We all took advantage of the situation and turned it into BRING YOUR PETS TO WORK week.

Here are Licorice & Kay, owned by Karen (one of our vet nurses)

I had discovered a lump growing on my own dog’s stump.

Poor Shepo. He had been licking his stump excessively and not allowing me to fully assess it. He loves to shake his stump so I thought he must have knocked it on something. I dragged him and his cute stump with me to work on Tuesday and got Alana to do the works on him. She did a great job at removing the main lump plus a few other benign ones he had. We decided it is best to get the lump on his tail checked out by a pathologist.

It was quite entertaining to see how nervous I make my colleagues. It is never easy operating on a fellow staff’s pet because you dread the worst happening. Thankfully Shepo made a smooth recovery and I had to send him home early because he woofed the clinic down. The histopathology report on his lump came back saying it was a benign lump. His lump was referred to as a ‘collagenous hamartoma’.

My pooch had a fancy type of lump that I have never heard off.

How odd? I was just happy to know it was benign!

Shepo’s irritating lump on the stump

While Alana was operating on Shepo, I was called out to a property to examine a cow with retained placenta post calving. The farmer was worried because he had lost a cow with retained membranes the week before.

I arrived on the property and was waiting for the owner to meet me when my breath was taken away by the smallest calf I have ever seen.

It turns out to be a one day old twin. I fell in love with it. It was just so small and adorable. As for the cow, the owner had already successfully pulled out the retained placenta. After examining the cow and ensuring she didn’t have any more membranes attached to her uterus, I gave him a handout that thoroughly discussed our vet recommendations on prevention and treatment of retained membranes.

This is the calf quickly getting up as it noticed me approaching it.

A close up: So petite and adorable. I called him/her ‘midget calf’

You can run but you can’t escape from posing with me Midget!

I think the farmer was fascinated with my obsession with the calf even though he agreed it was the smallest he has ever seen.

Midget joins mom and is relieved to be free from me.

Wednesday came, it was a very quiet day. I had to leave work half an hour early to make a doctor’s appointment. One of the vet nurses had just taken a call from a very distraught owner and had advised her to bring dog in URGENTLY.  I told my colleagues I would be back to pick up the afterhours phone as I was on emergency call and take over any cases in hospital.

When I walked back into work after my appointment, I was baffled. There was this staffy on the surgery table that was intubated & on oxygen therapy.

A total of 4 staff members (2 vets and 2 vet nurses) were working on her.

She had blood coming out of her nose and anus. My colleagues quickly updated me on her situation. She was being treated for snakebite envenomation. She had already been given one vial of antivenin. She had been resuscitated only minutes before. I jumped in and took over her care as it was my duty on call. My dedicated staff members didn’t want to leave and kept trying to help until I was able to completely manage her on my own. I then gave her ANOTHER vial of antivenin and monitored her heart rate & breathing closely.

Her temperature got too high, about 40.5 degrees. I started cooling her down with wet towels, ice packs and a fan. At that stage, she was in an unconscious coma-like state. Her pupils were miotic and non responsive to light. As soon as her second vial of antivenin kicked in, I started to notice small signs of responsiveness. She started to gain her blink reflex and would occasionally suddenly start paddling. I let her owners pat her before they went home even though she was in an awful state. I just wanted to ensure they got to see her one last time because her prognosis was very guarded.

Needless to say, it was then almost impossible to get her owners to leave.

Unfortunately, I had to encourage them to go home to get some rest so that I could focus on monitoring their baby Roxy. I always feel so terribly guilty when I ask owners to leave. I just find I perform better in the absence of the owners. My focus is the patient and not trying to soothe the owners during the whole ordeal. It is hard to answer all the questions of the concerns owners when you managing a very critical patient that can crash at any one moment.

As soon as the owners left, Roxy lifted her head and started swallowing. We had to extubate her. I could not believe my eyes. Roxy must have felt that her mom was leaving. This was the critical period. She could have easily collapsed and required resuscitation again. Shockingly, she was getting very stubborn about jumping off the surgery table. I moved her to a comfortable cage and she started blowing bloody bubbles from her nose. I cut down her fluid rates and started her on gastric protectants.

I checked on her throughout the night & early morning and she looked ace. She made an incredible recovery.

I kept her hostage for an extra day in hospital because she still had blood in her urine. Roxy then made a big statement declaring she is overdue to go home and chewed her drip out. We are all in awe of Roxy’s strong will to survive. She defeated all the odds!!! Needless to say, she was the highlight of the week for everyone involved at my practice.

This is Roxy 2 hours after she recovered. She is looking very drowsy and unhappy in the cage.

Roxy is very camera shy. She sure loves to wag her tail…

All my attempts to get a great photo with Roxy failed. This is the best picture I could get

I am on call this weekend and it has been fairly steady. I was mostly called out to treat dog binges. First I had to admit Flash for chewing a ice gel pack that may have contained anti-freeze (ethylene glycol) which can lead to kidney failure 72 hours post ingestion. He was put on iv fluids to flush him out.

