The Incredible Dr. Pol

Can I go now?

Oh, come on!

This time on The Incredible Dr. Pol.

You act like a buck!

Either you get in farther or you get out.

Whoa, holy Moses!

Hang on!

Temperatures are dropping.

We either fix it or his life is over.

So are the animals.

Good, oops, hang on mom!

And Charles.

Hey, mom.

Takes the biggest plunge of all!

Meet Dr. Jan Pol.

He's a local legend with over 19,000 clients.

And a team that does whatever it takes.

Dr. Pol is riding solo to farm calls until his son, Charles, returns from L.A.

The weather is gnarly, but no matter there's a life and death situation

at Jerry Keeson's farm.

Jerry Keeson, he wanted us to come out on this nice

snowy rotten winter day.

All the side roads were pure ice so we went to Jerry Keeson's skating in the car.

What we got?

I got Jake in the box stall and a little favoring on both front legs.

- Founder? - Yeah, it's founder or a little bit of a lameness.

It's, ah, they're tender.

Founder is a painful disease affecting the horse's feet.

If the damage is severe enough, it could require euthanizing Jake.

You do become attached to them like members of the family.

Truly, I do love my horses.

Jake's been in the family for 13 years.

Jerry's not prepared to lose him.

- Cats, watch out. - Oh, yeah no, cats are fine. - He's got a little temperature.

When did this start?

- Two Fridays ago. - Oh, that long already? - Yeah.

Lameness is a clear sign of founder.

But the odor from Jake's foot is not.

When you pick up the foot, the crack between the frog and the wall,

and it goes deep, right into the live tissue.

So when you take a whiff.

Holy, Moses!

You can smell it.

It stinks to high heaven.

Jake's suffering from a condition known as thrush, a bacterial infection

that's easily treated.

That's again with this weather, whether it's wet, it's dry, it's cold,

you get infection in the hoof, and they called it thrush.

Okay, that's not the worst.

Oh, it's okay.

You don't get a vaccination yet.

Jake the horse will be better very fast, you know, with the proper treatment,

like Coppertox, and to dry up that infection that's there, they'll be fine in no time flat.

Thank you, sir.

You take care.

- Anything else? - No.

- Okay. - Not really, that's it. The main thing.

Can I go now?

A heavy caseload means it's back to the clinic for Dr. Pol and

for his prodigal son, Charles, it's back to Michigan.

When Charles was gone, oh, yeah, missed him like a toothache.

But yes, it's nice to have him back.

He's a long way from sunny Los Angeles.

I really hate the cold, but my parents asked me to come help out at the clinic.

I love my parents, so I'm happy to do it.

The wet Michigan winter brings a flood of emergency cases.

Dr. Brenda's in triage mode.

Buddy's case is urgent.

He was out running the fields and

was headed home probably about twenty to eleven and got hit by a car.

Actually, let's try to roll you.

It'll work better I think for me too.

Put your foot in here sweetie.

Yeah, I know.

Buddy's wounds are critical.

His owner Kristin, devastated.

I don't know if you've ever heard of empty nest, but that's an awful time in your life.

And Buddy showed up one day and

somebody knew I needed something in my life and, so.

When we found him, it scared me when I saw all the pieces in the road, you know, of the car,

that she had to of hit him really, really hard.

Buddy spent the night alone, in sub-zero temperatures.

He has got some pretty severe injuries to the inside of his right hock and foot.

He's got a lot of road burn issues.

Dr. Brenda needs to check for broken bones before stitching Buddy's wounds.

As I'm looking at the x-ray and looking at Buddy's leg, there's no large fractures,

so we're going to clean up these wounds as best we can.

Amazingly, Buddy has no internal injuries.

His greatest threat comes from potential infection that could lead to amputation.

Dr. Brenda's focusing on saving his leg.

Buddy's missing pieces of the skin, so we're seeing right down to bone.

The tissues gone, the skin's gone.

And we've just got bone here, so we've got to get this covered up,

we've got to get his injuries cleaned up, get all this closed, get all of the bone covered up.

The good and bad thing is he's stoic, so he's not going to show a lot of pain,

doesn't mean he's not in it.

Most of this is just a matter of trying to put the jigsaw puzzle back together even though

we're missing a couple parts of the jigsaw puzzle.

There's just some tissue that's just gone.

Alright, here, Buddy, we're almost got the tough part done.

