A day in the life

Today was one of "those" days at the clinic.  Not really a bad day, just somewhere on the border of interesting and chaotic.  We had a good number of surgeries and a few run of the mill drop-off appointments.  It started to get interesting when one of the surgeries called to say that they had tied the dog in the bed of the truck.  He jumped out, and got hung by his collar.  Fortunately, the collar broke, the dog got away and was promptly hit by a car.  Luckily he was not badly injured.  Who knew that getting hit by a car would be the better option?  But when your other choice is strangulation or broken neck...

Needless to say we elected to clean his wounds and monitor him for the day and perform the neuter at a later date.  The next disruption to our day was a call about a dog who had started with a bad limp after running in the field last night.  I wanted him to drop off since we didn't really have any appointments available but apparently he lives 25 minutes away and that's just too much driving back and forth.  Ultimately we told him he'd have to wait until I was between surgeries and he decided to run some errands.  I guess that makes the 25 minute trip to town more worthwhile.  Anyway the dog had  a very swollen foot and a draining tract between her toes with something dark in it.  Usually that just ends of being dirt or dead tissue but she wasn't about to let us look.  So we sedated her, shaved and cleaned the area and prepared to explore the wound.  Then came the moment all veterinarians wait for...pulling something awesome out of a wound tract.

The small piece came out first and I was already amazed at that.  So imagine the shock and awe that ensued when I pulled out the large piece.  It was as big around as my little finger.  Imagine the force which she had to have rammed her foot on that to drive it up between her toes.  I'm sure she will feel a lot better tomorrow.  We took an x-ray too, no broken toes.

Just when things were settling down we got a call from a woman who announced she was on her way and that her dog had been badly injured but she couldn't talk on the phone and drive.  A short time later she and her three children (all relatively calm considering) arrived with a dog drenched in blood and still actively bleeding.  There was so much blood on the dog my receptionist thought for sure the dog was dying.  The owner's theory was that the dog had been mauled by a deer.  I'm not even sure that's a thing that happens but after further evaluation I could at least say with certainty that's not what happened to this dog.  All the blood was coming from a tiny (as in 2-3 mm) laceration on the inside of the ear flap.  It took longer to clean off all the blood than to suture the wound.

And then things settled down enough for us to finish the morning and go to lunch.  Whereby someone came in, without an appointment, during the middle of lunch hour and asked for a rabies shot.  Really?  Do people do this to their physician or dentist or barber, etc?  We told him he needed an appointment and sent him away. Seriously.  What is wrong with people?

The afternoon started ok.  Then the old man who rescues stray dogs and cats showed up unannounced with a relatively healthy looking kitten who was "lethargic." Other than an early upper respiratory infection there was really nothing wrong.  She wasn't even that lethargic.  And it's basically viral at this point anyway.  So we sent a dewormer and instructions to check her temp again in the morning.  Then an appointment came 2 hours early.  Naturally.  During a free moment I went to check on the ear dog and make sure she wasn't bleeding any more.  I found my tech putting a leash on her the kennel area and she informed me the dog met her at the door but the gate to her run was closed and locked.  Curious, to say the least.  We put the dog back and went on.  A few minutes later I went to check on her and found this.

After snapping a few photos I went to try and get her down.  After all, since she came in for two stitches I didn't want her to leave with a broken leg!  She started to jump down as I reached for her but then seemed to have a change of heart about the same time I wondered if I could actually catch her.  So now I was supporting her front end and she had rearranged her feet in the bars in such a way that I was afraid to let go and cause her to hurt her foot but I also couldn't reach high enough to help her out.  Great.  And there were some excessively loud dogs in the kennel making my calls for help useless.  While contemplating my predicament the tech appeared and I asked for a chair.  She brought a stool.  I wasn't sure this was safe for me to stand on while catching a 40 lb dog.  But about this time the dog bailed and between the two of us we broke her fall.  We relocated her to a cage.

A note was on the schedule for this afternoon indicating a new client was coming in to meet the vet before deciding if this was where he wanted to bring his pets for care.  At some point during all this he had arrived.  He was asked specifically when making the appointment if he would be bringing pets and he said no.  Naturally when he arrived he had three dogs in tow requesting nail trims if possible   Since he wasn't supposed to bring dogs we didn't really have time for this but he was happy to wait. Ideally this shouldn't be an issue but since we are short on staff and even shorter on staff trained well enough to be useful I didn't have two people I could dispense for nail trims.  But he eventually got talked to and the nails trimmed despite the last appointment (with two pets nonetheless) showing up late.  Par for the course as last appointments go.

In the end the owner running errands was able to pick up his dog without making an extra trip, the owner of the bleeding dog admitted that she also jumps fences at home, the new client seemed happy, and the hit by car was back to his usual obnoxious self.  And we all went home with a good story.