He howled like a hyenna as he hated being left alone in his cage.

This is him today still on a scavenging mission. He needs 24/7 supervision-worse than a child I tell ya!

Flash raiding the clinic trash. Don’t worry it was empty!

Flash giving the tragic look for having the e-collar on & being kept in a cage. Sorry buddy, you tried to pull your drip out twice already!

Finally, I promised to talk to you all about Sky this week but will have to postpone her story for another week. Why? Well it is because her owner couldn’t bring her in for her revisit last Friday. I will be seeing her tomorrow instead and can’t wait to see how she is feeling and to tell you all about it in the next issue.

I will also be talking about Spot. I  treated him yesterday and he also had an eye problem. It will all be about EYES next week.

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I have been unable to blog for some time. I have been working myself to the bone.

Unfortunately my losing trend kept going and I had to put down ‘Zorro’, one of my most lovely ongoing geriatric patients.
I used to refer to him as Zorrito. He was so special and used to help himself to the back of the clinic and enjoyed the huge fuss we used to make of him. He will truly be missed by us all. I present to you this video footage of him doing what he does best; putting a huge smile on our faces.

I also lost the battle with ‘Hamish’, a 2-year-old siamese, that was attacked by the same owner’s rescue staffy. This tough lad really put in a good fight and did not want to give up but he kept bleeding 5 days post his attack and it was time to let him go.

On a more positive note, ‘Poa’ is a trooper and keeps getting the spring in her step after each time she bleeds out through her stomach.

She has been to the specialists twice and after each procedure, she bounced back.

Unfortunately she has a rare gastric condition that we can only manage and there is not cure. Her desire to live and enjoy life never ceases to amaze me. ‘Poa’ came in with her bro, ‘Harvey’ to visit me last week. So adorable.

Obviously I am looking forward to having a few days off to recuperate emotionally and physically.

I was on emergency call last weekend and it was insane. I treated almost every species of animal in one day.

Friday night started with the emergency treatment of ‘Hamish’ after he was munched on by a staffy when he had escaped the house. I got him stable then had two other call outs which turned out not to be true emergencies but over the phone they sounded critical and needed veterinary attention. I am never happy to say: ‘No I won’t see your animal because it doesn’t sound like an emergency’. My reasoning is some clients are not good at describing the ailments of their pets and can be way off, either exaggerating or simplifying what is going on.

I admitted Star, an 8-year-old Chihuahua cross, with a huge abscess on her head for surgery the next day. As for Jasper, an 11 month old male domestic short hair, all he needed was antibiotics & pain relief for his cellulitis affecting his hind leg. I secretly hoped the busy Friday meant things may cool down for the rest of the weekend. I was wrong!

I got woken up at 7 a.m. Saturday morning to check out a down cow. The owner was worried she may have a rotting calf inside her.

She had calved two days ago and he suspected she may have an unborn twin.

On arrival, Moon, the pet cow, was laying flat on her side, grunting and looking absolutely dreadful. I conducted my exam and found that she did not have a twin and most likely was suffering from milk fever (low calcium). I gave her the antidote-4:1 fluids (contains heaps of calcium) in the vein & under the skin and we positioned her sternally and she perked up a lot. She was still not out of the woods but her rapid response was a good sign. This is Moon munching on some food later that afternoon.

I then had to go into the clinic to check my 4 hospital patients and get ready for Saturday morning consultations. One of my patients was going home but the other two were still very critical and the last patient was booked in for surgery later that day.

Consults begun and I had to admit two more patients for further workup.

I finished consults and delved into our surgeries and workups.

I knocked out ‘Star’ and cleaned up her abscess and then proceeded with a much-needed dental. I simply could not ignore her dental disease and thought it necessary to do after I sorted her abscess out. Check out her very festy mouth only but beware it ain’t a pretty sight and can ruin your appetite.

Around 4ish p.m., I had to go back to the down cow and give her more fluids. I went home, had 15 minutes to inhale some food and go back to the clinic and start discharging patients. I also got a call to go check out an alpaca but it was a long drive so I suggested they pick up pain relief instead to tie them over the weekend. It was a fairly warm day and I wanted to be close to the clinic if any snake bite emergencies came up. Every minutes counts for those snakebite patients and me being 25-30 minutes away on a property was a risk I wasn’t willing to take. I offered them to bring the alpaca in for me to examine but they didn’t have a float.

Anyhow, when I came back to the clinic, I got a few people knocking on the door, one with an injured baby magpie, another with a run over turtle and finally a really odd lady. Both the poor magpie and turtle needed to be put to sleep as they had very nasty wounds that I could not repair. As for the odd lady, she was knocking on the clinic window and I approached her without opening the door and said: ‘How can I help you?’. She lifted her hand to show me her wounds and said:

‘I have been bitten by a dog, can you give me a tetanus shot?’

