17/07/2026
STORY SHARED WITH FAMILY’S PERMISSION:
I lost my precious girl 1 year ago, she was 9 years old.
She joined our family aged 5 having lived in a breeding kennels for those first years of her life. This somehow makes what happened to her even harder to come to terms with.
It just shows how resilient dogs are, from day 1 she was the sweetest, happiest, trusting dog, so happy with her new life.
At the end of May 2025 I called our vets to say she needed to be seen urgently, first thing that morning, due to sickness the previous day. She was unusually subdued, straining to pass faeces, which she couldn’t do, pacing around the garden. My instinct told me she had an obstruction somewhere.
On arrival at the surgery I agreed to leave her for imaging after confirming that there was a vet on duty who could perform surgery if it was needed. No consent forms were given to me, the phone line was down, no internet, no printer. No costs discussed.
I called at midday for an update having had no communication, to be told imaging confirmed a large amount of content within the stomach and intestine consistent with food or similar density material which was not moving.
It had been decided to administer fluids and laxatives to try to move the material from the gut to the large intestine. This procedure had not been discussed with me, I had not given my consent.
A phone call mid afternoon confirmed no change. I questioned if surgery was needed now, was told they would continue with the same. Another phone call later to say come and collect her at 6pm, no change.
I was shown images taken at 10.48 that morning showing the mass in the stomach and intestine. The procedure had done nothing. She had passed nothing out. She had been at the surgery for 8 hours.
She was brought to me and sat panting hard, regurgitated fluid in front of the vet, she looked weak and wobbly. The vet said he hadn’t realised she looked that bad. He advised to take her home and bring her back at 8 am the following day for surgery. He would pass the history to the out of hours vets in case.
We drove her home briefly and could see her stomach was enlarged, bloated looking, she was panting and pacing, and still straining to pass something. We phoned the emergency out of hours vets which was held at a nearby veterinary hospital and took her straight there.
I will be forever grateful to the vet who met us and instantly recognised the emergency that it was, who wasted no time getting her the help she needed. We left her knowing she would be having immediate surgery to remove the blockage. First sentence on the clinical notes written by this vet says ‘very poor history and no x-ray from vet and no vet handover. Very poor communication by case at vets’. ‘Client arrived with dog actively regurgitating, very quiet and sedate looking, wobbling, drooling, very uncomfortable’. This was within 1 hour of collecting her from the vet practise where she had been for 8 hours for treatment.
Surgery initially involved draining 1 litre of fluid from her stomach. a further 700 ml were removed during surgery. She found purple intestine, with the colon in front of the abdomen, very full of poo, small intestine dark purple and minimal pulses, colon starting to discolour. This is a lot to explain but i think it shows the severity of the state she was in. Small fibrous tissue bands had formed and were strangulating the small intestine, colon had twisted on top.
This vet dealt with all of this and the colour returned to the intestines, she completed her surgery.
My dog remained in intensive care for 4 days, I visited her there. She should not have survived this episode but she did. If at any point I thought she needed it to end I would have done so, but she was a strong determined girl.
She was still very poorly and developed sceptic peritonitis so we agreed to transfer her to a large Veterinary training hospital for more treatment. She stayed there for 5 days, recovered and came home.
During all of this with the help of a retired solicitor friend I wrote to the original vets, informed them of what happened and asked for answers as to why she wasn’t treated that day. My costs so far were at £12k.
The vet referred to the VDS. I gave the VDS full account of the history, told them the vets had been negligent by not treating her, having identified a blockage. I said I was looking to recover the full amount of my costs from them.
After 3 months the VDS replied, they had seen all the history from all veterinary practises involved. The response from the VDS was shocking.
Sentences from the history made by the operating vet had been taken out of context from paragraphs, and put in to new sentences giving a different meaning. The whole letter was a distorted account of the truth.
The operating vet wrote in her notes, once she had completed the surgery that she “followed intestines up to stomach and then back down to colon no hard FB material palpable“.
