Tales from a Young Vet Read online

  I peered at the little creature in front of me.

  ‘Er, they seem to be necrotic?’

  ‘Yes.’ Nadene was standing on the other side of the table, looking at me expectantly.

  ‘And why would its toes be in this state?’

  I kept peering, as though the answer might suddenly leap out at me. Why would a little leopard gecko, no more than eight inches long, have blackened toes that appeared to be dying?

  It was a striking little creature – yellowish skin with black spots (hence the leopard part), L-shaped legs sticking out at right angles, its toes splayed out like little hands. Three toes on one of its front feet were blackened, and a toe on the other front foot was missing. It was staring at me as if it, too, were waiting for an answer.

  Then I noticed little bits of dried skin on its feet. My brother Ross had once had a leopard gecko, and I remembered how we would watch it in fascination as it shed its skin like a worn-out stocking, eating it as it peeled away.

  ‘It looks as though it hasn’t completely shed its skin. Could the remnant left behind be causing the blood flow to restrict in the toes?’

  Nadene smiled. ‘I think you’re right. It’s not an easy one, this, but that looks like the most obvious answer. Let’s tell the owner to get baby oil and cotton buds and try to get those last remnants of skin off. That should at least save the remaining toes.’

  I was in my first week at the Beaumont Sainsbury Animal Hospital, a clinic run by the Royal Veterinary College and situated next door to their Camden campus. Beaumont was a first-opinion practice for small animals, but it also had the only specialist exotics centre in central London – hence the steady stream of reptiles, birds, fish, and invertebrates such as snails and worms arriving though its doors. It’s amazing what people decide to keep as pets.

  Along with the others in my rotation group I was at Beaumont to practise consultations, straightforward treatments like vaccinations and puppy advice, basic surgery like neutering and dental care, and a little bit of exotics work alongside Nadene, an expert in her field.

  Beaumont is a busy clinic based in a large four-storey building. It offers discounted rates to pet owners because there are a lot of vet students and trainee veterinary nurses working there. A constant stream of people and pets comes through the door. Since returning from South Africa my feet hadn’t touched the ground and, as much as I missed Jacques, I’d barely had time to talk to him.

  We worked early or late shifts, starting at eight or eleven in the morning. All the arrivals at Beaumont were logged on to the computer and we would each take the next case on the list as we became free. After going through a thorough history of the animal with its owner, asking all about the problem and doing a physical examination, we had to report back to the clinician in charge with our findings and recommendations. They would then return with us to see the patient, plus owner, and either opt for tests or prescribe medication.

  These were our first full solo consultations without supervision and the vets in charge expected us to be very thorough indeed. We couldn’t just ask, ‘When was your dog last treated for fleas?’ We had to ask what product was used and how often. This could mean quite lengthy consultations, as we worked our way through a seemingly endless list of questions, but it did teach us good practice and ensure that we didn’t miss any vital information.

  I enjoyed consultations because I never knew what, or who, was coming through the door. I loved chatting to the clients, and enjoyed meeting the variety of people and animals that arrived. As long as I started with ‘What seems to be the problem?’ the rest would flow and I felt my confidence growing with every case.

  ‘Mr Grey with Ruby?’ I announced, looking around the crowded waiting room.

  ‘Here, over here.’ Mr Grey, looking very flustered, shot out of his seat and hastened towards me, dragging a reluctant greyhound behind him.

  ‘Oh, I am relieved to see you. I’ve been so worried about poor Ruby, she’s in a terrible state,’ he gasped. ‘She’s our angel, you know. We just dote on her and we can’t bear to see her suffer. She gets the best of everything, so I just can’t imagine what’s gone wrong. And the worst part is that poor Ruby is so embarrassed about it.’

  As I ushered him through to a consulting room, aware that the remaining owners in the waiting room were transfixed, Mr Grey talked non-stop and with such speed that it was hard to keep up. Waving his arms in the air and gesticulating theatrically, he threw himself into the chair and bemoaned poor Ruby’s condition and her mortification.

