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Tales from a Wild Vet: Paws, claws and furry encounters
Jo Hardy
Caro Handley
From African goats to blue wildebeest, and potty pigs to dippy donkeys, Jo Hardy, now a qualified vet, is about to take on the world, one animal at a time.Jo is determined to go where vets are desperately needed. Heading out first to the townships of South Africa, then to Uganda.Dealing with life-and-death decisions and much-loved family pets, here and abroad, including a giant French rabbit, a labradoodle that stops breathing under anaesthetic and an angry cat that won’t get out of its box, Jo has to trust her training as never before.



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Copyright (#u356210ed-fa4e-5381-af13-04f957448623)
This book is based on real-life experiences. However, many details of the scenarios, and names of the animals and owners, have been changed to protect client confidentiality.
HarperElement
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
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First published by HarperElement 2016
FIRST EDITION
© Jo Hardy and Caro Handley 2016
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover illustrations © Sarah Tanat-Jones
A catalogue record of this book is
available from the British Library
Jo Hardy and Caro Handley asserts the moral right
to be identified as the authors of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008142506
Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780008142513
Version: 2016-02-29

Contents
Cover (#u3851cf92-5338-56dd-9718-c8d11027a383)
Title Page (#ulink_41fff810-e682-58cd-9fff-66040eecfd45)
Copyright (#ulink_830b79b0-da55-59d8-9c18-ceafc7cb9fd7)
Chapter One: Mickey and the Miracle (#ulink_1a00ab00-a6af-5a46-9396-cbd84dd6b773)
Chapter Two: Hedgehogs, Doves and a Very Cross Pheasant (#ulink_cd27f95c-ee0f-59ef-a1c8-dba06cfe75a7)
Chapter Three: Tosca (#ulink_7ea912ca-6c8a-5615-8ab3-d081c5baea5f)
Chapter Four: South Africa (#ulink_30d7424b-6118-57b8-8cb0-89eb65a0100f)
Chapter Five: First-time Surgery (#ulink_0b8bef51-c72f-5d5b-8b32-ed6d7a6e9c42)
Chapter Six: Monday Morning (#ulink_3db6f695-c8ee-55ae-903a-d081e7437f58)
Chapter Seven: People and their Pets (#ulink_b8ce9941-090f-50b8-b60a-385a864c3124)
Chapter Eight: Hoping to Help (#ulink_46b97736-a243-5d7d-a1d1-fc131ae511e7)
Chapter Nine: On the Side of the Animals (#ulink_72162ddb-f97a-5f13-a338-a34171077f92)
Chapter Ten: The Handprint (#ulink_f180cf4d-9074-587c-b210-3b5ba00b7255)
Chapter Eleven: The Thank-you Chicken (#ulink_a77a82cc-b66d-54cc-b28f-7b7e6b6f466c)
Chapter Twelve: Margaret the Pig (#ulink_edfb1868-5e66-52fd-870e-d51734cfad65)
Chapter Thirteen: A Better Future (#ulink_c1793e27-662a-57dc-94c6-f5c5dfab0db6)
Chapter Fourteen: Just Like Us (#ulink_7343062a-f7e4-5976-8116-dc67006824f0)
Chapter Fifteen: The Trouble with Cats (#ulink_025cd76e-0422-5d93-a12f-4993161411aa)
Chapter Sixteen: A Cheeky Chicken, a Daft Duck and Piles of Puppies (#ulink_66bc7c4e-c8ea-5b2b-b780-046118c40ed2)
Chapter Seventeen: Morocco (#ulink_8a3d7755-5c45-5378-827d-7ef663484afa)
Chapter Eighteen: Wedding Plans and Lucy’s Surprise (#ulink_230801e4-4584-5698-8bd7-4eb0e2f2687a)
Acknowledgements (#ulink_05a556fa-dfb4-598d-b0cb-821b87c5bfc9)
About the Publisher (#u5b54d759-4f9c-5692-b169-506c45a15de8)

CHAPTER ONE
Mickey and the Miracle (#u356210ed-fa4e-5381-af13-04f957448623)
‘There’s something wrong with Mickey. Can you help?’
The elderly couple standing in front of me were visibly upset. She had tears in her eyes, and his lower jaw was trembling.
