Book warmly recalls colorful veterinarian

IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE BARN?, by Elizabeth Yates, North Country Press, 208 pages, $10.95.

Veterinarian Forrest F. Tenney was an uncommon man. Plain of appearance, he nevertheless had a smile that could melt an icicle and his presence in a barn was balm of Gilead to tense farmers worried over ailing livestock.

In whatever Tenney did, he strove for excellence yet never thought of himself as the rara avis he was. He lived in Peterborough, N.H., and when, in 1966, his friend and neighbor, celebrated author Elizabeth Yates, wrote this book about him he was pleased but not puffed up. When Dr. Tenney died in 1986 his enduring legacies included the practices he introduced of using anesthesia when performing major surgery, and the piping of soft music to the kennels where he housed convalescent and boarding animals.

Newly revived in reprint from, “Is There a Doctor in the Barn?” resonates with the credo of a man pledged to the truth that we are all morally obligated to be the best we can be. Mind you, Doc was no goody-goody. He could rip off profanity so blue it paled the azure of a June sky, and although he was a dedicated vet, he never doted on the beasts he cared for. “I’ve stayed up all night with an animal, not because I loved the animal but because the man who owned it had seventy-five dollars or so of his total economic life in that animal and couldn’t afford to lose it,” he once said bluntly. He was also a shrewd horse trader, famed for his astute bargaining flair.

But all his life he followed the lodestar of his conscience. “He treated animals and people with respect, as if no creature were insignificant, as if no person were too small, or too young to deserve decency and courtesy,” remembers author Elizabeth Marshall Thomas in the book’s foreward.

Born in 1910 to Scottish parents, Forrest and his younger brother, Stanley, were reared on a farm near Antrim, N.H. “Learn and learn it right,” their lame father taught them. “Use your knowledge for others and do all the kindness you can every day.” At 3, and proudly attired in the Lilliputian replica of his father’s blue-bibbed overalls, toddler Forrest was initiated into the mysteries of farm chores. When he was older he learned from his father than sentimentality was an outlaw emotion on a farm. “Never marry an animal,” he said pithily. From his mother, a woman of few words, schoolboy Forrest learned another meaningful lesson. Each morning as he set out for school his mother called after him, “Now see that you get a hundred.”

In the smooth, pellucid prose style that is her trademark, Yates follows her subject around on one of his characteristic 18-hour days which concludes with his return at day’s end to Pearl, his devoted wife of 30 years. This particular kaleidoscopic tour includes curing Red Rose, a groaning cow with a stomach ache (by means of a potion of gruel and beer); putting down the fatally wounded dog of a heartbroken hunter who has mistakenly shot him while deer hunting; sewing back together the torn ear of a tiny, trembling brown mouse brought to Doc in a candy box by a tearful little girl; and treating a 104-year-old multilingual parrot who, when finally coaxed to speak by the fascinated, expectant Doc, fixes him with “a cold, baleful eye” and shrieks, “Good night, children!”

Interwoven flashbacks to Forrest’s early and middle years segue into his maturity and civic activities. Yates relates that once, when a fellow bank director arrived at Doc’s office to confer with him, a busload of 4-H people was just leaving. Watching the bus disappear, the bank director wondered aloud how Tenney could find time “to talk to a bunch of kids in the midst of a busy day.” To which the vet replied instantly, “I feel honor bound to share with the generation that’s coming on some of the things that my particular life has taught me. … That’s one of the ways we’ll get a better world.”

Author Elizabeth Yates, now 89, has 50 books to her credit and has lost count of her honors and awards. As uncommon in her fashion as was Doc Tenney, she says that the only books she keeps on her desk at home (she is now a resident of Concord, N.H.) are the Bible and a dictionary. Those wishing to purchase the insightful “Is There a Doctor in the Barn?” directly may order it from North Country Press, P.O. Box 641, Unity 04988. Maine residents must add 6 percent tax. Cost of shipping is $2.

Bea Goodrich’s reviews are a monthly feature in the Books & Music section.