Vet among the pigeons

163 Pages·2010·1.58 MB·English

by  Hick

Acknowledgements
Firstly, my thanks to the many readers of Vet on the Loose who passed on their
praise and good wishes. Sorry it’s taken so long to write this one.
My thanks to the Irish Blue Cross who have allowed me to use the
Ballyfermot clinic as a setting for some of the stories. The Blue Cross clinics are
supported by voluntary staff and I was lucky to have had the privilege to work
with two of the best in Gordon Nowlan and Eamon Cosgrave who, between
them, have given almost eighty years’ service to the pets of Dublin and their
owners. Their good humour and compassion never once failed in all the nights,
despite serving one of the busiest clinics in the inner city in all weather
conditions and into all hours of the night.
My apologies, in advance, to the many nice equine vets and the ones who run
decent equine courses! I was unlucky in my first experience described here, but
thankfully have had good experiences since. Hopefully, the few remaining
dinosaurs will soon become extinct!
While on the subject of vets, thanks to Ralf Seidewitz, my neighbouring
colleague and friend, for picking up the pieces for me when my efforts to
combine a twenty-four/seven on-call practice with rearing three young children
didn’t work!
My thanks to the staff of the O’Brien Press and in particular to Michael
O’Brien, who allowed me to stay as a hobby writer, and to Ide, the editor, as she
waded through pages of clinical detail and surgical procedures, not to mention
my appalling spellings!
Thanks to Hillary and all the staff in our fabulous local book shop, Bridge
Street Books in Wicklow town, for their ongoing support of Vet on the Loose.
Thanks to Mark Quinlan for his input in the accountant’s meeting chapter.
Mark, of course, in no way resembles the entirely fictitious boring suit in the
story!
As always, my thanks to my husband, Donal, and three children, Molly, Fiona
and Jack (who wasn’t born for the time-frame of this book – sorry, Jack!).
Thanks for the unending support and many cups of tea that were needed for the
production of this book!
And, speaking of cups of tea, thanks to John Armstrong, who dropped in for a
cup of tea one evening and ended up building a veterinary clinic – read all about
that in the next book!
CONTENTS
Title Page
Acknowledgements
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1: LEAPFROG
CHAPTER 2: JED AND HIS FLUFFY PYTHON
CHAPTER 3: THREE LITTLE GIRLS AND THEIR DOG
CHAPTER 4: A HELPING HAND
CHAPTER 5: OUT OF THE HORSE’S MOUTH
CHAPTER 6: THE BALD EAGLE
CHAPTER 7: THE PYJAMA PARTY
CHAPTER 8: SPECIAL INDULGENCES
CHAPTER 9: TWIN LAMBS
CHAPTER 10: BEAUTY – OR THE BEAST?
CHAPTER 11: A DIFFERENT CONSULTATION
CHAPTER 12: THE FILLY FOAL
CHAPTER 13: A CASE OF BUMBLE FOOT
CHAPTER 14: A NASTY FRACTURE
CHAPTER 15: THE WHITE STUFF
CHAPTER 16: A TEMPERAMENTAL VEHICLE
CHAPTER 17: THE BEWITCHING HOUR
CHAPTER 18: NEW ARRIVALS
CHAPTER 19: NOT BAD FOR A FIVER!
About the Author
Also by Gillian Hick
Copyright
Other Books
PROLOGUE
T
he phone rang. Slug, my faithful canine assistant since I first qualified as a
veterinary surgeon, looked up, expectantly.
‘No, Slug. We’re off duty,’ I reminded her, following her gaze to the cherubic
four-week-old baby, concentrating intently on studying her fingers in the cradle
nearby. Motherhood had put a temporary hold on our veterinary career. Still,
every time the phone rang, Slug jumped to attention.
‘So, Gillian! How are all the sleepless nights going?’ boomed John, a vet from
Dublin for whom I had worked a few weekends over the previous years, usually
at last-minute notice.
‘Well, it’s easier to get up at night to feed a baby than calve a cow,’ I replied,
leaving out the bit about how, after calving the cow you could go straight back to
sleep instead of endlessly lying awake, wondering if that tiny creature beside
you was still breathing, and equally afraid to breathe yourself in case you woke
her.
‘Ah, but you’re probably getting fed up sitting at home at this stage. Do you
good to get out of the house for a bit.’
I had a feeling I knew where this was headed. ‘Well, no, actually,’ I insisted,
firmly. ‘Molly is only four weeks old. Maybe in another month or two.’
The voice on the other end of the phone was dismal. ‘So, no chance you’d do
a clinic for me this Wednesday, then?’
‘No. Absolutely none. Not a hope.’
And that was how I found myself, at four o’clock the following Wednesday
afternoon, hunting desperately among the Babygros for my stethoscope and
rooting out my white coat from the maternity wear.
But only for an hour … maybe even half an hour, I reassured myself, feeling
slightly tearful at the thought of baby Molly, comfortably swaddled in the
apprehensive arms of her father, blissfully unaware of the abandonment that was
about to take place.
With debating skills that would have served him well in the Senate, John had
convinced me to cover his weekly stint at the animal welfare clinic. Although I
had heard of the Irish Blue Cross, to my shame I was ignorant of their purpose
and work. John had explained to me that they ran a series of subsidised clinics
throughout the inner city to bring veterinary care to the pets of those who
couldn’t afford it. My job for tonight was to go out with the mobile veterinary
clinic and tend to the ‘handful or so’ of cases that would arrive at the
Ballyfermot clinic.
