Week 6 - My last week on the Eastern Cape

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My final week at Safari 4u vet in Cintsa was one of the most rewarding. It made me realise how much good we have done here over the last 6 weeks, and I was sad to leave an area that still needs so much help when it comes to the local animal population. What a beautiful, fulfilling, and rewarding place to spend the first half of my summer.

Monday we started the day back at Areena, and this time we were called to see a sick goat who had given birth to 2 kids last night. They thought she had mastitis, when in fact the pus from her udder was actually colostrum, the first milk that comes from the udder, which is full of antibodies. It is thick stuff, and comes out looking like condensed milk. I was worried for one of the babies who was sick, as, if they don't get the colostrum within the first few hours, without any antibodies, they are very prone to infections. His temperature was 32 degrees, and I told the owner he was unlikely to survive, but we would try our best. We milked the colostrum from the mum, and syringe fed the baby, much to the delight of all of the students. (A few days later we found out he had survived and was doing really well!) Afterwards we returned to the Gonoubie mange outbreak, and treated another herd of dogs. They seem to be improving, but it will take months to get this under control. A friendly drunk local followed us around, telling us how much he loved animals and how thankful he was that we had come to help the township. A new batch of volunteers arrived in the afternoon and were thrown in the deep end, getting stuck in with injecting and examining the dogs. We returned home and practiced more suturing in the garden, surrounded by monkeys who were all eager to sample our newly stitched up bananas.

Tuesday we had an early start to dart impala at Mpongo game reserve. One of the lions had given birth the night before and we could just about make out a tiny silhouette of a scrawny cub in a den, making an extremely loud and grumpy cry that was far too big for such a small creature. We darted from the game drive vehicle, and had a fabulous time looking at safari animals en route to the impala, before darting, carting the impala back on the truck, and teaching the new students IV, IM and subcutaneous injections. After a quick lunch, Kim and I took the students to Gareth's for pregnancy testing. Before we started, he took us to a local crocodile farm, and we saw hundreds of baby crocodiles, and lots of 2-3 year old crocodiles be fed mince in large poly tunnels. They are slaughtered at 3 years old and the skin is sent to factories to be made into handbags. When we returned we PD'd cattle and dehorned some too. We removed the sutures from the cow we enucleated. The wound was completely healed, and the cow looked so much more comfortable. Just before we left, we darted one of Gareth's Nyala (one of the larger antelope) and all helped to heave the enormous beast into the trailer, ready to be transported to his new home.

Wednesday we had another early start to meet the curator at East London zoo, to discuss our plans to enrich the lives of their animals. We had a behind the scenes tour of exactly what they do there, and started off in the kitchen to look at the animals diets. We were shocked at what they were feeding the animals; raw mince and fruit for the bearded dragon, dog food for the tortoises, antelope pellets for all the grazing animals - horses, cows, antelope and goats- and only enough hay to last 2 hours, with no grazing, and banana and pineapple for all of the birds. This was going to be a lot of work. We watched some of the animals being fed, and we were saddened that the keepers didn't even try and enrich the feeding for them. All of the food was chopped up into bite size pieces and placed in a bowl, and the animals spent 10 minutes gobbling up the food before returning to sitting around doing nothing. We had made plans to enrich their enclosures, with food balls, frozen blood ice lollies, burying food and filling kongs and freezing them. One of the monkeys we saw was bald and emaciated, and in a bad way. The keeper said not to worry, and it was "just old age", but we offered to examine it when we bring immobilisation drugs. We then looked at their maintenance department, and saw that their hay delivery for the whole zoo was 30 bales, barely enough for 2 days. To start with, we focussed on the horses, cows and goats, the easier animals to improve. The horse and 2 cows were being kept in an enclosure with no grazing, and they were knee deep in mud. They had no bedding, and only enough hay to last them a couple of hours. We put up hay nets for the horse and out bedding in the concrete stable. The whole enclosure had wire and breeze blocks all around it, and was a tetanus case waiting to happen. The animals were so desperate for grazing that they had pushed all of the metal wire from the fence away, getting their faces scratched to try to get to the grass the other side. We cut as much back as we could, but the whole area needs rebuilding. Next were the goats, who we were told had been regularly foot trimmed. Some of the feet were so overgrown that we had to cut 2/3rds of it away to get it back to normal. We spent time hanging branches for the goats to nibble on, and did as many feet as we could. Again, there was no grass in the paddock, and the animals were surviving on pellets and hay only. A goat started to give birth, so we left the enclosure to leave her in peace. At the end of the day, I did a guinea pig and rabbit tutorial for our students, before heading back to work on the diet sheets, and planning the things we could do on each of our future visits to the zoo, to make the lives of these poor creatures a little bit better.