  Ruby, meanwhile, settled patiently beside him looking, if anything, mildly bored. She probably just felt rather unwell.

  ‘So I see from the notes that she’s got diarrhoea?’ I ventured.

  ‘Yes. Oh, my goodness, how could she have got it? We give her organic food; no rubbish at all for our Ruby.’

  I tried to reassure him. ‘Please don’t worry too much. It’s not uncommon, even in dogs that are very well cared for.’

  I had flicked through Ruby’s history before calling them in and it seemed that she had always been a perfectly healthy dog. The likelihood was that the diarrhoea was simply a reaction to something she’d eaten or perhaps a mild stomach bug.

  I went through a detailed history, which Mr Grey was only too happy to supply, starting with the moment he and his partner first set eyes on little Ruby when she was just eight weeks old. ‘It was love, you see.’ His eyes grew moist. ‘We loved her, and she loved us. We promised right then that we would always be there for her.’

  ‘And you certainly are,’ I said brightly. ‘Now, let’s get Ruby to stand up and I’ll examine her.’ I did, very gently and very thoroughly. She was a little bit dehydrated (cue another outburst from Mr Grey along the lines of, ‘Oh, my poor Ruby’) but otherwise there was not much to find.

  Leaving Mr Grey and Ruby in the consulting room, I went back to relay everything to Harry, the vet in charge. He came back with me and we prescribed a diet of chicken and rice, as well as some binding paste.

  ‘She will get the very best chicken that we can find, fresh every day, and I will cook it for her with the finest basmati rice,’ Mr Grey informed us solemnly.

  Thanking us profusely he headed out again towards the waiting room with the reluctant Ruby in tow. He got to the end of the corridor and struggled with the door. Whoever designed the place put a release button on the wall to open the door and, goodness knows why, decided to place it several metres away so that, without fail, every client ended up tugging on the locked door for a while before realising that there was something they had to press to get out. ‘Button on the wall,’ I called, and a relieved Mr Grey finally made a rather agitated exit.

  A few days later Ruby reappeared on my list of consults. My heart always dropped a little when an animal was brought back because it usually meant that the advice we had given hadn’t worked.

  ‘Oh, I’m glad it’s you again,’ Mr Grey began, as he sprang to his feet in the waiting room. ‘Ruby likes you, so we were hoping it would be you. She didn’t want to have to get to know someone else.’

  Flattered as I was, I doubted that Ruby had even registered me, let alone taken a liking to me.

  This time Mr Grey and Ruby went away with some antibiotics and a few days later he popped back to tell me that all was well – Ruby and her doting owners were restored to harmony. ‘I’m so glad,’ I told him, and I was. There’s nothing like a satisfied customer, and Mr Grey and Ruby – he being so extravagant in all he said and did, and she so placid and patient – had made me smile.

  That morning, in a rare moment off I caught up with Lucy over a coffee. ‘How’s the dating going?’ I asked her. ‘Found anyone you like yet?’

  Lucy made a face. ‘I haven’t had a lot of time lately. I’m having real trouble with my research project. All my tests are failing and I’m beginning to panic, so the hunt for Prince Charming has had to go on the back burner, although I did have a quick flick through some dating profiles the other
day. Just have a look how gorgeous this guy is,’ she said, getting out her phone to show me the picture.

  ‘He’s nice,’ I agreed. ‘Why not go on a date?’

  ‘I told you, no time. I’ll save him for later and hope he’s still free.’

  In addition to all our placements, we each had to carry out and write up a piece of original research. Mine was on horses’ shoes and whether horses are actually better off with or without them, and Lucy’s was on cow’s milk. She was trying to find out whether you could test the DNA in a particular cow’s milk to see whether the cow would genetically have the potential to have a high milk yield. If it worked it would mean that in the future farmers would be able to test a cow’s milk in her first lactation to see if she was going to be a high producer later in life. A great idea, as it could change the way that farmers select their cows for breeding. Apart from the small problem that Lucy wasn’t getting any usable results.

