On 6 December 2005 I flew, together with Petra, to Istanbul, to accompany, on our return flight, dogs that had been adopted in Holland (through the AAI foundation) and in Germany. It was the first time that I had visited an animal shelter abroad. Upon our arrival in Istanbul we were warmly welcomed by Tuana, one of the volunteers, even though it was the middle of the night.

Because I adopted a dog from Istanbul in 2001 I was really interested to see the shelter from where Jesse, my Turkish German pointer, came. We set off the following morning, but first we went to another shelter nearby, Ömerli. Tuana is trying to introduce some improvements there. From the outside it looked nice, inside it was, given the circumstances, also fine. The dogs were in tiled pens with pallets to lie on. They didn’t have any access to outdoors where they could run and play. I took a few photos while Petra went to a larger pen to start a doggy-hugging session. I took a photo of a pointer then followed Petra in to the pen to tickle, scratch, cuddle and be generally silly with the dogs….

The pointer stood up, and to our amazement there was a pool of blood where she had been lying. She licked the area clean. As she came towards us she began bleeding more heavily. It was clear form her teats that she had recently had puppies, but there was no sign of them. I asked Tuana if we could take her to a vet but fiorsthe went off to find out what had happened. It turned out that the pointer had been sterilised 10 days before by a vet who would have made a better butcher. He had gone on holiday, without arranging for a locum. It s incredible how some vets in Turkey treat the animals they care for. The dog clearly felt unwell, and wanted nothing more than to get away from us.

We took her to the car and carefully placed her in the back. I sat in the back seat to keep an eye on her and saw that she was bleeding even more heavily, and that she constantly licked it up. She didn’t react to my calming words or my stroking. Finally after half an hour (Istanbul is big) we arrived. When we opened the door we saw to our shock that it was getting worse. She was immediately examined, and showed all the signs of shock. The vet concluded, after blood tests, that this dog needed an immediate operation, but due to the enormous blood loss she first needed a transfusion. And through it all she kept on bleeding. Tuana phoned the SHKD shelter, and within half an hour someone arrived with a donor-dog. They took some blood from this dog. Meanwhile the pointer had been taken to the operating theatre, because she was in such a serious condition, and the blood was not yet available. We waited, and waited, and drank coffee, and waited…..


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