by Jo Hardy
He was a beautiful young black-and-white cat who was brought in by a whole family – mum, dad and three young children. They explained, all talking over one another, that Sweetie had suddenly been unable to use his back legs. One day he was fine, and the next morning he couldn’t walk.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ said the smallest girl, who must have been about six. ‘Is he going to get better? I chose his name,’ she added.
‘I need to have a look at Sweetie and then I’ll let you know,’ I told her.
Actually, I thought I knew what was wrong, and it wasn’t good. I checked Sweetie over. His back legs were stone cold and his temperature was low. All the signs pointed to an aortic thromboembolism. This is when a blood clot forms in the heart and then travels down to the fork of the blood vessels that supply the back legs and lodges there.
I explained to the family that we would need to keep Sweetie in our pet hospital to try to help him and promised to call them. They left, after kissing him goodbye, all of them looking sad and subdued.
I started Sweetie on strong pain relief every six hours and aspirin therapy in the hope of dissolving the blood clot, but I knew that the chances of him recovering were very low. Two days went by with no improvement and it was starting to become hard to manage his pain. He hadn’t regained any function of his back legs and they were still very cold.
I phoned the family and spoke to Mr Barnes. As always, in these situations, I outlined what we had done and told him that the prognosis wasn’t good and that Sweetie was in a lot of pain.
The decision always lies with the owner. We vets can only give them the facts, but most owners don’t want their pet to suffer. Mr Barnes phoned me back to say that the family would like to say goodbye to Sweetie and then they wanted me to put him out of his pain.
They arrived an hour later and all three children were so brave. They took turns to cuddle their pet and kiss him goodbye. When it came to the smallest girl’s turn she buried her blonde head in the cat’s soft fur and whispered, ‘I love you, Sweetie.’
After they had gone, feeling horribly sad, I gave him his final injection and stroked his head as he slipped quietly away.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A Cheeky Chicken, a Daft Duck and Piles of Puppies
‘You’re going to what?’
‘Spay a duck,’ Sue replied, suppressing a smile.
‘How do you do that?’ I said, incredulous. ‘I’ve never heard of anyone spaying a duck. And why would you do it?’
‘Because it’s got egg peritonitis. You’ve probably come across it in chickens. The eggs keep getting stuck in the abdomen and are a prime medium for bacteria. If I spay the duck the problem’s solved. And I can do it, because we’ve got a new machine that will allow us to anaesthetise it more effectively.’
I was fascinated. To spay a cat or dog is very straightforward, but the problem with birds is that they are notoriously hard to anaesthetise because they have several air sacs as well as lungs. As the anaesthetic gas is heavier than air, it gets stuck in the air sacs and then you can’t wake the bird easily because it stays in the system a long time. Birds also breathe using their chest wall instead of a diaphram, so they easily tire under anaesthetic. But, as Sue explained, the new mechanical ventilator was able to deliver controlled breaths containing anaesthetic gas, which meant the bird didn’t need to breathe for itself, and it helped the gas keep moving instead of settling in the air sacs.
I was back at Dacre House, the small-animal practice in Tunbridge Wells, and owner Sue was keen to keep the practice at the cutting edge of developments and to try out new procedures.
The duck in question was called Jemima and she was a real character; I could see why her owners were so fond of her that they were happy to pay for surgery. She flip-flopped around the practice on her big webbed feet, following us around like a little dog. She absolutely loved attention, quacking with delight the minute you stopped to talk to her.
Sue carried out the operation later that day, and it was a complete success. The ovaries and the uterus came out, which meant Jemima would never lay an egg again, but that didn’t matter, she was a much-loved pet.
It was exciting to think that new innovations were happening all the time. Even in the few months since I’d graduated there were developments that would help save the lives of more animals.
It was mid-May and I was getting excited about my next trip. I had signed up to go to Morocco for two weeks at the beginning of June to work with a charity caring for the working animals of the world. SPANA – the Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad – run a clinic in Marrakech and a centre in Chemaia and I was going to spend a week or so in each alongside local vets treating the working horses, donkeys and mules that are part of the livelihood of many local people.
