The Travelling Vet Read online

  To Max: true friend, companion and teacher

  CONTENTS

  List of Illustrations

  Preface

  Introduction

  1 Armadillo

  2 Giraffe

  3 Swan

  4 Snow Leopard

  5 Goat

  6 Elephant

  7 Chicken

  8 Maned Wolf

  9 Holstein Cow

  10 Rhinoceros

  11 Donkey

  12 Ferret

  13 Giant Panda

  14 Pig

  15 Iguana

  16 Crocodile

  17 Kangaroo

  18 Zebra

  19 Sugar Glider

  20 Wildebeest

  Acknowledgements

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Aged 2 with my grandparents’ dog Ben on holiday in the New Forest; we were inseparable.

  Helping out with lambing in North Devon, aged 8.

  Proud of my chicken-wrangling skills, aged 3.

  A Brazilian three-banded armadillo – the nine-banded armadillo’s little cousin.

  The Wildlife Vet’s capture team walking a giraffe to the trailer.

  The head collar allows for some control as we drive the giraffe out of the bush to the waiting trailer and with a blindfold on and ear plugs in, he is much calmer, but I still had to be careful that he didn’t knock me off the platform with an effortless swipe of his neck.

  Bjorn demonstrating successful cardiopulmonary resuscitation on a giraffe.

  Leopards are very cuddly when they are asleep! This was a young female leopard we worked on out in Africa.

  I had to get a quick photo with her before she was woken up.

  No surprise that these Boer goats were more interested in their food than posing for a photo with me!

  Job done! Elephants successfully sedated for relocation, there’s just time for a quick photo with Derek, Wayne and Lotter before they wake up.

  Standing on the trailer with Lotter at our final destination, just before we unloaded and woke him and his fellow elephants.

  The first elephant I ever worked on (a 30-year-old bull elephant), having just finished replacing his tracking collar.

  Two beautiful, fully-horned rhinos. I took this in Kruger National Park in 2013. On my last two trips to Kruger I have not seen a single rhino; their absence a tragic reality and proof of how hard the park has been hit by poaching in the last decade.

  A successful humane dehorning; a good team can carry out the procedure in about twenty minutes with minimal stress to the rhino, but sadly even dehorned rhinos are now being targeted by poachers.

  Riding one of my grandparents’ donkeys, aged 7. Noddy, Tizzy and Carole gave me a real love for these wonderful animals from a young age.

  A selfie with my famous friend Pollyanne.

  This Simmental calf suffered a broken leg after his mother accidentally trod on him, but a month in a cast ensured the bone could heal fully.

  Not the famous ferret Freddie, but still equally cute.

  Large White sows can weigh up to 300 kg so need to be respected, particularly when they are nursing a litter.

  At 4.6 metres long and weighing over 700 kg, this fella (an African Nile crocodile, which we were relocating) was seriously intimidating up close.

  Conducting my clinical examination on a panda cub.

  She took some persuading, but the bamboo shoots convinced giant panda Xi-Xi to pose for a photo with me.

  My first encounter with a grey kangaroo was out in Australia. Little did I know then that I would be chasing one around a vet practice one day!

  Final checks before taking off to dart some zebras.

  Relieved and happy, posing with one of the male zebras I successfully darted.

  Shane the sugar glider being positioned for surgery, pom-poms clearly on display, moments before the incident happened!

  A Blue wildebeest, like any wild animal, is much less intimidating when it’s asleep. This one was from another capture.

  Aerial view of the large tarpaulin enclosure, funnelling down towards the truck. Several of the curtains are closed, separating off the different sections.

  Max and Mungo, my faithful companions.

  PREFACE

  Animalia. The term incorporates an untold number of eclectic animals that inhabit our planet. Estimates of individual species range from 2 to 50 million. For many people, they are simply the sporadic cohabitants of their world – the spider in their bathtub, the bird in their garden, the rat in their garage, or the monkey that plagues their market stalls. For me, though, they have always been an intrinsic part of my life. I trace my conscious desire to become a vet back to the age of six.

