No vet? No problem. Meet Dave Dunn, who stitched up his horse with buttons

If a job needs doing, Dave Dunn will find a way.

I met Dave in 2017 at his home in Makinsons. I was working for the Intangible Cultural Heritage office of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, where my main mission was interviewing seniors around the province. I'd drive to places I'd never been before, in search of someone I'd never met before, all to sit down and record that person's life story.

Everywhere I went, I heard incredible tales of resourcefulness and creativity. I met people who showed me quilts and clothes made of repurposed flour sacks. I heard an amazing array of folk cures and remedies.

And I met Dave, who once sutured up a horse with buttons.

From Georgestown to Makinsons

Dave was born in 1941 and spent his childhood roaming about Georgestown, which he described as "a bustling community, lively as heck. You could run up the street with a mason jar and get a jar of molasses, or you'd run somewhere else and get a chunk of cheese."

Dave took to helping out with his father's trucking business, and often ended up down on the waterfront. There, he encountered the antics of "longshoreman gangs" first hand.

"The pilferage was out of this world," he said. As he remembers it, the workers loading cargo on the waterfront were notorious for nabbing transistor radios "the iPhones of the day," as Dave called them.

He moved out to Makinsons with his family in the 1970s, where he began gardening and tending to horses, goats and other livestock.

"If a horse is in trouble," he said, "if they need to a get a pill in them, you've got to get a pill in them. You've got to figure out ways to make things work."

And with that, Dave launched into the tale of the time he sewed up a horse with buttons.

Wait, buttons?

Buttons? Yes, buttons. I know there's something jarring about the whole thing. Buttons are for sweaters and cardigans, right? Maybe they could double as eyes on a doll or an old handmade teddy, but even that seems more creepy than suitable.

If buttons seem sinister on a doll, what about buttons sewn through the skin of an animal? Buttoning up a real, live horse feels like a violation of some kind an uncomfortable bridging of animals with arts and crafts, at least, if not the living and make believe realms. It might seem kind of gruesome.

Nonetheless, these buttons weren't for any kind of show. They were put to use as a last-ditch DIY solution for Dave's horse, Prancer, in a critical time of need.

Another horse had struck Prancer on her side, leaving an open gash that needed mending. To make matters worse, Dave and Prancer were on the road near Lewisporte at the time. Prancer had to be treated before either of them could head back home to Makinsons.

Without any vets nearby, Dave paid the local doctor a visit. But the doctor in Lewisporte had some misgivings.

"The doctor said, 'They'll think I'm a horse doctor!'" Dave recalls. "I told him, 'There's nothing wrong with being a horse doctor!' But anyway, he wouldn't come out."

So Dave took matters into his own hands. He attempted to sew up his horse with sutures, but the stitches wouldn't hold.

Seven buttons in all

After he'd tried a few times, he remembered hearing about a wounded cow who'd been stitched up with buttons in Clarke's Beach. Dave had a feeling that buttons might secure the stitches with just the tension he needed. So with a new tactic in mind and his friend Myrtle's button collection at the ready Dave set straight to work.

"I think it was about seven buttons four on the bottom, and three on the top. One in the centre on the top, a couple of flanks, and then the ones on the bottom to match it. And then afterwards when the buttons were held, I used a shoelace. I pulled it through the buttons with a shoelace, and tied it up with a little bow."

Dave had been using Orajel an over-the-counter anesthetic, often used for toothache to numb the horse's pain. But as he said, "It was a hot day and while I was in there trying to do the job, I was rubbing sweat off my head. Next thing I knew, my forehead went dead, and my nose went dead, and my mouth went dead, and my fingers went numb oh, it was so funny trying to do it. That was the funny part. It just made it into such a lark."

Dave had called a vet near Makinsons to inspect the job upon his return. After sizing it all up the vet told Dave, "I couldn't have done any better."

Prancer's wound healed up after a week or so, and Dave clipped off the buttons.

The wound was set where Prancer's black and white hair met, so no one ever saw the scar.

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