Dr Liza’s Vet Tales Excerpt – Honcho Needs Surgery!

Dr Liza’s Vet Tales Excerpt – Honcho Needs Surgery!

During my final exams I was under a huge amount of pressure, the reams of notes that I needed to work through were nearly as tall as I was and I spent countless hours at work. At this time Honch tore his cruciate ligament (a ligament in the knee which stops the tibia sliding forward from the femur) and so off to Ondestepoort he went where he had special knee surgery. After a successful surgery he spent his night in hospital chewing up his hospital cage mat and figuring out how to open the door to his hospital cage leaving the students on duty with a big job trying to keep him settled! It goes without saying that he was discharged promptly the next day having made a remarkable recovery!

Now the most important part of repairing the cruciate ligament and the success of surgery is the post operative cage rest for weeks afterwards, which we knew was going to be a huge mission with this thug!

The first night home I had him drugged up with sedatives and we made a bed for him in the corner of the kitchen pushing a table on its side into the corner to keep him there. I had a lot of preparation to do for my medicine exam and really needed to get stuck in. Honch had dozed off with his trademark snore and I sat down to my work but a few minutes later Honch had pushed his way out of his enclosure and wobbled down the passage to see what I was doing.

I mustered up some patience, took him back to his corner, pushed the table back into place, pushed the washing machine behind the table as an anchor, got him settled and again went back to work. A good while later I was making some progress when I heard a squeak of the table and “thump thud”. Off I went to investigate and I met Honch half way down the passage looking very dopey.

Getting very frustrated at this stage, I repeated the process but this time I felt empowered to be a vet student, calculated some drug doses and topped up his sedative dose. Additionally I placed his lead on his collar and tied it to the kitchen door for extra security.

Feeling the pressure of the workload that I faced with the time getting late, I once again set to work and of course a while later there was a crash followed by the squeak of the table and a very drugged up Honch waiting for me – he had chewed up his lead! I lost my temper and Ash, who had just arrived home from a meeting, very tactfully took Honch with him to the T.V. room where they both slept the night while I continued to study.

That night when I eventually got to sleep I dreamed that I removed my own ovaries! I rationalised that since if I could hardly manage to nurse my dog with patience and finesse, I would hardly be a fit mother! The next day our plans were finalized to get Honcho and Sheila into quarantine to come over to New Zealand where cage rest would hopefully be a much more realistic accomplishment for our thug!

To read more about my adventures, read Vet Tales available as a book or e-book from https://www.drliza.co.nz/shop/