Gory photos at the end.

     It was my last night on call, the night before leaving my job and house to return to Scotland. Weeknights tended to be pretty quiet and I had an evening of packing ahead of me, cardboard boxes liberally scattered across the living room. I had decided that when I moved home, Millie the cat was not coming with me – she loved it here. She could go out if she wanted to, sit on the windowsill watching people walking past, have stairs to run up and down at 3am, all the things a cat should do. Taking her back to a second story flat in Glasgow just wasn’t fair. Jill next door had fallen in love with her over the course of a weekend when I was away and she was chief Whiskas disher-outer, and it seemed the perfect solution. She would move in with Jill and enjoy being an only cat with the undivided attention of a single lady lavished upon her. A single lady with a sun room where a lazycat could bask all day

     I packed up all her effects and took her round to Jill’s. We stopped for a cup of tea and chat as usual, putting off the packing as long as possible before I surrendered to the inevitable and headed home for a jolly time of labeling boxes. I hadn’t got my foot through the door before Bill called.

“Where are you? Got a stitch up for you, said you’d be there in 15 minutes. A dog that ripped itself out lamping rabbits. Just needs a few stitches. They don’t have much money” I grabbed my keys and headed out.

     They were waiting for me at the surgery in a rough looking van, two young guys and a wee black dog. I opened up the surgery and got them inside. The whippet was wrapped in a jumper soaked with blood. “Is that all his?” I asked them.

“Aye, it was pissin all ower an all I could think like to do was put pressure on – I’ve had my fist in there all the way.” I peeled the hoodie back to reveal a substantial gash with a fist rammed in it..

“What’s his name?” I asked, just as the second lad went in for a closer look, turned green and staggered out of the consult room to throw up in the car park. His mate took over. “It’s Ronnie. Sorry about him like, it was dark an we couldn’t see and we ran all the way back carryin him an..” “Don’t worry pal, go get your mate some water and I’ll take a look at this.” The wound was deep, the muscles were ripped all down the front of his chest. There was a clear entry wound where he had run on to a stick at full pelt. I flicked some splinters off the edge. “Right guys, you’re going to have to leave him with me, I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call you when I’m done.”

“Will he be able to work again?”

“Let’s worry about that later, right now we need to save his life. This is really serious. I’ll call you.” 

I sedated him immediately and gave him some hefty pain relief. The poor dog hadn’t made a noise yet, despite me prodding at a gaping hole in his chest. I left him to get sleepy whilst I gathered a few things I thought I would need – an operating kit with drapes, suture materials, swabs, a tray to keep everything sterile, gloves and anything else I could think of. But first I had to clean it up. With Ronnie asleep I was able to examine the wound properly. I pushed the general anaesthetic into his bloodstream and turned him on his back into a cradle to keep him propped with his legs in the air. For the first time I appreciated the full horror of his wound. The stick had pierced the skin, plunged into the muscle and been deflected by the breastbone so it ran parallel to the ribcage, cleaving the muscle off the bone and leaving a large tear. When the dog tried to reverse off the stick, the tip it had caught on the muscle fibres, and the rip had made a right angled flap. You couldn’t see the extent of his injuries at first, but making a slit in the hollow skin above revealed something akin to a butchers shop window. I took a couple of pictures so I could show his owners the extent of the damage.

     Using warmed saline I flushed the wound time and time again, removing as many splinters as I could with my fine forceps, chanting “Dilution is the solution to pollution”. It was a painstaking job, I knew that any foreign material left in there could potentially cause an abscess and stop the wound healing, or worse, set up life threatening infection. When I thought I had removed everything I could, I started the repair job.

     I was on my own at the surgery so I had to try to think ahead to everything I might need, then have it ready and laid out as once I was scrubbed up I couldn’t break sterility by touching anything and risking further contamination of the wound. Satisfied that I had everything within easy reach, I started to reconstruct his chest. It was cold in the building, midnight in the North in January, but I was sweating. First I had to establish which bit went where, which muscle belonged to which ripped end, then try to stick them back together as seamlessly as possible without leaving any little air pockets. It took a couple of hours and dozens of little stitches, but I was making good progress when his paws started to twitch. He was waking up. I was alone, unable to tend to anaesthetic gas and was doing the surgery under a ketamine general anaesthetic – very effective and cheap, but with a time limit. I stopped stitching, drew up some more drugs and tried to get a vein, but he had been laying on his back with his feet in the air for and hour and a half by this time, and the veins in his forelegs were collapsed. I started to scrabble about in desperation as he came ever more awake. With the certain knowledge that it was medically a very bad idea, but the only hope I had, I stuck the needle into the femoral vein and pushed the plunger. He settled and slid back into deep anaesthesia. I took a second to breathe, sort myself out, scrub my hands again and reapply myself to the gory jigsaw. Eventually I reached the point where I thought I had done the best I could, and put my instruments down. The dog was starting to come round and fight against the anaesthetic. It was 2.30am.

