• Dr Liza’s Vet Tales Excerpt – My Early Days as A Vet

I was one of four vets working as part of Rose’s team learning the ropes as a relatively new graduate in a busy small animal practice. We had some great times together working as a well-knit team. I remember one day, I had almost completed doing a consultation for a dog with a bad skin condition. I was standing at the drug shelf deep in thought deciding on what strategy to assume to help the dog. One of our nurses asked me why I looked so thoughtful to which I replied, “I’m contemplating drugs” to which she responded jokingly, “No, don’t do it, it’s not worth it!”

Many of the animals we looked after were real characters… There was Remus, a lovely, well-muscled Brindle staffie who had his own treadmill at home which he ran on every day, since his owners couldn’t keep up with his high energy level! There was Sumo, a huge sixty kilogram male rottweiler that Rose dealt with, he would take her for a drag each time she brought him into hospital. We were careful to muzzle him each time he came in as he was known to act aggressively towards most people, except for the time when some burglars broke into his home and he slept through the proceedings! Another rottweiler pup came in for his vaccination, his owner battling to get him into the consultation room as he kept on growling at her and needed a fair bit of disciplining. He was been named “Satan” and unfortunately probably lived up to his name showing such attitude as a young dog! There was also a big black cat called “Lucifer” who thank goodness didn’t live up to his name and was a lovely fellow.

We had many dedicated pet owners visit our practice one of which was eighty-eight- year old Mrs Rutherford who one day brought her dearly beloved cat to us as her kitty had been off her food and vomiting. Upon examination we found that she was dehydrated and running a very high temperature.

The first thing that we did was to put her on a drip which would make her feel a lot better. We then followed with some blood tests and x-rays to try and find out what was wrong. We concluded that “Kitty” (a good name for a cat.) had a furball stuck in her gut and to get it out we needed to keep her on a drip and feed her laxatives. A crucial part of being a valued professional as a vet is doing very important things like monitoring a patient for the delivery of a much awaited package of poop with the furball. This we do with diligence, dignity and pride, as far as possible and with Kitty we were eventually rewarded!

There are some greatly gratifying moments awaiting excrement like the dog that came in having eaten a sock, he had a sock fetish! He was feeling under the weather and was subdued and we had the option of performing surgery to remove it or to treat him with laxatives in the hope that he would pass the sock. His owners elected the latter and we were delighted to find out the following morning that he had pooped out a sock!

Another important part of the job is communicating with our clients and of course we needed to report to Mrs Rutherford on Kitty’s progress which we did by phone. After rambling off the whole story which I had so neatly prepared, Mrs Rutherford replied “Sorry dear, can you repeat that? I can’t hear you.” and so I tried again. After going through my well-prepared report for a second time, again Mrs Rutherford said she still hadn’t heard me and so shouted my little speech to her over the phone and it was third time lucky!

For the rest of our communications over the phone I made sure to shout into the phone so that she would hear me, much to the amusement of my colleagues. The next time Mrs Rutherford phoned my colleague Heather ended up speaking to her and she was prepared, knowing to shout into the phone as she had heard me doing. This time Heather received an unexpected reply from Mrs R, “Please don’t shout dear, I have a hearing aid and it’s working perfectly”!

Our fun-loving receptionist Sally told us that a few of our clients were very deaf and many made use of hearing aids but one elderly gentleman was very concerned about the life of the hearing aid battery and so he confided in Sally that he sometimes switched his hearing aid off so that the battery didn’t run out and this proved particularly useful when his wife was being a nag!!!

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