HAVE YOU MET THE VET YET?

Say "arf!", please

JENNY GILES, TENNANT'S VET
MAY HAVE STARTED LIFE AS A 'DOCTOR DOLITTLE'
BUT NOW SHE DOES QUITE A LOT ...

Gemma Buxton asks the questions

When did you arrive in Tennant Creek?
In August 1991 we came up to Tennant Creek. We moved from Padthaway where we'd been running a vet clinic for the surrounds of Padthaway, which is a very rural area where my husband had been working on his father's properties. He decided to return to Government service as a vet and I had the prospect of coming up here and working in a town that didn't have a regular private practice.
So we moved to this isolated town with a lot of differences to what we were used to. We weren't used to such a cultural diversity so that took a little while to accustom ourselves to. But we have fitted in well and we love living here and hope to continue living here for another few years yet.

Why did you become a vet?
Well, as a child I grew up in the Adelaide hills and I was surrounded by animals and they were all my friends! I used to converse with them much more than I did with people, I was a very shy little girl. And that's all I could think of ever wanting to become. So I worked hard, I mean I wasn't a genius but I was reasonably good at school. I went to vet school over in Perth and came out with honors and went on with my profession. That was in 1985, so this is my thirteenth year, hopefully it's a lucky year!
I've had a varied career, I've worked as a locum, from New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and we've had our own practice and we now run a part-time practice here in Tennant.
We have three evening sessions a week here but we are on call if someone has an emergency and we do surgery on Saturdays. We also run boarding kennels, we can cater for up to ten dogs, we have only six runs and double up the dogs that live together and are compatible. When people go on holidays they usually leave their dogs here. We usually have between three and four in the off-season and during holiday seasons we are completely booked out and often have to turn people away. We also cater for cats.

How many animals do you see in a week?
Well I mainly do the dogs and cats and Andrew (my husband) sees the horses in town, usually out of hours. So on average I would see between 30 and 50 animals a week and most of them are dogs and cats.
We've even seen the odd tortoise but I'd prefer not to see any snakes! I see the horses when Andrew is out of town and have had to do some horrific stitch-up jobs which actually have come together quite nicely.
Mainly here in town, our function is vaccinations, treating gastro's and skin conditions, which are very common here. With cats we have an odd cat flu every now and again. We do a lot of desexing, so on Saturdays we may have a line up of perhaps 10 or more spays and castrations to do. We do lots of other surgery. Andrew deals with most of the orthopedic work, mending fractured bones.

How diverse is the range of animals you see?
We have the odd joey come in, because people pick them up from the side of the road. I had a bus load of tourists bring me a wedge-tail eagle that they found on the side of the road down the track! So that was quite exciting having 40 people bring this one eagle to me! That had to have a wing amputation which we performed and now it's living happily on a perch in town somewhere!
I think probably the cutest pet I've treated is a wombat where I had to pin his leg, but that was in Victoria. I've had a nail-tail wallaby in; that was one of the prettiest ones as well, which had been hit by a car, so we put it on a drip. But other than that, oh yes the tortoise with a skin condition, that was very difficult!
I haven't had much experience with ferrets and we're about to undertake the desexing of 5 ferrets which will be very interesting!
The most difficult pet is a dog that comes in every now and again and wants to eat me from afar and I have to stand back on the other side of the room while its owner tries to control it! That sort of thing makes it one of the most difficult of pets that I have encountered.
We have difficulties with aggression and there are some dogs that obviously see the experience as totally intolerable and will disgrace themselves because they're so nervous. But fortunately most dogs are happy to come in and the cats are fine.
I have had some circumstances where I would have preferred to have referred the animal on to a specialist. And because of the distances and people finding the finances difficult, they've asked me to attempt things that I normally wouldn't do.
For example I've had prolapsed iris in a cat which I did and stitched the cornea and I was quite pleased with that, where I normally would have referred the animal on to an eye specialist. The planes will now take animals down to Alice and we've also had some go on to Brisbane at great cost. One animal had 3 or 4 fractures in it's femur and we sent it to Alice and then it went on to Brisbane.

