David's Daily Diversions

Dave's Veterinary Ambulance Service

I thought yesterday was going to be a quiet, peaceful day. I thought we would have Typika and my mother-in-law would come over to help Kel with her genealogy.

Instead, because Mrs Holford needed to measure the charcoal-burned carpet at Welsh Newton, where we borrow the church for Liturgy, and Welsh Newton is just four miles from Monmouth, we decided to go see my mother-in-law instead. We spent most of a hot afternoon in her back garden. I also met one of Kelly's uncles for the first time.

We thought things were winding down and I thought I would be home soon when Kelly's brother rang. His dog had been in labour and delivered four live pups and a dead one over the previous 14 hours. There were more pups inside and she needed to get to a vet. Kelly's father's car wasn't working, so we volunteered to take the dog. We had to drive to Abergavenny, leave Aidie with his Uncle David, and take a boy and his dog to Newport.

After getting lost trying to get to the surgery, we finally found it. X-rays indicated that there were four more puppies unborn. After three injections to induce labour, one puppy was born with great assistance from the vet but stillborn nonetheless. After my little brother-in-law insisted that he wouldn't pay for a caesarian, and consistently insisted that he knew better than the vet, we (not he) paid the bill and took the dog back to Abergavenny.

After we arrived, it became clear that the mother wasn't going to have the rest of the litter. She had given up. Knowing it was the only chance of saving any remaining pups, we took her back to Newport for a c-section at 9:45 on a Sunday night. In the end there was only one more pup inside and it was dead. (The rest we had seen on the x-ray were undelievered placentas.) The puppy hadn't been dead long and would have been saved had she had the section on the first visit. We got back to Abergavenny at 11:30 and back home at 1:00 am.

We never got to Welsh Newton and we never had Typika.