Читать книгу Tales from a Wild Vet: Paws, claws and furry encounters - Jo Hardy, Jo Hardy - Страница 7

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 a vet student I was allowed to visit her often and I spent a lot of time in her kennel, talking to her, cuddling her and sitting beside her with my textbooks open on my lap. She had grown painfully thin, but I coaxed her into eating again by gently feeding her sausages, and when she was finally well enough to go home she tottered out of the hospital. All the way home she squealed in the way she did when she wanted a walk, so we knew we had our Tosca back and promised never to complain about her annoying traits again.

We were all thrilled to have her home, and once she was back in her own territory she carried on getting better and soon seemed like her old self. But as the months passed we realised she was losing her sight, and her head had begun to tilt to one side, which meant that she probably did have a slow-growing brain tumour. This may have accounted for the uncharacteristic behaviour that she continued to display, such as hiding in strange places and her gorging episode.

Tosca didn’t appear to be too fazed by losing her sight. She still charged around the house, so we put bubble wrap around the trees in the garden and horse boots on the legs of the dining-room chairs so that she wouldn’t hurt herself when she bumped into them. She never seemed to have a problem finding us – or the dishwasher – and she still demanded our undivided attention.

When I graduated a year later she was still doing well and we were hopeful that she would be with us for some time yet. After my graduation ceremony and the ball that followed and once all the excitement was over, Jacques and I drove down to Cornwall to join my parents and Ross for a holiday. Every year Mum, Dad, Ross and I go to the same little cottage in the Camel Valley Vineyard in north Cornwall for a lazy fortnight of pottering around beaches, walking the dogs, looking at holiday cottages and filling up with cream teas at Viv’s café down the road. This year, Jacques was joining us, and I was looking forward to spending time with him in one of my favourite parts of the country. Jacques and I planned to arrive a few days after the rest of my family, as I had to pack up my house at university and say a sad goodbye to my housemates and friends.

After the long drive from Kent to Cornwall, never less than six hours, Jacques and I pulled up at the vineyard, got out of the car to stretch our aching limbs and lifted our bags out of the boot. We walked down the path towards our cottage to find Mum outside with Tosca lying on the ground beside her in the shade.

I ran towards them. ‘What happened?’

‘Tosca’s been really off colour today,’ Mum said. ‘We knew you were on the way, so we decided to wait and see what you thought before getting help. Especially as it’s Sunday.’

I knelt down and stroked Tosca. She barely responded. Her little tail, seldom still, didn’t even manage a small welcoming wag. There was also a faint rattle coming from her chest as she breathed.

‘She was playing in the sea yesterday,’ Mum said. ‘You know how much she loves dashing in and out of the waves. But she can’t see them coming and I think she’s inhaled some salt water.’

I looked up at Mum. ‘She really looks awful. We need to get her to a vet. I can’t help her, I have nothing with me.’

We got Tosca gently into the car and took her to a very friendly local out-of-hours vet called Sandra, who took her temperature – which was alarmingly high – gave her an antibiotic injection and a Metacam injection to bring her temperature down and asked us to bring her back in the morning.

A diagnosis was difficult. Given that we knew she had cancer, there might well have been tumours in her lungs. But it was also possible that, having inhaled seawater, she had developed pneumonia.

We took her back to the cottage to rest. The vet told us to make sure she was eating and drinking, but we couldn’t persuade her to take anything at all. No small titbit tempted her, not even sausage; she wouldn’t even drink water, so the next morning we took her back and she was put on a drip for 24 hours to rehydrate her.

That helped, but when we took her home again she was still very weak. At worst she simply lay flat; at best she managed a small wag of her tail. We took it in turns to check on her and sit with her. None of us wanted to say it, but we were very afraid that we were losing her.

The following day Dad suggested we take her to the beach. It was her favourite place and Dad reasoned that we would either be taking her for one last visit, if she really was reaching the end, or it would give her a boost and she just might perk up. It was kill or cure time.

We all agreed it was a good idea, and once again we lifted her gently into the car before heading down the road to the sea. When we arrived Jacques carried her from the car to the beach where – to all of our delight and amazement – she lifted her head, sniffed the salt air and immediately launched into a shaky jog towards the sea.

We stood, grinning. It was clear that, weak as she was, she was back with us and ready to fight. I hugged Jacques. ‘She’s tough as old boots,’ I said, wiping away a tear. ‘She’s not ready to go yet.’

‘You’re right, she’s some dog,’ he said, watching her with a look of slight incredulity on his face.

After that Tosca gradually regained some of her energy and vitality. She was still weak, but we could all see that her spirit was undimmed. We took her to the beach every day, where she dug a huge number of holes in the sand and continually tried to scamper off towards the sea, bumping into people on the beach that she couldn’t see.

At the end of the week Jacques had to go back to South Africa. I drove him to Heathrow where for once I didn’t dissolve into tears because I knew that we were only facing a short parting this time; I was going to be joining him for two weeks at the end of August, only a month away.