  Fast-forward thirty-one years, and now eleven years after qualifying, my passion is if anything stronger than ever. Annual trips to Africa, and the wide range of species I have been fortunate enough to work with, have only served to broaden my horizons as to how spectacular the animal world is. Where my three-year-old self was once content with chickens, lambs and dogs, his thirty-seven-year-old counterpart now deals with giant pandas, giraffes, leopards and rhinos – wonders at them, in exactly the same way. For just as an addict craves his next fix, or a surfer longs for that next big swell, my drug of choice has always been the animal kingdom. I have always been captivated by meeting and treating any new species, so to experience them at first hand in their natural environment, learn about them, and make a positive contribution to their propagation, has been a constant privilege.

  What started off as the dream of a six-year-old boy to become a vet has now evolved into a desire to travel the world and encounter the spectacular diversity of animals that share this planet with us. From the prehistoric Nile crocodile to the endearing sugar glider or enigmatic snow leopard, the more variety I encounter, the more it fuels my passion.

  Yet this evolution in my interests has not detracted or diminished from the joy and thrill I still get every day as a rural veterinary surgeon in the UK. Eleven years in, and the job is still as fascinating and challenging as ever. No two days have ever, or will ever, be the same, and when I go into work in the morning I never know what the day will hold, or which animals or situations I will encounter. Dog, cow, rabbit, horse, chicken, pig, alpaca or tortoise; death, life, tragedy, triumph, hilarity, solemnity, routine or bizarre – mine is a completely unique profession. Every day is an emotional rollercoaster, where the minute you think you’ve cracked a problem, something always pops up to remind you of how much you still have to learn.

  There’s a common misconception that being a vet is all about working with animals. The truth is that it is as much, if not more, about working with people. The best vets in the world will only have a reputation to match their skill if they can communicate well with people. But it’s only when this is fully comprehended and embraced that the beauty and power of the human–animal bond can be fully appreciated, as wonderful and unique a relationship as any individual human being on the planet. The Inuit who relies on their pack of sled dogs for transport, or the Nepalese farmer on their ox to plough; the Mongol who requires their eagle to hunt; the farmer who knows every one of their cattle by name; the zookeeper who daily feeds and cares for their collection; the widow whose only companion is her dog; the child with their first pet: whatever the circumstance, veterinary intervention invariably involves understanding and managing this relationship, sharing the joy or sadness, gently correcting or encouraging, asserting or humbling yourself, as the situation demands.

  For me, this relationship adds great joy and interest to my job, and although I have witnessed some incomprehensible acts of animal cruelty, the vast majority of my experiences have highlighted the very best in human nature, and I have felt as priv
ileged to meet the people who care for this vast array of animals as I have to treat the animals themselves.

  In this book I hope to convey my passion for a job that I love, to give the reader a sense of how weird and wonderful a veterinary surgeon’s life can be, as I recount true stories that range from the inspiring to the absurd. Some names and locations have been changed to protect identities. Some of these animals were pets, some livestock, and others were from zoological collections or encounters in the wild. I have also set out to share some facts about these wonderful animals and to highlight the plight that too many of them are facing. There is no chronology to the stories I tell, or the species I mention, nor do the episodes I recount present these animals in alphabetical order or by geographical distribution. The beauty of life – of all life – is its rich and random tapestry, and one of the fascinations and great joys in mine is never knowing what will happen from one day to the next, or who will come through the door.

  So do, please, step into my consultation room, for this book is your own consulting list, and each chapter introduces you to a new client: a different animal with its own individual and unique problem.

  Jonathan Cranston

  March 2018

  INTRODUCTION

  ‘The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.’

  Mahatma Gandhi

  There can’t be many vets who have stitched up a dinosaur. It’s not the sort of ambition that would be taken too seriously by a careers teacher. Mine had even advised me against applying to vet school. He felt the course was too competitive and that I might struggle. After thirteen rejections, he might have had a point, but the ambitions of a six-year-old boy were not easily going to be thwarted. And now eleven years after qualifying, not only am I a vet, I have worked in nearly every facet of my profession, across four continents, treated some of the most iconic animals on the planet, and offered veterinary expertize on a multi-million-dollar Hollywood blockbuster. As I reflect on it now, I still can’t quite believe it myself.

