The first thing I saw on Thursday morning when I got in was Dagny. Officially it was her day off, but she had received a message in the early hours of the morning about a whelping bitch, or more accurately, about a bitch that was not whelping, and by nine in the morning, Ninja’s owners had decided that she required some veterinary assistance. For the record, Ninja is a sweet little Chihuahua with big eyes, though when she arrived at the clinic, those big eyes looked definitely troubled. Not surprising because when Dagny carried out a vaginal examination, there was a puppy stuck in the passage.  Using plenty of lubricant, Dagny managed to draw the pup out into the world. Sadly despite all her efforts, the pup never started to breathe. An x-ray showed that there was another puppy, and by measuring its skull, Dagny estimated that it might still be born normally, and so instead of spending her time off relaxing, she stayed in the clinic while Ninja’s owners gave their pet some time to try to give birth naturally.

For me this could be only viewed as an opportunity. Thursday is the day that Irene has designated that the dental room and laboratory should be cleaned and maintenance carried out. I think everything in the lab is jogging along fine, but it was only recently I realised that there were weekly and monthly services to be carried out on the dental machine and that they weren’t being done. There is a sheet on the wall of the dental room that I hadn’t noticed, and on that sheet were daily and weekly spaces for initials. Leah had been doing the checks, but in the weeks since she left, the boxes have all remained blank, and when I checked with Irene, it transpired that she didn’t know either. Most of the time in between I have been distracted by other things, but now and then my imagination would go into overdrive as I pictured the whole dental machine seizing up through lack of oiling.

Dagny had tried to call the maintenance rep, but there was no reply and so  she suggested phoning Kari Anna, who is still on maternity leave. ‘After all,’ she said with a laugh, ‘It’s not as if she will have anything else better to do.’

This proved to be incorrect. Dagny held the phone away from her ear for a moment, and even I could hear the wails of the baby from across the room. Still, the dental machine is VERY important, and Kari Anna is VERY patient, so with her help, we managed to oil the handsets. All that was left then was to oil the compressors down in the bowels of the appliance, and so, by ten a.m., Dagny and I were crawling around on the floor of the dental room, pointing a handily discovered ultra-violet light into the guts of the machine.

There was a horrible moment when Dagny thought she had been pouring oil into the air-compressor itself, but happily, it did turn out to be the correct orifice (obviously it’s very important for a vet to get the right orifice).  Finally, the oil levels were back to the right place. As we finished, I pushed myself up from the floor and stretched. I fully expected Dagny to do the same, but for some reason, she was still on the floor.

‘I’m not sure if I should get up,’ she said. ‘This is my day off. Maybe I should just lie here.’  I offered to get her one of the cushions we use for patients, but she turned it down. She checked the time on her phone. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I should be at the gym,’ and before I knew what was happening, she had started to wave her feet around in the air.

I was taken away from all this excitement by Wivek. Her daughter had hurt herself at school, and as Wivek had run to work (what a healthy lot of people I work with) she had no car. I drove her to the school, but happily it transpired that the injury was not as serious as had originally been thought. I arrived back at the surgery to see Ninja and her owners taking a walk down the road and I assumed all was well, but when I went back in, I discovered that they were still waiting for pup number two to arrive.

She returned from her walk, and still was making no progress, and so finally Dagny and Ninja’s owners decided  it was time to go ahead with a Caesarean.  Dagny is a quick and decisive surgeon, and so within a very short time, the gorgeous little pup in the photo at the top of the page was born. It’s always lovely to see how all the staff gather round to help when there is a newborn to be revived. Somehow, even after years in practice, there is always something magical about the gift of birth.