Tales from a Young Vet

by Jo Hardy

  Poppet was very unwell. Grey with white dapples, she was adorable to look at but was showing clear signs of distress and the clinician in charge was concerned. Like Ebony she had colic, but the hope was that we could clear it up without a major surgical intervention. She had an impaction, so she was put on a high rate of intravenous fluids to try to soften it and she was starved and given pain relief. We were told to give her an hourly colic check and to do a LOBD check every half hour in between. The problem was that Poppet was not much bigger than a largish dog and she couldn’t get her head over the stable door to say hello to us.

  We were stumped, until someone thought of opening the door and putting a bale of hay across it. Poppet could rest her chin on it, and we could check her more easily.

  As the night wore on Poppet kept lying on her back and rolling from side to side. Because her colic was caused by a blockage in her gut that needed to shift, she was rolling to try to ease her discomfort and budge the impaction. But rolling repeatedly wasn’t a good idea, as she could potentially cause herself further damage, so it was decided that one of us had to stay with her all the time, picking her back up and putting her on her feet every time she tried to lie down and roll.

  In the early morning the decision was taken to tube her. Tubing is often the last stop before surgery. It involves putting a tube up the animal’s nose and down into their stomach, sticking a funnel in the top and pouring in water. As the water goes down you pull out the funnel and direct the tube into a bucket underneath, to create a siphon that will suck out the liquid from the stomach. A horse’s stomach normally contains an absolute maximum of two litres of fluid, although with a Falabella it would be half this. If there’s significantly more than that it’s a bad sign because it means there’s a build-up. Horses can’t vomit, so the excess matter just collects inside them and it can kill them.

  Poppet responded well to this procedure, with her stomach contents cleared out she calmed down and stopped trying to roll, and by the next day she had passed some faeces – a sure sign that she was on the mend.

  On my last morning, weary after a twelve-hour shift, I stood outside with Lucy, leaning on a fence, watching the sunrise.

  ‘I’ve loved every minute of this placement,’ I said. ‘I’m going to miss being here when I’m on the farm next week.’

  ‘Wish it was me,’ Lucy sighed. ‘I’ve got pathology for the next fortnight. I know I chose it, but now I can’t think what came over me, I must have been mad. Looking down microscopes all day isn’t going to be fun. It makes me dizzy, and half the time I have no idea what cells all the little dots are.’

  ‘Could be worse, though,’ I said, flicking a bit of dried manure off my boot. ‘You could be in an abattoir. We’ve still got that to come next month.’

  She made a face. ‘You’re right, that’s not going to be a lot of fun. All right, I’ll stop feeling sorry for myself. And in two weeks’ time I’ve got work experience with a farm vet. Plenty of lovely cows to look forward to.’

  We said goodbye to the staff, the other girls in our group and one another. For the next month we were all off to do separate electives and work experience.

  Back at the house I poured myself a bowl of cereal and stroked Buddy, who was just getting out of his basket for a stretch. I opened the fridge to get some milk, and yelped. Sitting in the middle of the shelf was a cow’s hoof. Which of my charming housemates had stuck that in there? I grabbed the milk and closed the fridge.

  Minutes later John wandered into the kitchen in a T-shirt and pyjama bottoms, hair sticking out in all directions. ‘Morning,’ he said. ‘How was the night shift?’

  ‘Fine, how was pathology? And is that your cow’s hoof in the fridge?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, sorry. I thought it would be pretty cool to try to preserve it. We could put it on the shelf as an ornament when I’ve dried it out. I’ll take it out later.’

  ‘Sooner would be nice. And maybe give the inside of the fridge a wipe?’

  He looked surprised. ‘Really?’

  ‘Mmm, I’m not sure cow’s hooves are all that hygienic. Especially when they’re tucked in between the butter and the eggs.’

  ‘Oh, OK.’ He wandered out again.

  I reminded myself that I did choose to share a house with four boys, and there were many benefits, although most of them had temporarily slipped my mind.

  I finished my cereal and headed off to bed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Fly on the Wall

  Two weeks in the Dorset sunshine seemed an inviting prospect. After a week of nights at the equine hospital it felt like an age since I’d seen daylight, so I was looking forward to being out in the fields working with farm animals.

  Along with two other vet students, Alice and Danielle, I was staying in an adorable picture-postcard cottage in a pretty picture-postcard village with the distinctly un-picturesque name of Shittington – not that it bothered any of the local people, who were a lovely bunch.

  The three of us were there to study farm animal population, which meant doing the rounds with the local farm vets. This was a little like the work we were doing in Wales, checking out the health of local herds, but this time we were allowed to do a lot more of the actual procedures; it was more hands-on and less to do with writing reports and adding up statistics, and my hope was that it would give my farm skills a real boost.

  We spent the next two weeks taking blood from calves to assess how much immunity had passed on from the mother, and vaccinating calves and cows against BVD (Bovine Viral Diarrhoea) and IBR (Infectious Bovine Rhinotracheitis, a virus that affects the airways and fertility). Both are nasty viruses that can spread fast. As we’d already learned in Wales, the priority for farmers these days is to keep the herd healthy, so they’re always on the watch for anything that might cause real problems.

