by Jo Hardy
An hour later, Roz popped her head in. ‘Any progress?’
‘No,’ we all chorused.
‘OK, well, let’s give her one more injection and wait another 20 minutes and then we’ll have to do a caesarean. I’ll operate and, Jo, the nurses have gone home so I’ll need your help.’
Jed and Hannah were a little alarmed by the prospect of an operation. ‘It’s very straightforward,’ I told them. ‘And if she carries on trying to give birth for too long she’ll be in distress and the remaining puppy will be in danger. She will still be able to feed the puppies, but because of the incision she might be a bit sore. If she seems to be uncomfortable you can get artificial puppy milk; it’s just going to be a lot of work for you, I’m afraid.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Hannah. ‘It’s her first litter, you know. We came over from New Zealand to live in the UK for three years – we’re both doing postgrad research work – and we just had to have a dog. We found Sasha through a rescue charity. She was just a few months old. We’ll take her home with us when we go back.’
‘And the puppies?’ I asked. ‘Will you sell them?’
‘Sell or give, yes,’ Hannah said. ‘But we might keep one, for Sasha, and because, well, who can resist a puppy?’
A cup of tea later and there was still no change, so we left Jed and Hannah with the puppies to look after and keep warm and took Sasha through to the operating suite.
Once she was anaesthetised Roz made an incision down her belly and within seconds she had lifted out a puppy – a fairly large one, too. I took it and wrapped it in a warm towel, rubbing it firmly on the back to dry it off and stimulate breathing.
‘There’s more,’ she said. ‘In fact … there are two more.’ And out came two more bruisers.
‘Wow, three large puppies. No wonder Sasha was tired,’ I said.
When Sasha was stitched up and resting, we took the puppies through to Jed and Hannah.
‘She had seven?’ Jed said, incredulous. ‘And we might need to feed all of them? It’s goodbye sleep, I guess.’ He and Hannah didn’t know whether to laugh or cry – in fact, they did both.
It was almost 10 by the time we’d finished and Sasha was awake. We gave her back her puppies, which she started to nuzzle, and told Jed and Hannah we’d keep her in for the next 24 hours to monitor them. All being well, she would go home the next day with plenty of dried puppy milk in case she was too sore to feed.
‘I’ve had an amazing day,’ I told Mum as I wolfed down a plate of shepherd’s pie. ‘I was wondering – what would you think about getting another springer puppy? I’ve seen some today that are just sooo sweet, and I’m sure Roxy would love it.’
‘Jo, are you mad?’ Mum said. ‘Roxy most definitely would not want to share her humans with an upstart newcomer! Like a lot of rescues she’s a bit insecure. I find it hard enough resisting bringing home some of the dogs I collect from the pound. I couldn’t have another dog unless it was a rescue.’
I sighed. She was right, of course. But that night, as I drifted into an exhausted sleep, I couldn’t help thinking that, against all logic, a puppy just melts your heart.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Morocco
Through the scrum of people milling through Marrakech airport I spotted a small, round, elderly man with silver hair holding up a sign with my name on it.
I approached him. ‘Bonjour, je m’apelle Jo. Parlez-vous anglais?’ He shook his head and carried on smiling.
I wasn’t sure how far my schoolgirl French was going to get me. ‘Je voudrais un SIM,’ I said, pointing to my phone. Nothing. I started taking my phone apart to show him the SIM card.
‘Ah, OK,’ he nodded, and he led me towards a shop where, luckily, the assistant spoke English, had the right SIM and installed it for me.
We left the airport and the old man, who told me, with much gesticulating, that his name was Boujema, took me to a lorry that stank of horses. I had to be in the right place.
The chaotic traffic we drove through reminded me of Uganda, but everything else was very different. Marrakech is a major city, with grand hotels, stunning palaces, mosques and public gardens, as well as a maze of poorer quarters.
I stared out of the window, fascinated by glimpses of street markets, ornately carved doors and women in brightly coloured robes. Eventually we left the city behind and reached the SPANA clinic, where I would be working, on the outskirts of town.
