To hear the words at the 6 week old check up, that Mabel was going to be here for a good time, not a long time, caused my wife and I to be a bit stunned.
When our litter of 8 was being checked over for the first time at the vets, it was the last thing that we had expected. Little Mabel was tiny, but mighty among her litter mates. To hear that she had a significant heart murmur and wasn’t likely to be around for a long time made the whole family quite sad. We felt that we would have to trudge towards an entitle sad ending without much chance of hope.
After some processing time, we got in contact with SASH at North Ryde, driving from Canberra to meet with Dr. Arianne.
It was wonderful to see, even while waiting in the foyer, staff who were just walking past, coming over to say hello to Mabel. It is clear that they all love what they do.
Dr Arianne clearly explained the urgency of surgery, but also that there was a clear pathway for hope, and 5 days later we met Dr Julia, who made heart surgery understandable in her explanations.
Mabel was taken into their care and every time we rang up to check in on Mabel post surgery, the team all knew who Mabel was and they were able to get us an update on her recovery.
While we are not out of the woods yet, we are so grateful to Arianne, Julia and the team for giving hope back, and for ensuring that there is a little happy wagging tail around for longer than what was expected!
– North Ryde NSW
