‘We’ll have legs everywhere’

Planning to make a quick buck by selling pups? Fancy getting your latest trendy cross breed cocker-labra-pug-doodle bitch pregnant? Think again. Abby tells us about just *some* of the things that can go wrong in the 'puppy trade'. These poor animals are living beings, and as such, they can (and will) attract large vet bills and welfare disasters. Don't get caught up by inexperience and dubious advice. If you are planning to breed, do your research. And by that, I mean ask your vet. Not some random social media group.

I’m Abby Wharton 28yrs old and the Head Nurse of an Out Of Hours practice in Swindon. I started here in August having been at my last first opinion practice for 7 years. I live in a smallholding and outside of work, I have a small number of cows to look after.

What made me become a nurse?

Mine isn’t the fluffy story! I always wanted to be a vet when I was younger and I never wanted to be a nurse. After college, I worked on an Aberdeen Angus breeding farm and we regularly had the vet out to help with herd health. After a year of working there, one of my friends was a nurse in practice and seemed genuinely happy and loved her job. I thought that maybe this was the route I wanted to go down and applied to all of the local practices. Finally accepted by one and began my training!

What do I love about it?

I love emergency surgery. If there’s a complicated anaesthetic, I am there. A 2 am C-section or a 3 am GDV is my favourite! Equally, I love a medicine case. Having a patient come in needing care and attention to improve it over the course of a few days is so satisfying. I have a particular interest in canine behaviour. So the nervous ones and the aggressive ones are usually mines. I love trying to help them see it’s not actually that bad at the vets!

An interesting case

We had a 2 yr old Labrador presented unconscious with a temperature of 35C. She was in shock and had horrendous mastitis. Having the cows, I’m pretty clued up about mastitis, so I tried to milk her out regularly but her ducts were too blocked. The owner was made aware she would probably need surgery and he openly said that he couldn’t afford it. He signed the dog over to the host practice and over the course of 2 weeks, she had regular surgery after her mammary glands were almost entirely sloughed off. She stayed in with both the OOH staff and the host practice. Seeing her get better and change was brilliant. She became a naughty young Labrador with a zest for life and has recently been signed off with perfect mammary lines sutured.

The biggest struggle.

I’m finding the breeding boom the biggest struggle at the moment. The number of C-sections has risen to a few a week when it used to be a few a month. Clients often complain about the cost and say they can’t afford it. One client left their dog too long end sadly she died on the table. It’s so frustrating and heartless. Then finding out they intend to sell the puppies for 2k+ It’s so disheartening.

How would I fix it?

I would like to tighten the breeding laws. You should have to apply for a license and be inspected by the council if you even intend to have one litter. Whether you have one litter a year or 10, you still have a duty of care to the bitch and all of the puppies.

What do you do outside work?

Outside of work, my passion is my dog and my farm. I have 7 cows that I have owned for 10 years and a dog that I go hiking with and compete in agility and Canicross with. I love the outdoors and being busy.

Funny anecdote.

Once, we had a dog in to be made sick (Labrador of course) having stolen the contents of an uncooked casserole, potatoes onions garlic the lot. When making him sick, he brought up all of the casserole as well as some knickers!

When I took them out to the owner, she laughed and said he has a real fetish for dirty knickers!!

I tried very hard to keep a straight face!