‘He’s off his food. He’s normally so full of life, but for the last couple of days he’s been so quiet. And this morning he was sick and there was … blood,’ they told me.
I looked at the small brown-and-white mutt sitting on the examining table, looking up at me solemnly with big, trusting brown eyes.
‘Hello, Mickey,’ I said. ‘What’s up with you then?’
He was a mixed-breed terrier; there was probably a bit of Westie and a bit of Yorkie mixed in with some Cairn in his background. His eyes peered out through a fringe of white hair and his small silky ears flopped over at a perky angle.
I looked at his worried owners. ‘Let me take a look at him while you tell me a bit more about what’s been going on. How old is Mickey?’
His owners, Mr and Mrs Thomas, told me that he was seven, which is still fairly young for a small dog. He was a rescue dog, they explained. They’d found him at a dog pound when he was just a puppy and they’d been devoted to him ever since.
As I went through a basic examination, which Mickey tolerated patiently, I rattled through a mental index of possible causes for a dog vomiting blood. The trouble was, it could mean so many things. Had he swallowed a foreign body? Did he have a tumour? Did he have gastritis? Did he have stomach ulcers? Did he have worms? Or might it be an infection?
This was my very first case as a fully qualified vet, and it had to be a complicated one. I had been hoping for something simple; a dose of worms, perhaps, or a vaccination and a bit of flea advice. Instead, here was Mickey, with his mystery condition.
It was early August 2014 and I had been a vet for all of three weeks. After graduating from the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) I’d signed on with an agency as a locum and here I was, on my first day at Braxton’s, a small practice in East London, filling in for two weeks while the regular vets were on holiday.
After five long years of study and training, I could still hardly believe that I’d actually made it. We’d been pushed to the limit – and never more so than in our final year, when we’d worked on rotation in every kind of practice, from small animal to stable, to farm and even the zoo. It was non-stop; sometimes terrifying and constantly demanding. But no matter how tough the challenges, there had always been a qualified vet supervising everything I did. Now I suddenly felt as if I’d had the safety net whisked out from under me. For the first time, I was on my own.
I took a deep breath. ‘I think we need to give Mickey an X-ray to see what’s going on in his stomach. There are a number of things that could be wrong and hopefully that will give us a much better idea of what it is and whether he might need surgery.’
Mickey’s owners looked at me, white-faced. ‘Will it cost much?’ said Mrs Thomas. ‘Because we don’t have pet insurance and we haven’t got a lot of money.’
My heart sank. The sum they mentioned wouldn’t cover the X-ray, let alone surgery, which could potentially run into hundreds of pounds. At college they’d taught us to diagnose and treat, but they’d given us very little advice about what to do in financially restricted situations.
In an ideal world, you would want to get a specific diagnosis and treat it directly, but I was becoming increasingly aware that the situation with Mickey was far from ideal. At this stage, Mickey didn’t seem like he was critically ill, and it also didn’t seem like he had an obstruction, since he was passing stools, so I felt confident that we could trial some treatments and come back to talk about further diagnostics if he didn’t improve, maybe with some financial help from a charity. So for now all I could do was give Mickey the medication that his owners could afford and hope it would be enough. I stroked him gently while I attempted a confident smile. ‘Don’t worry, there are a few things we can do that will hopefully help Mickey.’
I gave him a shot of steroids to bring down the inflammation in his stomach, plus a wormer and a rehydration electrolyte solution to drink and told them not to feed him for 24 hours to allow his stomach to settle, and then to give him a bland diet of boiled rice and chicken.
‘Keep a close eye on him,’ I said. ‘And if he isn’t improving in two days, bring him back in.’
‘Thank you so much. We will. Come on, Mickey,’ they murmured, tucking him into Mrs Thomas’s jacket. They left looking a little happier and I crossed my fingers and hoped they wouldn’t need to return.
‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ Karina, the practice nurse, asked.
‘Yes, please,’ I said gratefully. ‘And any chance of a biscuit?’
That morning, at the small hotel where I was staying, I’d been too nervous to eat breakfast. I normally love breakfast, but the prospect of starting my first real job had my stomach doing flips.
I had arrived at the practice bright and early and Karina had greeted me warmly.
