Tales Of A Vet Nurse

By Jade Pengelly

The highs and heartbreak of caring for the animals we love

You never know who or what is going to walk, crawl or slither through the doors of veterinary hospital...

Clumsy Luna the Greyhound and her fragile front legs; the tortoise in need of a prosthetic leg; Jock the Saint Bernard and his problematic eyelashes; Edward the Burmese cat and his extravagant diet; the burly farmer and the world's tiniest Chihuahua, Lulu-bell... there is never a dull day in the life of a vet nurse. As the people who care for them around the clock, vet nurses are uniquely placed to speak for their patients and help us understand what our pets are going through.

From emergency shifts at a posh London practice to a busy country hospital treating all manner of wildlife - snakes, foxes, hedgehogs - to working with equine-surgeons and teaching the art of care to new generations of vet nurses in New Zealand, Tales of a Vet Nurse is about a life devoted to saving our beloved and unconditional friends. Along the way, Jade enlightens readers to the forbidden feasts of Labradors, the dangers of x-raying prize-winning showjumpers, and the most common pets she sees as hospital inpatients.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Mar 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781775492481

Jade Pengelly

Jade Pengelly is a vet nurse from Christchurch, New Zealand. She has worked in five practices between the UK and New Zealand. She was also teacher of veterinary nursing at Wintec, Waikato, for two years. She has a Bachelor of Science majoring in animal sciences, as well as a diploma of veterinary nursing. She has two horses and shares five dogs with her husband.

Book preview

1

Expect the unexpected

‘Help me! Please!’

The distraught woman who had just stumbled into the clinic was worse than dishevelled. She looked like she’d survived a bomb. Tears ran down her cheeks, leaving wet tracks in the black soot that covered her from head to toe. She was limping, clearly struggling with whatever it was she carried in her arms. As she drew closer, her burden revealed itself as a lifeless bundle of black fur.

The staff behind the front desk immediately jumped out of their seats. One, a vet nurse, ran towards her.

‘My dog,’ the woman sobbed, as the vet nurse took the matted lump from her arms. ‘Please, help him.’

As the nurse turned and raced through the doors to the emergency area out back, the woman crumpled to the floor, burying her face in her soot-covered hands. Her shoulders heaved.

The receptionist kneeled down beside her and touched her lightly. ‘They’ll do everything they can for your dog,’ she said gently. ‘Now, come with me. I’ll get you a cup of tea and you can tell me what happened.’

*

When I arrived at work first thing the following Monday, I was blissfully unaware of the drama that had unfolded over the weekend.

‘Hope you’re ready for a busy day,’ Hannah, the night nurse, said. ‘You’ve got all the usual in-patients and surgical patients in the kennels to oversee. And then you’ve got Duke.’

And that was when I learned about the soot-covered woman and her dog. The moment she’d passed Duke over to my colleague, the whole team had kicked straight into gear. The big black dog was barely breathing, so they hooked him up to high-flow oxygen and gave him medication to try to take some pressure off his lungs, monitoring him closely and hoping against hope that he’d regain consciousness.

Meanwhile, Duke’s owner had drunk her cup of tea and calmed down enough to share the full story. Earlier that morning, she’d ducked out to run some errands at the local shops. It was raining outside, so she’d left her beloved dog in her warm, dry conservatory around the back of the house. On her way home just half an hour later, she saw a red fire engine speeding down the street ahead of her, sirens blaring and lights flashing. Only as she drew closer to her house, did she realise where the red truck was headed. When she finally pulled up outside, she was met with a terrifying sight: smoke was pouring from every window of her home.

She leaped out of her car and sprinted around the back to the conservatory. Angry flames licked up its walls, and a haze of smoke billowed against the glass. Aghast, she saw a firefighter emerge from the roiling grey clouds, holding her unresponsive dog.

‘Duke!’ she cried. ‘Is he dead?’

The firefighter shook her head. ‘He’s still alive, ma’am, but he’s barely breathing.’

Another firefighter ran over, bearing an oxygen mask and tank. Without speaking, the two firefighters got to work, gently lying Duke down on the ground then putting the mask over his muzzle in an attempt to get him oxygen and revive him.

‘It’s no good,’ the first firefighter said after a couple of moments. ‘He needs to see a vet as soon as possible.’

‘I’ll take him right now,’ Duke’s owner said. She bent down and hoisted up her dog, dashing back to her car and bundling him into the back seat. That was when she tore down to the vet clinic.