Thursday I took 4 of our students back to the Fletchers farm, and we had a busy, fab day, injecting sheep for sheep scab and treating a sheep for mastitis. We then attempted to save the life of a very sick ram who was collapsed and couldn't even lift his head. We tried IV medication and fluids, but then decided to euthanise him as he continued to deteriorate. The students enjoyed performing a post mortem on him, and we found the most enormous, disgusting family of tapeworms in his colon. They were taller than me! He also had horrific pneumonia, and when I opened up his chest a bit of diseased lung flicked onto my tooth, and one of the students had to wipe it off. So gross. After lunch we headed to dehorn some calves, which they usually do without local anaesthetic, and just put their heads in the crush and burn away the horn bud. I explained to the farmer that we would do it with nerve blocks, and I also normally add a smidge of sedation into the local to take the edge off the cattle. To make sure the local had enough time to work, we nerve blocked all 8 calves in the pen,before one by one putting them into the crush to be disbudded. However, much to my total embarrassment and mild panic, one by one, each calf fell fast asleep and lay one on top of the other, squashing each other and therefore proving impossible to then get into the crush. By the time I had blocked the last calf it was too late, I had sedated the entire pen, and Rick had the reversal agent an hour away. "Is this supposed to happen?"piped up one of the students. I explained it was a good learning curve of what not to be done! So we disbudded each sleeping calf, then had to lift 200kg of calf up and out of the crush, to get it to stand and wobble back to its mum, before falling back to sleep again in the field. It would wear off in a fee hours. We ended up having to dismantle the crush to get the last few animals out. Craig the farmer made some excuse that the rest of the calves were too young to be done, but more likely he didn't want this crazy white vet to interfere with his stock again! At least the calves were better off for it, and had no idea what was going on. Afterwards we went to collect their new sheepdog puppy from their neighbour, and we found ourselves surrounded by border collie puppies in the sunshine, drinking coffee. It was bliss. Lastly we rechecked the lame bull from our last visit before heading home for our weekly pizza night.