‘Are any of the regular vets here?’ I had asked.
‘No.’ She smiled. ‘All three of them have gone away at the same time. It’s just you and another locum.’
I had tried not to look as alarmed as I felt. I had been hoping for a bit of hand-holding as I eased my way in, but there was clearly no chance of that. The other locum, Wanda, came in a couple of minutes later. She was from New Zealand and after we’d said hello she told me she had qualified 18 months earlier. At least she had a bit more experience than I did, but there was no getting round the fact that the place had been left to two vets who were unfamiliar with the practice.
Luckily we had Karina to help us. She was bubbly and smiley and knew her way around, which was a relief, because when we peered around the waiting-room door on that Monday morning we saw that it was already packed with animals and their owners. Karina offered to come into the consulting room with me to help me find my feet and I accepted gratefully. Just having her there, chattering away, made me feel much happier.
‘You only get 10 minutes per consultation here,’ she had announced cheerfully. I looked at her, feeling daunted. As vet students at the Royal Veterinary College’s state-of-the-art Queen Mother Hospital (known as the QMH) we’d had a whole 40 minutes in which to take the animal’s history in minute detail and perform the initial examination, before referring our suggested course of treatment to a senior clinician. Most practices allow 15 minutes, but some busy ones across the country have shorter consults, so 10 was going to be high pressure.
At least I had only agreed to do consultations. I didn’t feel ready to perform surgery on my own yet, without a more senior vet around. Wanda had agreed to do any surgery that cropped up, and thankfully she seemed fine about it.
After Mickey had disappeared with his owners, he remained on my mind. He was such a sweet little dog, I just hoped that whatever was wrong with him wouldn’t turn out to be serious and that the treatments I’d given him would sort out the problem.
The rest of the morning flew by and over a sandwich lunch Wanda and I compared notes. I told her about Mickey and she said she’d been bitten by an angry cat and had to put a very sick hamster to sleep.
Wanda was one of those people with a totally upbeat nature. She spoke with an accent so heavy that I had to concentrate to follow what she was saying. So I wondered if I’d heard her right when she announced that she was off to get a tattoo that night.
‘Really?’ I said. ‘A tattoo? I’d never be able to decide what to have. Plus they really hurt, right?’
‘Ah, won’t bother me,’ Wanda said. ‘I’ll just put a stick between my teeth and bite hard.’ She laughed as she got to her feet. ‘Better go, I’ve got a cat to spay and a pregnant guinea pig to look at.’
After a long afternoon, most of which seemed to be filled with overweight dogs, I began to feel as though the day would never end. When the final patient had left, I said goodnight to Karina and Wanda and gratefully went back to my hotel. Too tired to eat a proper meal, I bought some Pot Noodles on the way and ate them in my room where, thankfully, there was a kettle.
Locum work is tough for a vet straight out of college, but I’d chosen to do it rather than take a full-time job in a practice because I was planning to spend much of the next year travelling. I wanted to see some of the wilder parts of the world and to work in areas where people had no access to a vet.
My first stop would be South Africa in a few months’ time, where I was going to work with the SPCA – the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
After a couple of months volunteering with the SPCA I was planning to fly to Uganda to work for a month with a charity called World in Need, helping villagers in a remote northern area of the country, where there was no vet, to look after their goats, pigs and cows. I would be living miles from the city in a small mud house with no running water or electricity and visiting far-flung homes on foot or by bicycle. I enjoyed my home comforts, so it was definitely going to be a challenge!
I would be back in England for a few more weeks of work after that, before heading off on another adventure, this time to Morocco to work with a charity caring for injured horses and donkeys.
With all that to come I felt both excited and nervous. But, meanwhile, I needed to get a bit of experience under my belt, and earn some money.
On my third morning at Braxton’s the sun was out, the birds were chirping as I walked to work and I felt sure the day was going to be a good one.
In reception I found Wanda and Karina waiting for the kettle to boil and laughing.
‘Morning!’ I said. ‘What’s the joke?’
‘This,’ Wanda said, pulling up her sleeve to reveal a tattoo that covered her entire arm.
