I do not own a dart gun, so when my phone rings at three o’clock in the morning and the caller asks, “Doc, do you own a dart gun?” I say “No” and go back to sleep.  A “Yes” answer could suck me through the gates of hell until daybreak.  Bruce, a friend of mine, owns cows and recently purchased a dart gun, so I gladly supply him with pharmaceutical ammunition instead of owning the dang gun.  Oddly enough, when I get the middle of the night dart gun inquiry and say “Bruce has one,” folks patiently wait until morning before calling him.  Apparently, veterinarians are held to different sleep standards than normal humans. 

 Several weeks back, Bruce’s son, Kyle, hauled a belligerent cow with calving difficulties to my clinic.  She was wearing a halter, dragging a couple lariat ropes and had been blasted by two doses of tranquilizer from Bruce’s dart gun.  I hoped she was asleep in the trailer, figuring I could creep behind her, reposition and deliver the twisted calf while she dozed.  I was wrong and she exploded into the corral.  By dallying her lead ropes to different posts we were able to crowd her into the clinic where we prepped her for a C-section.  She fought continually, pausing just long enough to let me cut her open before throwing herself open-side down onto the concrete floor.  Being a cow doctor is not all coffee and cupcakes.  After much sweat, cursing and retying restraint ropes, I delivered a dead, deformed, three-legged calf.  Not surprisingly, the cow was just as cranky after surgery as she was before.  Using the halter lead ropes, we leap-frogged her back into the trailer, but after unloading the cow back home, she jumped the fence and disappeared into the darkness.  One month post-op, the cow is fine and has rubbed off her halter, but she is wandering the pastures still looking for a fight.  We have no idea what tripped her trigger and this brings me to my point.