Helped one of my best friends load calves Saturday.

He once snowshoed 28 miles over a 9,000 foot pass, starting at 4,000 feet and ending at 5,000 feet, to get help for a hired man. Both his feet froze into his boots, and the vet wound up saving his gangrenous foot.

So here's the story. He and a hired man were snowed in at a remote line camp. The hired man ran out of whiskey and was experiencing extreme DT's, so Carson headed out on snowshoes to get help.

After making a 28-mile snowshoe trip, his feet were frozen into his boots and he had to cut them off his feet. He developed gangrene in one foot when he returned to the cow camp, and a cowboy from a neighboring cow camp visited, saw it, and took him into the doctor.

The doctor insisted on amputating his foot, but Carson refused. Instead, they went to the bar where the vet was drinking.

The vet never met a problem he couldn't solve, drunk or sober. He looked at the foot and said, "I think I can save it. I've always wanted to try this."

So the vet injected the gangrenous foot with Azomycin (back when it had antihistamine), which fights anaerobic bacteria, and rubbed sulfa pills and bag balm on it. After a few weeks of rubbing bag balm on it, the foot was healed.