Holly’s Space

In the Te Awamutu Courier, which is a local newspaper, last Tuesday, there was a letter to the editor from Mike and Charlene Lewis. This letter was all about how one of our local vets Holly, saved a dogs life. Mike and Charlene were so grateful that Holly had saved their pet dog Honey and they wrote the letter especially to thank Holly and also let the locals know how dedicated and skillful she is.

So what happened was that Mike and Charlene had their dog Honey spayed at the Te Awamutu Veterinary Centre on the 16th of May. When they collected Honey at around 3.30pm they noticed blood in her cage. They said that they were concerned but the vet said that Honey would be okay. By about 8pm Honey was literally nearly dead. Her gums and mouth were basically white and she was not responding to anything they did. They could tell that there was something awful about to happen.

So Mike and Charlene called the emergency vet number and were told to bring Honey straight in which they did. Once they had taken her into the vets they found that she was suffering from severe internal bleeding. Unfourtunately the on-call vet was a large animal vet and didn’t really know what to do. He called up Holly who is a part time vet at the centre. When she arrived, she took one look at the dog and she could tell Honey was in serious trouble. Holly then rushed back home and brought back her own dog.

Immediately when she got back she took a large amount of blood from her own dog and transferred it into Honey. She put in enough blood so that Honey was strong enough to receive an operation to find out what was wrong and fix it. Holly found the internal bleeding and fixed the problem.

 Now about two weeks later, Honey is basically back to normal and Mike and Charlene are very grateful for what Holly has done. Like it said in the letter “If it were not for Holly’s extreme efforts, skill and dedication to her work Honey would have without doubt died.”All of this took place rather late at night and only finished at nearly 2am. Holly wouldn’t have ever given up until she was 100% sure Honey was alright!

I think this whole story is quite effective. It is great to know that the vets in our community are so dedicated. I also think it is quite nice that Mike and Charlene have taken the time to show their appreciation for Holly. It is good to see something nice in the letters to the editor as they are often used as a place to complain.

A few days after the article came out I saw Holly in at the vets and talked to her about it. She said that any dog is able to transfuse blood to another dog unlike humans where it has to be the same blood type. Although if the blood transfusion doesn’t work the first time, then they do need to get a dog with the same blood type, which is a rather difficult job. So pretty much you’ve only got one chance to get it right. She also told me how happy she was that Honey lived. She was very proud to know that she saved a dogs life. I can barely imagine how grateful Mike and Charlene must have been.