*

By the time Duke’s owner had finished sharing this harrowing story with our receptionist, her dog had thankfully started responding to the veterinary team’s life-saving efforts. He came to, and once he’d had time to stabilise, the vet nurses gave him a gentle bath. That was when they discovered that Duke wasn’t, in fact, a black dog at all. He was a border collie, his proud white chest and stomach only revealing themselves as the nurses carefully washed all that soot away.

Somewhat restored to his former glory, but still very much the worse for wear, Duke was moved through to a kennel in the hospital ward. One of the nurses set up a large, comfortable bed for him to rest in, and the team continued to care for him intensively throughout the remainder of the weekend.

‘He’s by no means in the clear,’ Hannah told me. ‘It’ll take a miracle to pull him through after such a horrific ordeal.’

‘How awful.’ I was shocked. In my many years as a vet nurse, I’d never encountered an animal that had survived such a crisis. ‘Do we know how the fire started?’

‘It seems it was an electrical fault in the conservatory. A neighbour noticed the smoke and called the fire service. Not a moment too soon, either.’

‘And how’s Duke right now?’ I asked.

‘Well, he’s been stable for most of the night. His heart rate and temperature are within normal ranges, but over the past couple of hours he’s been struggling to breathe again. His gums are still a bit red, but less so than when he came in. Sasha’s due to arrive shortly, and she’s going to see if she can work out what’s going on. But otherwise, it’s really a matter of continuing to monitor him closely, treating him as needed, and making sure he’s comfortable.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I can take it from here.’

While I waited for Sasha to arrive, I went to meet Duke and see how he was doing for myself. As I approached Duke’s kennel, he looked up and locked his big brown eyes on mine.

‘Hello, Duke,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you beautiful? Look at that glossy coat.’

It was immediately evident that he was having trouble breathing, but he still wagged his tail when he heard my voice. My heart broke for him. This big, sweet dog had been through the most terrifying experience imaginable. He would have seen and smelled the fire coming for him, but wouldn’t have been able to do anything to escape to safety. Then, he’d woken up in this unfamiliar and busy place, surrounded by strangers and gasping for breath. I gently scruffed his ears. While I checked his gums, then his heart and respiration rates, I spoke softly to him. His fluffy tail wagged the whole time. I quickly felt a bond with him. It was hard not to. He was one of those dogs.

When Sasha came in, she was as immaculately put-together as always—you never would have guessed she’d spent most of the preceding 72 hours at the clinic, barely sleeping and doing everything she could to save Duke’s life. I knew he was in the best hands with her: if there was any vet who was going to get him through this, it was Sasha, who thrived in any situation where she had to work out how to treat a very sick animal.

She quickly checked Duke over. ‘Well, the good news is he looks much better than he did when I last saw him,’ she said. ‘Is he eating?’

‘Yes, he’s showing interest in food again,’ I replied. ‘And Hannah said he’s walking around a bit—he made it over to the door there and back.’

‘That’s impressive,’ she said. She watched him for a moment. ‘I’m concerned about his breathing, though. Any improvement there?’

‘No. Apparently it’s deteriorated over the past few hours.’

Sasha’s brow furrowed. ‘That’s not good.’ She looked as worried as I felt. ‘That could mean he’s developing pneumonia. It wouldn’t be surprising, given the beating his lungs have had.’ She paused, gathering her thoughts. ‘Let’s get a stretcher for him and get some chest X-rays.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll get Demi to come and help.’

It wasn’t hard to find Demi, the surgical nurse: I heard her hearty laugh before I saw her, and found her with a coffee already in hand. A very experienced vet nurse, Demi was just the sort of person vets liked to have on hand during an emergency, because she often knew what they needed before they did themselves. She assisted me to carefully manoeuvre Duke onto a stretcher, then we carried him through to Sasha, who was already waiting in the X-ray room. Then, since there were still all the other in-patients requiring a vet nurse’s attention, I returned to care for them—but the whole time I was anxious to learn the results of Duke’s X-ray.

About half an hour later, Demi and Sasha came to return Duke to the kennels and give me a handover.

‘He unfortunately does have some pneumonia developing,’ Sasha said.

‘Oh no, that’s not great news, is it?’ I replied.

Pneumonia is an umbrella term for severe inflammation or infection of the lungs, and it can be caused by bacteria, fungi, or inhaling smoke or chemicals. In Duke’s case, pneumonia was always going to be a risk due to the large amount of smoke he’d inhaled.

