Quick as a striking snake, the horse whipped downwards and seized my shoulder in his great strong teeth. He laid back his ears, rolled his eyes wickedly and hoisted me up, almost off my feet. I hung there helplessly, suspended like a lopsided puppet. I wriggled and kicked but the teeth were clamped immovably in the material of my coat.

  There was no doubt about the interest of the passers-by now. The grotesque sight of a man hanging from a horse’s mouth brought them to a sudden halt and a crowd formed with people looking over each other’s shoulders and others fighting at the back to see what was going on.

  A horrified old lady was crying: ‘Oh, poor boy! Help him, somebody!’ Some of the braver characters tried pulling at me but the horse whickered ominously and hung on tighter. Conflicting advice was shouted from all sides. With deep shame I saw two attractive girls in the front row giggling helplessly.

  Appalled at the absurdity of my position, I began to thrash about wildly; my shirt collar tightened round my throat; a stream of the horse’s saliva trickled down the front of my mac. I could feel myself choking and was giving up hope when a man pushed his way through the crowd.

  He was very small. Angry eyes glared from a face blackened by coal dust. Two empty sacks were draped over an arm.

  ‘Whit the hell’s this?’ he shouted. A dozen replies babbled in the air.

  ‘Can ye no leave the bloody hoarse alone?’ he yelled into my face. I made no reply, being pop-eyed, half throttled and in no mood for conversation. The coalman turned his fury on the horse. ‘Drop him, ya big bastard! Go on, let go, drop him!’

  Getting no response he dug the animal viciously in the belly with his thumb. The horse took the point at once and released me like an obedient dog dropping a bone. I fell on my knees and ruminated in the gutter for a while till I could breathe more easily. As from a great distance I could still hear the little man shouting at me.

  After some time I stood up. The coalman was still shouting and the crowd was listening appreciatively. ‘Whit d’ye think you’re playing at – keep yer hands off ma bloody hoarse – get the poliss tae ye.’

  I looked down at my new mac. The shoulder was chewed to a sodden mass. I felt I must escape and began to edge my way through the crowd. Some of the faces were concerned but most were grinning. Once clear I started to walk away rapidly and as I turned the corner the last faint cry from the coalman reached me.

  ‘Dinna meddle wi’ things ye ken nuthin’ aboot!’

  Five years later and a newly qualified James Herriot has recently arrived in Darrowby and is eagerly awaiting his first call-out without Siegfried. The phone rings and it’s Lord Hulton’s farm manager, Mr Soames, who explains he has a valuable hunting horse with colic. James’s hopes for a straightforward case are dashed: not only is colic in horses notoriously tricky, but he must also deal with Soames, who is a prickly character.

  James, nonetheless, has no choice but to steel himself for the visit, the well-thumbed pages of Common Colics of the Horse hovering in front of him ‘phantom-like’ as he drives to the farm.

  I opened the door and went inside. And I stopped as though I had walked into a wall. It was a very large box, deeply bedded with peat moss. A bay horse was staggering round and round the perimeter where he had worn a deep path in the peat. He was lathered in sweat from nose to tail, his nostrils were dilated and his eyes stared blankly in front of him. His head rolled about at every step and, through his clenched teeth, gobbets of foam dripped to the floor. A rank steam rose from his body as though he had been galloping.

  My mouth had gone dry. I found it difficult to speak and when I did, it was almost in a whisper. ‘How long has he been like this?’

  ‘Oh, he started with a bit of belly ache this morning. I’ve been giving him black draughts all day, or at least this fellow has. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s made a bloody mess of it like he does everything.’

  I saw that there was somebody standing in the shadows in the corner; a large, fat man with a head collar in his hand.

  ‘Oh, I got the draught down him, right enough, Mr Soames, but they haven’t done ’im no good.’ The big man looked scared.

  ‘You call yourself a horseman,’ Soames said, ‘but I should have done the damn job myself. I reckon he’d have been better by now.’

  ‘It would take more than a black draught to help him,’ I said. ‘This is no ordinary colic.’