‘A couple of quick vaccinations and the odd itchy dog,’ he reassured me.
‘You’ll be in and out in no time.’
By the time I had travelled out to Ballyfermot and met up with the mobile
clinic, I had been away from home for an hour already and was desperately
trying to stop myself from ringing just to check that all was okay. I was ready to
bolt. Just a couple of itchy dogs, I reminded myself. Another few minutes and
I’ll be on my way home again.
Being unfamiliar with the area, I was surprised, as the Blue Cross ambulance
pulled around the Kylemore roundabout, to see a vast crowd of people lined up
along the pavement. I scanned the area trying to see where the local football
match might be held, but the surrounding concrete jungle offered no clues.
‘Good crowd tonight,’ commented Gordon, the volunteer driver for the clinic,
as he pulled in alongside them.
‘What match is on?’ I asked, aware that in my angst-ridden silence I was
probably appearing unfriendly.
‘What match?’ he asked. ‘There’s no match on tonight.’
Then it became obvious to me that not only was the footpath filled with
enough people to support a good-sized football team but that these people were
accompanied by an array of squalling puppies, yowling cats and oversized
mongrels with the odd suspicious-looking cardboard box thrown in for good
measure.
I looked at Gordon in horror.
‘This,’ he indicated, waving his arm expansively across the sea of expectant
faces, ‘is your audience.’
The ‘in and out in no time’ ran to a full hour and well into the second as I
vaccinated and bandaged and prescribed tablets and doled out advice to what
seemed like hundreds of pet owners. I didn’t even have time to dwell on the
image of John’s smug face as he lay in his Spanish villa, enjoying the peace and
tranquillity. Luckily, neither did I have time to dwell on the face of a hopefully
sleeping baby.
It wasn’t until one client left me with the all-but-forgotten refrain of ‘Thanks
very much, doc!’ that I felt a grin slowly spreading across my face. Despite the
long months out of work, the path worn to the National Maternity Hospital in
Holles Street where I had become yet another unidentifiable mum, the frequent
check-ups and weighings and measurings – the vet had returned!
For the rest of the clinic I came alive, sleepless nights forgotten, all fears of
returning to work a thing of the past. With the last bandy-legged pit-bull lurching
down the steps of the clinic, it seemed as though I had never been away.
As I drove back the miles towards home, though, the feeling of satisfaction
was gradually overtaken by panic over what would await me. I could already
envisage the scrunched-up little face, blotched and reddened from hours of
incessant screaming. For the last few miles I could almost hear the indignant
roaring in my ears and was breaking out in a sweat by the time I screeched to a
halt in the driveway. As I opened the front door, the silence was deafening. This
was worse than I had anticipated. Frantically, I burst into the sitting room and
my eyes came to rest on the cradle, pulled over beside the large armchair, where
husband, daughter and dog all lay snoozing happily, oblivious to my worst fears.
CHAPTER ONE
LEAPFROG
I
finally resumed my regular job as the third vet in Riverside Veterinary Clinic,
a mixed practice based in County Wicklow. My boss, Seamus, was an
experienced vet, and my colleague, Arthur, had four year’s more experience than
I had. It seemed a lifetime since my short break for maternity leave and life went
on as usual at a hectic pace at the clinic. I had been back in the thick of things for
a good few months now. I could hardly believe that Molly was almost eighteen
months old already!
One day, at a nearby four-hundred-and-fifty unit dairy farm, my visit
coincided with the arrival of a tour bus of seventy or so kids from a south Dublin
primary school on a mission to find out where their daily milk came from. The
fact that my job for the day was to collect a semen sample from a bull to check
his fertility before the season began was unfortunate. Although my patient was
keen, and a dainty little Friesian cow stood by, ready and waiting to assist, I
didn’t rush in. The kids, all decked out in a multicoloured display of virgin
wellies, were enthralled by the scene that lay before them. The little cow,
obviously less concerned than me by their arrival, pulled greedily at an errant
wisp of silage and raised her tail to dump a steaming deposit, quickly dispelling
any romantic notions the children might have had about farming life.
The teacher, all decked out in immaculate tweeds and pristine boots, assuming
I was from the farm, called for my attention.
‘Oh, it’s so good of you to have us out today,’ she blustered. ‘You’ve no idea
how much the children have been looking forward to it. I’m a country woman
myself, you see, and I thought it would be wonderful for them to get to see a real
farm. Of course, it’s not the same now,’ she lamented, largely to herself as no-
one seemed to be listening to her. ‘When I was a girl, every cow had a name and
we knew them all; not like now, with great ugly numbers on their backs and
plastic tags in their ears.’
I thought back to the last time I had been in this yard, scanning a batch of
heifers. I had overheard a heated argument between Richard and his elderly
father as to whether number 435 (or Scruffy, as she was known), was an