     I took him back to my house and slept beside him all night, waking briefly to top up his pain relief.

     When morning came, I opened my eyes and was greeted by the sight of a pair of soft dark eyes staring back at me. When I groaned and sat up, his tail tip flipped.

     He went home later that morning, his young owner so pleased and grateful that he brought me a present.

“Some pork chops for you missus, I 'ad a pig.”

I laid the chops on top of my already rammed car, and set off for Scotland.

     I phoned down to the surgery a week later for an update, and was delighted to hear that he made a full recovery. In time he returned to work to live out the life of the poachers dog, wild and happy.

The chops were delicious.

**DISCLAIMER** 

If this were to happen today I would handle it very differently, but I did the best with what I had at the time.

Nursing her wrath to keep it warm

“I’m sorry but this canna gan on, you’re no getting anywhere and the dog is suffering and I canna cope any more and I divven want to but I think we are gonna have to pit her doon and it’s a shame anna but we canna gan on like this and I canna keep payin’ these bills it’s not that I divven want to pay for the dog like but its not making nowt of a difference, is it.”

     A large, clearly frustrated and quite angry woman was crowding out the consult room, a tall long haired German Shepherd dog at her side, markedly underweight.
“Okay, lets back up a bit and take this a bit slower – you said I’m not getting anywhere – I’ve never met your dog, so let’s start at the start, what exactly is the problem?”

“What do you mean you’ve never met the dog like? My husband’s been bringing her doon fer weeks to try and sort oot the diarrhoea man, it’s running oot o’ her! Look at the state o’ her, aal scrawny, mekkin me look bad! All them jabs haven’t made a bit o’ difference.”

“I understand, that must be very frustrating for you and difficult to watch her like that, but the thing is, we’ve really never seen your dog here before. You registered her by phone a couple of months ago, but this is the first time she’s actually come in. Might she have been seen somewhere else?”

The woman stopped, stared at me, blinked twice then shouted

“BASTARD!!” 

She wasn’t finished. “I told him to take her and gan to the vet. He’s been tekkin her away oot every week and asking for the money for the vets bills. But that useless bloody bastard husband of mine has gone to the bloody pub again! Spending my money on beer and those waster mates of his. Well I’ll bloody show him!”

“Okay, meantime, maybe we can see about helping your dog?”

     I examined the bewildered dog gave it a jab, a combination of a couple of drugs I thought might help. The owner left with some special sensitive food, a few tablets, a set of instructions and a murderous rage.

One week later they were back for a follow up.

“It’s amazin, hinny. She cleared right up and has been fine evva since. That’s a few months she’s had this, and it couldda been fixed, but that useless bastard drank the money for hissel. I nearly had the poor dog put down!”

I was just pleased we got a result, I wouldn’t like to have faced that lady’s wrath!

Mrs Walker's Pussy

     One of the things they don’t tell you about much in vet school is that you are going to end up having to deal with your clients mental health issues. Some times that’s easier than others. Sometimes we end up doing a version of care in the community, for free. I regard that as a privilege.

     Mrs Walker was a long standing client, with an outrageously obese cat. She would always say with a twinkle in her eye, “He’s a very hungry pussy!”. He was such a hungry boy that he ended up with diabetes. There was no chance of managing him with insulin, so we did our best to get on top of his issues with a combination of diet and oral medication. As Mrs Walker was increasingly frail, rather than giving her large bags of heavy cat food she would come in and buy one or two small packs every couple of days. A sparrow like wee woman with stick legs and a cheery nature, we were very fond of her and always took a little time to speak with her, knowing that her family had all moved away and could only visit at weekends, which they did. In the wintertime she would come in with freezing hands, and we would always try to stall her and share some tea together so we could get her warmed up again before heading out into the harsh Scottish winter.

     Over time, it became increasingly noticeable that Mrs Walker was losing her marbles. Whilst this was very sad and a source of some worry for all of us, she bore it with such good cheer that we couldn’t feel too awful about it. Her visits became more frequent, at least every day and sometimes more often. We noticed that she was asking for more and more cat food, insisting that she had none. She knew she was right because she had written it down. The staff were uncomfortable about this, so one of the team offered to go round and check on her food supplies. When they arrived in her kitchen they discovered a litter tray full of kibble, and a food dish with cat litter. We started labeling the packets. 

     It was around coffee break one morning on a freezing day and I was at the reception, chatting. Mrs Walker came up to the desk and smiled at me.

“Good Morning Mrs Walker, what can I do for you today?”
“Well now, I need a comb, and my feet”
“Your feet?”
“Yes, I have an appointment. I wrote it down, see?” I looked at the proffered note.
“I think that might be an appointment for you at the hospital with the nurse?”
“Oh. Where is this?”
“The vets. I’m the vet who looks after Oscar”
She looked crestfallen for half a second, then the impish grin started to reappear.
“Of course! Never mind, I’ll just take the hot water bottle and a comb please.”