  ‘What the hell is it, then?’

  ‘Well, I can’t say till I’ve examined him, but severe, continuous pain like that could mean a torsion – a twisted bowel.’

  ‘Twisted bowel, my foot! He’s got a bit of belly ache, that’s all. He hasn’t passed anything all day and he wants something to shift him. Have you got the arecoline with you?’

  ‘If this is torsion, arecoline would be the worst thing you could give him. He’s in agony now, but that would drive him mad. It acts by contracting the muscles of the intestines.’

  ‘God dammit,’ snarled Soames, ‘don’t start giving me a bloody lecture. Are you going to start doing something for the horse or aren’t you?’

  I turned to the big man in the corner. ‘Slip on that head collar and I’ll examine him.’

  With the collar on, the horse was brought to a halt. He stood there, trembling and groaning as I passed a hand between ribs and elbows, feeling for the pulse. It was as bad as it could be – a racing, thready beat. I everted an eyelid with my fingers; the mucous membrane was a dark, brick red. The thermometer showed a temperature of a hundred and three.

  I looked across the box at Soames. ‘Could I have a bucket of hot water, soap and a towel, please?’

  ‘What the devil for? You’ve done nothing yet and you want to have a wash?’

  ‘I want to make a rectal examination. Will you please bring me the water?’

  ‘God help us, I’ve never seen anything like this.’ Soames passed a hand wearily over his eyes then swung round on the big man. ‘Well, come on, don’t stand around there. Get him hot water and we’ll maybe get something done.’

  When the water came, I soaped my arm and gently inserted it into the animal’s rectum. I could feel plainly the displacement of the small intestine on the left side and a tense, tympanitic mass which should not have been there. As I touched it, the horse shuddered and groaned again.

  As I washed and dried my arms, my heart pounded. What was I to do? What could I say?

  Soames was stamping in and out of the box, muttering to himself as the pain-maddened animal writhed and twisted. ‘Hold the bloody thing,’ he bellowed at the horseman who was gripping the head collar. ‘What the bloody hell are you playing at?’

  The big man said nothing. He was in no way to blame but he just stared back stolidly at Soames.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Everything points to the one thing. I’m convinced this horse has a torsion.’

  ‘All right then, have it your own way. He’s got a torsion. Only for God’s sake do something, will you? Are we going to stand in here all night?’

  ‘There’s nothing anybody can do. There is no cure for this. The important thing is to put him out of his pain as quickly as possible.’

  Soames screwed up his face. ‘No cure? Put him out of his pain? What rubbish is this you’re talking? Just what are you getting at?’

  I took a hold of myself. ‘I suggest you let me put him down immediately.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Soames’ mouth fell open.

  ‘I mean that I should shoot him now, straight away. I have a humane killer in the car.’

  Soames looked as if he was going to explode. ‘Shoot him! Are you stark raving mad? Do you know how much that horse is worth?’

  ‘It makes no difference what he’s worth, Mr Soames. He has been going through hell all day and he’s dying now. You should have called me out long ago. He might live a few hours more but the end would be the same. And he’s in dreadful pain, continuous pain.’

  Soames sank his head in his hands. ‘Oh God, why did this have to happen to me? His lordship is on holiday or I’d call him out to try to make you see some sense. I tell you, if your boss had been here he’d have given that horse an injection and put him right in half an hour. Look here, can’t we wait till Mr Farnon gets back tonight and let him have a look at him?’

  Something in me leaped gladly at the idea. Give a shot of morphine and get away out of it. Leave the responsibility to somebody else. It would be easy. I looked again at the horse. He had recommenced his blind circling of the box, stumbling round and round in a despairing attempt to leave his agony behind. As I watched, he raised his lolling head and gave a little whinny. It was a desolate, uncomprehending, frantic sound and it was enough for me.

  I strode quickly out and got the killer from the car. ‘Steady his head,’ I said to the big man and placed the muzzle between the glazing eyes. There was a sharp crack and the horse’s legs buckled. He thudded down on the peat and lay still.