  I sympathised. It wasn’t easy fitting in the research and I was getting a bit worried about my own, which was going to involve photographing an awful lot of horses. But we had a research month coming up, mid-May to mid-June, when we’d be able to catch up with the practical side and start putting it all together. Comforting ourselves with that thought, we headed back to work.

  That afternoon I was due in surgery and I couldn’t wait. I’d watched plenty of operations, and I’d scrubbed in and assisted at quite a few, but now I was going to be doing the whole thing on my own and I was really looking forward to it. There was something about surgery that I found deeply satisfying. I like working with my hands and I enjoy a bit of neat stitching, but the real buzz came from being able to make a real difference, right there and then.

  My first solo op was a bitch spay on a young Staffie called Melissa. The supervising clinician was a very serious young vet who expected me to know exactly what I was doing and to talk him through every step of the procedure as I went along, which wasn’t easy. He added comments and instructions at the same time, along the lines of ‘Don’t pull so hard, take that across, you need to ease off now.’ It was all constructive criticism, but he was so deadpan that by the time I got to the end I wasn’t sure whether he thought I’d done a good job or couldn’t wait to see the back of me.

  Luckily he seemed to think I was all right. When it was all over he smiled, for the first time, and said, ‘You’re a natural, well done.’ I thanked him and walked out – and then did a little jig in the corridor. It was fantastic to have praise, especially from someone who I could see didn’t give it lightly.

  Over the next few days I removed an abscess from a rabbit, spayed a cat and castrated a tiny Chihuahua crossbreed. When it arrived in the surgery I took one look at this minute dog and wondered if I’d even be able to find its testicles. On most dogs they’re about the size of plums, but this little chap’s were more like peas; they were the tiniest testicles I’d ever seen, which made removing them very fiddly indeed. I kept finding them and then losing them again, and with the clock ticking and the clinician watching it was a bit nerve-wracking.

  But by the end of the first week I was beginning to feel like a real vet.

  Heady with triumph, on the Friday of my first week I met up with my old friend Abi for dinner. Abi and I had known one another since we met at the stables when she was eleven and I was thirteen. She was as mad about horses as I was, and we used to ride together every evening and at the weekends. When we got a bit older we had girly movie nights and went out to Saturday night parties together. We looked alike, so everyone took us for sisters, which I loved because I don’t have a sister of my own.

  Abi is a kind and gentle person, and I’ve never heard her say a bad word about anyone. After finishing her history degree she decided to train as a teacher with Teach First, the scheme that selects people who haven’t trained as teachers, trains them for six weeks and then puts them into tough schools in low-income communities for the next two years. If they make it through that, they become qualified teachers. It’s a great scheme, aimed at ending inequality in education and finding inspirational people to help and encourage kids who might otherwise fail, but the reality for Abi was pretty harsh. She was in a school where her Year 3 seven- and eight-year-olds gave her constant grief, and because Abi just wasn’t the kind of person who would ever shout at them if they misbehaved they took ruthless advantage of her. The last time I’d seen her she had been pretty miserable.

  ‘I’m ravenous,’ I said as we pored over the menus in a little Italian bistro round the corner from Beaumont. ‘I could eat everything here, and be back for more.’

  Abi laughed. ‘Anyone would think you’re still growing, Jo, with the amount you seem able to put away.’

  ‘It’s being a vet, Abi,’ I said. ‘All that stress and tension just makes you want to eat. And speaking of stress and tension, how are things in the classroom?’

  ‘Better.’ She grinned. ‘I’ve got a fantastic new trick. I have a timer and every time the children play up I run it for a minute. At the end of the lesson, the minutes on the timer come off their break. They only have to see me reach for the timer and they start yelling, “No, Miss, don’t do that!” They’re little angels now.’

  ‘That’s fantastic. Any chance you could come up with something to keep unruly pets and their owners in line?’

  We spent the rest of the evening eating and talking non-stop. At 10.30pm I looked at my watch. ‘Abs, I’m going to have to run. My last train goes in fifteen minutes.’