I gasped. ‘Wow! When you said you were getting a tattoo I didn’t think you meant …’
‘Ha!’ laughed Wanda. ‘You thought I was going to go for some neat little bluebird tucked away by my shoulder? Nope, this is what’s known as a full-sleeve. And when it’s settled down,’ she regarded her swollen arm, with its crust of dried blood, ‘it’s going to look just beaut.’
‘I bet it is,’ I replied. ‘What’s the picture, exactly? It’s hard to tell.’
‘That,’ Wanda said proudly, ‘is known as The Tribal. It’s based on tribal Maori designs. Did I tell you I’ve got a bit of Maori heritage? This is my way of celebrating it.’
I had to laugh. Wanda was completely nuts but it was impossible not to like her.
The morning passed peacefully with a few routine cases and I felt I was just getting into my stride when Mr and Mrs Thomas appeared with a very subdued-looking Mickey. He hadn’t perked up at all. In fact, the poor little thing looked much worse.
He lay flat out on the examining table, showing no interest in anything at all. Mrs Thomas, her eyes red-rimmed, told me he hadn’t wanted to eat anything at all. He had stopped vomiting, but that was probably because he hadn’t eaten, as clearly he wasn’t on the mend.
I felt so sorry for him, and for the Thomases. He was their world and they were terrified of losing him. I promised I would give him anything I had that might possibly help.
I started with anti-emetics to help with his nausea and vomiting, gastro-protectants to help with any inflammation in his gastro-intestinal tract, and antibiotics in case he had a bacterial infection. As I watched his very downcast owners take him home again, I could only hope that one or all of these drugs would do the trick.
But the following day Mickey and his owners were back.
‘Nothing seems to be working,’ Mrs Thomas told me as she brought Mickey out from inside her jacket.
The little chap was weak and could barely lift his head. Something was clearly very wrong and I was running out of options.
I looked at Mr and Mrs Thomas, both of whom were on the verge of tears. ‘I think I’d better keep him here overnight,’ I said. ‘He’s dehydrated because he’s not eating or drinking much. I can put him on a drip and give him intravenous fluids and that should help.’
They agreed and, shoulders bowed, they left their precious little dog with me. I carried Mickey gently through to the little hospital room in the back and set him up on a drip. I tried to feed him some high-calorie paste from my finger. He ignored it, so I heated it up a little to make it warm and slightly smellier. He showed some mild interest and while he licked at it half-heartedly, I stroked him. ‘Come on, Mickey, you can do it. Please don’t give up,’ I whispered.
I checked on him every hour or so and that night he seemed settled. Wanda, who was staying in the flat over the surgery, promised to come down and check on him again before she went to bed.
That night I talked to my boyfriend, Jacques, on Skype. He was 6,000 miles away in South Africa and I missed him. He listened patiently to all my tales of woe and did his best to cheer me up when I told him about Mickey, but it wasn’t the same as having him there with me. I could have done with one of his warm hugs.
After a sleepless night I arrived at work early the next morning. Much to my delight, Mickey had picked up a little, so I phoned the Thomases and suggested they come and get him and carry on nursing him at home. They were delighted to find him a little brighter and they took him home, along with some of the high-calorie paste. The following day, though, Mrs Thomas rang to say that Mickey was still very ill.
It was Friday. I had thrown every treatment that they could afford at him. I explained to Mrs Thomas that of course it was up to her and her husband to decide what to do, but that if Mickey didn’t improve over the weekend it might mean that he wasn’t going to get better.
‘Does that mean we should have him put to sleep?’ Mrs Thomas asked, her voice shaky.
‘Well, we don’t want him to suffer, so in the end it might be the kindest thing,’ I answered.
That night I went back to my family home in Tunbridge Wells for the weekend. My parents had lived in the same house since I was a year old and it was always good to go home and see them and our dogs: springer spaniel Tosca, and Yorkshire terrier Paddy.
On Saturday I spent time with my horses, Elli and Tammy, riding and grooming them. I’d had horses ever since I was a little girl and I adored them. It was a beautiful summer weekend, the kind you seldom get in an English August, but Mickey was constantly in my thoughts. I knew his owners would be heartbroken if I had to put him to sleep and I wished there was something more I could do for him.
