When I was a student nurse working in the community I once sat on a patient’s chihuahua, which was asleep on her couch. Its owner put in a written complaint about my behaviour. ( or more importantly my behind)
In another home I once spied a mummified cat , curled up near a long used coal fire and could only go go eyed my colleague as she tried to persuade that patient to enter psychiatric hospital
At another house, in the Sheffield districts I couldn’t help verify a patient’s death as I heard a family pet ( a nasal pug with a habit of hiding under her mistresses’ bed ) heavy breathing 🐕
I once saw a farm dog lie still and whimpering next to the paralysed body of her shephard owner and I pretended not to notice an elderly dying patient’s Yorkshire terrier as it was “ smuggled” into intensive Care by a tearful grandaughter, under her anorak.
I’ve seen my own dear Meg , a feisty and somewhat bad tempered Welsh terrier , sit still and respectful at a moribund patient’s bedside. Something Mary copied a few years later.
And Finlay , my first Welsh terrier once gently removed a spinal injury patient tracheostomy inner tube and held it in his mouth like a Frenchman smoking a cigarette as the staff looked on open mouthed .
I was present when a florid schizophrenic patient strangled the ward budgie
And I’ve watched tearfully as a psych patient on his deathbed called to his dead wife only to be told he was in fact asking to see his long deceased old horse.
Animals in hospital ….and outside hospital they love who they love