  While Soames stares at the body of the horse in disbelief, James explains that Siegfried will carry out a post-mortem in the morning to confirm his diagnosis. Soames is now furious and threatens to sue James over the whole affair, convinced that the young vet has made a grave error. James heads back to the surgery, worried that he may have scuppered his career before it had even started, although he still feels that he had no option but to put the horse out of its misery. The next morning, however, Siegfried informs him that the post-mortem had indeed shown torsion of the bowel, meaning James had taken exactly the right course of action and that, if anything, Soames had taken too long in sending for a vet.

  Despite the advent of tractors, there were still plenty of young and healthy horses in the Yorkshire Dales who needed the services of vets like James. The area even had its own breed, the strong and hardy Dales pony. Spring was a busy time for foaling, followed by docking and castration in May and June. Docking removed part of the tail, a procedure usually carried out on heavy draught horses to prevent it getting caught in harnesses or carriage equipment. The castration of year-old colts was a job Alf never enjoyed, principally because in the 1940s castrations were often performed on a conscious, standing horse, with the aid of just local anaesthesia. The actual procedure is fairly simple but vets were obviously vulnerable to injury should a horse prove non-compliant. ‘It’s dead easy to remove the testicles from a horse,’ Alf frequently said. ‘The real skill lies in persuading him to part with them!’

  The real-life experiences of Alf and partner Donald Sinclair bore testament to the dangers and occasional mayhem that ensued when treating horses. While performing a castration, Donald narrowly escaped a nasty injury when the horse kicked the knife he was holding out of his hand, so that it sailed through the air, missing his head by inches. Alf applied a chloroform muzzle to anaesthetize the horse which promptly bolted into a field. Alf was ‘hanging on grimly to the head rope’ as it crashed through a fence into a garden.

  Not unsurprisingly, in If Only They Could Talk the young James Herriot is apprehensive whenever he is sent to perform a castration or delicate equine surgery, knowing that, while he is competent in his work, he perhaps lacks the innate skills to tame an unruly horse.

  Out of ten jobs nine would be easy and the tenth would be a rodeo. I don’t know how much apprehension this state of affairs built up in other vets but I was undeniably tense on castration mornings.

  Of course, one of the reasons was that I was not, am not and never will be a horseman. It is difficult to define the term but I am convinced that horsemen are either born or acquire the talent in early childhood. I knew it was no good my trying to start in my mid-twenties. I had the knowledge of equine diseases, I believed I had the ability to treat sick horses efficiently but that power the real horseman had to soothe and quieten and mentally dominate an animal was beyond my reach. I didn’t even try to kid myself.

  It was unfortunate because there is no doubt horses know. It is quite different with cows; they don’t care either way; if a cow feels like kicking you she will kick you; she doesn’t give a damn whether you are an expert or not. But horses know.

  So on those mornings my morale was never very high as I drove out with my instruments rattling and rolling about on an enamel tray on the back seat. Would he be wild or quiet? How big would he be? I had heard my colleagues airily stating their preference for big horses – the two-year-olds were far easier, they said, you could get a better grip on the testicles. But there was never any doubt in my own mind. I liked them small; the smaller the better.

  One morning when the season was at its height and I had had about enough of the equine race, Siegfried called to me as he was going out. ‘James, there’s a horse with a tumour on its belly at Wilkinson’s of White Cross. Get along and take it off – today if possible but otherwise fix your own time; I’ll leave it with you.’

  Feeling a little disgruntled at fate having handed me something on top of the seasonal tasks, I boiled up a scalpel, tumour spoons and syringe and put them on my tray with local anaesthetic, iodine and tetanus antitoxin.

  I drove to the farm with the tray rattling ominously behind me. That sound always had a connotation of doom for me. I wondered about the horse – maybe it was just a yearling; they did get those little dangling growths sometimes – nanberries, the farmers called them. Over the six miles I managed to build up a comfortable picture of a soft-eyed little colt with pendulous abdomen and overlong hair; it hadn’t done well over the winter and was probably full of worms – shaky on its legs with weakness, in fact.