  ‘There are a million ways to live a life, my friend.’

  Bill’s words echoed around my head as I gazed out of the car window. It was a mild, wet November morning, the kind that feels more autumnal than bracing winter. Bill, a family friend, and I were winding our way through the pretty villages and valleys of the Brecon Beacons, the low-lying mist creating an eerie wonderland around me. I thought of the people who lived behind the doors we were passing, the farmers who worked the beautiful landscape, the shopkeepers, postmen and bus drivers. They were all living their lives, and within each came a multitude of choices, a host of possibilities, stories, tragedies, wonders, that had led them to the life they were living on this wet November day in 2015.

  As for me, my life could easily have turned out so differently. I had wanted to be a veterinary surgeon since the age of six. I mean, I really wanted to be one, and nothing could, would or ever did change my mind. Although the clues were probably there when I was even younger. Early pictures show me with chickens or lambs under my arms as soon as I could walk, or falling asleep next to my grandparents’ golden retriever. You could say it was what I was born to do, and I never wavered. Yet on Sunday, 13 August 2000, I found myself preparing to study Pathology and Microbiology at Bristol University, having been rejected at least twice from every veterinary school in the UK – and once from University College Dublin. The previous year I had turned down an offer to study Zoology at Liverpool, and taken an enforced gap year in the hope that I would later get a veterinary place somewhere, anywhere. Where would I have been in 2017 if I had chosen a different path? A different city, different friends, a different career – my mind reels at the millions of permutations. And even within the veterinary career I eventually pursued, it could all have been so different.

  I remember sitting round the table one evening, with a handful of friends, in my parents’ living room, towards the end of my eighteenth birthday party, as the music started to fade and lights to come on, supping on the remnants of my beer. Empty bottles, half-drunk glasses, red wine stains on the tablecloth, half-finished plates of finger food and bowls of crisps and nibbles surrounded us. My parents were busily tidying up around us as we continued chatting, entering that marvellous reflective mood, preparing for the next big step of our lives, and contemplating our hopes, ambitions and dreams. Where would we each be in ten years’ time? For me, the answer was quite simple. I would be in the middle of a field at six o’clock on a damp, foggy spring morning, with the sun just starting to break through. My green Land Rover Defender would be parked with its back door open, and two dogs would be running around the field. I would be a few yards away, lying prostrate at the rear end of a recumbent cow, assisting her to calve while the farmer stood over me, offering words of encouragement. All I had ever dreamed of being was a regular, country, mixed-animal vet.

  And ten years on, at the age of twenty-eight, that is exactly what I was – though for ‘Land Rover Defender’ read ‘Isuzu Trooper’, and make it one dog – Max – rather than two. I had found myself being offered my dream first job out of vet school, working down in rural North Devon. But then fast-forward another seven years: I had worked on four continents, and had treated over a hundred different species – everything from the routine dog, cat, cow, horse, pig and sheep, to the more exotic snow leopard, elephant, rhino and giant panda (to name just a few). And now I am consulting on film sets, including advising on extinct dinosaurs. It certainly was an unusual and unplanned career path that I had taken. But that’s life: things happen, opportunities present themselves, and choices get made.

  So wise old Bill was right, there truly were a million different ways to live a life, not just as one of the 7.2 billion people on the planet, but as one of 20,000 veterinary surgeons in the UK. Now ten years qualified, though, the rose-tinted spectacles had long been removed. I had battled through the application process, competing for a place on the intense and protracted course, eventually qualifying, relocating far from my support network, starting out in a job where the days were long, lonely, demanding and stressful, as well as being both physically and emotionally draining. And despite the pride I have always taken in those privileged initials MRCVS (Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons), it is sobering to reflect that my chosen profession consistently ranks among those with the highest suicide rates, and which, contrary to public perception, generally pays its employees less than the minimum wage when calculated against hours worked. I had a plethora of scars and injuries having been bitten, kicked, scratched, stabbed, cut, stitched up, stood on, squashed, stamped and charged. I’d been covered in every possible bodily fluid: blood, pus, urine, diarrhoea, amniotic fluid, rumen contents, anal gland secretion, decomposing tissue. I had accidentally jumped into a silage pit, driven into two ditches, fallen into a pond and had even been hospitalized with a two-litre pleural effusion after contracting bovine tuberculosis and then having to undergo a year of treatment.

