Friday 11 March 2011

Long suffering vets

This posting is a tribute to all those wonderful vets who on a day-to-day basis put up with the madness of animal owners and the complete lack of inhibitions of their patients.
On Monday, I bundled all four animals (two dogs and two cats) into the car and took them off for their annual innoculations. All was going well. We were all calmly sitting in the waiting room when the door of the consultation room burst open and a carpet walked out towards us. The cats were safely in their pet voyagers, thank heavens. Labrador Oscar lept backwards into my lap while chewing his upper lip - a sign that says Holy shit, I dont know what to make of this! Bella the Collie yelped. Fortunately the carpet just stood there while its owner paid the bill. Afghan hounds are not know for their spontaneous intelligence.
Runway cleared and carpet ushered out, we were called in to see Jim Logan.
Jenga was first. The tiny grey cat had to be hauled out of the basket, hissing and swearing. Her immediate reaction was to look for an escape route. Leo was next. Jim held the basket upside down and poured Leo out onto the consultation table. Leo then proceed to dissappear into the surface of the table. Eyes shut tight, ears flat, shoulders hunched exuding the body language which said: I really don't exist. No wonder the vet back in Jo'burg called him Dorothy. Injection over, I suggested to Leo that he might want to get back into his basket. Yes, yes, came the response. Paws scrabbling for the per voyager, eyes still tightly shut, ears glued back.

The dogs were much easier save for the fact that Oscar flatly refused to stand on the scale. Before they knew it they were all back home and within seconds had totally forgotten that their weekhad started with a bang.

And then we got the blood results for the sheep. Our scanning had produced some interesting results. 4 barren, 7 singles and 11 twins. (Thank heavens not triplets.)The good news was our English ram had done his thing and if we did not witness sheep-type hanky panky it was just because he was showing classic English politness and modesty. The bad news was that 4 barren out of 22 is statistically too high and we needed to know why. One possibility was that the sheep have a mineral deficiency so we called the sheep vet out to take blood. So long suffering Martin Andrews arrived. Now the sheep behaved well, the problem was the hens. For some reason know only to themselves, they decided to hang about Martin, getting under his feet, tripping him up, talking to him. One even got air borne, fluttered into the back of his Land Rover and settled down making "I am going to lay an egg" type noises. He was very good natured about it and gently tossed her out. But I shook my head wondering what these poor vets have to tolerate everyday of their lives. Anyway the upshot is: no mineral deficiencies so we have to look further afield to resolve the question of our 4 barren ewes.