Mê Thú Cưng - Pet Magazine for Vietnam | Số 5 | Issue Five | Animal Welfare Vietnam | Page 89

Mê Thú Cưng
Marcel Lennartz... (from page 64)

had knowledge and did not offer
standard injections. This Vet took
time for the dog, made the dog
relaxed and then arranged for the
injection and then re-comforted
the dog again. Perfect!
Then, Puppy gave birth. All very
cute puppies, but one of the
puppies had only 3 legs (Tripod)
and another one had no bum. Our
Vet recommend to put the dog
without a bum to sleep. He could
operate on him but advised that
it would be cruel to the dog as it
would have lifetime infections, so
we put that one to sleep. We kept
the other dogs, and one by one
went to other families. I wanted
to keep Tripod. It was a happy
dog that jumped like a rabbit.
When I went for a short overseas
business trip and got home, this
dog was given away to a friend
of the family, something I really
didn’t like. Trying to get it back
was not possible as it had already
been given to someone else.

without permission. My old
landlord learned this when he
tried to enter our house when we
were not home. ;) Puppy would
eat anything but there were times
that we only gave her commercial
dog food. We bought a retractable
cord dog leash so when walking
the dog she could easily run 9
meters away. All the time when I
took Puppy out I was very aware
about dog thieves. In front of our
old house there was an area where
it was safe to let her run around
without leash. No one ever stole
my Puppy.

Describe your overall
experiences and feelings of
having pets in Vietnam?

Puppy got older but was hardly
ever sick, until March 2012. She
was still very happy but became
more and more silent. She had
one nipple which clearly had an
infection. I tried to find the good
Vet on Nguyen Dinh Chieu, but
he was gone. To me it looked her
Puppy had a strong character. illness looked like Mastitis and
She would follow me everywhere, then I went online and tried to find
was extremely happy when I another vet, which wasn’t easy.
got home but would attack any Finally a local Vet came. He looked
stranger entering my house at the dog and said “your dog

has cancer”. This logically didn’t
make sense as cancer doesn’t
come that quickly nor can you
say that without blood samples.
When asked why he knew it was
cancer his answer was simple
(and standard): “Your dog is 14
years old, I know it is cancer”.
Puppy received injections and
some stuff that should make the
hardened puss inside the breast
softer. Indeed for a few days the
infection started to become less
and Puppy was a bit more alive.
Then suddenly it became very
worse. I didn’t want to use the
same Vet again and posted on
many forums to ask for support in
finding a good qualified Vet that
“knows what he/she is doing”.
After an entire night of postings,
one person responded from
the ARC animal rescue. They
immediately gave me the
telephone number of Dr. Nghia, a
miracle doctor, which I wish I had
known earlier. One of the reasons
that I didn’t meet him earlier
was because there was another
Vet with a similar name and bad
reputation. So I thought this was
the same clinic. I was totally
wrong.
I called his office in the morning
and he urged me to bring Puppy
as soon as possible. Puppy went
into horrible shape overnight. She
got really dirty from her illness but
I didn’t want to clean her to avoid
causing more pain.
When arriving at Dr. Nghia’s clinic
he immediately said that this
was not cancer and he expected
it to be Pyometra. But without
proper testing he couldn’t directly
confirm this. He performed
various tests and confirmed that
it was Pyometra; an extremely

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