Worldwide Veterinary Service

A Winter Adventure in Samos

Beth Thompson MRCVS, Veerle Dejonckheere MRCVS, and David Cruz VNOnce again, Heathrow airport was the meeting place for three individuals setting off for a week’s adventure on the island of Samos, and thanks to the wonders of text messaging, you could be reasonably sure of introducing yourself to the persons standing opposite check-in desk number 33. Our team was ‘head vet’ Veerle Dejonckheere; myself, a new grad from London; and vet nurse David Cruz, who as man of the group, was elected by the girls to be responsible for organising us all.

With sweet smiles to convince the airline staff to waver the excess baggage fee, we were set for our night of flying, departing Heathrow at 10pm and, with a few hours in Athens airport, arriving in Samos to the sight of a beautiful sunrise over the hills. “Well, it ain’t flat” commented David as we walked across the tarmac to the terminal. It certainly wasn’t!

We had been disappointed to learn that we weren’t to meet the legendary Joeri, who was home in Holland enjoying a well deserved holiday. However, we had the pleasure of working with Didi and Michel, a Danish couple currently volunteering at the shelter, and it was Michel who greeted us smilingly at the airport. Over the week, we experienced their wonderful friendship and hospitality, with their never-ending supply of spinach pastries and doughnuts, and were constantly in awe of their dedication and determination to help the animals of Samos. Within just two months, they had become known across the whole island as the ‘famous Danish couple’, a true reflection of their work.

After our exhausting journey, our thoughts had turned to catching a few hours kip before beginning our task. Didi and Michel had, however, been told of the first WVS trip and ‘Super Clive’, who, as legend goes, operated for 24 hours solidly immediately following a journey longer and more arduous than ours. So, on our arrival in the basement of the house, we were met by the sight of rather a few dogs and cats awaiting our attention (including a Great Dane!) and with a list of ‘consults’ also coming in that same morning.

So our work began. We sprung into action before tiredness could kick in, unpacking our bags and setting up our operating space. The hydraulic table and lighting were indeed better than that seen in many practices, and a nearby freezer made a useful place for laying out our sterile kit. Our first major challenge was learning how to sterilise instruments using the pressure cooker we had brought with us. After following the instructions to the letter, and putting our entire set of instruments through a cycle, we were faced with the unthinkable. We could not get the lid off! We rechecked the instructions. Yes, it had cooled down sufficiently. Yes, all the pressure had been released. Still it was jammed shut! How about a ‘gentle’ tap on the floor. Eureka!! (We were sure that step had just mistakenly been omitted from the instructions). At this moment, Didi and Michel returned and asked whether we were interested in an autoclave that they could get hold off. Yes please!!

On this first day we made good progress through our cases, beginning with a few cat castrates and spays to test our anaesthetic protocols, and then, in the late afternoon, turning our attention to Stella, the Great Dane. She was certainly not the breed of dog that we had been expecting and I think she sapped the last strength out of us! With a few patients still waiting, and with owners expecting to collect them that evening, we were saved by the arrival of the ‘German A-Team’. This was two lady veterinarians, one of whom worked full time in different neutering projects throughout the Greek Islands. They had visited Samos a week previously, and on stopping by tonight, offered to finish our last cases whilst we grabbed a couple of hours sleep before Tobi took us out for a welcome dinner. They were a supreme example of German efficiency and we were incredibly grateful.

Day two began with a surprise for Veerle and I. We were sharing a room and awoke to find that a little dog named Lily had joined us sometime during the night. In speaking to her owners later that day, we discovered that she had learned the art of sneaking into peoples beds, as if she woke her Dad she would be swiftly returned to the floor! David had also shared his room with a multitude of cats, but then his door had been deliberately left open to encourage them in! The ‘party’ continued in David’s room each night, and later included the addition of a beautiful puppy called Sam. If the UK did not have quarantine laws, Veerle and I both felt that Sam would have found a new home in Devon.

Our second day was as busy as the first, with many private owners having been persuaded to bring in their animals for sterilisation. I had not completed a huge amount of surgery prior to graduating, but Veerle was the most excellent and patient teacher, and David ensured that the anaesthetic was never a concern. The German A-Team had left us a fantastic anaesthetic protocol for dogs using xylazine, diazepam and ketamine, which proved very successful. Throughout the week, we did encounter considerably more bleeding during surgery than usual, with up to 15 swabs being required for a bitch spay in comparison to the typical 4. We suspected Ehrlichia although significant bleeding was also seen in dogs that we tested as Ehrlichia negative.

Our third day was a busy surgery day again, but we took a break from operating on the fourth day for Didi and Michel to drive us to see the shelter. Samos’ rainy season begins in November, and unfortunately on the day we ventured out, torrential downpours replaced the occasional showers of the last few days. Thankfully for the dogs at the shelter, Didi and Michel had placed their beds up on pallets in anticipation of the change in weather, so they were now both undercover and raised up. The dogs had a curious habit of daily dragging their blankets out into the rain and the puddles, but it was wonderful to see their pleasure and excitement as we gave them fresh clean bedding.