‘We need to begin treating it aggressively now,’ Sasha said. ‘I’ll start him on antibiotics, and we can use the nebuliser throughout the day as well.’

‘Is there anything else we can we do to support him today, aside from the medication?’ I asked.

‘Let’s get him back on oxygen,’ Sasha said. ‘If we can keep an oxygen mask on him for 24 hours, then hopefully it will give his lungs enough extra support for the medication to work quickly and effectively.’

Demi went to fetch the oxygen cylinder and mask.

‘Here, you get him attached to the oxygen,’ she said when she returned. ‘I’ll start administering the medications Sasha’s prescribed to treat his pneumonia.’

The oxygen mask was one specifically designed to fit snugly over a dog’s nose and mouth, but we normally only used them when an animal was sedated or unconscious. Just like people, dogs don’t much like having a mask tightly covering most of their face—and Duke was no exception. The moment I’d got the mask fitted to his muzzle, he pawed it off. I tried putting it on once more, this time holding it until he stopped fighting it, but as soon as I let go he just shook it off again.

‘I can’t get him to wear the mask,’ I said to Demi. ‘Can you have a go?’

She didn’t have any more luck than me.

We were at an impasse. As much as we wanted Duke to get the supplementary oxygen his lungs desperately needed, we also didn’t want to cause him any extra stress, because that would potentially make things much worse. When an animal is stressed, their respiration effort increases in response, and that could be catastrophic for Duke’s already weak lungs.

‘Let’s ask Sasha,’ Demi said.

Sasha’s solution was a larger mask. ‘A looser fit might be more comfortable for him,’ she said, ‘and he’ll still receive some oxygen.’

Duke tolerated the bigger mask for longer . . . but after ten minutes proceeded to shake it off again. Sasha sighed.

‘I think I have an idea,’ said Demi. ‘Wait here a sec.’

She dashed away, and soon returned brandishing some nasal oxygen prongs. ‘I saw these hidden away at the back of a drawer a while ago,’ she said. ‘I knew they’d come in handy at some point!’

‘Are they . . . human prongs?’ I asked.

Demi nodded, a big grin on her face.

‘Well, I don’t have any better ideas right now!’ said Sasha. ‘We might as well give them a try. They can’t hurt.’

The prongs were a couple of centimetres long, and one sat in each nostril. They were held in place by a piece of tubing that wrapped round the back of Duke’s head. We soon got them on him, and he was much more content with this method of oxygen delivery—but another problem had presented itself. They kept slipping off, since his muzzle was obviously much smaller than a person’s.

But we had made it this far, and we were determined not to be defeated. This brave dog had already survived a fire. We weren’t going let a pair of prongs be the end of him.

Within moments, we’d grabbed every potentially useful item we could find within hand’s reach and rigged a complex contraption that successfully held the prongs in place. Duke looked like Franken-dog, with various clips and pegs poking out the side of his head, but he was happy.

And, most importantly, he finally had precious extra oxygen going to his lungs.

*

The next afternoon, when Sasha came to check on Duke’s oxygen concentration levels, she was cautiously optimistic.

‘His levels are better,’ she said. ‘So I’m willing to try taking him off the supplementary oxygen, but I want to continue monitoring his levels.’

To the entire team’s delight, Duke’s oxygen concentration held well over the following hours. What’s more, his respiratory effort was significantly less than the day before. He was clearly finding it easier to breathe.

From that point on, Duke continued to rally. By the end of the week, he was taking short walks outside the practice.

Every single day, his owner visited him. Sometimes she came twice a day. Always good-natured, Duke was especially delighted to see her. The moment he spied her coming, his shaggy tail would bat away at his bed and he’d grin goofily up at her. These two were clearly devoted to one another. Without a doubt, the reason Duke was still here was down to his owner’s quick reactions. She had got him to us as quickly as humanly possible—she hadn’t even stopped to think about trying to save precious photographs or mementos from her burning home. She didn’t appear to think much of what she’d done; instead, she was eternally grateful to the veterinary team.

‘Thank you so much for saving Duke,’ she said, whenever she got the chance. ‘I don’t know what I would have done if anything had happened to him.’ But, really, she was the one who saved him. She was the hero.

