Read Trust Me, I'm a Vet for Free Online

it’s nothing personal – I’d probably be just as choosy if I had pets of my own – but you would have thought that Emma’s clients would have trusted her judgement.
    ‘I told her Ginge could be dead by then, but she wouldn’t budge. What else can I do? I can’t force her.’
    I don’t pursue it any further, and I refrain from asking her to put the newspaper away. It doesn’t do to fall out with your receptionist on your first day.
    ‘Here’s your nine-thirty,’ Frances says, looking past me. ‘Mrs Moss and her daughter, Sinead. They’ve not been to us before.’
    I look at my first customers. Mrs Moss is wearing a green tent-like dress and Sinead’s dark hair has been scraped back into a Croydon facelift. She’s holding an open-topped cardboard box with THIS WAY UP and PERISHABLE GOODS stamped on the side. I cautiously show them into the consulting room where Izzy’s waiting to assist me.
    While Mrs Moss keeps a tissue pressed firmly to her nose, Sinead keeps the box at arms’ length and lowers it carefully onto the table. The stench makes me retch. Steeling myself, I look inside. A tricolour collie pup with an air of desperation in its eyes sits cowed in the bottom, its mouth set in a squiggle, reminding me of Snoopy from the Peanuts cartoon strips. Glistening strings of saliva stretch from its lips to the fringe of a bloodstained baby blanket.
    Mrs Moss informs me that the puppy’s name is Freddie, he’s eleven weeks old and they bought him from a farm while they were on holiday in Wales.
    ‘Has he had his first vaccination yet?’ I ask.
    Sinead stands beside her mother, chewing gum and fiddling with her enormous gold earrings. I repeat the question, but the Mosses remain silent, their expressions blank.
    ‘It’s really important,’ I say, at which Mrs Moss finds her tongue at last.
    ‘He had some of those homeophobic drops – the breeder showed me.’
    ‘You mean homeopathic,’ I suggest gently, yet inside I’m churning with anger on Freddie’s behalf, at both the breeder and Mrs Moss for believing this would be enough to protect him from some of the nastier puppyhood diseases. ‘He has parvo – a viral infection.’ I hold back from angrily adding, Which we could have prevented with a course of conventional, tested vaccine.
    Izzy hands me a pair of disposable gloves and disappears, rolling her eyes.
    ‘I told you.’ Sinead turns to her mother. ‘I told you we should’ve had him checked out.’
    ‘He was fit enough when we got him.’
    I lift the puppy out of the box. ‘Come on, Freddie, let’s have a look at you.’
    He shivers and moans when I press his belly very gently to check for anything that might suggest an alternative diagnosis.
    ‘He’s been passing blood from both ends,’ says Sinead. ‘It’s bad, innit.’ I leave the Mosses in no doubt as to exactly how bad it is, and admit him. I can’t perform miracles though – it’s up to Freddie.
    ‘Give us a call later and I’ll let you know how he’s getting on.’
    ‘Leave it,’ says Mrs Moss, as her daughter makes to pick up the box. Neither of them looks back. The door into Reception closes after them and, like magic, the door behind me opens from the corridor which links the consulting room with the pharmacy, Kennels, prep room and operating theatre. Izzy comes bustling in with a tray of equipment.
    ‘Izzy, anyone would think you were listening at the door.’
    ‘I was,’ she says with a wicked twinkle in her eye, and I’m relieved that her initial shyness with me has already worn off. She takes a close look at Freddie. ‘Poor little scrap. There’s no way he’s eleven weeks – he can’t be more than six. And the label on the box is apt – he looks highly perishable to me.’
    We put Freddie on a drip, dose him with antibiotics and clean him up, then leave him in the isolation cage under the stairs in the corridor on the way to the laundry.
    ‘Oops, I’m sorry,’ Izzy says when she bumps me with