Monday morning arrived and I was back in East London. Mickey was booked in as the last of my consultations that day, and I was dreading it; I hate putting animals to sleep, although I’m always glad to be able to relieve suffering. But when I went out to the waiting room, much to my surprise, there, sitting between his owners, was a decidedly perkier Mickey. And what’s more, Mr and Mrs Thomas both had great big grins on their faces.
In the consulting room they explained that they’d brought Mickey in to show me how much he had improved – and I could see that he had. Relief flooded through me and I thanked goodness that the treatment had worked. As I stroked the rough fur on his small head it took all my willpower to stop myself from shedding a tear.
‘I’m so glad the treatment worked!’ I said.
Mrs Thomas patted my hand.
‘Oh no, dear, it wasn’t you,’ she said. ‘On Sunday one of our friends prayed for Mickey and he started to brighten up right away. It was a miracle.’
I said nothing and smiled. I was just delighted that he was looking so much better. In the end, did it really matter whether it was down to my treatments or a bit of divine intervention?

CHAPTER TWO
Hedgehogs, Doves and a Very Cross Pheasant (#u356210ed-fa4e-5381-af13-04f957448623)
Two beady eyes regarded me intently from a bed of straw inside the cardboard box, and a small, pointed snout twitched curiously.
‘Can you help?’ the little girl asked over the top of the reception desk at Folly Wildlife Rescue, where I was volunteering. ‘It came out of the bonfire Dad lit in the garden. We didn’t know it was in there, we’re so sorry.’ Her eyes filled with tears.
‘We’ll do our best,’ I said. ‘Let me take him from you and we’ll have a look.’
Very carefully I lifted the hedgehog out of the box and onto the table. Some spines were missing on his back and there was a nasty wound on his side, clearly a burn. Heather, one of the animal care assistants at the centre, got to work cleaning the wound with antiseptic.
‘I don’t think he’s going to die, but we need to treat him and keep him here for a little while. The spines he’s lost won’t grow back – they can’t grow through scar tissue – but he can survive without them and the wound should heal. Give us a call in a few weeks and if he’s recovered you can take him home and release him back into your garden.’
The little girl – she couldn’t have been more than eight – wiped away her tears and smiled. ‘Really? Can we come back, Daddy?’ She turned to her father, who was standing behind her.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘We’ll come and see how he’s doing, and when he’s ready we’ll take him back and let him go. And next time I light a fire at the bottom of the garden I’ll check first.’
As father and daughter left, hand in hand, after generously giving a small donation to the charity, I took the hedgehog through to where an empty cage was waiting for him and laid him gently inside. I had applied antibiotic cream to his wound and would keep a close eye on him to make sure he was healing. I filled in the chart on the front of his cage and a few moments later, Julie, one of the volunteers, came through with a little dish of scrambled eggs.
‘Here’s a treat for him. This should perk him up a bit.’
In between locum jobs I was spending several mornings working as a volunteer at a rescue charity for injured and orphaned wild animals. Folly Wildlife Rescue is an amazing place, home to dozens of hedgehogs, as well as badgers, foxes, deer, ducks and birds. Most of them are brought in by members of the public, and once they arrive at Folly the animals are treated, fed and cared for until they have recovered enough to be released into the wild again.
Open 24 hours a day, Folly was first set up by husband-and-wife team Dave and Annette Risley. It started in their back garden, with sheds, aviaries and hutches, and bit by bit they raised the funds to build the fantastic well-equipped centre they have now.
When you arrive at Folly, in Broadwater Forest, not far from where I live in Tunbridge Wells, you’re greeted with a cacophony of cooing and chirping, because the wall beside the reception desk is stacked with birdcages three or four tiers high.
Go past reception and you find yourself in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Here you will be greeted by two tiers of incubators for younger birds or small mammals or for the older ones that need intensive care, alongside a whole wall of bigger cages for recovering birds and small furries, plus a large examination table in the middle for checking over all the newly admitted animals. Beyond the ICU is the hedgehog ward: dozens of white, glass-fronted, ventilated cages – all of them full – alongside work surfaces for feeding, weighing and examining the animals daily.
