Memoirs of a Cotswold Vet

by Ivor Smith

  The strong plastic box became the conventional and generally satisfactory way of transporting smaller animals, but there remains to this day, I am sure, the unconventional rat owner. Some of these love to enter the consulting room apparently without the patient and then at the last moment surprise the vet by producing him from under his jumper. Occasionally it was from under her jumper and I had to look away in case there was any prolonged difficulty extricating the inquisitive pet from the depths. On these unusual occasions you can bet at the end of the consultation the rat will be tucked back under the jumper or allowed to run up the owner’s sleeve once more. Bizarrely, the deep relationship between owner and pet rat is usually genuine and at times quite touching, and despite what you might expect they rarely bite. A stranger handling them when they are unwell is sometimes the exception to this rule.

  From time to time I have found myself somewhat reluctantly involved in the treatment of the pet fox. Many would argue that it is unnatural and cruel to try to domesticate the fox, but it is hard to explain that to a client who has had an apparently abandoned cub living with her for several weeks. In captivity the young animal has not learned to hunt and has become dependent on the owner for regular meals. When the owner is adamant that euthanasia of the young fox will not be considered as an option it leads to a tricky dilemma.

  I found myself in this situation in the ’80s when a young fox was brought to surgery wearing a collar and attached to a dog’s lead. I knew the owner well as she was the fond owner of a German Shepherd dog. The fox cub had come into her possession as she drove to Churchdown one night. He had apparently been abandoned by his parents at the side of the road and was weak and sufficiently distressed to allow her to pick him up. At home, after a few days’ rest and plenty of good food, he made a speedy recovery. But that was weeks ago and now it was too late to release him back into the wild with any realistic chance of survival. No doubt farmers would argue that he should have been destroyed in any case. The owner argued vehemently the other way and he remained her pet. Over the next year he grew accustomed to a daily domestic routine, which included walks around Churchdown on his lead. Most of the time he seemed to get on well with the German Shepherd he shared a home with, until, as he matured, he began to show some aggressive instincts towards the dog.

  The distraught owner asked for my advice about the problem. I knew that discussing euthanasia would be pointless and I recommended that he was castrated before a more serious behavioural problem developed. While he was under the anaesthetic she was pleased to hear me suggest that I remove his scent glands at the same time. Only the owner knew how much the latter problem was, but if there is one smell I hate more than any other it is the smell of the fox. Why our dogs enjoy coming back home from a walk across fields smelling like a fox I shall never know. The scent glands in the true sense are not really glands at all. They are a pair of small sacs lying near the anal sphincter muscles in carnivores, and their walls are lined with a mixture of sebaceous and apocrine glands. The combination of this mixture of secretions produces an obnoxious smell. When the dog or the fox passes faeces, a small quantity is expelled and the process results in a form of territorial marking. It is not unusual of course for an excitable dog when he is being handled to squirt much larger quantities of this foul liquid over the vet.

  The fox was admitted for surgery and I was about to enter a new learning curve on handling animals. His owner had gently popped him into a small kennel, but as soon as she left he reverted to his wild and natural preservation instincts. I had stroked his head on previous occasions when cradled in his owner’s arms and as I talked quietly to him I attempted to give the same reassurance and hoped that he would remain still long enough for me to slip in a small painless subcutaneous injection of acetyl promazine. Once he was sufficiently sedated the rest of the procedures I intended to carry out would be quite routine.

  I hardly saw him move as he whipped round and his slashing canine teeth opened an incision on my arm nearly 5cm long. This fellow had the strength of a dog and the agility of a cat. My nurse dressed my wrist and, once bitten, we took appropriate steps to avoid it happening again. Soon Mr Fox was sedated, relaxed and ready for the operating table. He went home with lines of sutures under his tail and between his legs.

  When he arrived at the surgery ten days later to have the sutures removed he was easily given a sedative injection while cradled in his owner’s arms and caused no problems that day. I was satisfied with his progress. We were both healing well.

  The frequent opportunities that presented themselves to talk to children’s groups meant that there were ample opportunities to discourage them from even considering having a wild animal as a pet. It is great fun to give them names and call a visiting pheasant to the garden Fudge, or the local squirrel that pinches the nuts from the bird feeder Charlie, but they do not make good pets. Grey squirrels sometimes created unexpected problems when they were brought to surgery with often relatively minor injuries that they had sustained in road accidents. Invariably it was mum accompanied by the children on their way home from school who found the injured animal. No doubt mum reassured the children that the nice vet would make the animal better. The vet in these cases could take just one course of action, and Charlie would be painlessly put to sleep. It is of course illegal to treat and to return grey squirrels to the wild. Explaining this to the kind family who came visiting the following day to see how Charlie was progressing was very hard.

  There was never a problem explaining to other folk who brought wild rabbits to the surgery that when myxomatosis was suspected I intended to put the animal to sleep. Most people who lived nearby and enjoyed the countryside had seen rabbits in the late stages of the disease. Some of the bodies of affected rabbits are so disfigured as a result of the infection that it is a shock to the dog’s owner who go to investigate what their pet is so interested in. To make matters even gorier the carcass had often been attacked by carrion crows or torn apart by a fox, but fortunately it was more common for the fox to carry off all the evidence. It came as a shock to town-dwellers facing the disease for the first time; it could have been their first experience of epidemic disease in wildlife.

