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Finzi just after being rescued Pete Wedderburn

Dumped and dying, Finzi's tale serves as warning to dog owners

Finzi’s tale is a cautionary one for dog owners, vet Pete Wedderburn said, warning people to make sure to worm their dogs.

A DOG WHO was dumped and dying had her life saved thanks to the actions of a Bray vet – and her tale is a cautionary one for all dog owners.

Well-known vet Pete Wedderburn kept his Facebook page Pete the Vet updated when he found a dying dog, whom he named Finzi, by the side of the road last week. He spoke to TheJournal.ie about how Finzi came through her ordeal – and how her illness is one other dog owners can learn from.

Collapsed

“This sort of thing happens a lot in my line of work,” said Wedderburn, who was out with his family last Sunday afternoon when they found a dog dumped beside the road.

She was just lying there – she couldn’t walk, she was collapsed. Her gums were as white as sheets and she was emaciated. She was dying.

The family brought the dog back to their home and said they would do what they could for her, picking up items from Wedderburn’s clinic, including fresh blood, which they were lucky to have left over from a previous operation.

They were able to give Finzi a blood transfusion and antibiotics, after which she vomited up worms. “These were worms which hadn’t been treated,” explained Wedderburn.

“A lot of people don’t know all puppies are born with worms. When she was a pup she would have suckled her mother and swallowed worm eggs, which hatched out into the intestine. Some go into the system and settle into the puppy’s mammary glands.” She would then pass these worms on to her young.

Wedderburn said that if there is one message he is keen to get out from this story, it is that dog owners should make sure they worm their dogs to prevent them becoming infected as Finzi was.

The vet was worried that Finzi could die, but hoped that she would come through against the odds. On Sunday night and Monday night she was kept on a drip, and had bloody diaorrhea full of worms. “It was still looking pretty bleak,” said Wedderburn. “It really was only on Tuesday that it started to genuinely pick up.”

On Tuesday morning, Finzi was even well enough to appear on TV3 with Wedderburn, but when they returned from the show they got some bad news. “Somebody had literally found a dead dog – Finzi’s brother. What I found upsetting is he was probably lying in the bushes and was probably too weak to make a sound.”

This story underlines how much of an emotional rollercoaster Wedderburn’s job as a vet can be. “I genuinely don’t think a day goes by without some emotional trauma, good ones and bad ones,” he said.

Animals are beings; they suffer just like we suffer. They have emotions, they feel abandoned, they feel miserable. It’s great to save one dog’s life.

(Pete Wedderburn/YouTube)

Wedderburn said that he was concerned that Finzi may have been abandoned because her owner couldn’t afford a vet. “It is important people realise there is always an option,” he said. “There is always help there.”

He advises people who need treatment for their pet but who don’t have the funds to go to their local vet and explain the situation. “If people are well intentioned and can scrape together some money and make some sort of effort, and prove they are genuine, most vets will be helpful,” he said, adding that animal rescue groups can also be contacted if people find animals that are in distress.

A story from Wedderburn’s veterinary clinic will be featured in each episode of the new series of Animal A&E, which is aired on TV3 at 7.30pm on Thursdays. All of the below photographs are taken from the Pete the Vet Facebook page, with permission.

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Read: 10 tips for tackling your dog’s extra weight>

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25 Comments
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute
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    Sep 28th 2017, 10:54 AM

    Aren’t we lucky our country doesn’t have issues like this or others.

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    Mute Shawn O'Ceallaghan
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    Sep 28th 2017, 12:27 PM

    Helps not building on an island with a Volcano.

    To be fair though, we did settle beside arguably the biggest and strongest colonial power in the world. So we all make mistakes.

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    Mute Brown Boots
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    Sep 28th 2017, 12:41 PM

    I dunno, I guess you’ve not seen Mrs Boots erupting at the slightest thing!