There was a beautiful mix of dogs at the shelter, with hints of Beagle and Labrador, through to wiry coated terriers and elegant hunting dogs. It was wonderful to know that twenty of them were leaving for new homes in mainland Europe in a few weeks, with another twenty going at the beginning of December. Over the last few months, Michel and Joeri have been extending the shelter with a new covered run area, an isolation building and a sewage tank well on the way to completion.

Two individual cases at the shelter brought us both great sadness and great pleasure. Whilst we were feeding the dogs, David noticed a handsome dog named Paul looking unwell, and despite our efforts, we lost him through haemorrhagic gastroenteritis overnight. Thankfully, no further cases developed. Twix, a chocolate Labrador lookalike was our success story. Didi and Michel had been worried that something in the back of his mouth was causing him great distress. He had stopped eating and was now having difficulty breathing. We took him back to the apartment, and under anaesthesia we identified a huge swelling of his soft palate. Happily this was an abscess and in draining a considerable volume of pus we identified the culprit. A grass seed. As Twix came round from his anaesthetic, he began taking the most wonderfully deep breaths of air, with a truly joyful expression on his face. “I can breathe” he seemed to say.

After our visit to the shelter, and a brief return to the apartment to change into clean dry clothes, we drove along the northern coastline, with its views of Turkey, to visit a lady called Gabby. She was not only the owner of Lily, but also of Max and foster mum to two 6 week old puppies, who were doing considerably too well on their 3 hourly day and night feeding. Max had sustained a broken femur a few weeks previously, and thanks to his small size, Gabby had been able to smuggle him into the local hospital under her jacket to have an x-ray taken. He appeared to making good progress as we changed his bandage. Gabby had supplied us with the most delicious apple pie earlier in the week, and today surpassed it with a chocolate rum cake. Thanks to these cakes, the Greek tavernas we visited each evening with Didi and Michel, and Tobi’s generous first and last night dinners, we were certainly never in any danger of starving!

Our final visit of the day, was to the home of Stella, the Great Dane, who belonged to two reclusive English artists. Their house was both their studio, with signs of work in progress, and a gallery displaying their finished work, which has been exhibited as far away as Montana, USA in the presence of Presidents. For those of us who work in the scientific world, it was a refreshing taste of art and the expat life. With no permanent small animal vet on Samos, we were truely overwhelmed by the heartfelt thanks of Stella’s owners, and indeed of most of the people we met during the week.

We returned to our operating suite for the last two days, and Veerle, David and I all felt the ‘good vibe’ that came with the establishment of a good and successful routine. I was gaining considerable confidence in my surgery, thanks to Veerle’s instruction, and David placed some fantastically neat skin sutures in several cases. A couple of challenges were provided by a Sharpei-Staffy cross, who was not overly enamoured by us but did allow her owner to place a muzzle on her, and an escapee cat that leapt across all our shelves laid out neatly with our drugs and equipment, and narrowly missed placing her paws across our sterile kit, before she was apprehended. But even our attempt at cleaning the floor with Hibiscrub, due to a lack of disinfectant, that had turned the room into a skating rink, did not upset our stride.

We were kept company throughout by an assortment of cute puppies, recuperating dogs and a host of cats that had adopted the apartment as home. A cat hammock, resplendent with cushions, had been suspended from the spiral stairs beside the operating table, which provided the cats with a fantastic view of all proceedings and a suitable place from which they could bat at us with their paws as we walked below.

Didi and Michel demonstrated their dedication time and time again to us, not least during these last two days which they spent trying to catch a large dog they had spotted with a tiny collar around its neck that was causing a severe injury. Apparently, an all too common problem when collars are placed on puppies before they become street dogs. Didi and Michel’s persistence, coupled with enough sedative to calm a horse, was ultimately rewarded, but as the dog was Leishmania positive he was put to sleep. At least some comfort can be derived from knowing that the dog was no longer suffering.

A busy week passed all too quickly, and we soon found ourselves heading out into Samos town one last time for a farewell and thank you dinner with Tobi. Veerle, David, Didi, Michel and myself then visited the café bar that had become a favourite haunt over the week, for one last pina colada and baileys.

We were leaving on an early flight out of Samos, but our promises of ‘We will stay awake all night’ soon faded into sleep. A sleep that was broken by panic, as we woke to realise we should have been at the airport 20minutes ago! Into Michel’s tiny Dhiatsu, piled five people and four rucksacks (thank goodness we packed the night before!), narrowly missing sitting in a car sick puppy Sam’s vomit, and off we sped to the sound of wheels spinning as we rounded the tortuous mountain roads. We arrived at the airport 20 minutes before our flight actually departed to find that most of the flight’s passengers were just casually arriving themselves! Maybe if we had tried to do that in a major airport like Athens we would have been less fortunate. It wasn’t until we were sitting in Athens airport a good few hours later, awaiting our connecting flight to the UK, that I realised in the haste of leaving the apartment that I had put my t-shirt on i!nside out!!

Veerle, David and I all agreed that it had been a wonderful week, and a pleasure to have contributed to the work that Animal Care, Samos are doing on the island. All the clients had been so positive and thankful towards us, and they and we all wished we could have stayed longer. And it was lovely to have the satisfaction of knowing that we had some role in ensuring that dogs, like Twix, were going onto a better future.