  At Wilkinson’s all was quiet. The yard was empty except for a lad of about ten who didn’t know where the boss was.

  ‘Well, where is the horse?’ I asked.

  The lad pointed to the stable. ‘He’s in there.’

  I went inside. At one end stood a high, open-topped loose box with a metal grille topping the wooden walls and from within I heard a deep-throated whinnying and snorting followed by a series of tremendous thuds against the sides of the box. A chill crept through me. That was no little colt in there.

  I opened the top half door and there, looking down at me, was an enormous animal; I hadn’t realized horses ever came quite as big as this; a chestnut stallion with a proud arch to his neck and feet like manhole covers. Surging swathes of muscle shone on his shoulders and quarters and when he saw me he laid back his ears, showed the whites of his eyes and lashed out viciously against the wall. A foot-long splinter flew high in the air as the great hoof crashed against the boards.

  ‘God almighty,’ I breathed and closed the half door hurriedly. I leaned my back against the door and listened to my heart thumping.

  I turned to the lad. ‘How old is that horse?’

  ‘Over six years, sir.’

  I tried a little calm thinking. How did you go about tackling a man-eater like this? I had never seen such a horse – he must weigh over a ton. I shook myself; I hadn’t even had a look at the tumour I was supposed to remove. I lifted the latch, opened the door about two inches and peeped inside. I could see it plainly dangling from the belly; probably a papilloma, about the size of a cricket ball, with a lobulated surface which made it look like a little cauliflower. It swung gently from side to side as the horse moved about.

  On walking back to the house to ask for soap and water, he discovers no one is in so is forced to return – in something of a gleeful gallop – to his car. A few weeks later, however, he is called back in to perform the dreaded procedure.

  Stepping out of the car, I felt almost disembodied. It was like walking a few inches above the ground. I was greeted by a reverberating din from the loose box; the same angry whinnies and splintering crashes I had heard before. I tried to twist my stiff face into a smile as the farmer came over.

  ‘My chaps are getting a halter on him,’ he said, but his words were cut short by an enraged squealing from the box and two tremendous blows against the wooden sides. I felt my mouth going dry.

  The noise was coming nearer; then the stable doors flew open and the great horse catapulted out into the yard, dragging two big fellows along on the end of the halter shank. The cobbles struck sparks from the men’s boots as they slithered about but they were unable to stop the stallion backing and plunging. I imagined I could feel the ground shudder under my feet as the hooves crashed down.

  At length, after much manoeuvring, the men got the horse standing with his off side against the wall of the barn. One of them looped the twitch onto the upper lip and tightened it expertly, the other took a firm grip on the halter and turned towards me. ‘Ready for you now, sir.’

  I pierced the rubber cap on the bottle of cocaine, withdrew the plunger of the syringe and watched the clear fluid flow into the glass barrel. Seven, eight, ten cc’s. If I could get that in, the rest would be easy; but my hands were trembling.

  Walking up to the horse was like watching an action from a film. It wasn’t really me doing this – the whole thing was unreal. The near-side eye flickered dangerously at me as I raised my left hand and passed it over the muscles of the neck, down the smooth, quivering flank and along the abdomen till I was able to grasp the tumour. I had the thing in my hand now, the lobulations firm and lumpy under my fingers. I pulled gently downwards, stretching the brown skin joining the growth to the body. I would put the local in there – a few good weals. It wasn’t going to be so bad. The stallion laid back his ears and gave a warning whicker.

  I took a long, careful breath, brought up the syringe with my right hand, placed the needle against the skin then thrust it in.

  The kick was so explosively quick that at first I felt only surprise that such a huge animal could move so swiftly. It was a lightning outward slash that I never even saw and the hoof struck the inside of my right thigh, spinning me round helplessly. When I hit the ground I lay still, feeling only a curious numbness. Then I tried to move and a stab of pain went through my leg.