Episode 11 More Creatures Great and Small

We Brits love our animals.

From livestock in the fields

to pooches in the park.

It's the job of the nation's vets to keep them healthy.

Whether consulting in the countryside...

There is something very nice about being next to a nice cow.

..or horsing around in the stables...

I spend all my job outwitting animals.

Got him!

..they're passionate about their patients.

I am now known as the mad chicken lady.

On call when the animals need them most.

If we leave it any longer,

he almost certainly is going to not going to make it.

They're the dedicated vets, patching up pets,

and caring every day for more creatures, great and small.

Coming up - in Teesdale, farm vet Richard

is called to a cow with milk fever.

Come on, get up for us.

Equine vet Sybil treats a lame horse.

I feel awful watching her.

And, in Dunfermline, vet Megan deals with a toothy chinchilla.

Some decay and it's just not that nice.

Teesdale in County Durham is home to 230 square miles

of spectacular farmland and a healthy livestock industry.

Farm vet Richard from Castle Vets has over 500 farms on his books.

She's big enough, isn't she?

I like being a professional whose skills are needed.

I like the fact that people phone us up and they want us to go out

and help them, hopefully solve a problem

which they can't solve on their own.

You are working with animals, and hopefully making them better

which is obviously a satisfying thing.

But you're also helping someone with their livelihood,

and some of the decisions that you make can have a big influence

on how someone's business is run.

Today, Richard has been called to a farm near Egglesburn.

Farmer Tim has 800 acres and 60 cattle.

This morning, he's noticed something is wrong with one his new mums.

She calved a couple of days ago,

and I was in last night, around about 11 o'clock, to check on her,

and she was fine. Then this morning, about seven o'clock,

I popped in and saw she was flat out.

This cow has got a condition we call milk fever.

It's an acute shortage of blood calcium.

It tends to happen to cows around calving time.

Suddenly, they're putting a lot of milk into their udders,

there's an acute need for calcium, the blood levels drop.

And because calcium's also needed for muscles to work,

you end up with a cow that looks like that.

Now this cow apparently is quite lively, quite motherly.

We'll get some calcium into her before we do anything else.

All right, sweetheart, all right.

Cows' milk contains nearly four times more calcium than humans'.

Calves need more as they grow quicker and have larger skeletons.

This is a device called a flutter valve,

and I'm going to give it to her into a vein

so that it gets to work nice and quickly.

If we don't treat her, then she can, what we call, blow up...

All right, good girl.

..which basically means she starts to get bloat.

Because she's not ruminating, her stomach fills up with gas

and that starts to press on her heart and lungs.

If you leave them too long, they can actually die of it. Here we go.

That bubbling sound you can hear is the calcium running into her vein.

It's one of the few sort of almost magical things we do sometimes

in that a cow like this girl that's off her legs,

if you give her calcium into her vein, sometimes, not always,

but sometimes within a few minutes she's up and away again.

It works almost instantaneously.

But this new mum is so sick, she needs all the help she can get.

Right, come on.

So I'm going to give her some oral calcium, as well.

We've put calcium into her bloodstream,

and that'll get absorbed straightaway,

but calcium's also absorbed quite quickly from the gut,

the gut's got a very good blood supply.

And the name of the game really is to get her back on her feet and...

hopefully we're going to do that.

Good, have you swallowed that, Missus?

Unwell cows struggle to stand up, so Richard and Tim help her upright.

But weighing over half a tonne, it's backbreaking work.

That's it. Hey, hey, all right, all right.

Just wedge that in her shoulder there. Brilliant. That's it.

Basically, we need to prop her up until she's feeling a bit better.

Cows have been reared in Teesdale for centuries,

but in the past treatments were often unconventional.

They used to inflate the udder with a bicycle pump.

And the thinking behind that is that the cow's losing calcium

into her udder, in the form of milk.

What stops milk being produced is pressure in the udder,

so they used to artificially raise the pressure of the udder

by pumping the udder up with a bicycle pump.

Shall we see if she'll get up?

No, she won't. Not quite.

Erm, I think she needs a bit more time.

The cow's legs have gone numb.

Will that leg just go underneath her there?

Rolling her over will help her circulation

and might help her stand.

She wants to get up, you can see that,

but she just hasn't quite got the go yet.

-If she's not up sort of mid-morning...

-Yeah.

..give us a shout and we'll have another look.

The longer the cow stays down, the slimmer her chances of recovery.

Back at base in Barnard Castle, it's business as usual

for the rest of the practice.

Come on, my boy.