The VDS wrote in their response
“We cannot support your suggestion that the difficulties arose as a direct result of an intestinal blockage. We note the following entry confirming no such obstruction was found”.
One sentence in the vets notes used by them to contort the truth.
The response concluded by saying if I wanted to prove negligence I was welcome to obtain an independent veterinary report and make a claim in court.
I did a lot of research and investigating other cases with the help of my friend and concluded this was the VDS supporting the veterinary industry rather than a fair route forward for the pet owner and indeed this was no longer about proving right or wrong but how to win in the legal system.
Sadly then things changed and I could not find the strength to carry on a legal battle.
After a few weeks at home, with highs and lows, one day my dog was very sick and showed all her original symptoms. I knew she could not go through any more. I made the decision to put her to sleep.
No scans so no conclusion.
We will never know the reason for those fibrous bands that caused the strangulation which in turn caused a loss of blood flow to her intestines, but what I do know is that if this had been discovered 12 hours earlier and those bands had been cut away there would not have been a loss of blood flow to her other organs. There is a chance she could have made a full recovery.
I realise this is very long but I want to include a second incident that happened to my dog whilst on a check up appointment at the Veterinary training hospital, due to the previous sceptic peritonitis.
She had stayed there overnight to be monitored and on our journey to collect her we got a call to say she had gone lame on a hind limb. We arrived and were told actually it was the hind leg they had inserted a cannula into. She was still weak at this point but we had been told she needed a test for Addisons disease. This test had been suggested during her first stay but it was explained it was invasive, unlikely she had Addisons, she was too weak for the test so it wasn’t done.
During the follow up appointment i was told again she needed this test, I said No. I was worried she was still too weak so we wouldn’t do it. It was then insisted that she could be missing vital treatment if she did indeed have Addisons disease so I very reluctantly agreed.
On arrival we were taken to see her but she wasn’t in her kennel, apparently vet nurses were taking her outside as she had wind. It was 27 degrees heat that day. I saw 2 nurses trying to walk her outside in the heat on 3 legs, barely moving, panting. In complete shock I told the nurses to get her back inside in the cool. She was taken to a kennel in ICU, she collapsed in the kennel and lay whining. I never saw her in this much pain even after surgery. She had a massive swelling in her groin. The Vet fetched a senior vet who said it was an odema, a swelling of fluid, it happened after the cannula had been removed for the Addisons test. He gave her more pain relief.
My husband stayed and insisted they scan to confirm, I had to leave the room and wait in reception as I couldn’t cope with what I saw.
The vet came back to me later and i said I did not appreciate witnessing what the vet nurses were doing and why was it necessary, she would have gone to the toilet inside if needed, it was too hot outside. I did not expect to see this treatment in that establishment. No apology, just normal way of doing things. We had no choice to leave her overnight and collected her the following day. I nursed her at home, iced flannels slowly brought down the odema and pain killers for several days. She really had not needed this on top of everything else.
I phoned the department and spoke to the senior vet in charge of both vets in training who had treated my dog and said I was not happy I felt forced into agreeing to the Addisons test, the incident happened because they did the test, my dog was in no fit state anyway and I was frankly appalled at the handling of the situation that arose.
I received a letter from the clinical manger who I had not met and who had never seen my dog, telling me that feedback from a student vet said my behaviour was in breach of their zero tolerance policy, and they would no longer provide Veterinary services to me.
I have never replied to this. It feels like a case of veterinary training taking precedence over animal care.
I hope that changes happen, the small animal veterinary industry is in desperate need of change. Pet owners deserve better, animals deserve care.
Please sign the petition asking the UK Government, “To Establish an Independent Veterinary Ombudsman for Pet Owners to provide a fair, impartial system for handling complaints about veterinary care. The service should be able to investigate cases, make binding decisions and ensure accountability across all vet practices”:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/771177
