Six-year-old cockapoo Harry, who is so important to Vickie and Jon Durbridge that he was best man at their wedding, almost died after contracting a potentially lethal gut disorder.
The haemorrhagic gastroenteritis caused repeated vomiting and bloody diarrhoea, and the little dog spent a week receiving lifesaving treatment from our team at our Vets Now clinic in Newport.
Harry had already narrowly survived often fatal parvovirus as a puppy, and the couple feared he wasn’t going to come through this latest serious illness.
However, they got the best present when he was allowed home after treatment.
“Harry started having sickness and diarrhoea, and I stayed up half the night checking on him,” said Vickie. “But in the morning, the diarrhoea became totally bloody, and we knew we needed help quickly.”
They rushed him to our Newport Vets Now clinic, which is one of our more than 60 clinics and hospitals open for emergency treatment, as their own vets were closed at the weekend.
“Harry was very poorly when we first saw him,” said vet Charlotte Davis. “Haemorrhagic gastroenteritis is an extremely serious condition that can be fatal if the patient goes into shock.
“Swift treatment is essential, and it’s really important that they stay in hospital for intravenous fluid therapy through a drip and pain relief.”
“Poor Harry felt so nauseous that he couldn’t eat, and we had to place a feeding tube to help him. He also developed a condition called ileus, where his intestines aren’t moving properly. So, he required constant medication to help this.”
Some of the patients who get better recover in two days, but in Harry’s case, it took nearly a week, and Vickie and Jon could only wait and hope.
“It was such a scary time,” said Vickie. “We were constantly by the phone waiting for updates, and when we went to visit and saw how sick he was, we were in floods of tears.”
“When two or three days passed, and he was still really bad, we feared we were going to lose him.”
“We felt totally lost at that point and had to have the awful conversation about what we might have to do. But we weren’t ready to give up as long as the vets said there was some hope.”
Following intensive treatment, Harry started to make a marked improvement towards the end of the week and began to eat again after they visited.
After a nail-biting week, they finally took him home, and he’s since continued his remarkable recovery and is back to his old self.
“We can’t thank Vets Now enough,” added Vickie. “When we took him in, we knew he was close to death, and they definitely saved him.
Vet Charlotte added: “We are lucky that Harry had such committed owners who wanted to do anything to make him feel better. Vickie and Jon did the right thing by getting him to us early.”
Our Vets Now emergency clinics are here for you when you need us most. Find your nearest Vets Now clinic here.