In the meantime I was working hard, dividing my weeks between three different practices. As well as working with my old friends at Dacre House, I had started as a locum a couple of days a week at Williamson’s, a medium-sized practice in north Kent. And on the few spare days I had I was working for Rachel, a self-employed freelance vet who worked out of the back of her jeep visiting the homes of her clients in a rural area in East Kent.
Rachel was energetic and lively, but she was also desperate for a break. As a one-woman band her practice, built up over the previous five years, had become more successful than she’d anticipated. She was so busy that she hadn’t had any time off for ages. She had called me a few weeks earlier and said she could do with some help. I was interested, so we met in a café and got to know one another over tea and cake.
‘I love the job, Jo,’ she told me. ‘But it’s hard to take a break, so if you could help me out, that would be fantastic. I’d like to spend a bit of time with my husband and children and I need to do some training workshops to keep up with the latest developments.’
I really liked the idea of visiting clients at home and driving around the lovely Kent countryside all day. So once Rachel had introduced me to a few of her regular clients, she took a couple of days off and I got going.
The reality of working on my own was harder than I had imagined. With no receptionist or nurse I had to do everything myself, beginning with fielding all the calls. Rachel had given me a list of consults for the day and her work phone. After pulling off the road to answer it a couple of times I soon learned that it was better to let it go to voicemail and then listen to the message as soon as possible. That way I could decide whether it was an emergency I needed to fit in straight away, or an appointment I could book in for later.
Following Rachel’s strategy, I saw one client every hour. That allowed 30 minutes’ driving time, 20 minutes with the client and 10 minutes to pack my kit into the car and grab a cup of tea or a sandwich.
On my second day I arrived to see a horse that needed vaccinating. I got out of my car and looked around, but there was no one in the stable yard, just a few chickens and a tethered horse. I watched in fascination as one of the chickens, obviously the daredevil in the flock, flapped up onto the back of the horse, climbed up to its neck and stood there, surveying the yard and no doubt enjoying the elevated view. The horse looked a little unhappy, but didn’t object. It was obviously a regular arrangement, although one that was clearly favoured more by the chicken than the horse.
I was watching this little scenario – the chicken still happily atop the horse with no intention, it seemed, of coming down anytime soon – when a young man came rushing over, apologising for not being there to meet me.
‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘It’s Jo, isn’t it?’
‘Oh my goodness. Sean? I haven’t seen you since …’
‘Primary school,’ we said in unison, laughing. Sean and I had been in the same year group at our primary school. He and his best friend Liam were always the naughty ones, disrupting class, regularly getting the dreaded blue stars that signalled trouble.
As one of the shy, good girls with my neat hairband and my prep all done, I thought Sea
n was very daring.
Now things had changed; I was more confident and he had clearly mellowed into a nice, laid-back man.
‘You haven’t changed much in the past 14 years,’ he said.
‘Really? Hope I don’t still look 11!’
‘No, no, I meant you look great, it’s nice to see you. And you’re a vet now. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised, I remember you loved horses.’
‘I still do. What about you? What are you up to these days?’
‘Well, I’ve just started up my own company. It’s mainly working in computer technology.’
‘Something I know nothing about then! So am I here to see your horse?’
‘Oh, no, it’s my girlfriend’s horse actually. She couldn’t get here so she asked me to come and meet you.’
As we walked through the yard to the stable and I vaccinated the horse, we carried on chatting about school, old friends and our lives now. Inevitably we had lost touch with most of the people we knew as children, so it was good to look back and reminisce.
Eventually I looked at my watch. ‘I’m late for my next appointment, I’d better go.’
‘Good to see you, Jo,’ he said. ‘I knew you’d do something worthwhile.’
‘Thanks, Sean, good to see you, too.’
Driving towards my next appointment – another horse vaccination – I was startled when Rachel’s work phone rang. When I reached a small layby five minutes later I pulled over to check the message.
