It goes without saying that one of the great things about being a vet is getting to work with animals every day. Of course, every patient is important to us, and we always aim to treat each one as if they were our own, so we try very hard not to have favourites. Some patients are particularly special though, and this might be because we see them so often that we get to know them as though they are family, or it may be because they are such a lovable character. In Alfie’s case, it is both!

Alfie the Cockerpoo is not yet a year old, but in his short life we have certainly got to know him very well. When Alfie’s owner first brought him home, delighted with the fluffy, adorable character he was, she very soon got him booked in to see the vet. This first veterinary appointment is very important for a puppy – we are not simply giving them their first vaccinations. It is also an opportunity for them to get used to coming into the surgery, we can talk through their general care requirements at home, and we give them a thorough health check to ensure they have no sign of disease or congenital health abnormality. For Alfie, while he was extremely lively and delighted with all the attention at his first veterinary appointments, it became clear very quickly that he did indeed have some concerning features.

Alfie was found to have a dermoid – a congenital defect of the eye in which part of the cornea acts like the skin and grows hairs. This meant that Alfie’s left eye had a clump of hair growing from it, causing irritation to the surface of his eye.

If this wasn’t enough of a concern, further examination revealed that Alfie had some other abnormalities as well. One of his baby teeth, a lower canine, was in an abnormal position. Not only was this likely to affect the position of the corresponding developing adult canine, but the abnormally positioned tooth was sticking into his hard palate, making a hole in the tissue and causing pain. We also found that one of Alfie’s testicles had not properly descended into his scrotum and was retained further up adjacent to his body wall, where it would be at high risk of developing a tumour later in life.

All of these conditions would affect Alfie’s health and quality of life if left untreated, and this understandably came as a shock for his owner to learn that her beautiful perfect puppy had such ‘imperfections’. What is more, while all of the conditions were treatable, there would inevitably be a cost associated. In particular, the eye condition would require referral to a veterinary ophthalmologist and costly specialist treatment. While she had been very responsible and taken out pet insurance for him, none of these conditions would be covered by the policy as they were present at the time the policy was taken out, so she would have to cover the costs herself.

In theory, Alfie’s owner would have been within her rights to return him to his breeder and request her money back. In reality, there was no chance of this happening as she had already fallen head over heels in love with his beautiful personality, as had we all. After that first visit for his vaccinations, we made a plan for his treatment.

With referral to an ophthalmologist arranged and medical treatment started to keep the eye comfortable in the meantime, our first priority was to extract the abnormally positioned tooth, to prevent further trauma to the soft palate and hopefully encourage the adult tooth to develop more normally. So Alfie underwent his anaesthetic and delicate tooth extraction at just 12 weeks old, weighing only 3kg. Since then, he has had three rounds of complicated ocular surgery at the referral specialist and has been back with us to have his castration, removing the stubborn testicle that was hiding up just inside his leg, along with 3 other baby teeth that he never managed to shed.

More recently, once we thought we had finally resolved all of his congenital problems and he could have a break from vet visits for a while, we saw Alfie again with some very sore ears – so sore in fact that we couldn’t properly examine them with him awake. Once we were able to have a look down his ears under sedation we were able to see that, on top of all his other problems, poor Alfie was unlucky enough to have extremely hairy ear canals. All of the hair growing down his ears was clumping together with wax, blocking the canals and causing irritation, and required plucking away – which was painful and irritating in itself. So poor Alfie developed a fear of having his ears touched and his dedicated owner has had to work hard to desensitise him to ear handling, so he can tolerate it again in future.

We calculated that Alfie has been in to see us for more than 20 visits in his life so far, and that’s not counting the visits to the eye specialist – it’s a lot when you consider that he hasn’t even celebrated his first birthday yet.  Many of these vet visits have involved sedation or anaesthesia and some form of surgery or intervention, so you might expect his initial enthusiasm with the vets to have depleted somewhat. But the reason we love Alfie so much is that he is so delighted to come and see us every single time, giving us all the best kisses and wagging his tail with absolute joy when he gets a fuss. So he most definitely is very special – he might have been born with a few imperfections, but to us Alfie is the perfect patient!