  In between vaccinations and taking blood samples I had fun learning how to use a pregnancy scanner and how to trim cows’ hooves. The scanner is a sausage-shaped probe that you hold in your hand and insert into the cow rectally. It relays pictures back to a screen and gives a more detailed diagnosis of pregnancy than simply using your hand.

  As for hoof-trimming, it’s a bit like cutting your nails but a lot harder work! A cow’s toes are covered by a thick coating of keratin, the same stuff our nails are made of, and like nails they keep growing. Cows need this trim one or twice a year, and the idea is to create a perfectly shaped hoof so that they can walk comfortably; we used hoof nippers and hoof knives to do this. I enjoyed shaping their hooves to make them nice and even, trimming off loose edges that could trap dirt, all the while checking for ulcers and spraying antibiotics if there were any signs of infections. The cows were, for the most part, very patient while we worked and I liked to think they appreciated the effort. The trimmings aren’t just thrown away afterwards, they are kept and used to make the foam in fire extinguishers, among other things.

  On the last day of the first week, while we were doing our thing down on the farm, I bumped into Isobel, the producer of Young Vets, who was scouting for filming locations for when Grace came to do her farm elective in a couple of months’ time. She came to watch us at work, and we spent an hour or so chatting and explaining what we were attempting to do with the hooves of the cows. In return she told us a bit more about Young Vets and how it was all going. She explained that, contrary to what we all thought, it wasn’t reality TV or a fly-on-the-wall programme, it was an observational documentary. Right, I thought, so there’s a difference? Weren’t they pretty much the same thing? I decided I’d better keep my thoughts to myself.

  That night I dashed off to Kent for the weekend to go to Abi’s birthday party. She’d just finished her first year as a teacher and she was in the mood to celebrate. We had a great night out and danced till one in the morning, so I arrived back in Dorset a little tired on Sunday evening.

  After another week with the cows in the glorious Dorset countryside I headed back home to catch up with my family, before sta
rting a fortnight’s work experience with a sports horse veterinary practice that provided veterinary services for the local racecourse.

  This was heady stuff; the idea of working with highly strung racehorses fascinated me. They are mostly hot-blooded thoroughbreds – tall, slim, athletic and handsome – but because of the exertion they are put under they have a high accident rate and a lot of health problems.

  The first race I attended was on a Tuesday evening, which meant working a long day as I had started at eight that morning when we visited a number of local stables. I really didn’t care, though, because I was so excited and couldn’t wait to see behind the scenes.

  We had been told to dress smartly, which was impractical but necessary according to the rules, so, in contrast to my usual dress-down, vet-on-the-go look, I wore smart beige tailored trousers with a crisp shirt, my freshly washed black Musto coat and polished boots.

  Vets Jane and Tanya, both of whom, in their tailored outfits, looked more like race officials than vets, were warm and welcoming. Jane had just been made a partner of the practice, despite still being in her early thirties, and Tanya was a hugely experienced vet with loads of tips to pass on. They knew exactly what they were doing, oozed confidence and looked completely at home amongst the race officials and racegoers. I, on the other hand, felt totally out of place and would have been more at ease in my wellies mucking out the stable.

  Just before the first race, the three of us went to stand in the middle of the parade ring amongst the trainers, owners and jockeys to assess how each horse was walking and to pick up any problems. Tanya and Jane were running me through a checklist of what to look out for when the first of the racehorses came through – and took my breath away. I had been around horses all my life, but I had never seen anything like these specimens. These were super-horses, the athletes of the horse world; every muscle popped from them, they were lean, their coats glistened in the low sunlight and their manes flowed. These were horses at their peak.

  When the bell rang the jockeys mounted almost in unison. The horses seemed to know what the bell signalled and some of them started bouncing with excitement. The trainers led them down the walkway to the race track and, as the last one left the ring, we followed. Racegoers crowded towards the walkway on both sides, watching the horses and looking curiously at us. For a few heady moments I had a sense of what it must feel like to be a champion athlete, coming out of the tunnel onto the pitch, with a fever of excitement and expectation all around.

  As the horses reached the racetrack, the trainers stepped back and the jockeys cantered them up to the start line. That was our cue to head for the two BMW cars parked to one side. Tanya got into one to go to the halfway point, ready to cover the second half of the race, and Jane and I got in the other and headed for the start line. Once there we left the car to have a look at the horses waiting to go into the start gates, checking for a final time that none of them appeared lame or unwell. Some were playing up and refusing to walk in without a tussle but the jockeys knew how to manage them. As the last one was led into the stall, Jane and I sprinted back to the car.

  We had just seconds before they released the horses. We dived into the car and accelerated to keep up with the horses. It was amazing being right next to the race with the horses galloping beside us, eyes wild and nostrils flaring. I was lost in awe of them, until Jane shouted ‘Hold tight’ and I bounced halfway out of my seat and hit my head hard on the roof. The smooth road beside the track had given way to a bumpy dirt track but we hadn’t slowed down. We followed the horses for another couple of hundred metres until we reached Tanya’s car. At that point she took over and followed the race back onto the smooth road on the other side of the track and on to the finish.