  So if I had my time over again, would I change anything? Would I go back and tell my six-year-old self that the game wasn’t worth the candle, and to set his ambitions on something else? Gazing out the window on that November morning, and reflecting on what I had done over those ten long years, the people I had met, both colleagues and clients, the animals I had worked with and treated, the experiences I had gained, and the places I had visited, I knew without a moment’s hesitation that the answer was an emphatic ‘No’.

  In fact, it now struck me, I was only just getting started.

  1

  ARMADILLO

  ‘Armadillos make affectionate pets, if you need affection that much.’

  Will Cuppy

  The animal kingdom is vast and incredible. I personally think it’s impossible not to watch nature documentaries without being filled with awe and amazement at the array of different types of animals with whom we are privileged to share this planet.

  It is a common assumption that, as a veterinary surgeon, I
will automatically know about, and be able to treat, any animal that finds itself on the consulting-room table, or behind a stable door. So it often comes as a shock and disappointment to others when I confess that I don’t immediately know, say, the common ailments of Triturus cristatus (the great crested newt). That said, I still love that assumption, and I have tried my hardest to fulfil it, but sadly, even over a five-year degree course, there are several species that just don’t make the cut. The maned wolf, the giant panda, the snow leopard and the pufferfish, to name but a few.

  So how does the veterinary curriculum work? Well, there are six main species we study in great depth at veterinary school, and they are all mammals: the horse, the cow, the pig, the sheep, the dog and the cat. A few weeks’ teaching is given over to ‘small furries’ (rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs and the like), with a couple of days allocated to reptiles and birds, and maybe the odd hour to amphibians and fish. This may seem woefully inadequate, particularly if you are a lover of one of the many species that doesn’t feature prominently in the veterinary curriculum, but let’s think about this for a minute and do some maths. At a conservative estimate there are 8.7 million different species on the planet, so in a typical degree course we would have precisely 18 seconds per species to learn everything there is to know about their anatomy, physiology, behaviour, therapeutic pharmacology, medicine, surgery, dentistry, endocrinology, oncology, and reproduction. Oh, and that would be studying twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the entire five years, and with no time to prepare for the biggest part of the job, namely the three Cs of human interactions: care, compassion and counselling. So unfortunately, but I hope understandably, there have to be one or two omissions.

  For some, gaining an MRCVS qualification is just the first step in a lifetime’s journey of studying these more exotic animals, and for the rest of us these specialists become the go-to-gurus. For those in general practice there are several skills we have to learn to mitigate this knowledge deficit. Firstly there is the principle of animal comparisons. For example, to most intents and purposes, you can treat a rabbit as if it were a miniature horse: they are both hindgut fermenters, doing most of their digestion in their caecum, and have hypsodont teeth meaning that their teeth continually grow. Alpacas and llamas are both ruminants like cattle and sheep, and ferrets share many characteristics with dogs. Then there is the idea of lateral thinking. If I am treating a dog with diarrhoea, who has involuntarily redecorated his owner’s sitting room, I am faced with a series of questions. What has caused it? What body systems are involved? What are the animal’s immediate and long-term requirements? Is it dehydrated, requiring fluid therapy? Does it have a bacterial infection, necessitating antibiotics? Does it have a parasitic burden and require deworming? Or has he just gorged on the family’s Sunday lunch? If I can solve the puzzle for a dog, why can’t I solve it for a meerkat, reindeer or wallaby? And, of course, if all this fails, there’s always Google …