Unusual Animal Patients

And the delight of the vet

Veterinary doctors have no easy job and their university education is long and thorough – after all, animals are anatomically and physiologically just as complicated as humans, but instead of one species to deal with, vets have patients belonging to dozens of widely differing species. Therefore one of the problems for vets is that they see a much greater variety of body shapes and structures than human doctors. However, the clientele of the city veterinarian isn’t really that terribly varied: mostly cats and dogs, maybe an occasional parrot; oh yes, and hamsters and guinea pigs not to forget. Imagine my vet’s surprise (and delight) then, when I took some of my newts to him for treatment. Newts can suffer from newt pestilence, a terrible disease for these amphibians with an as yet not fully understood aetiology, which leads to loss of appetite, emaciation, skin lesions and a smell of parsley in the infected animal.