Tales from a Wild Vet: Paws, claws and furry encounters. Jo Hardy
my comments?
Most of my interviews could be done over the phone, thankfully. At least that way the interviewers wouldn’t be able to see how nervous I was, and ITN could supply photos from a shoot we’d done with them. But I still felt distinctly jittery.
After our return from Cornwall it was hard to say goodbye to the family, and especially hard to say goodbye to Tosca, who was still not quite her old self. But that was when I had to go and start my first two weeks of locum work at Braxton’s so, waving goodbye to the family, I packed my things into my little car and off I went.
When I got back home after that first stint of locum work I felt absolutely exhausted. It was so good to be home. Mum was cooking a roast chicken for dinner, Dad gave me a big hug and I sat down on the sofa and burst into tears. I was looking forward to a couple of weeks at home now, volunteering at Folly Wildlife Hospital, before heading off for two weeks in the South African sunshine with Jacques – I couldn’t wait.
Tosca was still doing well. She was a little more frail than before, but she was still bouncing around and was happy to curl up beside me as I checked the statistics for my research project. During our final year at the RVC we’d all had to carry out a piece of original research; mine was on horses’ hooves, and whether wearing horse shoes was ultimately of benefit or if horses were actually better off without them. I’d had to photograph and measure the hooves of a lot of horses and I had put a huge amount of work into it, so I was delighted when my supervisor said he thought that what I’d produced was good enough to be published in a scientific journal. But before I submitted it I had to repeat the measurements to verify that my results – which came down in favour of horses not wearing shoes – were valid and reliable. So I had to painstakingly work through it all again.
Soon after I got home I had a visit from our local ITV news programme, South East Today. Young Vets was due to air in a couple of days and they wanted an interview. No sooner had I said yes than they confirmed a date and arrived, cameras in tow. We did an interview in the sitting room and then rushed off to the stables so they could show me with my two horses, Elli and Tammy. As they were leaving they said it would be on the lunchtime news that day. That was in two hours’ time.
At five to one I turned on the TV and sat down, a plate of cheese toast on my knee, to watch. I hadn’t seen the films of Young Vets and I still couldn’t imagine what it was going to be like watching myself on TV. It was a strange experience. I think it’s almost impossible to see yourself on film and not feel critical (why didn’t I tuck that lock of hair behind my ear and why do I sound so cheesy?), but it could have been worse.
The news clip was a taste of what was to come. Two days later the whole family sat down to watch the first episode in the Young Vets series. I only appeared in the introduction to the first one – I wasn’t given a solo slot until Episode Four – so I was able to enjoy watching the others. I grinned at Charlie, one of the friendliest and kindest people I knew, and then Grace, who could appear a bit ditzy but was ultimately an excellent vet.
As soon as the programme got underway the tweets began. I never did get used to reading Twitter comments from people who didn’t know me, but when the four episodes in which I had solo sections were aired, there were plenty of them to read. Only one was genuinely unkind and I realised I had been lucky – I could have been mauled. Most people had nice things to say about the programme and the vets.
On one morning towards the end of that week, Tosca seemed unwell again. I stroked her gently as I examined her and took her temperature. It was much too high – she was clearly very ill. I took her to my local vet to get some antibiotics and an intravenous drip and brought her back home. I set up a drip, hanging it over our living-room door and putting her bed on the floor below it. Mum decided to sleep on the sofa next to her so that she wouldn’t be alone.
In the middle of the night Tosca began howling with pain. Tosca was the toughest dog I’d ever known. If she was howling, she must feel awful. I came downstairs to where Mum was sitting with her and stroked her head and her silky ears. She’d had enough and though my heart ached, I knew it was time to let her go.
My parents agreed to take her straight to the vet. Ridiculous, since part of my job was putting animals to sleep, but I couldn’t face seeing Tosca go. She had been my world for half my life.
Tosca was always needle-phobic and the last thing we wanted was for her to feel frightened, so I reminded Mum to ask the vet to sedate her first with an injection in the lumbar region.
In the event, that was enough. Before she was given the final injection, which is an overdose of anaesthetic, Tosca slipped peacefully away.
We buried her in the garden the next morning, close to my first spaniel, Bluff, who had died when I was 10. When Bluff went Dad had been redoing the garden with a mini-digger, which made the digging easy. This time we dug the hole by hand, all of us taking turns.
Tosca had been obsessed with tennis balls. They were banned in the house, due to the havoc she’d wreak with them, so we’d chuck the balls back outside when she brought them in and she would grab them and bury them in holes all over the garden. She was great at digging the holes, but being blind she neglected to fill them in and we were forever tripping into her mini-trenches. When we buried her, we tucked several of her beloved tennis balls in with her.
Dogs live short lives, and if you have a dog you know that most likely at some point you will be faced with making the decision to let it go. Even knowing that, saying goodbye is never easy. We were all quiet for the next few days, missing Tosca’s ebullient presence and painfully aware of the great big gap she had left in our lives.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘Is that you, Englishman? I’ve got a job for you.’
It was my old friend Thys on the phone, an Afrikaner vet I first met when he took me on for work experience as a student three and a half years earlier. I loved working with Thys, but this time I was in South Africa for a friend’s wedding, not to work with animals.
I hesitated. ‘What’s the job, Thys?’
‘I’ve got to implant embryos into six wildebeest. You game?’
How could I say no? It sounded like a fantastic opportunity to try something new. Working with Thys was always an adventure; he expected me to handle some extraordinary situations, to think on my feet and to be resourceful.
‘I’m game. Tell me when and where.’
Thys told me to meet him at a junction a few miles up the road at seven the next morning. ‘You can follow me to the farm where the job is,’ he said.
I had arrived in Port Elizabeth, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, two days earlier. As always, the 16-hour journey from London, including changing flights at Johannesburg, had left me tired, stiff and sore, but, as always, the minute I stepped off the plane into the sweet-scented air of Africa, filled with the magical sounds of cicadas, my tiredness fell away.
Minutes later I was through the terminal and into Jacques’s arms. We headed out to his truck, where he had a beautiful bunch of purple flowers waiting for me. This was part of the ritual of our many reunions over the five years we had been together.
Jacques and I had first met when I took a gap-year trip to South Africa to work on a game reserve where Jacques helped to manage the volunteers. I had fallen in love with South Africa – the warmth, the stunning scenery, the wide open spaces, the generous, welcoming people and the unique mix of animals that roamed in the bush. And a couple of visits later, I had fallen in love with Jacques, too.
At six-foot-six, broad and muscular, at first he appeared intimidating, but I soon discovered that he was actually a big softie, as well as being hugely knowledgeable, great to talk to and a lot of fun.
For the next five years, all the way through my studies at vet school, we saw one another three or four times a year; Jacques coming to England or me going out to