Tales from a Wild Vet: Paws, claws and furry encounters. Jo Hardy

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СКАЧАТЬ home, so we’d promised to meet up often, but in the weeks since graduation we’d both been so busy that three months had gone by before we could find a time to get together. I was longing to see her and looking forward to catching up.

      Lucy was living in a pretty little terraced house with a cottagey feel to it that she shared with another vet and the black cocker spaniel she had bought soon after we graduated. She’d called him Renly, after her favourite character in Game of Thrones, and he was gorgeous and cuddly but very, very naughty. He had just been castrated and Lucy said she was feeling very sorry for him, but he didn’t appear to be suffering – he was leaping everywhere and making inroads into the kitchen bin every time Lucy turned her back, so that the house rang with constant cries of, ‘Renly, no!’

      Over a delicious dinner and a glass of wine, Lucy told me all about her new life. She had settled into the practice and was becoming part of the farm community and I could see how much she was enjoying it. She said she was working hard, going from farm to farm with Renly tucked into a crate in the back of her car, but the work was what she had always enjoyed most, and she was being given lots of support by the vets in the practice.

      Lucy was full of stories about her work. One of the funniest was about a pig called Patsy that appeared to be so ill it couldn’t stand up. Lucy arrived at the farm with a vet student in tow and examined the pig, taking its temperature with a thermometer up its backside. It was clearly unwell and she suspected pneumonia, but when she went to inject it with antibiotics and anti-inflammatories the pig, which weighed all of 200 kilos, suddenly leaped to its feet, the needle still stuck in its rump, and shot straight into a bush from which it refused to emerge. Clearly after the indignity of the thermometer, the injection was a step too far. After failing to chase the pig out, Lucy and the vet student stood in the field trying to tempt it out with apples and bran mash, at which point Lucy finally managed to retrieve her syringe and make a hasty exit.

      It was lovely to spend an evening with Lucy; she made me laugh, gave me a great meal and reminded me of how precious good friends are. I was so pleased for her that she had settled into country life, but I couldn’t help thinking how different our lives were now, with Lucy in a stable job with a house and a dog, while the next year for me was going to be filled with travelling, both in the UK and abroad.

      In the end, though, I decided that both options were exciting, just in different ways.

CHAPTER THREE

       Tosca

      Mine is a family of animal-lovers. In particular, dogs. We’ve always had dogs, mostly springer spaniels; affectionate, loyal and energetic companions. Tosca had been part of our family since I was 11. I could barely remember a time when she hadn’t been around. Whenever I had gone home from veterinary college she was waiting to leap up at me, pawing at me when I ignored her and demanding my instant and undivided attention.

      A pretty black-and-white springer spaniel, you always knew when Tosca was around. If you tried to sit down with a book she’d nudge your hand with one of her beloved tennis balls, inviting you to go and throw it for her, then bounding around in delight when you gave in to her demands, put your book down and went outside with her. You’d throw it and she’d run after it, but instead of bringing it back she’d start playing with it, and then dig a hole to bury it. She never did get the hang of retrieving. After every meal Tosca would lick all the plates as we loaded them into the dishwasher, hovering ready to snap up any scrap that was inadvertently dropped and oblivious to exasperated groans of, ‘No, Tosca, leave it alone.’ She was the undisputed definition of naughty.

      Ironically, Tosca didn’t like me when she first arrived as a puppy; she seemed to see me as her rival in the pecking order (Ross, my younger brother, on the other hand, she dismissed as bottom!). She would growl at me, and I would snarl back, until we both thought we had won. But our relationship grew from this unpromising beginning into something deep and unique. I used to love curling up on the sofa with her, stroking her soft, floppy ears as she rested her head on my lap. When I was studying for exams – first GCSEs, then A levels, then the endless exams through five years of vet school – Tosca always seemed to know. She’d suddenly suspend her usual demands and come and sit quietly beside me, as if she understood that I needed her support. So when, at the beginning of my fourth year at vet school, Tosca became ill and almost died, I was devastated.

      By the time I left home for college we’d had Tosca for over eight years and our little Yorkshire terrier, Paddy, for four. Paddy was only eight months old when we got him and was just a little brown ball of fur. He’d been rescued from a house in which around 200 Yorkshire terriers had been found after their elderly owner died; some of them dead, the rest suffering from disease and malnutrition. Paddy had escaped relatively unscathed and he and Tosca soon bonded – she took him under her wing and they’d snuggle on the sofa together.

      Then one Saturday, when I was home from college for the weekend, I found Tosca lying on her side groaning, her belly horribly swollen. She had gorged herself on the sack of dried dog food we kept hidden away in the conservatory. We couldn’t think what was going on, or even how she’d got to it – Tosca was a bit of a scavenger, but she’d never done that before. In recent weeks, though, she’d had other episodes of behaving oddly, such as hiding in strange places so that we had to hunt for her.

      She had drunk a lot of water after eating the food, which had made it swell in her stomach. We took her to Louise, our local out-of-hours vet, who decided that Tosca would need surgery, as there was too much in her stomach for it to be eliminated naturally.

      Louise operated that evening, but when I phoned to see how Tosca was doing, Louise told me she wasn’t coming round from the anaesthetic as easily as she should. When Tosca finally did wake up she was in a bad way – her condition was critical. And as the life of my dear, faithful exam-buddy hung in the balance, I had to return to college after the weekend and anxiously await updates from home.

      The following day, Mum phoned. Tosca had been referred as an emergency to the Queen Mother Hospital, which was attached to the Royal Veterinary College where I was studying. My parents were on their way right now with Tosca in their car, as it was quicker than waiting for a pet ambulance. I waited outside the hospital until they swung into the car park. When I opened the boot I was shocked to see that our lovely energetic and bouncy dog couldn’t even stand up. She was attached to a drip and was limp and lifeless.

      Inside the hospital she was whisked away by vets and nurses and a little while later the senior clinician, Giacomo, called us in to explain that Tosca’s abdomen had become septic after her operation and as a consequence her heart had started beating in an irregular rhythm that could be fatal. Even with further surgery to flush out the infected fluid and medication for her heart, she would only have a 50/50 chance of survival.

      We were stunned. Tosca couldn’t die; we weren’t ready to lose her. We were allowed to go through and give her a cuddle before she was taken into surgery. After several hours of anxious waiting I was told that she had made it through the operation but was still in a critical condition. In addition to her stomach problems they had found a small tumour on her adrenal gland. Once again she hadn’t come round as expected, which the vets felt might indicate that she also had a brain tumour which was causing the anaesthetic to be filtered out of her brain more slowly than usual.

      The news that she had cancer as well as septic peritonitis was pretty devastating, but there was still hope. The cancer was in the early stages and could be a slow-growing type, so there was a good chance that, if she made it through this ordeal, she would have another couple of years.

      Tosca remained in the Intensive Care Unit for three weeks. It was a tough time for all of us, but with the expert care of the vets and nurses, she pulled through. As СКАЧАТЬ