  We followed more slowly, me rubbing my sore head as Jane apologised and explained that we absolutely had to keep up with the race. We reached the finish as the last horse was leaving the track, got out of the car and followed them back up the walkway to check that they were all being offered water and washed down, and that none had been hurt during the race. Jane was pulled aside by a trainer who wanted her to put a scope down one of the horses, as it hadn’t run as well as they had expected. We took the horse back to the on-site vet room to put the camera down its windpipe. There was a little mucus, which indicated the start of a mild respiratory infection. This put the trainer’s mind at rest; the horse wasn’t useless, it was becoming ill.

  Moments later we ran back to follow the horses into the next race. There were several races that night and we had a turnaround time of about ten minutes between each, so we didn’t stop for several hours.

  I loved my night at the races; the pace, buzz, the people, the excitement, and most of all those magnificent horses.

  Two days later I received an email from the Young Vets programme makers to say that Isobel had loved meeting me and that she thought I would be great in the series. I was stunned; it took me a few moments to take it in. If I agreed, there would be a film crew following me through the rest of my rotations and I knew that would, at times, make life harder. But on the other hand it would be fun, and I would have a record of this year as a souvenir of one of the toughest and most challenging times in my life. How could I say no?

  I wrote back to say I’d be delighted. The crew would join me, they said, in a couple of weeks’ time, during my summer holiday with my family, to do some background filming.

  After the heady thrills and glamour of working with sports horses and my invitation to be part of the Young Vets series I bumped back down to earth with a week in an abattoir in Bristol. This was not a placement that many of us trainee vets were looking forward to, but it was an essential part of our training. Every abattoir has a vet present to ensure that animals are treated humanely until the point of slaughter, and that the procedures are carried out properly and hygienically. The vet also provides a vital service to the meat inspectors who check the meat for any signs of disease before it goes on the market.

  Determined to prove to myself that I had a strong stomach, I’d already visited an abattoir before I started at the RVC. It was not fun seeing a healthy cow and realising that half an hour later it would be dead, but I got through it and this time I was at least prepared for what would be involved.

  So at the abattoir we were taught about animal welfare and meat inspection, and on the plus side I felt reassured that the meat we all eat is carefully monitored and the process is quick and pain-free for the animals, who are unaware of what’s happening because they’re stunned unconscious before slaughter.

  It was good to be back with my rotation group after a month in which we’d all gone our separate ways to do our elective courses and our work experience. We worked in the abattoir from 6am to 1pm, so we had afternoons clear. There were a couple of assignments to write, but other than that we were free. As it was August and the students were on holiday, we were staying on the Bristol University campus, so Lucy and I headed for their impressive squash courts, figuring that if we could play tennis, squash couldn’t be that hard.

  Lucy was president of the RVC tennis team, regularly taking time off from rotations on Wednesday afternoons for matches, and while I wasn’t as good as she was, I could play. But we soon discovered that when it came to squash our tennis skills meant nothing. We were so bad that we fell around laughing at ourselves.

  At the end of the week I headed straight off on holiday, heady with the prospect of a whole week’s holiday with my lovely family in Cornwall. Every year Mum, Dad, Ross and I go to the same little cottage in the Camel Valley Vineyard in north Cornwall and have a lazy fortnight pottering around beaches, walking the dogs, looking at holiday cottages and filling up with cream teas at Viv’s cafe down the road.

  This year I couldn’t wait. The last few months had been non-stop, so a complete break from rotations, electives, work experience and the whole vet package was a wonderful prospect. But no, wait, hadn’t I agreed that the TV crew could come and do some filming? Was I mad?

>   It was too late to back out, so I just had to hope that having the film crew around wouldn’t mean too much disruption to our precious break.

  In the end it was fine. The crew that came along were the two I knew well from our equine fortnight, Amy and Sam, and they didn’t arrive until the Wednesday, so we had three whole days to ourselves first.

  There’s a dairy farm next to where we stay and over the years I had become friends with the owners. The current farmer, Tom, was eight years older than me and he’d taken over the running of the farm from his dad several years earlier. I did some work experience with them when I was sixteen and I’d been dropping by every summer since, so Tom and I had become good friends and he’d agreed that the crew could do some filming on the farm.

  Tom is a country man through and through. All he ever wanted was to take over the family farm and to keep things just as they had always been. He loved the quiet life, running the farm and then going to the pub for a pint in the evenings. With my thirst for adventure we were very different, but he was a joker who made me laugh and I liked lending a hand when I was down there.

  This summer Tom proudly showed me the trailer he had bought to fit behind the tractor. The idea was that it would pick up the cut grass and save him doing it by hand. Except that what Tom showed me was, as far as I could see, a pile of rusty junk.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said, eyes gleaming with triumph.

  ‘Um, it looks as though it might need a bit of work doing on it.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but never mind that, I’ll soon sort it out. And it was a bargain at £800.’

  I peered at the trailer, with its rusting sides, dodgy wooden flooring and rotting chains.