good idea, but I needed to be sure. I knelt beside him in the waiting room to give him a quick check. His abdomen was bloated and tight, and he yelped when I touched it.
‘He’s very bloated. I’m afraid this could be quite serious. Would you mind waiting? I’ll take him straight through to the senior vets, then come back to get a fuller history from you while they start working on him.’
I ran to get a trolley to wheel Barney through to the ER. Doug helped me to lift him gently onto it and then patted him on the head. I wheeled him through the double doors and Stacy rushed over. ‘He’s really bloated. I think it’s a twisted stomach,’ I said. She checked him over, put the ultrasound probe on him to confirm the diagnosis and nodded.
‘OK, he’ll need surgery, but first we need to deflate his stomach; the build-up of gas is what’s hurting him. Jo, you can do this.’
We clipped a small patch of fur from Barney’s abdomen and applied antiseptic, then Stacy handed me a two-inch-long needle. Clenching my teeth, I plunged it straight through the clipped area and into Barney’s stomach.
The whoosh of gas escaping sounded a bit like a balloon when you blow it up and then let go. Almost immediately Barney calmed down and stopped howling. I knelt and stroked his head. ‘You’ve had a tough time, haven’t you, young chap?’ Barney raised his head, licked my hand and managed two thumps of his tail.
A few minutes later he was taken to a kennel in the Intensive Care Unit to be prepped for surgery while I went back, with Stacy, to talk to Doug and to take Barney’s history.
‘What is a twisted stomach?’ he asked. ‘How did it happen?’
‘It’s not uncommon in deep-chested breeds of dog,’ I told him. ‘It’s a condition called gastric dilation volvulus or GDV, in which the stomach twists and dilates when it can’t expel food or gas. The blood supply can also be cut off. GDV sometimes happens after a big meal followed by exercise, but frequently there isn’t an obvious reason.’
‘Barney always seems to be hungry,’ Doug said. ‘He steals anything he can get hold of; we have to keep all our food out of reach. The only things he doesn’t seem to like are carrots. Yesterday he ate my son’s headphones, a plate of biscuits and the insole of a boot.’
I laughed. ‘That’s a Lab for you. Happy dogs, but big eaters. What happened to Barney wasn’t necessarily anything he ate; we still don’t know all the reasons why dogs get twisted stomachs.’
I explained that we’d relieved the pressure of the build-up of gas, which could eventually have ruptured the stomach wall, and that Barney would need immediate surgery to return his stomach to the right position and to check for any other internal damage. ‘He’s sleeping now, we’ve given him pain relief and we’ll give you a call as soon as he’s out of surgery.’
‘Thanks.’ Doug smiled. ‘I’ll be off then. Got to get up for work at six.’
I looked at my watch. It was ten past two. Ten hours into my shift and there were still new patients coming through every few minutes.
By three things were quieter and at half-past Stacy told me I could go.
‘Have you had fun?’ she grinned. ‘ECC can be a bit of a baptism of fire.’
‘I’ve loved it,’ I said. ‘I felt like a real vet tonight.’
As I headed out to the car park the hospital’s hushed corridors felt peaceful. For a brief hour or two, until the day staff began to arrive, everything was calm.
I climbed into my little Volvo C30 and drove back to the house I shared with four other vet students in the village of Welham Green, five minutes from the campus. It just so happened (honest) that the other four were boys, despite the fact that eighty per cent of students in my year were girls. But despite the teasing I’d had from some of my friends, there was strictly no romance with any of them – we all just got on really well.
The house was in darkness as I crept in through the front door and made my way into the kitchen. Even Buddy, the sixth member of our household, a funny little mutt that one of my housemates had inherited from his grandparents, barely stirred in his basket.
Despite the late – or was it early? – hour, I was still buzzing with all that I’d learned and done over the past twelve hours. I made myself a cup of tea and a piece of toast – standard post-night-out fare – and sat at the kitchen table.
Fifteen minutes later the exhaustion hit me. I crawled upstairs and was asleep within seconds.
CHAPTER TWO
Most people decide they want to be vets when they’re four years old and fall in love with their hamster, or kitten, or puppy. But for me the lightbulb moment didn’t come until I was sixteen. Until then I was pretty sure I wanted to be a forensic scientist – I loved the idea of solving mysteries – but when I was offered the chance to do a couple of weeks’ work experience with a local veterinary practice I realised how much people love and depend on their animals, and that if we help the animal, we help the owner, whether that’s an elderly person whose cat means the world to them or a farmer who depends on his cows for his income. Being a vet wasn’t just about animals; it was about people, too. There was also a forensic side to it. A vet has to examine all the available information to determine what’s wrong with an animal and while that’s sometimes obvious, it can also be a bit of a mystery.
I was sold.
I come from a family of animal-lovers, which helps. We’ve always had dogs, mostly springer spaniels; affectionate, loyal and energetic dogs. By the time I went to college we’d had Tosca for about eight years and Paddy, a little Yorkshire terrier, for four. Paddy came to us after his elderly owner died and the RSPCA discovered about 200 Yorkies in a squalid, windowless shed, all of them in a dreadful condition. Some of them died and the rest were farmed out to different rescue organisations. Paddy was only eight months old when we got him, a little brown ball of hair. He seemed to have survived the ordeal pretty well and he and Tosca soon bonded, she took him under her wing and they’d snuggle on the sofa together.
We also had my two horses, Elli and Tammy. I’d been mad about horses since I was five years old, when my friend started riding lessons and I begged my parents to let me learn, too. It was a huge financial commitment for my parents, but for Mum, being around horses was an unfulfilled childhood dream, and Dad just wanted to get as far away from his city job as possible at weekends. Only my younger brother Ross didn’t share the passion, having received a hoof in the groin during his first riding lesson when he was five. There was no way he was going near a horse again.
We bought Elli when I was twelve. She was a six-year-old bay, dark brown with a black mane and tail, chestnut dapples and huge dark eyes. She was my fun horse, so safe I could even ride her without a saddle. We won lots of rosettes together at local gymkhanas, but three years later she went badly lame. The vet told us she would never be a competition horse again and that she should be put down. The alternatives were to box-rest her in stables for a year or so, or to put her in a field, let her roam free and see what happened.
It was a huge blow to me. Elli was my world and there was no way I was going to let her be put to sleep. She’d always hated stables, so we chose to put her in the field and let her run loose. Two years later she was no longer lame but very unfit, so I began riding her to get her fit enough