What are some of the main problems you see with pets and animals in Tennant Creek?
Obviously we have a large problem with roaming dogs and I would dearly love to see some responsibility taken by the owners of the pets in treating skin conditions and curbing the population growth. Whether I'm ever going to see that I don't know! I think the solution to the problem is getting people to have more care and consideration.

What about ticks and fleas in Tennant, is it a problem?
Here in town we have the common brown dog tick and I've actually had to give one or two blood transfusions to dogs; severe cases because people couldn't control the tick population in their yards. On one of the dogs, it was so infested, that you could pull about a hundred ticks off just a one inch square piece of the dog. It was absolutely covered in ticks. It's a very common problem and with yards that are heavily infested it is very difficult to control. You can get the pesticide fellows to come in and spray the yards out and they have now got new products out to help control it on the dogs.
You can either rinse weekly or you can put some spot-on between their shoulder blades or you can spray the dogs on a 3-4 week cycle, or you can give them tablets. So with the tick population being so high on these two particular dogs, they were just virtually sucked dry of blood. They were both weak and very, very white in their gums and they could barely lift their heads.

What about the dog baiting that has happened recently in town?
That's a common problem, we don't just see it here but in other towns as well. In every town there is someone who gets sick of the dogs and starts baiting. Here it is quite a more frequent problem than I've encountered before and usually it happens in batches and in specific vicinities. A few years ago it was happening around the airport. In the past it has been strychnine, which is probably the most common of baits used, but there have been a few 10/80s and you actually can't treat the 10/80s. Once the dogs get into the convulsing stage, it means that the they have absorbed the 10/80 and it is extremely life threatening. 10/80 is the common dingo bait which they are using now.

Any good pet survival stories?
Oh right yes! There was a little kitten that decide it was a little bit cold one morning so it decided to crawl under the bonnet and into the engine of its neighbour's car. And the neighbour decided to go to work quite happily and didn't hear the scream of the cat as it was twirling around in the fan belt!
The owners soon found pussy but he was stripped of his skin from the midway of his back all the way down to the very tip of his tail. His tail was completely denuded of skin and half of the back of the cat was denuded of skin as well. So in comes the family very distraught over this incident and we decided that we could try and put pussy back together - minus the tail! So I gave him an anaesthetic and stitched him back together. And then pussy proceeded, once he'd recovered from the anaesthetic, to start walking around like an elderly gentlemen with very, very tight braces on! Since then pussy has gone from good to excellent health and is now romping around very happily, minus a tail! How's that?!!

It takes a lot of hard work to become a vet, what advice do you give young people who wish to also pursue this path?
A lot of young people don't have enough faith in themselves to go for what they really believe they would like to do. I feel strongly that everyone has the potential to succeed in what ever they want to do for their future career. And I firmly believe that if they work really hard and despite all the odds and everyone saying that it will be too hard for you, that if you believe in yourself and you go for it then 9 times out of 10 you will succeed.
And if you don't succeed at least you know you gave it your very best shot, because its no use getting down the track ten years, and being too frightened to even try, and thinking, you know if only I had tried my very best in doing that then I could have been somewhere else, doing something else.
That's how I felt when I was going through high school; everyone said it was to hard to get into Vet Science because at that stage it was harder to become a vet than to go into medicine and I felt a little bit disheartened. If you remember to just keep your eyes on your goal and forget about negative people telling you things that will lead you to be disheartened and try your very best and work really hard then you will succeed most times.
It's still very hard these days to get into Vet Science and so you do have to get very good academic marks to get in and it is a very popular course. I think the entrance is so high because of the popularity of the course. You also have to be reasonably academic to cope because once you get into Vet Science the hours that they make you study are quite long.
But it is definitely a very rewarding job and well worthwhile!

