A busy day in Bristol by Sarah Stewart

On Saturday 14th April, Street Vets Cat, and Vim and I and Street Nurses Ffion and Ruth took to the sunny streets of Bristol where we saw 8 dogs. First there was our lovely Reggie, who loved the squeaky rubber chicken we gave him. We then saw Gypsy and Soph Soph, mother and daughter staffies who are always keen for cuddles from the Street Vet team. Gypsy has been suffering with dry eye, and we were lucky to have ophthalmologist Vim with us who did a full eye exam on Gypsy – improvising with a coat to shelter from the bright sunlight! Vim is going to sort out some much needed heavy duty eye drops for Gypsy to keep her eyes comfortable, and eventually she’ll also need to have a procedure to remove some ingrown eyelashes that have been contributing to her discomfort. Cat noticed Soph Soph had a small lump on her flank, so she and I took an FNA to check it out – it turned out to be just a cyst which her owners were very relieved about.

We then headed to St James’ Park where we have a regular meeting point along with Bristol Churches Together. There we met a new dog, Bella, who has been suffering from chronic skin issues and also going through phantom pregnancies each time she has a season. Bella was a star patient for us as Ffion and Ruth cleaned up her skin with some antiseptic wipes and gave her some flea and worm treatment. She will need some antibiotics and we are going to arrange for her to be spayed as soon as possible. She appreciated the attention and loved her new chewy toy!

Also at the park were Swift and Bruno. Vim got his coat out again to check out Swift’s eyes as her owner had been concerned about a bit of cloudiness. Luckily the cloudiness is just down to old age and Vim gave her the all clear. Bruno didn’t need a check up but he appreciated a new Kong toy and a new coat – the only one we had in his size was bright pink, but his owner thinks he’s man enough to pull it off and we agreed!

Finally we caught up with Vomit and his mate Alfie. Vomit (who has the best name of all our patients) has some skin issues which made the team a bit suspicious of underlying disease so we took some bloods and gave him some shampoo while we await results. Alfie got some parasite treatment and a big bag of food.

All in a day’s work for the StreetVet Bristol team! We look forward to seeing our regulars again next week, as well as meeting new patients as word gets around about the work we’re doing.