On the small animal side, the first furry patients are arriving.

Hiya!

Next door, in the equine department,

the team is busy prepping for the day ahead.

Senior vet Sybil is passionate about horses.

You're rather nice.

I've always been very keen on horses.

Can I just have it, please?

I think when I was young, I wanted to be a horse, really.

I'll get it for you.

Being an equine vet is a very demanding job,

and not to be undertaken lightly

just cos you imagine that you quite like horses.

Got him!

'We are really emotionally invested in the outcome of our cases,'

so that can be really, really tough.

Going to put it back together. You can still feel that.

Set in perfect riding country,

the practice has over 1,600 equine clients on its books.

Today, Dawn is bringing in her much-loved show jumper, India.

At their most recent competition, Dawn noticed something wasn't right.

Her whole body coordination was all wrong, and she was lame

on both back legs and one front leg.

I had to retire and come out of the ring.

India is only 12 years old,

and Dawn is hoping to compete with her for many more years.

These are my rosettes that I've won over the years.

Being that many things that we've done together.

She loves the jumping, we've had some fun.

I've always had a horse.

You just get so attached to them.

I don't think I'll ever get another horse like Indie,

because she's lovely to ride.

The only time she ever refused to jump for me

was when I took her to the jumping the last time,

it was just too much for her,

and then we knew that there was an underlying problem.

Senior vet Sybil will give India a thorough examination.

She's well-versed in the unique anatomy of horses.

Horses were designed by an artist and not by an engineer.

They are at the very limits of what is mechanically possible

in most of their systems.

Their legs are particularly susceptible to injury,

because below the knee, there are no muscles.

Everything is just entirely down to bone, ligaments and tendons,

so they're at risk of injuring their legs.

Sybil needs to find out what's making India lame.

Working from the top down, she starts by examining her spine.

See how she's quivering and refusing to bend?

And she should be able to tuck her pelvis,

so that she kind of folds herself in half, and she's really not.

A lot of tension through here.

It's probably a problem in her back legs.

Right, shall we go and trot her about?

Horses, like all prey animals, will go to considerable lengths

to look as healthy as possible.

Even a modern horse who spends his life in a stable,

a menage and a trailer will expect to find lions hiding somewhere.

'So horses will hide things as well as they can for as long as they can.'

India's instinct to hide her lameness makes it almost impossible

for the untrained eye to spot.

Just a little bit less movement in there.

-She's not a happy bunny, is she?

-No.

That's a good sign of grumpiness, yes.

Well, every so often you can see she's taking a couple of lame steps.

Most of the discomfort seems to be coming from the back legs,

and both of them are affected,

but the right hind appears to me to be worse affected.

On the harder ground,

India's lameness is painfully obvious to Sybil.

It's awful to watch.

OK, let's go the other way round. I feel awful watching her.

Now I've seen her on hard ground, I can see how bad she is now.

-She's tottering.

-She is tottering.

We need to have a big chat about how far you want to go down

investigating a lot of this,

because she isn't sound in any of her legs, you can see that.

With lameness in every leg,

Dawn and India's show jumping partnership could be over.

Now, Dawn must decide whether to put India through any more tests.

Farm vet Richard is back on the road.

Three hours ago, he was called out to a collapsed cow with milk fever -

a potentially fatal condition.

If we don't treat her, she starts to get bloat.

Her stomach fills up with gas,

and that starts to press on her heart and lungs.

If you leave them too long, they can actually die of it.

But the calcium treatment didn't work as fast as expected.

She wants to get up, you can see that,

but she just hasn't quite got the go yet.

Now, Richard is returning to see if there's any improvement

in farmer Tim's cow.

-Not quite up, no.

-No, but almost.

-On her knees, sort of thing.

-Getting up on her back legs or...?

Not quite, just sort of that angle,

then she goes flat,

-so I'm not wanting to...

-No, sure.

Sometimes, the appearance of the vet or just a stranger

is enough to make the cows get up, you know, do something different.

It would be nice to think that was the case here,

but we'll see how she is.

So she's moved a bit, hasn't she?

-Yeah, she's moved around a little bit.

-Good girl, all right.

If you can grab her head.

Now then, now then. Oh. Nearly there.

Oh! Come on, Missus.

Good girl, good girl.

That's what we wanted.

Good girl. Steady, steady, steady. Whoa!

Oh, come on, sweetheart.

That's it. She's got that leg out at least, yeah. Good.

This is what sometimes happens - they just need that extra bit of oomph

and sometimes a stranger coming along, like the vet...

-Or a sheepdog.

