Sometimes Buttermere veterinary surgeon Vicki Temple feels similarities with her great-grandfather, George Abraham, the Keswick rock climber and photographer. He used to test cars to destruction for motor companies on Lakeland mountain passes, seeking out the most unforgiving surfaces.
Together with Sandy Irvine, who was last seen making for the summit of Everest in 1929 with George Mallory, he made the first crossing of Wrynose and Hardknott passes by car, and then returned the same nerve-racking way (with his daughter – who, as Enid J Wilson, was to become a Country diary writer – riding in the boot as ballast).
Like her great-grandfather, Vicki is used to tackling inaccessible byways to remote farms in Buttermere, Loweswater, Crummock Water, Borrowdale, Ennerdale and Thirlmere. Unlike George Abraham, who risked these tracks with his rock climbing brother, Ashley, in their quest to photograph crags, however, in her case it is often a matter of the life or death concerning a cow or a sheep. Afterwards the grateful farmers may present her with a plate of bacon and eggs for a job well done. But not always.
One December evening, she tells me, a call came to a breached cow, where difficulties had risen during giving birth. The night was so cold that the car thermometer read -6C and the trough in the yard was frozen.
The beast was quite wild, with adrenaline overruling any injection, making it doubly hard to extract the calf. To do this Vicki had to cut into the animal’s side to perform a caesarian section – tricky, because the cow was lying down, forcing her to bend double as she worked.
The emerging calf was very big, and the wound in the uterus tore further, demanding more drastic repair work. The student vet she had brought with her had to hold the cow up on side, while the farmer’s wife held the wound open on the other. It took Vicki 30 minutes to stitch the uterus alone. The abdomen had to be stitched, then the skin.
When it was all over, she asked the farmer for a bucket of warm water to wash off. His response: “Aye, lass. The trough’s over there.”
