Gallery

My practice was based in Logan, Utah, extending to dairies a hundred miles north in Idaho. In my early thirties, I was the only woman vet my Mormon clients had ever seen. Cache Valley was surrounded by the Wasatch mountains, and valleys of alfalfa irrigated with mountain snow melt. I lived with my husband in a stone house at the northeastern edge of town.

View captions by clicking on each photo.

Linda doing a rectal exam on a cow
The stone house in Logan, Utah, up against the snowy Wasatch Mountains
Linda and Riley Michelson, an Idaho dairyman, consulting on a down cow
Linda reviewing cow health records in a milking parlor with a Utah dairyman
Linda and Crae Fuhriman after completing preg checks in Downey, Idaho. (Notice Linda’s rolled-up left sleeve—she did rectals with her left hand so she could write her findings in the medical record with her right.)
Rectal exams were often done outdoors. It helped to have a vet tech assist to hand over a uterine catheter, with antibiotics. The fishing tackle box held supplies. The dairyman’s young son observed
Linda and Greg Mauchley, an Idaho dairyman. Linda is mixing up an antibiotic solution for Greg to administer as a follow-up treatment for some coughing calves
The stone house in Logan, Utah where Linda lived.
Holstein cows on a typical Utah/Idaho dairy. The hay is alfalfa for feed. Idaho grows some of the best alfalfa in the country
Linda and Logan at home in the stone house
Linda’s parents, Josie and Dusty Rhodes, 1965
Linda and her technician working with a young heifer on a Utah dairy
Linda teaching a Utah dairyman how to give a cow an intravenous injectioninjection
Nibley, the cat who's featured in the book.
Linda with the jug band she played with when she met her husband