Situated inside a walled compound, it was like a little oasis away from the busy city. We drove in through the gates to a central courtyard where several peacocks and peahens strutted about on a grassy area. Boujema, who was the centre’s driver, helped me unload my suitcase and pointed me in the direction of the accommodation.
The building was bigger and grander than I had imagined it would be, although I knew that SPANA, a British charity dedicated to helping the working animals of the world, aims to put the highest-standard facilities in parts of the world where the animals need help. They don’t aim to make the best of a bad situation – they aim to make the situation far better. In Morocco they have five centres, each run by Moroccan vets. These vets also have their own private practices, so when English vets come out to help it really makes a difference.
I was shown around by Samir, who introduced himself as a horse technician who assisted the vets.
I was impressed by the facilities. There were 26 hospital boxes, most of which were full, plus two examination areas with stocks for the horses. There was even a padded knock-down box for performing surgeries and a small paddock.
I stayed in one of several bedrooms next to the stables. My room was small, just big enough for the single bed and a suitcase. It opened onto a courtyard area and just across the courtyard was a kitchen and bathroom.
In the room next to mine was another vet, Chloe, who had arrived earlier that day. She had graduated a few years earlier and had come out to Morocco in a break between jobs. After a bit of time in mixed practice she had specialised as an equine vet.
We liked one another straight away. Chloe was a sporty country girl. She had cycled from London to Paris and had worked with another charity, at a horse and donkey trust in Gambia. I noted it for future reference, as it sounded like somewhere I would love to go.
The clinic was within walking distance of the shops and cafés, so that evening Chloe and I walked to a little restaurant for dinner. The food was delicious, and very cheap.
I was tired and ready for a good night’s sleep, but I hadn’t counted on the peacocks. They shrieked, all night long. I thought I loved peacocks, but by morning I’d decided I definitely didn’t. They might be pretty, but they were noisier than cockerels, and their din was accompanied by the sporadic whinnying and braying of the donkeys and horses in the boxes.
By morning I was bleary-eyed and cursing peacocks. Chloe and I met in the kitchen for a breakfast of orange juice and pastries and she looked as tired as I felt.
‘Apparently peacocks are incredibly popular in Morocco,’ she said. ‘I can’t think why.’
Tired or not, we needed to start work. By 8.30am a second vet technician, Omar, was ready to take us with him on his morning round and to introduce us to our patients. The horses had already been fed, watered and mucked out. As we went from horse box to horse box, with Omar checking charts, temperatures and medications, he explained to us that as vet technicians he and Samir, who did the later shift, could do intravenous injections, put horses on drips, put in nasogastric tubes for horses with colic and wash and dress wounds. I was impressed. He seemed knowledgeable and capable, and with him and Samir to keep things running the vet only needed to come out to the clinic for a few hours a day to do new consultations and to check on inpatients.
After rounds we spent the next couple of hours washing wounds and bandaging legs, bringing each horse out to the stocks to be treated. The majority of the inpatients had injuries from the carts they pulled, from their harnesses or from accidents. Some of the wounds we treated were app
alling. One horse had lost a large area of skin from his rump. It was far too big an area to cover with any kind of bandage so, Omar explained, we simply had to clean it every day and let it heal. Many of the injuries were so severe that in England the animal would have been put to sleep, but in Morocco euthanasia was frowned upon, both for religious reasons and because each animal was vital to the livelihood of a family.
By late morning there would be a long queue of people waiting to see the vet. Their animals were tethered to a long chain strung between two poles inside the gates. Most of the owners would bring their horses and donkeys there early, go away for a few hours and come back when the vet arrived.
The vet, Mohamed, one of two who worked at the clinic, arrived and thanked us warmly for coming, before informing us he would be doing small animal consults on-site, leaving us to take charge of equine things with Omar. As each horse, donkey or mule was led across the yard, Chloe and I examined it and tried to treat it after numerous questions to Omar about what medications he had available. We dealt with colic cases, lameness – a lot of them had shoes made of rubber from old tyres – and bad teeth. Many of them had never had their teeth rasped and so they had become uneven and sharp. Chloe was an expert in equine dentistry, so she dealt with most of those cases.
