Could You Just.....

The owners were new to the area and booked the dog in for a routine castration. So it was slotted in with the normal set of ops and the day was fully op and consult booked. One vet was off ill on the day but all was planned and doable, just, without the duty vet needing a stress break (hit of double strength coffee and several bars of chocolate)

Alas the best laid plans of mice and men…

On pre-op check it was discovered that the owner of the dog for castration had neglected to mention the dog was cryptorchid. In other words only one testicle was descended. This is a potently dangerous situation for the animal. Testicles are supposed to be outside the body to be kept cool, trapped inside they can mutate into tumours. Sometimes it is a major hunt for the reclusive testi. It may be felt it may not. It may be in the abdomen, or in the groin almost “home” or any point between the 2 areas. It may be tiny and easily confused with other bits of muscle or fat or a fair size. The vet can spend over an hour chasing it down thinking they have found it every few minutes leaving a large area to suture up post find of the errant testicle.

The owner continued with her shopping list. While the patient is asleep, could we just remove both hind dew claws, the dog had badly ripped a hind dew claw a couple of times in the past year, and the nail was growing back in strange shapes. The owner was worried it may happen again, oh and clip all the nails.

The dog had an umbilical hernia. It was tiny, there was no lump, just a small hole that his old vet had once felt, could we just repair it.

Could we just give him a nice deep ear clean, the dog had recurrent ear problems so while he was asleep, a clean would be ideal.

Oh and an identichip would be the icing on the cake, or by now to be precise, the straw that broke the camels back.

Post unavoidable “vet stress break” the hn called a vet to help from one of the practices quieter neighbouring branches. The op’s were started and I landed the above fun job as the hn had the dental to do, she pointed out l hate dental machines.

I placed the identichip as soon as he was asleep. With how much there was to do sods law said something would make us forget it. Yes it was on my anaesthetic op sheet, ops board and consent form but with the way the day was going, l was taking no chances.

The hidden testicle was possibly felt in the groin and after a lot of groping and going a lot deeper than originally thought would be needed the errant article was found. The dog got lucky only 2 abdominal and 1 prepuce wounds, main testicle, hidden one and hernia repair.

Hind dew claws were simple to snip as only skin held them on. All that was needed was a couple of stitches a side and a dressing. I took over the dressings and ear clean as they were at the end of the op and the vet wanted the “powder room” She dragged the hn away from her coffee and gossip. Sorry, “work based discussion” to cover the anaesthetic for me.
The hn and call in vet’s 4 ops of dental, that had potential to turn into a nasty job, had turned into a short scale and polish, and the 3 cat castrates were pretty quick only minutes. She and the call in vet had a nice hot mug of coffee and a chat, making sure we saw them.

His ears were not too bad. I got a bit annoyed looking for the chunk of gunk that l couldn’t clean and realised it was stuck in the otoscope end. As I pulled the scope out the ear l caught the gunk and it pushed to the side so when l looked down in case it was inside the scope nothing was there, pushed back into the ear it pushed the gunk back into view.

Finally done, 2 of us carried him all 50 kg of solid dog back to his kennel. Oh the joys of human nurses that have special hoists. We snuggled him under his blanket and stood up to stretch. As l pushed my hand into my pocket to pull out my packet of smint, my hand slid down though a smelly wet brown mess. It was a gift to me in my pocket from my bloody patient as we carried him back to his kennel and l hadn’t realised. So much for a nice smint. Next time l carry the front end of the patient.