The boat trip got delayed by a day because we had an emergeny call. Sabrina was in pain, she was riddled with mammary cancer, hot and painful to the touch and she was having trouble getting about. Ethically this is was a really tough one. The surgical challenge was huge – a mammary strip, spay and mass removal under field anaesthesia – on an old dog with probably aggressive adeno-carcinomas. On the other hand, she was bright in her eye, wagging her tail and her owners clearly loved her dearly. She was a very sweet dog as well. I had Annie with me which was a massive plus because having assistance with the anaesthetic was going to be key.

After a bit of pondering and debating, we decided to go with it. The surgery took nearly 3 hours – it was really tough and all was going well until about 7hours post surgery. Sabrina just wasn´t recovering as I´d expect so Í decided to have another look and make sure I hadn´t slipped a ligature. She also had horrible bloody diarrhoea. Annie gave me a hand and on the second operation, the ties looked fine, but there was a lot of free blood in her abdomen and she seemed to be oozing from everywhere. Whether she has an underlying condition, I´m not sure, but she seemed to be clotting so I tied absolutely everything again. When I left this morning at about 4.45 her colour was a bit better but she is still not quite right. I just hope the whole ordeal hasn’t been too much with her.
 

I’ve petitioned for an extra cabin on the boat so Sabrina is coming with us. We are all depserately rooting that she pulls through.