Finally there is the ‘other animals’ ward, where badgers, rabbits, pheasants and the odd stoat, owl or duck reside. This ward has bigger cages and two small rooms attached to it where the larger animals can move around a bit better. The charity has a second site for rescued deer and there is another local charity that deals with foxes, so these animals are rarely seen in this hospital.
In all the wards every cage door has a chart attached to it, with details of when the animal arrived, its weight, diagnosis and the treatment and food it’s being given.
I first worked at Folly when I started my vet training, when I did a week’s work experience. Back then I helped to clean cages and feed the animals, but now that I was a qualified vet I was put to work examining and diagnosing the new arrivals and helping to decide on and administer treatment.
The centre is staffed by three well-trained, resourceful animal care assistants, alongside Annette and Dave and several willing volunteers, but there was no vet. They were trying to raise funds at the time to build a fully equipped vet suite, which I was only too happy to advise Dave on, with the intention of eventually employing a full-time vet. In the meantime, though, they were glad of any passing vet who was happy to come in and help out.
The little hedgehog caught in the bonfire is typical of the patients that people bring in to centres like Folly. It is sadly all too common for hedgehogs, which live in close proximity to humans, to be caught in bonfires, attacked by dogs, run over by lawnmowers (or cars), or to slip into garden ponds or be trapped in fencing. Sometimes they’re found wandering about during the day when they should be sleeping. That usually means they’re short of food. Sometimes they are found sick – with mange, lungworm or mites – or simply struggling to survive because they’ve been born too late in the year and haven’t put on enough weight to be able to hibernate and survive their first winter.
Hedgehogs are Britain’s favourite wild creature. Immortalised in Beatrix Potter’s much-loved story of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, as well as in numerous books and poems by literary giants such as the poet Philip Larkin, everyone loves them. Yet sadly they’re becoming a rare sight and are even at risk of becoming endangered. Over the past 50 years it is estimated that hedgehog numbers have fallen from around 36 million in the UK to fewer than a million, largely due to loss of their natural habitat. With fewer wilderness areas, hedgehogs are short of both food and safe spaces in which to live and nest. Thousands of them die on the roads, and while looking for food they often stray into gardens that can be full of dangers to them.
There are 17 species of hedgehog; little mammals whose spines are made of hollow hairs hardened by keratin, the stuff that human hair and nails are made from. A distant relative of the shrew (but nothing to do with porcupines), hedgehogs are believed to have changed very little in the past 15 million years, so it would be heartbreaking if we lost them now.
Folly is one of the places doing their utmost to save hedgehogs, by nursing back to health those injured animals that are brought in and by raising awareness of these little creatures and their habits and habitats. If everyone kept a little bit of wilderness in the corner of a garden, made sure that the animals could get out of the garden through a hole in the fence, and looked out for hedgehogs when building ponds or fires, it would make a real difference to their survival rate.
My next case there that day was a mother hedgehog and her two tiny babies, all of them riddled with mites. Their skin was raw and itchy and they’d lost quite a few spines. Mite infestation is very common in hedgehogs; the mites are parasites that are usually too small to see, but they’re easy to treat with the same spot treatment you use for dogs.
Before we applied the spot-on treatment (to avoid it getting washed off) we gave them a family bath in a washing-up bowl containing an inch of warm water with baby oil in it, to soothe their skin and keep it nice and soft. They loved it and we soon had them settled comfortably in a cage together, tucking into a bowl of cat food. Hedgehogs love cat or dog food, scrambled eggs and, as a special treat, rusks soaked in goat’s milk, as they are unable to digest cows’ milk properly. All of these treats are prepared in the centre’s kitchen, which is just along from the ‘other animals’ ward. Making up a load of delicious food, all served on plant-pot saucers, was a lot of fun. I enjoyed being chef to 30 little creatures!
The hedgehogs were easy to work with, too, as long as you managed to avoid the spines and didn’t mind the vast amount of faeces that came out of them, no matter how much or how little they ate. The birds, on the other hand, well, they could be a bit of a challenge, especially the collared doves. And there were a lot of collared doves.
Pigeons and doves are very similar; they all belong to the bird family Columbidae, though traditionally the name dove tends to be used for the smaller species and pigeon for the larger ones. I hadn’t had a lot of experience of working with birds before I went to Folly, but during my time there I learned a lot more about them and it really helped my confidence in interacting with them. I hadn’t ever thought much of pigeons, but since being around lots of them I have discovered that they’re friendly, silly birds that you can’t help liking.