Say "arf!", please JENNY GILES, TENNANT'S VET MAY HAVE STARTED LIFE AS A 'DOCTOR DOLITTLE' BUT NOW SHE DOES QUITE A LOT ... Gemma Buxton asks the questions When did you arrive in Tennant Creek? In August 1991 we came up to Tennant Creek. We moved from Padthaway where we'd been running a vet clinic for the surrounds of Padthaway, which is a very rural area where my husband had been working on his father's properties. He decided to return to Government service as a vet and I had the prospect of coming up here and working in a town that didn't have a regular private practice. So we moved to this isolated town with a lot of differences to what we were used to. We weren't used to such a cultural diversity so that took a little while to accustom ourselves to. But we have fitted in well and we love living here and hope to continue living here for another few years yet. Why did you become a vet? Well, as a child I grew up in the Adelaide hills and I was surrounded by animals and they were all my friends! I used to converse with them much more than I did with people, I was a very shy little girl. And that's all I could think of ever wanting to become. So I worked hard, I mean I wasn't a genius but I was reasonably good at school. I went to vet school over in Perth and came out with honors and went on with my profession. That was in 1985, so this is my thirteenth year, hopefully it's a lucky year! I've had a varied career, I've worked as a locum, from New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and we've had our own practice and we now run a part-time practice here in Tennant. We have three evening sessions a week here but we are on call if someone has an emergency and we do surgery on Saturdays. We also run boarding kennels, we can cater for up to ten dogs, we have only six runs and double up the dogs that live together and are compatible. When people go on holidays they usually leave their dogs here. We usually have between three and four in the off-season and during holiday seasons we are completely booked out and often have to turn people away. We also cater for cats. How many animals do you see in a week? Well I mainly do the dogs and cats and Andrew (my husband) sees the horses in town, usually out of hours. So on average I would see between 30 and 50 animals a week and most of them are dogs and cats. We've even seen the odd tortoise but I'd prefer not to see any snakes! I see the horses when Andrew is out of town and have had to do some horrific stitch-up jobs which actually have come together quite nicely. Mainly here in town, our function is vaccinations, treating gastro's and skin conditions, which are very common here. With cats we have an odd cat flu every now and again. We do a lot of desexing, so on Saturdays we may have a line up of perhaps 10 or more spays and castrations to do. We do lots of other surgery. Andrew deals with most of the orthopedic work, mending fractured bones. How diverse is the range of animals you see? We have the odd joey come in, because people pick them up from the side of the road. I had a bus load of tourists bring me a wedge-tail eagle that they found on the side of the road down the track! So that was quite exciting having 40 people bring this one eagle to me! That had to have a wing amputation which we performed and now it's living happily on a perch in town somewhere! I think probably the cutest pet I've treated is a wombat where I had to pin his leg, but that was in Victoria. I've had a nail-tail wallaby in; that was one of the prettiest ones as well, which had been hit by a car, so we put it on a drip. But other than that, oh yes the tortoise with a skin condition, that was very difficult! I haven't had much experience with ferrets and we're about to undertake the desexing of 5 ferrets which will be very interesting! The most difficult pet is a dog that comes in every now and again and wants to eat me from afar and I have to stand back on the other side of the room while its owner tries to control it! That sort of thing makes it one of the most difficult of pets that I have encountered. We have difficulties with aggression and there are some dogs that obviously see the experience as totally intolerable and will disgrace themselves because they're so nervous. But fortunately most dogs are happy to come in and the cats are fine. I have had some circumstances where I would have preferred to have referred the animal on to a specialist. And because of the distances and people finding the finances difficult, they've asked me to attempt things that I normally wouldn't do. For example I've had prolapsed iris in a cat which I did and stitched the cornea and I was quite pleased with that, where I normally would have referred the animal on to an eye specialist. The planes will now take animals down to Alice and we've also had some go on to Brisbane at great cost. One animal had 3 or 4 fractures in it's femur and we sent it to Alice and then it went on to Brisbane. What are some of