After seeing Jacques off, I drove to Kent to collect Mum’s parents, Grandma and Grandpa Nevison, who lived next door to us. I’m lucky in having my grandparents so close by. Dad’s parents, Grandma and Grandpa Hardy, only live half an hour from us, so I’ve got all four around me and they’re all absolutely lovely.

Our second holiday week was deliciously peaceful. Tosca was doing well, the sun shone and we enjoyed long walks and plenty of cream teas. I also managed to pop over to visit my old friend Tom, who runs a dairy farm close to where we were staying. A few years older than me, Tom is a quiet country farmer who took over the farm from his parents. Happy to stay settled in one place, Tom loves his farm, his animals and meeting his friends for a pint down at the pub in the evenings. We are very different, but we get on well. We’ve known each other for almost 10 years, ever since I spent a few weeks doing work experience on the farm when I was 16, and it’s always good to catch up.

Tom asked me to give him a hand with diagnosing his cows’ pregnancy, as he had a few he wasn’t sure about. Tom had a really old-school diagnosis method called ‘ballottement of the abdomen’, which is seldom used nowadays because it’s so inaccurate. It consists of pushing your hand against the side of the cow and wobbling the tummy around to see if you come up against something – like a calf. The trouble is, it only really works if the foetus is big enough, so the cow has to be at least halfway through a pregnancy for you to be able to pick up her condition.

There was one cow in particular that Tom was very fond of, a pretty black-and-white Holstein. She produced excellent milk yields and had had several calves in the previous few years, but for some reason she hadn’t become pregnant for quite a while. With dairy farming these days you can’t afford to lose any time. There is a voluntary waiting period of about 40 to 60 days after a cow gives birth when you give her a rest. After that you put her with the bull again, or artificially inseminate her, in the hope that she will fall pregnant within two reproductive cycles of 21 days each. If a cow is not pregnant six months or so after a birth then she becomes expensive to maintain and it’s time to think about slaughter or selling on at market.

Tom thought he felt something bumping against his hand and was hoping that this particular cow was pregnant. I checked her rectally, a technique I had had plenty of practice with thanks to my old friend Thys, an eccentric Afrikaner vet I had worked with on my frequent trips to South Africa while I was training. Thys had taught me always to insert my left hand into the cow, so that I could properly feel the uterus from inside.

‘Clarrie’s been one of my best cows,’ he said, ‘and I think I felt something when I checked her, so I’m hoping she’s in the family way again now.’

‘Clarrie?’ I said, eyebrows raised.

Tom looked sheepish. ‘I know it’s not the wisest thing to do to name them, but she’s a lovely cow, and she reminds me of Clarrie in The Archers – long-suffering and good-hearted.’

I laughed. ‘OK, Tom, let’s hope Clarrie is going to make you a happy dad again.’

I inserted my arm and felt her uterus. There was nothing there.

‘I’m so sorry, Tom, she’s not pregnant.’

His face fell. ‘Really? I could have sworn she was. Could you be wrong?’

I turned to him and said, ‘Well, I know I’m still freshly graduated, but I’m certain I can’t feel anything.’

His face fell. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I’ll give it a second go, just to make sure,’ I said.

Clarrie was none too happy by this time. She’d had enough of my arm up her rump and was trying to shake me off.

‘Hang onto her, will you, Tom? She’s getting frisky and I’d rather not be trampled on my first outing as a fully-fledged vet, thanks.’

After a second check I pulled off my gloves and turned to Tom.

‘I promise you, there’s no obvious foetus in there, Tom, unless she’s in the early stages, which I can’t tell without a scanner. Could that be possible?’

‘No, she should be well on by now. Let me feel.’ He inserted his hand into the cow. He wasn’t happy. ‘Oh, Jo, what a shame. This girl is one of my best yielders.’

His shoulders drooped. He knew it was time to send Clarrie to market. For Tom, as for all dairy farmers, with milk prices at an all-time low, hard-headed decisions had to be made.

He looked at me, his expression defiant.

‘I know I should let her go,’ he said. ‘But I’m not going to. Not yet. Clarrie has more than earned her keep until now. I’m going to put her out to pasture and give her a bit longer. She may fall pregnant next time round. She deserves another chance.’

I hesitated. He was making the decision with his heart, not his head. But sometimes we all need to do that.

I smiled. ‘OK, Tom, good call. Let’s hope she’s in calf again in a few months.’

He smiled, relieved. ‘Come on then, I think you’ve earned a slice of Mum’s apple pie.’

The following day my phone rang. It was one of the publicity crew from ITN Productions, asking whether I would be willing to do a few interviews to publicise Young Vets. This was a television series that had been made in my last year at vet college and it was about to air. Along with nine other student vets from my academic year at the Royal Veterinary College, I had been followed around on most of my work placements by a camera crew. Nerve-wracking at first (who wants to have their mistakes filmed?), within a couple of weeks the crew and I became friends and I barely noticed the cameras. In fact, it felt a bit odd, and even lonely, when they weren’t trailing me through every muddy farmyard, stable, operating suite and consulting room. When the series was completed the final shots were of our graduation, the 10 of us leaping in the air with joy.

