Update on the abandoned puppies

They're still hanging on, although the smallest is very poorly with both vomiting and diarrhoea. The vets at the surgery where they were left have very kindly offered to contain costs at £400 for the whole litter so  that they can be given the best possible chance of survival. The fact that only the weakest puppy is vomiting gives a bit of hope that whatever infection they have is not parvovirus, which would be the worst scenario.

The pups look as though they are rottweiler crossed with something else, possibly German Shepherd. The person who left them did at least put them somewhere where they'd be likely to be found and given treatment, but this is yet another example of the potentially dire consequences of breeding animals without having the resources to deal with potential problems.

Bottom line: it is enormously more expensive to deal with any of the multiple things that can go wrong with pregnant or very young animals than it is to spay or neuter.

Update 7th October

Sadly the vets contacted us just after midnight this morning to say the smallest puppy had died.

We are rubbish at identifying pedigree cats!

Suzie — now

Suzie - just after he came in

"Suzie" was brought in to us because she was abandoned. She is in fact a neutered male (in our defence the initial mis-identification of his sex wasn't us; we are not completely incompetent).

We thought he was possibly a British Shorthair, but in fact he's a Selkirk Rex. The fact that he would originally have been purchased for quite a lot of money makes it even more peculiar that he would have been simply abandoned.





Still, lovely to see he's found a wonderful home, and at least now we know why his whiskers look so beaten up; they have a natural wave.

Two rats

This is one of a pair of rats who were found running loose in the street by a member of the public and brought to our clinic. They're both visibly aged and this one has an injury which I suspect is the result of him chewing out the stitches after removal of a tumour.

At this time of life it's fairly unlikely that they would suddenly make a break for freedom off their own bat and the most likely explanation is that they were turned loose. They're both friendly and well-handled, and my guess is that the owner couldn't face up to the responsibility of deciding either to take them for euthanasia or organise continued treatment. Cost may have been part of this — a private vet would probably charge in the region of £30 to put down and dispose of two rats — but some of it may just have been inability to cope with the idea of sickness and death. In the past we've had stray hamsters with horrible-looking tumours which had obviously been released because the owner just couldn't bear to look at them. 

The clinic vets say these two are quite happy at the moment, but they've probably not got long before we have to put them to sleep.

The puppies who were dumped in the Newnham village play area

 

These puppies were found just before Easter in a rubbish bin on the Newnham Village play area, They're about 6 weeks old.

Two cats abandoned

The vet nurse at Soham Pet Doctors turned up to start the day shift and found two young cats in a cardboard box sitting on their doorstep. They're about 6 months old and seem to have been well-cared for (and, to give the owner credit, they had at least been left where they were guaranteed to be found and looked after).