed Lana became stronger, fitter and hungrier. She remained, and would remain on milk for sometime (too long really, but Kelly didn’t want to give up her baby!) but had also been introduced to hay and calf nuts. She continued to have episodes that worried us and every seizure that she had we would be convinced would finish her, but they didn’t and gradually their frequency reduced and their intensity lessened. We had got her past Christmas and spring was on the horizon, we both believed that if we could get her to the warm weather then we had helped her to achieve something that at the start was not on the cards. We set the target for Lana as the end of March, or perhaps the second week of April depending on the weather and the frosts in particular.