I said I would be happy to give interviews. We’d been warned that this would be a necessary part of the process when we had first signed up for the series, but I couldn’t help feeling horribly nervous. What if I said the wrong thing? What if I made a fool of myself? Or I embarrassed vets everywhere with my comments?

Most of my interviews could be done over the phone, thankfully. At least that way the interviewers wouldn’t be able to see how nervous I was, and ITN could supply photos from a shoot we’d done with them. But I still felt distinctly jittery.

After our return from Cornwall it was hard to say goodbye to the family, and especially hard to say goodbye to Tosca, who was still not quite her old self. But that was when I had to go and start my first two weeks of locum work at Braxton’s so, waving goodbye to the family, I packed my things into my little car and off I went.

When I got back home after that first stint of locum work I felt absolutely exhausted. It was so good to be home. Mum was cooking a roast chicken for dinner, Dad gave me a big hug and I sat down on the sofa and burst into tears. I was looking forward to a couple of weeks at home now, volunteering at Folly Wildlife Hospital, before heading off for two weeks in the South African sunshine with Jacques – I couldn’t wait.

Tosca was still doing well. She was a little more frail than before, but she was still bouncing around and was happy to curl up beside me as I checked the statistics for my research project. During our final year at the RVC we’d all had to carry out a piece of original research; mine was on horses’ hooves, and whether wearing horse shoes was ultimately of benefit or if horses were actually better off without them. I’d had to photograph and measure the hooves of a lot of horses and I had put a huge amount of work into it, so I was delighted when my supervisor said he thought that what I’d produced was good enough to be published in a scientific journal. But before I submitted it I had to repeat the measurements to verify that my results – which came down in favour of horses not wearing shoes – were valid and reliable. So I had to painstakingly work through it all again.

Soon after I got home I had a visit from our local ITV news programme, South East Today. Young Vets was due to air in a couple of days and they wanted an interview. No sooner had I said yes than they confirmed a date and arrived, cameras in tow. We did an interview in the sitting room and then rushed off to the stables so they could show me with my two horses, Elli and Tammy. As they were leaving they said it would be on the lunchtime news that day. That was in two hours’ time.

At five to one I turned on the TV and sat down, a plate of cheese toast on my knee, to watch. I hadn’t seen the films of Young Vets and I still couldn’t imagine what it was going to be like watching myself on TV. It was a strange experience. I think it’s almost impossible to see yourself on film and not feel critical (why didn’t I tuck that lock of hair behind my ear and why do I sound so cheesy?), but it could have been worse.

The news clip was a taste of what was to come. Two days later the whole family sat down to watch the first episode in the Young Vets series. I only appeared in the introduction to the first one – I wasn’t given a solo slot until Episode Four – so I was able to enjoy watching the others. I grinned at Charlie, one of the friendliest and kindest people I knew, and then Grace, who could appear a bit ditzy but was ultimately an excellent vet.

As soon as the programme got underway the tweets began. I never did get used to reading Twitter comments from people who didn’t know me, but when the four episodes in which I had solo sections were aired, there were plenty of them to read. Only one was genuinely unkind and I realised I had been lucky – I could have been mauled. Most people had nice things to say about the programme and the vets.

On one morning towards the end of that week, Tosca seemed unwell again. I stroked her gently as I examined her and took her temperature. It was much too high – she was clearly very ill. I took her to my local vet to get some antibiotics and an intravenous drip and brought her back home. I set up a drip, hanging it over our living-room door and putting her bed on the floor below it. Mum decided to sleep on the sofa next to her so that she wouldn’t be alone.

In the middle of the night Tosca began howling with pain. Tosca was the toughest dog I’d ever known. If she was howling, she must feel awful. I came downstairs to where Mum was sitting with her and stroked her head and her silky ears. She’d had enough and though my heart ached, I knew it was time to let her go.

My parents agreed to take her straight to the vet. Ridiculous, since part of my job was putting animals to sleep, but I couldn’t face seeing Tosca go. She had been my world for half my life.

Tosca was always needle-phobic and the last thing we wanted was for her to feel frightened, so I reminded Mum to ask the vet to sedate her first with an injection in the lumbar region.

In the event, that was enough. Before she was given the final injection, which is an overdose of anaesthetic, Tosca slipped peacefully away.

We buried her in the garden the next morning, close to my first spaniel, Bluff, who had died when I was 10. When Bluff went Dad had been redoing the garden with a mini-digger, which made the digging easy. This time we dug the hole by hand, all of us taking turns.

Tosca had been obsessed with tennis balls. They were banned in the house, due to the havoc she’d wreak with them, so we’d chuck the balls back outside when she brought them in and she would grab them and bury them in holes all over the garden. She was great at digging the holes, but being blind she neglected to fill them in and we were forever tripping into her mini-trenches. When we buried her, we tucked several of her beloved tennis balls in with her.

Dogs live short lives, and if you have a dog you know that most likely at some point you will be faced with making the decision to let it go. Even knowing that, saying goodbye is never easy. We were all quiet for the next few days, missing Tosca’s ebullient presence and painfully aware of the great big gap she had left in our lives.