The nomination "Responsible for those...": Veterinarian Tatiana Gorodkova from the Kemerovo region has been helping animals for more than forty years.
Tatiana Vasilyevna lives in the north of the Kemerovo region and has devoted almost her entire adult life to animals. To be more precise, animal health. In 1983, our heroine joined the profession after graduating from the Omsk Veterinary Institute. The journalists of AiF – Kuzbass told about the incredible stories of the veterinarian's work in the village.
Tatiana Gorodkova is officially retired, but she decided not to leave her post and continued to work as a rural veterinarian in her native Tyazhinsky district. Previously, her patients were mostly farm animals.
"It's not an easy job. I had to drive day and night, and on weekends. Animals don't ask when to calf, when to get sick. I've never refused to help anyone. It's easier for a person: he will tell you what hurts and how," says Tatiana Gorodkova.
Tatiana Gorodkova had thousands of cases, including accidents, due to the specifics of her work. In villages and villages, animals are periodically attacked by bears, and you have to go out and "darn", as the heroine herself says. There have been cases when cows have drowned in swamps. And those who managed to get out of there cannot always be saved, because burning peat burns the udder.
"There was once a case in Tyazhin: there was a hole in the ground behind the asphalt plant, where tar was poured to repair roads. And here's a cow alone, how she got there, I don't understand, climbed into the tar. And outside, only the head and back stuck out. They threw a rope over the horns and dragged them out with a tractor. Then I probably used up a whole flask of gasoline, they washed off all that tar. She stayed alive," says Tatiana.
Tatiana Vasilyevna is also struggling with malnutrition in horned animals. After all, cows often choke on root vegetables, such as potatoes. And such a seemingly small thing can lead to death. Large tubers in cattle are difficult to extract from the esophagus, and due to the structural features of the gastrointestinal tract, cows can swell. Therefore, it is sometimes necessary to push the tubers with a probe and even perform a mini-operation.
But the most difficult cases in the work of a veterinarian are cow calving. To help give birth to a new calf, Tatiana Vasilyevna was woken up more than once in the middle of the night.
"We came from the village, they say the cow is calving, but only one leg sticks out. I drove off, I see one leg, further away - the second leg, then two more legs and the fifth leg. What kind of octopus is this? She began to figure it out. It turned out that there were two calves in the womb that had wrapped up. I put the first one in the right position. One was pulled out - a heifer, alive. I straightened out the second one and they pulled it out, also a heifer and also alive," recalls Tatiana Gorodkova.
Our heroine jokingly says that cows in rural areas will soon have to be included in the red Book, as the number of cows has decreased over the past 10 years. But the specialist didn't have any less work anyway. The number of requests from dog and cat owners has increased.
"They brought me a cat once, and she had a huge bump on her jaw. I began to examine it, and there was a sewing needle. How she managed to get her there is a mystery, apparently she was playing. Miraculously, the tailed one did not swallow and did not die. And recently, a cat swallowed a fish hook, so I had to break off the tip with wire cutters. Dogs are very often injured by bones. I recently had a patient who put a tubular bone on his teeth. The owners held the poor guy, and I carefully removed the bone so as not to damage the jaw," Tatiana Vasilyevna shares her stories.
There are many cases when injured dogs are brought from the forest because of traps. And Tatiana Gorodkova saves four-legged from amputation of paws and gives them a second chance to run for their own pleasure. But even this does not take up most of the time of the veterinarian. One of its most important tasks is vaccination against anthrax, bovine fever, plague and other diseases. Therefore, dozens of animals pass through the hands of a specialist every day, who need to be tested and vaccinated. More than a thousand different animals pass through the caring hands of Tatiana Gorodkova every year.
Photos from Tatiana Gorodkova's personal archive.