I was shocked and replied in a very cool manner saying: ‘I am sorry but I only treat animals, you need to go to a hospital’ and gave her directions.

Took an hour or so to conduct all three discharges. Then I had to reassess my in hospital patients and they were not looking so well. Heidi, my snakebite cat, was actually the most stable patient. Poor Heidi is pictured below paralysed from the venom.

Snowball and Hamish were fairly critical. When I finally got home, I got called out again to check Lewis, a 15-year-old cat, with breathing difficulties. Thankfully he was not as critical as I thought and we managed to treat him medically and send him home and he was booked for full workup on Monday. When I got home Saturday night, I had not typed a single history as it had been so hectic and I simply collapsed into bed and hoped that I would not get any call outs on Sunday.

Sunday morning, I get a call at 8.30 a.m. with a very distressed owner concerned that her cat was flyblown. I recommended she cleaned her up and I would see her later that day. While I was checking on my patients at 10 a.m., I kept hearing a knock on the door and the owner of that flyblown cat had arrived earlier than we had discussed. I let her in and before I let ‘Shadow’ out to examine her, the owner said wait, I need to say something: ‘I can not deal with this and I can not afford it. I am a single mom and barely have money to feed my own kids, I would like you to put her down’.

Obviously the owner was simply having a melt down.

I know how hard it was for her to utter those words but these are words that I can never really digest well. I became a vet to save and treat animals, not to put them down when it simply suits the owner to do so. I took a step back and said: ‘I need to assess your cat and decide if this is a viable option. I do not routinely put animals down just because you ask me to.’ Out comes this beautiful morbidly overweight 6-year-old tortoiseshell with a severely matted coat and some diarrhoea that has attracted the blowflies. Shadow’s unkept coat is what predisposed her to being flystruck. Of course I refused putting her down and got the owner to sign a surrender form instead.

The owner was very appreciative that I gave her the option of surrendering the cat. I guess the dilemma in this situation is I am not teaching owners to be responsible. I gave her a way out and burdened myself with the task of finding a new home for an adult cat. Honestly, I am more than happy to wear it and sleep with a guilt-free conscience. I then sedated ‘Shadow’ and Judy (our lovely groomer) came in at 6 p.m. on the Sunday to help clip and clean her. She recovered well and I am going to be driving her to pet haven’s no kill shelter next week. This is a funny picture of Shadow’s stunned face post sedation.

Wow I hope I haven’t bored you to death. I just miss blogging so much and have heaps to share with all of you. I have taken a few days off work to spend with Elin and Sverre.

Being the nerd that I am, I will also be attending a behavioural seminar (4 hours each session) on saturday and sunday whilst juggling my plans with our much-anticipated guests.

Elin and I usually catch up on each other’s personal lives but then we always end up talking about vet stuff. We swap and share our experiences including documented photos. She teaches me all about large animals and I teach her about smallies and birds.

Well I better run off and look after my husband, pets and Scandinavian mates…We have heaps planned from fine dining to a tour around a true aussie sheep farm, to massages and etc.

I leave you with a picture of Elin, I & Kris (another dear friend) back in our uni days.

In this case, this spider calf was full of go:)

I mean check out the picture below, it clearly reflects his lively spirit!

My colleague Tony at Naracoorte and Penola clinic dealt with this case and was kind enough to share the pictures with me at work. I applaud him for his efforts. I also totally connect with the owner of this spider calf who chose not to simply give up on him.

Tony thoroughly assessed the case and discussed all the risks with the owners.

They both agreed that this little guy would be happier without those legs attached to his head.

They proceeded with a field anaesthetic and surgical resection of the attached legs.

It was success! I am sure mommy cow was relieved to have her cosmetically modified calf suckling from her without also giving a big kick too! Check out the little guy suckling from his mom after his surgery.

This case is just quite an eye opener. It explicitly shows you that you can never truly be mentally prepared to deal with all cases especially rare deformities. The most important thing is that when you are confronted with it, you do your best to learn from it and put on your best performance. Animals and their owners count on us in those challenging circumstances.

Tony definitely rose up to the occasion in this particular case.

This case reminds me of a few of my very challenging calvings in South Australia. I was pretty unlucky in getting called out a few times in my first year out as a veterinarian to calving dystocias associated with deformed calves. These abnormal calves were referred to as schistosomes: their gastrointestinal tract grew outside their body, their spine was so deformed and all four of their legs were pointing in one direction. They were supposed to be RARE as in my cattle professor/vet had only seen a handful after 40 years of being in practice. I saw maybe 4 in total over my first year out! The most practical and easy way to get them out is via a c-section and that can still be quite a difficult task. Some vets have successfully gotten those calves out via embroytome (cutting up the calf and pulling it out of the cow in pieces). Personally I preferred c-sections. Below is a gruesome picture of one of my schistosomes.

The great thing about me getting so many rare cases early on in my career is that now nothing can really phase me!

I am ready to tackle any case no matter how quirky or challenging or mind boggling it is… You live and you learn!