‘It’s Mrs Simpkins. My dog’s been attacked by two huge dogs in the park. She’s covered in blood and she’s shaking and crying. I really need you to see her straight away.’
I called the number. ‘Hello, Mrs Simpkins? It’s the vet here, Jo Hardy, I’m standing in for Rachel. What’s your address? I’ll come straight over.’
Luckily she didn’t live far away. Fifteen minutes later I pulled up outside a pretty rose-covered cottage. Mrs Simpkins must have been looking out for me, because she had the front door open while I was still unlatching the gate.
She looked distressed. ‘Millie is in here. I’ve wrapped her in a blanket, but I didn’t dare try to clean the blood off her, I thought I’d better wait for you.’
Millie was a toy poodle. Her small fluffy white head with big brown eyes peeked out of a bright orange blanket on the sofa.
‘Hello, Millie, let’s take a look at you.’ As I carefully unwrapped the blanket I asked Mrs Simpkins what had happened.
‘We were in the park going for a walk,’ she said, looking down at Millie and wringing her hands. ‘Suddenly these two enormous dogs pinned poor Millie down and started attacking her. They were ferocious. It was ghastly and I really thought they were going to kill her. The dogs’ owner managed to get one dog off and I got the other off, though I have no idea how, it was enormous. Millie was howling in pain and there was blood everywhere.’
As she talked I was checking Millie for injuries. She had several cuts, but I was pretty sure there were no broken bones. I cleaned her up and with the blood washed off she looked a lot less alarming.
After treating her cuts I gave her pain relief and antibiotics and told Mrs Simpkins that I would call in again the next day to see how Millie was doing. ‘She’ll need peace and quiet and rest, but I think she’ll be fine,’ I said.
Millie had a lucky escape – and so had the young Airedale terrier I was called out to see later that afternoon. A bouncy, happy dog, Rusty seemed very pleased with himself after snapping up and swallowing, in one enormous gulp, a ball of goose fat wrapped in cling film. ‘I just left it on the side for a minute,’ apologised the red-faced man who opened the door. ‘He’s not mine, I’m watching him for a friend. I’m a caterer and I was about to prepare some duck confit. Will he be OK?’
Neither the cling film nor the goose fat would do Rusty any good; I needed to make him bring it all back up as quickly as possible. I gave him an injection of apomorphine, which makes a dog throw up within minutes.
Sure enough, a few minutes later he stopped bouncing round, drooped and then started vomiting – all over the kitchen floor. We managed to get him out into the garden, which was just as well because he went on being sick intermittently for the next hour. Each time he’d feel better for a few minutes, start bouncing back, and then wilt again and throw up.
By the end of the hour absolutely everything in his stomach was out – including the goose fat and the cling film. He looked ever so sorry for himself, as if to ask what he did to deserve feeling so awful.
I helped his minder clean up the kitchen floor and then advised him to let Rusty rest a bit and to feed him normally the next day. ‘There shouldn’t be any after-effects,’ I reassured him. ‘But I guess the duck confit is off the menu.’
He smiled a wry smile. ‘Mmm, I’ll have to come up with something else. And watch Rusty like a hawk.’
After my encounter with Rusty I arrived home smelling gruesome, which delighted Roxy, who leaped up at me in great excitement. I must have reeked of strange dogs and vomit, clearly a heady aroma to a spaniel.
I showered and changed, grabbed a bite to eat and then Roxy and I headed off to her agility class. Mum had taken her while I was away, and we’d started going together again since I got back. I enjoyed it; we had a lot of fun and Roxy was a natural at some of the exercises. She was so good at jumping, going through tunnels and climbing that the instructor sometimes asked us to demonstrate to the class.
So far so good, but when it came to weaving, or the see-saw, Roxy still hated it. I think it must have made her feel extremely nervous, because she flatly refused to try either. The instructor lent me some weaves to set up in the garden so that we could practice at home.
