A Duty of Care

Some ghosts come back to haunt you.

1987, I left school, left college, gave up performing too (I’d been a dancer).

My parents fed up with me being at home pushed me into work. I fancied working with animals – so when an opportunity came up to work for Rose Cottage Veterinary Centre in Frodsham, as a trainee Veterinary Nurse I jumped at the opportunity. I was learning to drive and my parents bought me a car so that I could drive myself over to Frodsham to do this job.

They put me on a four month trial, and I worked hard, getting in there everyday and putting up with the shocking attitude of the vets towards the nurses and the nurses towards the trainees in turn.

Hey, I’d been all into singing and dancing, quiet to the point of being seen as a dumb animal myself.

I won’t go into too much detail, except one day I turned up for work, and news was there had been a caesarean upon a Rottweiler the night before, but I wasn’t to go into the kennel or anything on my own. I was asked to take the rubbish out – which included the clinical waste, body bits, blood etc…which was put into the freezer awaiting incineration.

I carried the sacks out, and as I walked past the kennel block towards the furthest building that housed the freezer, I could hear a strange noise, like that of a troubled small animal. Confused, I thought this over a bit, until the noise got so noticeable that I decided to break open the clinical waste bag.

Shocked, but at the same time overjoyed I found a tiny newborn puppy freezing cold but totally alive despite its experience of being thrown into the rubbish and left out in the cold for hours upon end.

Immediately I began to warm the pup up – and decided to go back into the veterinary centre and tell a nurse or someone, what I had found, ask what to do next – you know?

At first the nurse who I spoke to was thrilled too, or at least she pretended to be, we talked about whether the pup should be put in with its mother or given a feed first, and she asked could she take the puppy because she needed to speak to the vet.

The vet who had operated upon the Rottweiler the night before was called Elizabeth Gorse. The nurse called her to tell her what I had found. However Mrs Gorse said that because she had already told the owners the number of live puppies delivered by caesarean the night before, this one must be killed.

I protested, too right I did. I said the owners wouldn’t care about the numbers, it was only her embarrassed of her mistake, the pup had survived in a rubbish bag, it deserved the chance to live – if they were so embarrassed by this I would hand rear the pup myself and then no-one would ever know.

The pup was killed and flung into the medical waste once more.

I was severely disturbed by this, I mean I wanted to work with animals because I love them, plus I am a very sensitive person as it is. I hated that woman you can understand that, I cried for hours, except no-one could understand the pain.

A troubled teenager – indeed.

Next I took a blade from the surgery and went home and I cut myself, not because I wanted to kill myself or anything, but because I wanted to wear the emotional scar Elizabeth Gorse had put on my soul, on the outside, not the in.

Of course I didn’t last long, they soon dismissed me – I couldn’t stand being in the same building as the murderer – cold blooded murder – oh just an animal you might say, but if you can do that to an animal….

Tension built up at home because the job was gone, and the car my parents had bought me I was supposed to be paying for, except now I couldn’t. Without being aware of what she had done this woman Elizabeth Gorse had torn my life apart.

Now I ask you – don’t vets have a duty of care and a responsibility to put the welfare of animals first?

Written by J. Mitchinson VN BA(Hons)