-A sheepdog, yes, exactly.

We want to leave her quiet,

because what I don't want her to do is fall over.

She just wants to stand there and get some feeling back in her legs.

She's quite a feisty girl, and that's all to the good,

because those are the cows that get up.

She's keen to get up and mother her calf

and us going in there and messing around with her,

it's just given her the extra impetus to get up,

-and, great, that's a result.

-Yeah, it is.

-Happy with that.

-Very happy, aye.

-Good.

Now the cow is on her feet,

she should be fully recovered within a few days.

In Fife, Inglis Small Animal Hospital is having a busy shift.

The team of vets and nurses can treat up to 25 small animals a day.

Hello, are you coming out to say hello?

We Brits keep over two million small furry pets.

That's great,

and she's not even at all bothered by me touching that.

See that right one all curled round?

Vet Megan is a sucker for anything cuddly.

If you're a vet and you've got a space,

you just end up taking one of them home,

until you get to the point where you have no more room

or you get told that your husband will file for divorce

if you take any more animals home!

Megan's next patient is Millie the chinchilla.

These creatures are born with 20 teeth

which keep growing throughout their lives.

Millie's developed sharp, painful edges that need to be smoothed down.

No-one likes the dentist,

so, to keep her safe and comfy, Millie is anaesthetised.

Because we just want Millie mildly anaesthetised,

just to check her teeth,

she tends to have spurs on her front molar,

so we're just going to gas her down,

rather than giving her an injectable anaesthesia today.

So, popped her into the chamber, pop the oxygen on

and now we're just going to put the Isoflurane on.

Soon, she'll become anaesthetised.

Chinchillas come from the Andes mountain range

in South America, and can live for up to 20 years.

Just going to pop her in the bubble wrap

just to try and keep her nice and warm.

And she's on a heat pad, as well,

just to try and maintain her body heat.

So these just open her mouth,

and these are just cheek pouch expanders.

That's when your nurses need about five sets of hands!

I'm just rasping down the sharp spurs at the edges.

Chinchillas need to munch on grass and hay to wear their teeth down.

Drooling and a lack of appetite are signs they need dental work.

Certainly all the teeth on this side are...

There's some decay, and they're just not that nice

compared to the other side.

OK, that's her finished now,

so hopefully she's just going to wake up in the next couple of minutes,

and we'll keep her nice and warm

and then we'll see her again when she's recovered.

A few breaths of oxygen and Millie comes round.

Just to keep her nice and warm and make sure she recovers OK.

Back in Barnard Castle, equine vet Sybil is still dealing

with 12-year-old mare India.

Dawn brought her much loved horse to the practice

after she went lame.

I don't think I'll ever get another horse like Indie,

she's lovely to ride.

An initial examination was disappointing.

She isn't sound in any of her legs, you can see that.

We need to have a big chat about

how far you want to go down investigating.

But Dawn is not ready to give up on India just yet.

She wants Sybil to do further tests.

We're going to take some x-rays of her feet

to check the balance of the feet.

That's a common area for a source of pain.

It's a bit like wearing stiletto shoes, if your feet are not balanced.

And the only way you can tell is with x-rays.

She has to be up, because the machine has a limit

to how far down it can go.

And the machine's underneath the feet a little bit.

Easier said than done.

It can be very challenging and we could be following India around

with our wooden blocks for most of the morning.

Every girl's got to have high heels.

There.

I think we know where this is going.

That's enough horsing around for one day.

Right, I'm going to give her a mild sedative so she's relaxed

about the whole business.

Once the sedative takes effect,

Sybil and nurse Jess x-ray each foot.

Straightaway, Sybil spots a problem.

One of the main abnormalities I can see here is that the pedal bone,

which is the bottom foot bone,

you can see it's virtually parallel with her shoe,

and that means that all the soft tissues,

that come down the back of the leg and into the foot,

they are all under more pressure than they need to be.

So that'll be a source of pain.

And that can be fixed by changing this angle between bone and the shoe.

Sybil can prescribe special, supportive horse shoes

to reduce the tension on the soft tissue in India's feet.

But she also notices the early stages

of a joint disease called ringbone.

It's causing small painful bone spurs

to develop around India's joints.

This should be much smoother.

When we have a look at the navicular bone,

there's definitely extra bone on this proximal end,

so the top end of this bone,

which tells me that the ligaments here are certainly not happy.

And there's another concern.

Towards the inside, you can just see that there's an opening of the joint,

a closing of the joint space and fluffing across the joint space.

There's arthritis definitely in three joints that we've identified so far.

