My Take Tuesday: The One-Eyed Snack

The job was an enucleation—a surgical removal of an eye. Not a terribly uncommon procedure in large animal practice, but still a delicate one. We had the cow safely in a squeeze chute, and I did my best to maintain sterility in a place where “clean” usually just means “hasn’t been actively stepped in today.” I scrubbed up, gloved in, and worked with care. The tumor was extensive, but the removal went smoothly. I gently extracted the diseased globe and placed it on a sterile drape I had thoughtfully spread across two upended barrels.

It looked… professional. Almost elegant, in a gross kind of way.

I turned back to the cow to begin suturing the incision. I had maybe three stitches in when, like a flash of black-and-white lightning, a border collie launched into my surgical field. This dog, who had been loitering at a respectful distance until now, suddenly leapt up, planted himself on top of the barrels, grabbed the freshly removed Hereford eyeball, swallowed it whole, and hit the ground running—all in one smooth, horrifyingly efficient motion.

I blinked. The client blinked. The dog did not blink. Probably because it had just eaten something that used to blink.

“Well,” I said, calmly tying another suture, “I guess we won’t be sending that to pathology.”

The owner started to apologize, but immediately we both started laughing. What else could we do? The eye was gone. The cow was patched up. And the dog—miraculously—suffered no ill effects aside from probably some very strange dreams.

Let it never be said that large animal medicine is boring. Sometimes it’s bloody. Sometimes it’s bovine. And every so often, it’s downright eye-opening.

And that is My Take. 

N. Isaac Bott, DVM