the main problems you see with pets and animals in Tennant Creek? Obviously we have a large problem with roaming dogs and I would dearly love to see some responsibility taken by the owners of the pets in treating skin conditions and curbing the population growth. Whether I'm ever going to see that I don't know! I think the solution to the problem is getting people to have more care and consideration. What about ticks and fleas in Tennant, is it a problem? Here in town we have the common brown dog tick and I've actually had to give one or two blood transfusions to dogs; severe cases because people couldn't control the tick population in their yards. On one of the dogs, it was so infested, that you could pull about a hundred ticks off just a one inch square piece of the dog. It was absolutely covered in ticks. It's a very common problem and with yards that are heavily infested it is very difficult to control. You can get the pesticide fellows to come in and spray the yards out and they have now got new products out to help control it on the dogs. You can either rinse weekly or you can put some spot-on between their shoulder blades or you can spray the dogs on a 3-4 week cycle, or you can give them tablets. So with the tick population being so high on these two particular dogs, they were just virtually sucked dry of blood. They were both weak and very, very white in their gums and they could barely lift their heads. What about the dog baiting that has happened recently in town? That's a common problem, we don't just see it here but in other towns as well. In every town there is someone who gets sick of the dogs and starts baiting. Here it is quite a more frequent problem than I've encountered before and usually it happens in batches and in specific vicinities. A few years ago it was happening around the airport. In the past it has been strychnine, which is probably the most common of baits used, but there have been a few 10/80s and you actually can't treat the 10/80s. Once the dogs get into the convulsing stage, it means that the they have absorbed the 10/80 and it is extremely life threatening. 10/80 is the common dingo bait which they are using now. Any good pet survival stories? Oh right yes! There was a little kitten that decide it was a little bit cold one morning so it decided to crawl under the bonnet and into the engine of its neighbour's car. And the neighbour decided to go to work quite happily and didn't hear the scream of the cat as it was twirling around in the fan belt! The owners soon found pussy but he was stripped of his skin from the midway of his back all the way down to the very tip of his tail. His tail was completely denuded of skin and half of the back of the cat was denuded of skin as well. So in comes the family very distraught over this incident and we decided that we could try and put pussy back together - minus the tail! So I gave him an anaesthetic and stitched him back together. And then pussy proceeded, once he'd recovered from the anaesthetic, to start walking around like an elderly gentlemen with very, very tight braces on! Since then pussy has gone from good to excellent health and is now romping around very happily, minus a tail! How's that?!! It takes a lot of hard work to become a vet, what advice do you give young people who wish to also pursue this path? A lot of young people don't have enough faith in themselves to go for what they really believe they would like to do. I feel strongly that everyone has the potential to succeed in what ever they want to do for their future career. And I firmly believe that if they work really hard and despite all the odds and everyone saying that it will be too hard for you, that if you believe in yourself and you go for it then 9 times out of 10 you will succeed. And if you don't succeed at least you know you gave it your very best shot, because its no use getting down the track ten years, and being too frightened to even try, and thinking, you know if only I had tried my very best in doing that then I could have been somewhere else, doing something else. That's how I felt when I was going through high school; everyone said it was to hard to get into Vet Science because at that stage it was harder to become a vet than to go into medicine and I felt a little bit disheartened. If you remember to just keep your eyes on your goal and forget about negative people telling you things that will lead you to be disheartened and try your very best and work really hard then you will succeed most times. It's still very hard these days to get into Vet Science and so you do have to get very good academic marks to get in and it is a very popular course. I think the entrance is so high because of the popularity of the course. You also have to be reasonably academic to cope because once you get into Vet Science the hours that they make you study are quite long. But it is definitely a very rewarding job and well worthwhile!		Jenny with some canine friends in the nick.