So what I'm doing right now is using a laser light therapy to try to bring some healing

to this tissue.

The laser stimulates circulation, accelerating healing.

Melissa, we're ready.

We've stabilized the leg with a large soft bandage.

This is going to give him some support.

Okay, he is ready to go back into the cage.

Dr. Brenda was able to save his leg.

The best thing for Buddy now is rest.

Rest is one thing Charles won't be getting much of this winter.

It feels cold to be back in Michigan, that's what it feels like.

But I'm looking forward to getting back to work and maybe if I do some really hard work

I can warm myself up.

The prodigal son has returned.

Hey, welcome home, good to see ya.

How are you Charles?

- Roads were kind of bad, but I made it. - What is this?

I don't like beards, they itch.

A little insulation.

I thought I'd grow out a beard to keep me warm, but I gotta be honest,

it's not really that effective.

- So where do you sit? - I'm sitting here, you're sitting there.

Charles' return coincides with today's mail call and Dr. Pol hatches a plan.

Polar Plunge, hee, hee. When is that?

Oh, I think that is this weekend, isn't it?

- This weekend? - Yeah. - Hey, Charles.

- Hey, Charles. - I just got here from California.

- Yes, so you're still hot. - I'm still hot.

The challenge, hearty souls willing to jump into icy waters, a Polar Plunge,

for the Special Olympics.

- I dare ya, big boy. - You dare me?

- Yes, but I'm not pulling you out. - I'll be game, I'll do it.

- You need to come up with a costume. - A costume?

Yeah, that's what it said, they want you to have a costume, they even judge the costumes.

- There's a frog jumping in. - Being Dr. Pol's son is not a good thing for Charles.

- Everyone looks really cold out here. - They are, Charles, they are.

Poor Charles gets set up by Dr. Pol a lot and the Polar Plunge,

it does not surprise me that Dr. Pol has challenged him.

Okay, let's go, we got to go on a farm call.

Times up for the reunion.

The dynamic duo has a mystery to solve.

Jimmy the goat is ailing.

Dr. Pol is coming to see me today because my goat, Jimmy, he's lost quite a bit of weight.

And he's just not himself.

You know, I have chickens and every time I lose a chicken I cry.

So, when my goats, like Jimmy's sick, he's probably one of my favorites.

He's like a big dog.

Sharon thinks Jimmy's lost a lot of weight.

She's worried he's seriously ill.

Sharon is one of those people on a hobby farm.

She has goats, she has ducks, she has chickens.

Hobby farmers, you know, they think a lot more about their little animals and you love them

a lot more, because they don't have that many and they don't make money on it,

so for them it's not a money matter, it's just to keep the animals healthy.

Right through here is the easiest, whoa!

- Whoa, careful. - Ice!

My dad, it doesn't seem to affect him at all, he doesn't slow down.

It doesn't matter whether it's ice, slush or snow.

He's going to go one speed and that's Dr. Pol's speed.

Come here, guys!

Oh you're the buck, huh?

You smell good, Charles.

Did you put some aftershave on?

- Yeah. - Hey, Dr. Pol. - Hello, Sharon.

He's awesome, he's one of the only ones I know that comes out to do house calls.

The goats are in his hands.

Let's see what is going on.

Two fat and one thin.

Oh, Lord.

He's really not been eating well.

He's eating, but not eating a lot.

He's not as playful.

He's not coming out in the mornings like he usually does to greet me.

Come here, wanna make sure, yeah, you act like a buck.

Yeah, make sure you got the goat, Charles.

Nothing says you're home like putting a thermometer up a goat's rear end.

He's got diarrhea.

That's not good.

Let's just worm 'im.

Jimmy's diarrhea is a symptom of worms.

Twelve hours ago I was in L.A.

It's always nice to have Charles with me for the simple reason, you know,

I don't have to walk as far.

Are you gonna catch him?

- Oh, you wanted to worm 'im. - Yes, I'm going to worm everybody.

You, too, if nothing else.

Dr. Pol decides to worm all three goats.

If left untreated, worms can be deadly.

Okay, corner, corner 'im.

Slippery horns, gotcha.

Chubby, chubby, huh.

Oh, yeah, now you're mad, huh.

Now you don't want to talk to me.

- Come here, buddy. - And this one eats just as good as the others?

He's not eating as much, but he's very thin.

Well, no, he's not very thin.

These are very fat.

There is a difference.

He really is not thin.

He is just thinner.