  As she headed back to Kent for a weekend of catching up with her family, I made the forty-minute journey from Kings Cross to Welham Green. No visit home for me – weekends were Beaumont’s busiest time and I had Saturday surgery the next day.

  My second week at Beaumont was as full as the first. I did some more exotic animal work with Nadene. Among our patients were lizards, tortoises, a chinchilla (a South American rodent a bit bigger than a ground squirrel) and a Richardson’s ground squirrel, which looked like a cross between a squirrel and a gerbil, and was the most manic little creature I’d ever seen. It went crazy, trying to scratch its way out of its box and then running all over the consulting room when we took it out. Keeping it still enough to clip its ingrowing nails was almost impossible.

  The most exotic patient of all was an Asian water dragon, a gorgeous, bright green, lizard-like creature a couple of feet long. It had a bound egg, which meant that it had an egg inside it that it was unable to lay. After talking to the owner, a rather grumpy teenage boy, we suggested that he improve the dragon’s habitat. Without the right environment they won’t lay; she needed a nice wet corner with lots of damp moss for her to burrow down in to lay her eggs.

  My time at Beaumont had been busy and fascinating, and I’d loved my stint there, but I was looking forward to a whole month at home in which I could work on my research project and catch up on some sleep.

  The issue I’d chosen as my research subject – whether or not horses benefit from wearing shoes – had been causing a lot of controversy in the equine community. For hundreds of years horses have been shod, but a lot of people were beginning to wonder whether the shoes actually did any good, and increasing numbers of people in the horse world believed they actually damaged the hooves.

  There were a lot of arguments on both sides, but no research had been published, so I hoped mine might be the first. We had to choose our research projects at the beginning of rotations, but when I went to see one of the equine clinicians at college to ask them to supervise me they said there would be far too much work involved, I would never manage to do it and I should pick another subject. A second one was also doubtful and I was beginning to wonder if I really had bitten off more than I could chew. I decided to give it one more try, and thankfully the third clinician, an equine orthopaedic specialist named Dave, liked the idea and agreed to be my supervisor. I enjoyed working with Dave; relaxed and always complimentary, he was an expert in his field and was always coming up with interesting points to con
sider.

  The idea of the research was to photograph the hooves of horses with and without shoes, and to analyse the results. I needed to photograph a couple of hundred horses, but they couldn’t be just any horses; they had to be in two distinct groups – horses that had worn shoes for more than eighteen months and horses that had not worn shoes for eighteen months, either because they’d had them removed or because they’d never been shod. It takes a year for a horse’s hoof to grow out fully after a shoe is removed, which is why they would need to be unshod for a year and a half, to ensure the hoof had not been influenced by a shoe.

  I would need to photograph each hoof from three angles and then analyse the results, taking measurements of the hooves from the photographs. My conclusions had to be written up as a 4,000-word piece of research, to be submitted to the college as part of my finals.

  It was a big project, I knew that, but it was something in which I had a genuine interest. I made a list of places in the Kent area where I might find the horses I needed.

  Then, in the first week of my research, I became ill. I had an agonising sore throat and a high fever. I felt awful. I went to the doctor three times and went through a whole lot of antibiotics before tests confirmed it was glandular fever.

  There was no putting off the research – it had to be done because there was no other free time – so I was just going to have to toughen up. So every day, ignoring my raging temperature, I dragged myself out to local farriers, stables, vet practices and farms. I got through it by dosing myself up with paracetamol and sleeping whenever I wasn’t working. My parents were away on holiday for two weeks during that month, so I had Tosca and Paddy to look after as well as my horses.

  It was a tough time and I felt pretty sorry for myself, regularly messaging Jacques to have a good moan. He was calm and patient, putting up with my self-pity and making me laugh despite my aches. By the end of the month I was really pleased with the work I’d done, though. I still had a long way to go before it would be completed, but the research so far was beginning to convince me that shoes really did alter the shape of a hoof, a conclusion I knew would put a few backs up but which really excited me.