After the consults Mohamed checked that we were happy with our morning’s work and then left, so Chloe and I caught a taxi into the city to have lunch. In the heat of the day a cheap taxi was preferable to a long, hot walk.
Lunch gave us a welcome break. The afternoon was quieter than the morning, but there were still more horses and more procedures, operations and routine checks. The clinic was incredibly busy, and the majority of the horse boxes were occupied most of the time, although we did manage to go into the city and explore some of the fascinating souks, the street markets filled with spices and delicious foods, and the little alleyways and paths of the old city.
One of our first serious cases was a little bay stallion with a pretty pony face. We called him Little Bay, as horses don’t have names in Morocco. He came into the clinic in a bad way; his gums were pale, his temperature was through the roof, he was dehydrated and he had a horrendous cough, although we weren’t sure whether this was related to his other symptoms or whether two different things were going on. I took some blood and stained it up to look at it under the microscope. The red blood cells were crawling with babesia, a protozoal parasite transmitted by ticks. It was the same illness I had seen in the dogs in South Africa.
Little Bay’s owner, who used the horse to pull his cart of wares, was very concerned. He stood watching anxiously as we swung into action to treat his animal. We started with antibiotics that were strong enough to treat both the babesia and the cough, as well as some pain relief, but then Little Bay suddenly flung himself on the floor, panicking us all. We gave him a sedative and more pain relief and inserted a catheter and a drip to give him intravenous fluids because he was so dehydrated.
He had arrived looking terrible – I honestly thought he was dying – but an hour later he was bright, comfortable, happy and looking for attention, as if to say, ‘I’m fine, sorry I frightened you!’ It was a scary colic reaction, but Mohamed assured us he sometimes saw that with the antibiotic we had given because it causes spasms in the gut wall.
Little Bay wasn’t out of the woods yet, though, and over the next few days he alternated between looking very ill and much brighter. His owner came in every day with extra hay for him, staying to talk to him and stroke him. Many of the owners were devoted to their animals – their horse or donkey was part of the family, and their value was clearly much more than just financial.
At the end of our first week Chloe and I took a Sunday off to hike up the Atlas Mountains.
We took a tourist bus there, thinking it would be a gentle hike, but in fact it turned out to be a climb up a sheer mountain, with dozens of other tourists on the same route, all climbing on top of each other.
There were a couple of other European people in our group who seemed quite confident, but they hit difficulties halfway up and decided they couldn’t go on. Chloe and I pressed on, though, and got almost to the top. There was a waterfall there, in seven different parts, and a little shop. And of course the view was stunning. Our guide told us that if we could just get up to the next level there was a much better way down, but to do it we had to pay the shopkeeper to let us use his ladder to get up a sheer rock face. We made it, and the guide was right. The view was even more spectacular and we came down on a different, parallel path that was easier.
For our second week Chloe and I transferred to one of SPANA’s other centres, in Chemaia. This was a small town to the west of Marrakech, and we travelled there in a grand taxi (these were for longer trips, while the petit taxis were for local journeys). The taxi was an ancient yellow Mercedes and the driver waited until it was full before he would go. That meant four other people in addition to him, Chloe and me – seven of us plus luggage in all. One very cramped hour later we were there.
The SPANA centre at Chemaia was half the size of the one in Marrakech, but just as nice. There were 12 hospitalisation stables and a stock for procedures. A very charismatic technician called Driss showed us around and introduced us to the two highly experienced vets, Youness and Kamal. All three were so welcoming that they made us feel part of the team the moment we arrived.
The order of the day was very similar to how it had been in Marrakech, but if anything we were even busier. By the time we’d done the morning medications and checked all the critical patients, washed wounds, rebandaged and made sure that all the horses got some grass from the patch at the front, it was lunchtime. The shops were too far away, so Driss would make us egg sandwiches and tea. He would chat to people who came in with their horses and carts to drink at the water trough placed at the front gate, and distribute fluorescent headcollars, bridles and plates to go on the back of the cart so that they would be more visible to cars in poor light. This project is unique to Chemaia and incredibly popular. The staff there asked SPANA to fund it and they agreed. Now most horses and carts are kitted out in hi-vis!