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    Mute Harry Whitehead
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    Sep 28th 2017, 5:34 PM

    @Shawn O’Ceallaghan: People settle near volcanoes for the same reason they settle near rivers and shorelines – it’s a tradeoff between convenience and the occasional disaster. In the case of volcanoes, the convenience is agricultural – volcanic soil is known for being rich and fertile.

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    Mute dangermouse
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    Sep 28th 2017, 10:46 AM

    Isn’t prince Philips a god to these people maybe he can peg the top with the duchess of York

    35
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    Mute TravellingTheWorld
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    Sep 28th 2017, 11:11 AM

    Surprised AFP haven’t blamed ‘Global warming’

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    Mute Gerald Kelleher
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    Sep 28th 2017, 11:28 AM

    @TravellingTheWorld: Well they once tried to incorporate plate tectonics into ‘climate change’ , looking on 9 years later at the propaganda that Goebbels would have be delighted with , it is time to normalize climate as a research topic -

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVGGgncVq-4

    The big idea is comparing evolutionary geology between our planet and our sister planet Venus which are roughly the same size but with very different dynamics. The current batch of geologists don’t have the expansive view to investigate these comparisons much the same as climate guys can’t manage to look at planetary climate within context of all planets in the solar system.

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    Mute Michael Geraghty
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    Sep 28th 2017, 1:05 PM

    @Gerald Kelleher: venus is 42 million miles closer to the sun so pointless comparing the two

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    Mute Gerald Kelleher
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    Sep 28th 2017, 2:43 PM

    @Michael Geraghty: It is not entirely your fault that you can’t adapt to more challenging reasoning but the distance of Venus and the Earth from the nothing has nothing whatsoever to do with evolutionary geology on either planet.

    The Earth has a 26 mile spherical deviation between Equatorial and Polar diameters, in other words it is not a perfect sphere while Venus is. The Earth has both plate tectonic and volcanic activity while Venus has only volcanic activity. When I showed about a decade ago that it is impossible to exempt the Earth’s fluid interior beneath the thin fractured crust from differential rotation across latitudes, the community threw the kitchen sink at rotation and made a balls of it. I trust readers here to see to see how the planet’s rotation connects the planet’s Equatorial bulge (misnomer) with the motion and evolution of the surface crust (plate tectonics).

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    Mute Tomás Havana Kavanagh
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    Sep 28th 2017, 11:54 PM

    @Gerald Kelleher: so are ye saying earth is wobbling about the sun like a water balloon?

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    Mute Noel Allan
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    Sep 28th 2017, 11:36 AM

    Is it just me that noticed on the aircraft wingtip a new website address with an added w?
    when did wwww. become the norm…..lol?

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    Mute Brown Boots
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    Sep 28th 2017, 12:43 PM

    @Noel Allan: and they wonder why their branding ain’t working!

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    Mute Pa Curran
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    Sep 28th 2017, 7:13 PM

    Maybe they’ll pack in the prank calls now.

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    Mute Nicholas O'Halloran
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    Sep 28th 2017, 11:12 AM

    They should watch Von ryan’s express, plenty of tips

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    Mute Brown Boots
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    Sep 28th 2017, 11:16 AM

    @Nicholas O’Halloran: what sinatra running at the end, beaten only by the scene from Heat as the greatest movie running scene ever!!! What actors they all were!

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    Mute Mark Dervan
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    Sep 28th 2017, 1:54 PM

    That’s freaky! I had a missed call this morning from a strange number and when I looked up the country code it was Vanuatu which I’ve never heard of ever!

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    Mute Brian Murphy
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    Sep 28th 2017, 2:51 PM

    @Mark Dervan: So did I!

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    Mute Robc
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    Sep 28th 2017, 10:23 PM

    @Mark Dervan: so did I. I googled it and found out its a phone scam

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    Mute Jonathan Power
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    Sep 28th 2017, 2:16 PM

    I wonder could we do the same for Ireland ‘entire population evacuated prior to Leo’s budget’

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