  I can remember as a schoolboy reading the first reports of the disease, brought on by a virus, which I stress only causes illness in the rabbit family, but for them is deadly and highly contagious. The fascinating story of the French doctor who tried to use the disease to control the number of rabbits on his estate is a good illustration of just how contagious the virus is. In 1952 he imported the virus and released a few infected animals to mix with his local rabbits. He successfully destroyed all the rabbits on his estate, but, within eighteen months, he had also managed to wipe out most of the rabbits in France, Germany, Belgium and Holland. It soon crossed the Channel and the disease established itself in England; the first cases were found in Kent in 1953. Attempts were made to eradicate the disease but it spread rapidly through the country, and an estimated 60 million rabbits died in the first epidemic. Nevertheless, some rabbits did recover and became immune to further infection, went on to breed and passed on their immunity to their offspring.

  The infection can be passed from one animal to another by close contact but usually the virus is transmitted by the bite of an infected rabbit flea. The characteristic signs of the illness begin to develop about a week later, when the head and eyelids swell rapidly, and they have difficulty seeing through inflamed purulent eyes. Tumour lumps start to grow on the body. It is a horrific sight, but strangely they can sometimes be found feeding until just a few hours before they die. There is no specific treatment and, if a ‘myxy’ rabbit is found, speedy humane euthanasia is the only sensible course of action. Despite the horrendous effect the virus has on rabbits, hares are generally immune, and the virus will not cause illness in any domestic animals – apart from the pet bunny of course – and these really should be vaccinated each year against myxomatosis for peace of mind. The vaccine will not always give complete
protection to these pets but should the vaccinated rabbit get infected it does improve their chances of being nursed back to health. It is not uncommon for the family cat, to the horror of the owner, to bring home a present of a young myxy rabbit by way of a change from a mouse, but he will never catch the disease. And dogs will be dogs and by the time the owner catches up with him the initial interest in the carcass might have progressed to sampling it. It looks disgusting but he will never get the disease either. I have lost count of how many times I have enjoyed that reassuring chat on the telephone with terrified owners.

  Over the years our knowledge of the medical problems of the guinea pig, the mouse, the gerbil and all the other small rodents that children love to keep as pets grew steadily. The scant information we started out with in the 1960s had become volumes of expert advice by the time I retired. Operative surgery using sophisticated controlled anaesthesia has become a routine procedure. The accurately weighed patient is given a combination of carefully calculated sedative drugs and at the appropriate time put into an anaesthetic chamber into which a controlled amount of gaseous anaesthetic is introduced. Within minutes the animal gently passes into a state of safe general anaesthesia.

  How different it was in the 1960s. The pet with the fractured limb still needed a general anaesthetic to apply a Plaster of Paris cast in the case of the larger pets, or possibly a sticky Elastoplast tape bandage in the case of smaller ones. It was surprising how well fractured bones healed after the limb had been immobilised for a couple of weeks. How I was going to deal with that hamster with the overgrown teeth was something I might have thought about whilst out calving a cow. Most of us vets would have preferred to have continued calving cows all day. Who could possibly be worried about that hamster with the overgrown tooth? Well, the first problem could be a social one. More often than not the animal was the pet of Lady Fitzgerald’s niece who assumed that the outcome of the operation would be a success. You dared not think about the consequences of a disastrous one. The second problem was a practical one: administering a general anaesthetic. Veterinary science had moved on from using a jam jar with ether on a ball of cotton wool. Now we were using the gaseous machine to administer general anaesthetics to dogs and cats, with a face-mask that had been designed for use on human infants. It was the tiniest available and I am sure it worked well with babies, but gerbils and hamsters were quite clever at escaping from your grip and disappearing up the mask. Putting your hand in to retrieve the patient was just one of the many painful times we vets discovered how uncooperative the hamster can be. Suddenly those overgrown incisor teeth that were preventing him eating his food are making a meal of your hand. With his teeth embedded in your fingers he has no intention of releasing his grip. A flick of the hand – accompanied by an expletive – normally does the trick, but there were occasions when it can result in the patient being propelled unceremoniously across the room, to the astonishment of the assisting nurse.

  The pet always seemed to survive the ordeal and the vet, with blood still oozing from a deep finger wound, reapplies the mask, this time ensuring a tighter grip. There was always the risk of a bite occurring during a consultation with the owners. Naturally no vet in their right mind would deliberately throw their patient against the consulting room wall, or issue profanities for the entire neighbourhood to hear, but it has been known. Such was the case in the ’70s when the owners of a small rodent were not convinced of the vet’s good intentions and refused to accept his explanation. Following a complaint, the unfortunate vet was hauled up before the Royal College’s Disciplinary Committee. There he was found to have acted in an unprofessional manner and was struck off. For practising vets at that time, it was difficult to understand how the committee members could have come to this decision. Clearly they had never experienced a hamster hanging on to their bleeding finger. Perhaps on those traumatic occasions when they stood up and bashed their heads on the shelf above they complained, ‘Oh silly me, what a foolish thing to do, I must try to be more careful in the future.’ It is only natural for a vet to utter something sharp and spontaneous immediately following a kick, scratch or bite, and then apologise to anyone present. An experienced nurse learns to ignore such language on these occassions.