Even more surprising is that the different varieties have very different personalities. The collared doves are notoriously naughty and not very bright. They’re like thoroughbred horses: no brains and lots of energy. The second you opened their cages they would shoot out, which made it extremely hard to treat them. Each time one of them escaped the receptionist would yell, ‘Windows!’ and we’d all race to shut every window and door to stop the bird getting out. Then we’d face the tricky job of recapturing it, which usually took at least 10 minutes and often required the use of a net, which stood propped up in the corner ready for this all-too-common scenario.
When they weren’t escaping the collared doves were trying to peck you. I had to handle one with a swollen eye – it had a virus known as pox and it needed eye drops. Many of the other birds needed oral medication and, after a few unsuccessful attempts, thanks to Heather I learned a good way of holding the head so that the bird couldn’t move or peck me. I put two fingers on either side of the beak and two fingers behind the head. Not only did it keep them still, it allowed me to open the beak so that I could pop medicine in for the ones that needed oral medication or to feed those that weren’t eating properly.
The wood pigeons were a whole lot easier. Their main concern was food, so far from trying to escape they would settle in happily for the free feeds. They’d quickly get the idea that we would hand-feed them when they were sick, and started begging like dogs, especially the younger ones, jumping up and down at the front of the cage, making a squawking racket. Then, when you took them out, they would happily open their mouths wide ready for food.
While some breeds of pigeon were common at Folly, a racing pigeon was a rare sight, so when one was brought in one morning we all crowded round to have a look. Larger and far more slender than the other pigeons, this bird looked like pigeon royalty. There was nothing wrong with him, apart from the fact that he had got lost and a member of the public had caught him and brought him in, thinking he must belong to someone since he had a ring on his leg. The ID on the ring was bringing up no results, which was perhaps a good thing; pigeon racing is a competitive sport and many racers don’t have the space to keep pigeons that get lost or aren’t fit enough to complete the distance, so if his owner had been traced the fate of the pigeon might have been quite uncertain. Instead, the pigeon was boarded while we waited to see if an owner would come forward. If not, the ring would be removed and the pigeon would either be allowed to live out his days in the large aviaries on site, which are for birds that cannot be rereleased, or rehomed.
Many of the wild pigeons brought in to Folly were suffering from canker, or trichomonas. It’s a horrible disease in which white clots build up in the bird’s throat that prevent it from swallowing or breathing properly. Eighty per cent of pigeons carry the organism, but they don’t all become infected. When the birds become stressed the organism can multiply and a mild infection can turn into a serious condition.
Pigeons with canker have to be given antibiotics and need to be crop-fed, which means their food has to be pushed past the clots and into the bird’s crop, which is the muscular pouch near the gullet or throat. The crop is basically an expanded part of the oesophagus and it’s used to temporarily store food.
Learning to crop-feed was another bird-handling skill I acquired at Folly. The receptionist, Poppy, an elderly lady of great character, was particularly helpful with this one.
‘When the crop feels like a scrotum you’ve got the food in properly,’ she said breezily.
‘A-ha, thanks,’ I said, laughing so hard I almost dropped the tube of mashed Weetabix mixed with recovery formula that I was using to feed a small wood pigeon.
But not all birds needed hand-feeding, many could feed themselves on bird seed, depending on their age and the severity of their injury or disease.
Birds would often come in with injuries after being mauled by cats. One family arrived with a baby collared dove that had puncture wounds all over its back. The poor little thing was traumatised. We cleaned the wounds and treated them with antibiotics, and as we did so I learned a useful tip from the animal care assistants at Folly; they would take an antibiotic capsule meant for swallowing, open it up and sprinkle the powder on the bird’s wounds. It was an unconventional method, but it worked extremely well.
Like the hedgehogs, the pigeons are rehabilitated and released back into the wild whenever possible. The members of the public who bring them in the first place are usually happy to take them back and release them in the place where they were found, which is the best approach for the animals.
