Ruby to the Rescue!

The life of a vet is never a boring one! We had an unusual emergency this morning.

One of our neighbours had seen a collection of small creatures left in a cardboard box in the field out the back of the practice. When she tried to pick it up the wet sodden box fell apart and the little critters all ran away!

Walking straight to the practice she told us the sorry news and Louise went out armed with towels and a basket to see if she could find them.

Luckily despite the rain this morning the poor bedraggled critters had stayed close to the box. 13 very wet scared gerbils were hiding in the long grass! Thankfully they were very good to handle but very quick and at the time we had no idea how many there were!

Ruby the red setter was passing on his morning walk with his owner Mrs Graham Smith and another local dog walker Mr Troy. Very quickly we were on our hands and knees capturing all these gerbils!

Ruby was amazingly gentle and found more than the rest of us put together. With his keen sense of smell he was able to root them out of the long grass and then amazingly picked them up in his mouth and brought them to us. With the first we thought it might have been curtains for the poor gerbil but he very gently deposited a now quite surprised gerbil into our hands and went to find another. Amazing!

We are pleased to report we now have 13 much happier gerbils - 7 boys and 6 girls. All very well handled and surprisingly all fit despite their ordeal. We will be re-homing them to a local rodent rescue centre unless there are any good local homes available so do let us know!

In the meantime we are all very grateful to Ruby and his amazing search and rescue skills!