I had avoided telling anyone in the class that I was a vet, but that week a new member of the class turned up – one of the nurses from Downe’s, the practice where I’d been working a couple of weeks earlier. The game was up, and by the end of the class three people came up to say, ‘I hear you’re a vet, is there any chance you could look at my dog …?’
The following day, after making a few calls for Rachel and then nipping home for supper, I was back at Williamson’s by 9pm for a night shift. It’s a medium-sized, friendly practice with a good-sized hospital wing and a branch surgery a few miles away. ‘We’ve got a little room with a bed in it just off the hospital wing, so you can sleep,’ head vet Patrick had said when he first showed me around.
I’d already done three days there the previous week, but this was my first night. ‘We’ve had a new patient in this evening,’ said Roz, one of the senior vets, who was going through the patients with me before heading home. ‘Oscar is a Labrador who came in after eating something toxic. He’s on a drip and he seems settled in his cage, but he’ll need regular checks. Rosie, one of the nurses will be in at seven in the morning. Lots of luck, hope you have a peaceful night.’
After looking in on the patients – Oscar and a couple of cats – I settled into bed, read for a while and then snoozed. I was woken a couple of hours later by a tremendous racket from the hospital room. I leaped up and rushed through to find that Oscar had pulled the drip out of his leg and somehow managed to get out of his cage. He was running round the room, slowly dripping blood from the catheter site, waking the cats and no doubt wondering how to get home.
‘Oh Oscar,’ I said. ‘What have you done?’
It took me an hour to get hold of him, put in another drip – which he made it clear he most definitely did not want by wriggling like crazy – get him back into his cage and settled, and then clean up the bloody paw-prints he’d left all over the place. By that time it was after 2am and my shoulder, still sore from the wrench Tammy had given it, was aching. Rubbing it, I crawled back into bed, hoping to get a few more hours’ sleep.
As a result of the night’s antics I was a little bleary-eyed the next morning when I arrived at the Williamson’s branch surgery, where I was doing the first session. It was a small prefab, with just two rooms: one for the reception area
and a consulting room.
First in that morning was a very grumpy man with a collie, in for a kennel cough vaccination.
‘Where’s Jason, the regular vet?’ he said.
‘He’s on holiday, I’m standing in,’ I told him.
‘Well, you won’t be able to do this because my dog likes a man to give him the vaccine. He isn’t keen on women.’
‘I’m sure I’ll be fine,’ I said firmly, feeling a little taken aback. But the grumpy owner was right – the collie took one look at me with the syringe in my hand and hurled itself around the small room like a creature demented, as the owner struggled to get it under control. We did manage in the end, but it took quite some time for me to get near enough to administer the squirt of vaccine up the nose, and when I did the dog sneezed, violently, right in my face.
‘Thanks,’ I muttered under my breath.
That afternoon I was back at the Williamson’s main surgery, doing the 4pm till 7pm session. It was actually pretty quiet. I had a couple of minor cases until, just after 6pm, a couple, Jed and Hannah, arrived with their young springer spaniel, which was in the middle of giving birth. She’d had four puppies, which they brought with them wrapped in towels in a cardboard box, but she hadn’t passed another for a couple of hours and they were worried.
‘We’re sure there’s more,’ said Jed. ‘The way she’s acting, pacing around and stressed, we think she’s waiting for another.’
‘We can scan her and try to see what’s there,’ I said. I called Roz, who was in the next room. Together we took the springer, Sasha, in for a scan.
‘There’s definitely another puppy there,’ Roz said. She was right. I could see it on the scan, and when I examined Sasha I could feel the sack around the puppy with the end of my rubber-gloved finger.
‘It’s just going to be a question of waiting at this stage,’ Roz said. ‘Jo, will you stay with them? I’ll be nearby if you need me.’
I sat with Jed and Hannah, drinking cups of tea and watching Sasha, who alternately slumped, paced restlessly or sniffed at her four puppies, which were mewling in their box. Every 30 minutes I gave her an injection of oxytocin, which helps with contractions.