  Looking back on what could have happened when dealing with exotic creatures, I think I was fortunate to survive relatively unscathed. An occasion that could have left me permanently marked occurred whilst routinely treating a lizard for worms. I was expecting the creature to arrive at some stage during the evening: I had overheard the nurse arranging the appointment. I looked forward to him arriving; treating a lizard made an interesting change from the routine of vaccinating and clipping nails, and of course the emptying of anal glands. I recall searching the Gloucestershire countryside and exploring disused Cotswold stone quarries as a boy for small, friendly harmless lizards. I was not too sure about this particular monitor lizard when he arrived. He was huge. At first glance you could have been excused for thinking it was a baby alligator. The owner placed him on the examination table and I reassessed the amount of liquid anthelmintic I had planned to administer.

  I approached my patient. He continued to look straight ahead as I approached him from the side with a small standard 2ml syringe, filled with a white suspension of Panacur. This was an effective and reliable drug that was safe to give to most creatures. It was my intention to gently introduce the syringe into his mouth and squeeze the plunger. He saw me coming faster than I saw him move. It was astonishing, the syringe simply shattered as he spun round and snapped at it. I cannot remember what I said at that time but fortunately the owners were understanding and happy at my suggestion that perhaps it would be wiser to dispense with the direct anthelmintic approach and administer something in his food.

  Today, veterinary practitioners are fortunate that in the same way that their medical counterparts are able to refer patients to a consultant specialist, they are able to do likewise. Just a decade ago the second opinion consultants were few and far between. Consequently, the local vet often relied upon his ingenuity to overcome a medical problem.

  Not long after the monitor lizard incident, another exotic reptile was presented at surgery. He was a big iguana that originated from Down Hatherley. He had travelled just a few miles to see us with his necrotic scorched tail, which had become gangrenous and infected. To his detriment he had managed to get too close to the hot lamps keeping him warm in his vivarium and been seriously burnt. To save his life it was necessary to remove the lifeless necrotic appendage – in other words his tail had to come off. After a brief refresher on reptilian anatomy I was confident that the surgery would present no unexpected problems. My main concern was administering that general anaesthetic.

  Coincidentally, just a few days before, I had been reading of a challenge presented by Arnolds, the old British established veterinary instrument company. At this time they were manufacturing innovative plastic products as well as their beautiful stainless steel instruments.

  ‘What uses can you make of our plastic urinary catheters?’ Arnolds asked. ‘Well, for a start’, I said to myself, ‘I think the smallest size would fit comfortably into the trachea of an iguana awaiting surgery and it could be a totally suitable endotracheal tube.’ As it turned out, it was a perfect fit and worked a treat. Two weeks later the sutures had been removed and the patient was making a speedy recovery. My nurse and I had enjoyed performing the operation. At that time it was unique, we thought, and we were pleased with the outcome. My nurse had taken pictures during the procedure and I was happy for her to forward an account of the operation to Arnolds and to submit it as an entry in their national competition. And guess what? We won!

  Over the years life with exotic pets in the practice was fun and led to many stories that have been related time and again to friends. I have written of just a few of them here. I had the interest but not the time in which to specialise in these weird and wonderful animals and I accepted my limitations.

  To this day I r
ecall with some amusement a consultation one Sunday morning with two local youngsters. They presented a glass jar that was thick with foliage and a variety of vegetation in the midst of which, they claimed, were their pet stick insects. It was a routine health check to assure them that they were doing all that was required to maintain the optimum health of their pets. To be honest I could not see anything in that jar other than the foliage. There were two possibilities: either their feeding and management was excellent, and resulted in the insects maintaining a complete natural camouflage, or they had knowingly presented an empty jar and were testing the limits of my professional vocabulary. I gave them the benefit of the doubt, complimented them on their excellent pet keeping and told them to keep up the good work. I was over the moon when they didn’t ask me to sex them.

  There was the odd occasion when my unprofessional vocabulary was tested to the limit. For many years at the start of surgery every Monday evening, the same woman came in with her undisciplined Jack Russell dog and her two unruly children. The girl was not too bad but the boy was something else. After just a twenty-minute session with them on a good night, they left my consulting room, went to reception and made an appointment for the following Monday evening. A typical consultation began with an account of everything the dog, Snoopy, had eaten that week and a weight check to ensure he had not gained or lost the odd ounce. I blamed any deviation on the faulty scales to avoid the owner panicking over any apparent change in the last seven days. Nevertheless it was only minutes before the conversation started on diets, adequate vitamin intake, water consumption and the condition of his coat. I confirmed each week that he required no vaccinations for at least four months and, as we had only wormed him the week before last, he required no more pills at the moment. Naturally I had to inspect his teeth, avoiding a bite, and muzzle him while I clipped his nails, and, if he had not already squirted his anal glands over the table or my arm, I emptied them as well.