Finally, after a couple of weeks, Duke was well enough to go home. It was with some sadness that we farewelled him—I wasn’t the only one who’d got attached to our fire-surviving dog—but it was nothing to the feeling of wonder we shared, seeing him skipping out beside his owner, his tail wagging happily. His recovery had been so much better than any of us could have expected. Sure, he would never have the same lung capacity again and he’d have to take shorter walks, but he had survived against all odds.

He was a walking miracle.

*

As a vet nurse, no two days in my job are the same. If there’s one thing they all have in common, it’s that events can—and often will—take an unexpected turn.

Duke is just one example. He came into the clinic in such a critical condition it seemed impossible he’d ever survive, yet he walked out happily a few weeks later. I still think about him and his big brown eyes often. He was one of those special animals you care for that really touches you. And, crucially, his story had a happy ending. That alone makes it one I want to hold on to, because we all know things don’t always unfold so favourably.

Of course, there’s also the lighter-hearted side of what I do. Being a vet nurse means facing life-or-death dramas, but they’re the cases that tend to stand out. They’re not our every day. Like any job, we have certain tasks we perform more than others—but, unlike most jobs, even our day-to-day can be fraught with the unexpected.

When people find out what I do for a job, they almost always say the same thing: ‘Ohhhh! You must get to cuddle puppies and kittens all day! You’re so lucky!’ And they’re not completely wrong. Caring for adorable baby animals is one of the things a vet nurse does, and I’m often rewarded for my efforts with cuteness and cuddles. I love that part of my job, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. But there’s two sides to caring for anything, be it creature or person. There are all the lovely, heart-warming bits: the things that are a pleasure to do and that make you, an animal and their owner feel wonderful. Things like cuddling kittens or saving dogs. Then there are the not-so-nice bits. These are often the sorts of jobs that remind you there are two sides—or, rather, two ends—to every animal.

One of these jobs falls firmly, in my opinion at least, into the disgusting category. I will avoid this job at all costs, which is unfortunate because it’s also a fairly common feature of a vet nurse’s day. Luckily for me, however, some of my veterinary colleagues get a perverse kind of satisfaction from it, much like the joy some people experience watching enormous pimples pop. It makes perfect sense, because this job is like popping one—it’s just this one involves expressing the swollen glands on a dog’s butt. The correct terminology is ‘expressing anal glands’, and it’s pretty much what it sounds like. (Not, as I have heard more than one owner refer to it, ‘annual’ glands—if only it were something I did just once a year.) A common indication of a dog needing its anal glands expressed when you see it scooting its bum along the floor. They’re trying to sort things out for themselves, but it’ll probably need a helping hand. While some owners know how to perform this unpleasant task themselves, it usually falls to a vet or vet nurse.

I’ve been working in vet practices for nearly a decade, and I spent part of that time at a few different clinics in the UK. One Friday afternoon, while I was at a clinic near the seaside not far from London, a colleague came to find me, a sweet little Jack Russell trotting along beside her on a lead.

‘You all right?’ Jane said in her characteristically British way, a big smile on her face. ‘This is Ted.’

‘Hello, Ted,’ I said, bending down to scratch the top of the wee dog’s head. He gazed up at me appreciatively, his nubby little tail wagging enthusiastically.

‘He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s here to have his anal glands expressed,’ said Jane. ‘Would you mind holding him for me? I’d get his owner to do it, but Ted is a bit too wriggly.’

‘Is that right, Ted?’ I replied. In answer, he contorted his whole body on the spot like a delighted little noodle. I couldn’t help laughing.

‘You see what I mean!’ Jane said.

‘Well, you’re going to need to be a very good boy, and stay nice and still for me, Ted,’ I said, taking his lead and following Jane towards one of the consult rooms.

Jane started chatting away, telling me about her plans for the weekend and the latest adventures of her two young children, then filling me in on the latest clinic gossip. I always enjoyed working with Jane, not least because she was never short of a tale to share.

Once we got inside and closed the door, I popped Ted up on to the table.

‘Good boy,’ I said soothingly as I tucked my right arm underneath his belly and put my hand over his back, while threading my left hand under his neck and placing it gently on his head, so he wouldn’t be able to whip around and nip me. ‘Now, that should keep even you nice and still, Mr Ted,’ I said. ‘Okay, Jane, you can get started.’

‘Fab, ta,’ Jane replied. With barely a pause in her conversation, she got right to work.

I watched her nervously. Jane had been a vet nurse since she left school at the age of 16, and her mum and her sister both worked at the same clinic, so she