At about 2pm the consults would start. We would work alongside either Kamal or Youness, as legally a British vet isn’t allowed to make the decisions in Morocco unless a Moroccan vet is also on-site. Kamal was only there when needed, but Youness came for a few hours a day. Driss told him, ‘We have English vets now, you go.’ He was saying, don’t worry, they are capable – you can have a rest. If anything needed to change, we would ring the Moroccan vets for them to come back and assess and make the decision officially. After that, Chloe and I were left in charge quite a lot of the time, outside the regular consulting times.
After consults, any major procedures and stitch-ups were done and the day would finish some time between 4.30 and 6.30pm. After that, Chloe and I would usually head down to a local restaurant for a salad and tagine, then relax for a couple of hours before night-time checks and meds at about 10pm. We’d fall asleep quickly, exhausted and exhilarated from the day.
We treated dozens of cases, but among those that stayed with me long afterwards was the heavily pregnant little donkey with colic who we named Julia. On examination we realised that her uterus had become twisted. In England she would have been referred to an animal hospital for specialist surgery or put to sleep, but I realised Youness and Kamal were clipping her flank for surgery. My first thoughts were, They have to be kidding! How on earth are they going to do a caesarean and correct the torsion as a standing surgery? But while I administered the sedative, they cracked on bravely with it.
This was what in England we call superhero surgery – something extraordinary that was rare and risky. But they pulled it off. Youness delivered the foal – sadly dead, as the twist had cut off his blood supply – and then he and Kamal between them located the twist in her uterus, untwisted it and stitched her back up. Julia, heavily sedated, stood stoically and bravely throughout while her owner, a tall, elderly man, stayed t
hroughout, sitting on a chair in front of her with her head on his lap, stroking her nose.
Unsurprisingly she got bad peritonitis (inflammation of the abdomen) afterwards, but with decent pain relief, a shed-load of antibiotics and intravenous fluids she pulled through. As she got better we realised she was quite a character – bossy and quite stubborn, but a real fighter too. Throughout her convalescence her owner, who doted on her, brought her fresh greenery every day.
Another special case was Maggie, a donkey who came in with colic. Her heart rate (normally under 44 for a donkey) was 100. She was massively dehydrated and when we drew out some of her abdominal fluid, instead of a clearish liquid, it was dark brown. Chloe and I would have expected to put her to sleep, but in Morocco, unless the animal looks dead, it can’t be put to sleep, as the vets would be considered animal killers and would lose respect from the public. So instead we put her on lots of IV fluids, passed a stomach tube every few hours to check she wasn’t refluxing, then added more fluids and put her on a high dose of pain relief. Surprisingly, the next morning she was a little better. She was still quiet and not eating, but her heart rate was now in the 60s. Over the week she fluctuated, but she did slowly improve and even started to pick at grass when turned out with other donkeys. She was a very sociable animal and always looked brighter when she was around others, so we’d make sure that she got a bit of time with the other donkeys every day.
My favourite of all we called Sophie. She was a tiny donkey who collapsed in the street while pulling her cart, presumably from exhaustion. It then ran over her, causing massive trauma to her face and knees. Chloe and I spent an afternoon suturing her face back together. She had lost a lot of skin and some of the bone underneath was damaged, so it was a long procedure, but we managed it and afterwards she looked a bit more respectable, if a little battered. The main complication, though, was that she had damaged the nerve to the left eyelid, as well as the muscles above her left eye, so she couldn’t blink or close that eye. However, most animals have a third eyelid; a thin pinky-coloured membranous skin on the inside of the eyelid, and luckily Sophie still had control of this, although her new way of blinking made her look like a lizard. Her outer eyelids would remain still, while the pink membrane underneath would slide down over her eye.