The pigeons were hard work, but the biggest challenge I faced at Folly was in fact a large male pheasant. He was big and strong and he did not like being in captivity. He had an injured leg – a healing fracture – and he needed pain relief and rest, but every time I opened his cage to give him his medication and check on his leg, or give his cage a bit of a clean, he made a break for it. In that moment, he always forgot about his painful leg – escape was the only thing on his mind. He was so strong and flapped his wings so hard that it was difficult to get near him; even when I did catch him with my hands, he was so strong and powerful that he regularly managed to break away, so I ended up having to herd him back into his cage, shooing and clapping behind him while the other workers cut off all available exits.
The pheasant was not happy, but after several weeks at Folly his leg had healed and he was ready for release. Folly is situated in a beautiful forest, so it was decided that he could be released into a new habitat, away from roads or any areas in which pheasant hunting is common. I was given the privilege of letting him go, so after battling to get him into a cat carrier, I walked him down the driveway. He was not impressed. I felt him battering the box from the inside, but when I got to the edge of the wood I set the box on the ground and opened the door. Sprinting out, flapping his wings, he took flight for 10 metres or so, before hitting the ground and disappearing at top speed into the darkness of the wood. Watching him fly away was a wonderful feeling.
Folly is an amazing resource; I loved volunteering there and have gone back since to take them a baby sparrow that had fallen out of its nest at the stables where my horses are kept. The little thing had hit its head, which was swollen, but with a bit of Folly’s tender and expert care it recovered and, too young to be released, stayed to be hand-reared at the centre until it was big enough to fend for and feed itself.
One afternoon, after a morning at Folly, I set off to visit my friend Lucy, who was living in a small village in West Sussex. Lucy and I had met at the RVC in our third year and in our final year we’d been in the same rotation group of five students, sharing all our core placements.
We’d been close friends ever since. Lucy is an amazing person; a brilliant and talented vet as well as clever and forthright and a lot of fun. It was Lucy who kept me sane during the toughest moments of our training, and Lucy who commiserated with me when things went wrong.
After we graduated Lucy had headed straight for farm work, winning a highly sought-after internship with a small farm-based veterinary practice that would, hopefully, lead to a permanent job. She was only an hour away from my family’s home, so we’d promised to meet up often, but in the weeks since graduation we’d both been so busy that three months had gone by before we could find a time to get together. I was longing to see her and looking forward to catching up.
Lucy was living in a pretty little terraced house with a cottagey feel to it that she shared with another vet and the black cocker spaniel she had bought soon after we graduated. She’d called him Renly, after her favourite character in Game of Thrones, and he was gorgeous and cuddly but very, very naughty. He had just been castrated and Lucy said she was feeling very sorry for him, but he didn’t appear to be suffering – he was leaping everywhere and making inroads into the kitchen bin every time Lucy turned her back, so that the house rang with constant cries of, ‘Renly, no!’
Over a delicious dinner and a glass of wine, Lucy told me all about her new life. She had settled into the practice and was becoming part of the farm community and I could see how much she was enjoying it. She said she was working hard, going from farm to farm with Renly tucked into a crate in the back of her car, but the work was what she had always enjoyed most, and she was being given lots of support by the vets in the practice.
Lucy was full of stories about her work. One of the funniest was about a pig called Patsy that appeared to be so ill it couldn’t stand up. Lucy arrived at the farm with a vet student in tow and examined the pig, taking its temperature with a thermometer up its backside. It was clearly unwell and she suspected pneumonia, but when she went to inject it with antibiotics and anti-inflammatories the pig, which weighed all of 200 kilos, suddenly leaped to its feet, the needle still stuck in its rump, and shot straight into a bush from which it refused to emerge. Clearly after the indignity of the thermometer, the injection was a step too far. After failing to chase the pig out, Lucy and the vet student stood in the field trying to tempt it out with apples and bran mash, at which point Lucy finally managed to retrieve her syringe and make a hasty exit.
It was lovely to spend an evening with Lucy; she made me laugh, gave me a great meal and reminded me of how precious good friends are. I was so pleased for her that she had settled into country life, but I couldn’t help thinking how different our lives were now, with Lucy in a stable job with a house and a dog, while the next year for me was going to be filled with travelling, both in the UK and abroad.
In the end, though, I decided that both options were exciting, just in different ways.

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