Tales from a Wild Vet: Paws, claws and furry encounters
From African goats to blue wildebeest, and potty pigs to dippy donkeys, Jo Hardy, now a qualified vet, is about to take on the world, one animal at a time.Jo is determined to go where vets are desperately needed. Heading out first to the townships of South Africa, then to Uganda.Dealing with life-and-death decisions and much-loved family pets, here and abroad, including a giant French rabbit, a labradoodle that stops breathing under anaesthetic and an angry cat that won’t get out of its box, Jo has to trust her training as never before.
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This book is based on real-life experiences. However, many details of the scenarios, and names of the animals and owners, have been changed to protect client confidentiality.
HarperElement
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First published by HarperElement 2016
FIRST EDITION
© Jo Hardy and Caro Handley 2016
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover illustrations © Sarah Tanat-Jones
A catalogue record of this book is
available from the British Library
Jo Hardy and Caro Handley asserts the moral right
to be identified as the authors of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008142506
Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780008142513
Version: 2016-02-29
Contents
Chapter One: Mickey and the Miracle
Chapter Two: Hedgehogs, Doves and a Very Cross Pheasant
Chapter Five: First-time Surgery
Chapter Seven: People and their Pets
Chapter Nine: On the Side of the Animals
Chapter Eleven: The Thank-you Chicken
Chapter Twelve: Margaret the Pig
Chapter Thirteen: A Better Future
Chapter Fourteen: Just Like Us
Chapter Fifteen: The Trouble with Cats
Chapter Sixteen: A Cheeky Chicken, a Daft Duck and Piles of Puppies
CHAPTER ONE
‘There’s something wrong with Mickey. Can you help?’
The elderly couple standing in front of me were visibly upset. She had tears in her eyes, and his lower jaw was trembling.
‘He’s off his food. He’s normally so full of life, but for the last couple of days he’s been so quiet. And this morning he was sick and there was … blood,’ they told me.
I looked at the small brown-and-white mutt sitting on the examining table, looking up at me solemnly with big, trusting brown eyes.
‘Hello, Mickey,’ I said. ‘What’s up with you then?’
He was a mixed-breed terrier; there was probably a bit of Westie and a bit of Yorkie mixed in with some Cairn in his background. His eyes peered out through a fringe of white hair and his small silky ears flopped over at a perky angle.
I looked at his worried owners. ‘Let me take a look at him while you tell me a bit more about what’s been going on. How old is Mickey?’
His owners, Mr and Mrs Thomas, told me that he was seven, which is still fairly young for a small dog. He was a rescue dog, they explained. They’d found him at a dog pound when he was just a puppy and they’d been devoted to him ever since.
As I went through a basic examination, which Mickey tolerated patiently, I rattled through a mental index of possible causes for a dog vomiting blood. The trouble was, it could mean so many things. Had he swallowed a foreign body? Did he have a tumour? Did he have gastritis? Did he have stomach ulcers? Did he have worms? Or might it be an infection?
This was my very first case as a fully qualified vet, and it had to be a complicated one. I had been hoping for something simple; a dose of worms, perhaps, or a vaccination and a bit of flea advice. Instead, here was Mickey, with his mystery condition.
It was early August 2014 and I had been a vet for all of three weeks. After graduating from the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) I’d signed on with an agency as a locum and here I was, on my first day at Braxton’s, a small practice in East London, filling in for two weeks while the regular vets were on holiday.
After five long years of study and training, I could still hardly believe that I’d actually made it. We’d been pushed to the limit – and never more so than in our final year, when we’d worked on rotation in every kind of practice, from small animal to stable, to farm and even the zoo. It was non-stop; sometimes terrifying and constantly demanding. But no matter how tough the challenges, there had always been a qualified vet supervising everything I did. Now I suddenly felt as if I’d had the safety net whisked out from under me. For the first time, I was on my own.
I took a deep breath. ‘I think we need to give Mickey an X-ray to see what’s going on in his stomach. There are a number of things that could be wrong and hopefully that will give us a much better idea of what it is and whether he might need surgery.’
Mickey’s owners looked at me, white-faced. ‘Will it cost much?’ said Mrs Thomas. ‘Because we don’t have pet insurance and we haven’t got a lot of money.’