It's devastating news, but there's some hope.

We can get rid of some of the pain with anti-inflammatories.

We can sort out the pain from the feet with changing the shoes,

so she's comfy in her shoes.

It'll be like getting off stilettos, back into slippers.

I can't make her completely better by fixing it,

but, boy, I can make her happy.

I absolutely hate having to deliver bad news to clients.

'The sense of loss when they realise

'that their horse that they had high hopes for'

simply isn't going to be able to fulfil their ambition.

Really, India's athletic career is over.

We can make her into a comfortable horse,

but essentially, she can't go and jump India any longer.

Yeah, I'll just take it steady with her and then, eventually, you know,

if she's not happy with me riding, I'll have her as a pet anyway.

India's show jumping days are over,

but there's some light on the horizon.

If her new shoes work,

she could have a relatively pain-free retirement.

Back in Dunfermline, at the small animal hospital,

vet Megan has stayed behind to deal with a last-minute emergency.

A client's just rang to say one or both of her dogs

have ingested a strip of 12 ibuprofen.

Owners Lorraine and Andrew aren't sure if both their cocker spaniels

Cassie and Sadie, have eaten the tablets,

but they do have a chief suspect.

-We think the young one has sneaked into her...

-My handbag.

-..handbag.

She's always sticking her nose into things.

Anywhere where she thinks there might be some food.

So she found an empty chocolate wrapper

and some painkillers instead.

If not treated quickly,

eating ibuprofen can be fatal to dogs,

but luckily, for naughty Cassie,

she wasn't very good at hiding the evidence.

It was her that I caught with the wrapper.

-And it was in her bed.

-The rest of the stuff was in her bed.

Who's been naughty?

The sensible thing is to make them both sick,

especially if you don't know who's done what.

-She had all the wrappers in her bed and in her mouth.

-You're so silly!

-You're just so silly.

-This one's a troublemaker.

-I would imagine so.

I'm sure it's this one more than this one.

It's quite easy to get them to be sick,

we just give them an injection of apomorphine,

cover the floor with newspaper and we'll wait and see who's done what.

SHE LAUGHS

This will be...

You'll not have any in there, will you?

Cassie.

Excellent.

A small injection will make the spaniels sick within minutes.

And it's not long before Cassie coughs up.

It does look like some sort of white, flecky bits.

Cassie's been caught red-handed...

but Sadie's not so innocent after all.

-I think you've eaten some, too.

-Aye, you've got some.

See, you get the blame.

It's your fault.

After plenty more vomiting,

Megan's satisfied the tablets are out of their system.

I'm happy for them to go now.

Hopefully, these sneaky spaniels will think twice

before snooping around anyone's handbag again.

It's been six weeks since India's visit to the vets.

Sybil diagnosed the causes of her lameness,

and prescribed some medication and more comfortable horseshoes.

It'll be like getting off stilettos, back into slippers.

India's been trying out her new footwear

and today farrier Oliver has arrived to fit another set.

The vet's recommended she wanted egg bar shoes.

An egg bar shoe is a normal horseshoe with a bit on the back,

which makes it into an egg...

..which is designed to support the heel region of the foot.

Dawn has already noticed a difference

with India's new horseshoes.

She's changed the way she's walks quite a lot

since she's had the shoes on,

cos that's helped with the lameness in the front.

So, we're just taking it easy with her

and just doing a little bit of riding.

she gallops round the field and everything

and she comes in on a night, and she's quite happy.

India's lameness means her show jumping days are definitely over.

She's such a bonnie horse

and she used to really enjoy what she did,

but, yeah, it is a bit of a shock,

because I thought she'd do me another 10-15 years competing.

And, now India is a lady of leisure, Dawn has a new concern.

She's very fat. Well, she tends to put lots of weight on.

So she gets weighed every time she goes to the vets.

It's just like your fingernail. You need to gauge how much to trim off.

Then the sole is trimmed out just to tidy everything up

and keep it all nice.

Then you get your rasp on it, just like your nail file.

Well, well, well.

She doesn't like the smell.

India has never liked having the shoe burnt on.

It's been a bit of an ongoing issue.

Hopefully, she'll make a partial recovery, anyway.

Don't know, it's like humans, some can run marathons, some can't.

Her competing days may be over, but with new shoes,

Dawn and India can still enjoy gentle rides together.

'I think a little bit of riding, it does her good,

'and it keeps her joints going, as well,

'with her having the arthritis, rather than retire her completely.'

Today, especially, she feels practically back to normal.

But, no, she's just her normal cheeky self.