Friday was a tough day filled with some very sick animals. Some of the things I describe you may find upsetting, so I am sorry in advance.After another early start, we drove to Hamburg to meet Mandy, one of the founders of a charity called Hamburg Hounds and Horses. They set up the charity with a 14 year old girl from the village after they were fed up with the state of the animals in the township. Since then, they have a weekly dipping station, and we go as vets to them when we can to treat as many dogs and horses as possible. Mandy also has vaccines for the dogs, and buys food to give to the owners of the most malnourished animals. She told me that, before they started the charity, the situation was desperate. There was a distemper outbreak (a fatal neurological disease that we vaccinate dogs against) and a lot of dogs had neurological issues. The locals are very superstitious and fearful of animals, and thought the children would contract the diseases, so they killed the dogs by burning them alive, tossing them on fires or throwing hot oil and tar on them. People are superstitious about euthanasia, so getting owners to agree to not let their animal die naturally is tricky, and we are conscious to keep on the local people's side to ensure they continue to bring their animals to us.Today was crazy busy, but luckily we had a wonderful team of students, who I taught how to perform clinical exams before we let them loose to try and treat nearly 200 dogs in a day. Rick was faced with a truck fully seriously ill dogs who had all eaten a diseased dead horse. Mandy told us that last week she was called to see a horse in appalling condition. It was collapsed, covered in severe mange that was eating away at its body, and had a wire wound to its leg. We can only assume it was tetanus, but Mandy had told the villagers it needed to be shot, and she would call the ASPCA ( South African RSPCA) to come out immediately. Mandy returned to find that the villagers had decided to kill the horse themselves as they were worried the children would catch the disease, so they hacked the poor creature to death with machetes. They then dragged its body to the forest, instead of disposing of it correctly, and now all the township dogs ate it, contracting the clostridium, disease as well. One of the dogs in this truck was collapsed, dehydrated and desperately needed euthanising. The mange lesions on its head had stopped it from eating, and it was now unable to stand. The owner refused euthanasia, so Rick and some students gave IV antibiotics, fluids and TLC to try to save her. She stood up briefly but then collapsed again later. It was all we could do. Another dog was in a similar bad way, and the rest of them had such bad mange that some of their faces were decomposing. It was heartbreaking. I saw a donkey with an erupting tumour on his face, that was being eaten away by flies. There were skin lesions on its rectum and scrotum, and the flies were everywhere. The poor thing was being eaten alive. We decided to have him euthanised on Tuesday, and applied antibiotic spray to keep the files off him until then. The permanent bathtub was being used well, and the dog were queuing up to be dipped and wormed. We treated dozens of horses and dogs. It was exhausting being the vet, and every time Rick and I moved anywhere we had questions and cases to see and treat, it was hard to manage them all. At the end of the day, we examined more dogs, one with a rupturing eye ulcer, and one with severe skin disease. The owners here treat fleas and mange by rubbing tar and car oil onto the dogs, which causes chemical burns, sunburn due to increased heat, and one of the dogs we examined also had sebaceous cysts all over its body, likely because the oil had blocked the pores. It's eyes were inflamed from the fumes, and flew dirt was clumped all over its body. Another dog was emaciated, the thinnest dog I have ever seen. After it walked across to us to be dipped, it collapsed on the grass, pale and panting. We couldn't diagnose the underlying cause, but it needed euthanising. Sadly, because the owner wasn't present, we had no permission, and although at home we have the power end suffering even without permission, here in South Africa we don't have this authority. Some locals carried its tiny body back to its home,and my eyes welled up as I knew the poor thing would die slowly over the next week from starvation. We left knowing we had done a huge amount of good, but there is always a need for veterinary care here. The Hamburg hounds and horses have a harrowing tale to tell, and we had done our best to improve a desperate situation. My final day had come to a close, and on the way home I couldn't help thinking of all the dogs and cats I see at home, and how well looked after they are, and how lucky they are to be living in a first world country. I thought of all of the animals living in appalling conditions, with owners who cannot afford medical treatment themselves, and of course have no control over outbreaks of disease. I know I will find it hard to return to the UK knowing full well how many more needy animals I will have left behind here.

Friday night we partied at Montys for the last time, and come Saturday morning I was gutted to leave my home for the past 6 weeks, and the people here who I have called my family. Mr Jangles our blind rat helped me pack, and Kim, Rick and Alex, and Meg and Cat our students sat upstairs watching me attempt to squeeze a larger volume of clothes into my rucksack than I originally brought with me. I was sad to say goodbye to our wonderful group of students, who I was extremely fortunate to have taught. It has been so rewarding to see what they had learnt over the last 6 weeks and watch them develop. One of the students, Sunny, we even managed to convince to become a vet by the end of her time here. Kim and Rick took me to the airport and I said a sad goodbye to them before boarding the plane from East London to Cape Town, to begin my penguin adventures!

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Photos

Poor dog covered in oil
His owner treats his fleas and mange with car oil. This has caused chemical burns and sebaceous cysts to form all over his body

Deep tissue necrosis from the severe mange
This dog was in the group that ate the infected horse carcass