The puppies were five minutes old and felt cold to the touch. I picked them up one at a time and massaged their thorax vigorously with a towel. I placed my stethoscope into my ears for the umpteenth time and listened for the heartbeat. And for the umpteenth time I felt relieved.
"Congratulations" rung in my ears again and again and I turned in my crouching position and saw Rafael, a young bespectacled Brazilian veterinary colleague with several years' clincal experience and friendly manner, looking at me and smiling.
Last time I wrote it was to comment on a one day course on ethics and responsibilities that all veterianrians graduating in Mato Grosso have to attend. Its importance is that it culminated in me receiving my vet's card, giving me official recognition as a vet by issuing me with a number.
They were born by Caesarian section. It was the first surgery I was participating in since last October, when I finished my Extra Mural Study at Wern Vets on the other side of the World in my native Wales. Since then I had completed my dissertation - see 'Cuiaba Fauna Project Pages', defended it at oral test, applied for a Residency at God knows how many places in Cuiabá, then started today at a clinic in order to gain further clinical experience in small animal practice.
I enjoy surgery in all species. The veterinary market requires you to specialise. So I must admit to being stuck between a rock and a hard place. I want to work with wildlife, but everybody keeps telling me that I will starve to death if I insist on pursuing that dream. I lived it for the past year and a half, as those pages show, so maybe I would have to be content with that.
Rafael passed me each puppy as he removed it from the swollen uterine horn. The mother was deeply anaesthetised and felt nothing.
"Towel them dry and massage their thorax", he instructed.
The veterinary nurse, Elias, stepped up and syringed a drop of glucose under the tongue of each puppy. The glucose was to provide the neonate puppies wirh an energy boost. Under the tongue because the skin there is thin and the tongue is highly vascularised so the glucose would be absorbed faster into the blood stream.
Massaging the thorax with a dry towel imitates the natural licking that the whelping bitch would provide the puppies with, keeping them warm and their airways clear of mucous and stimulating defecation and urination, that is, the normal functioning of the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts.
Hours later and we returned the pups to their mother. They were promptly rejected (ignored). Could this have been the end of their tiny lives?
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