I DON'T think I have told you about the beautifully trained, mid-aged Labrador that arrived at our house nearly a year ago?

Our new pet, pictured, has settled in well, enjoyed long walks, spent a considerable amount of time in front of the fire and proven herself to have impeccable manners and a calm and relaxed demeanour.

Last week, at the surgery, I performed a complete ovariohysterectomy on her. In short, she got spayed, dressed, neutered; call it what you will.

There were a couple of reasons. The ladies of the house found it difficult to cope with her coming into season and dripping blood for ten days, and I was worried about future womb problems.

The day before the procedure, I was chatting to a ‘doggy’ friend and told her what was to occur. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Spaying your own dog!’ ‘That will be extra special!’

And it was… We were up early to go for a walk, making sure her bladder and bowel were empty.

Once at the practice, she was weighed, health checked (again) and she received a premedication of sedative and painkiller, carefully and painlessly injected into her muscle. After an hour, an intravenous cannula was placed in her foreleg and, while a very experienced veterinary nurse held her gently and murmured soothingly, anaesthesia was cautiously induced by way of a slow i/v injection. As she lay safely on her side, her head was held for me so that an appropriately sized endotracheal tube could be placed in her airway. Immediately, the nurse attached her to the anaesthetic machine, delivering 100 per cent oxygen and isoflurane, with the flow rates and concentrations reconciled with her bodyweight and depth of anaesthesia.

I like to clip the hair from my patient’s surgical site, as it allows me to see the lie of the land and get in the zone. While I did that, her vital signs were monitored continuously by a registered veterinary nurse who has performed thousands of anaesthetics.

As I scrubbed up, she was laid in a cradle on a heated mat and her abdominal skin was sterilised, allowing me to make a less than four cm incision in her midline. Her right ovary was located deep in her abdomen and the ligament carefully broken down, enabling it to be exteriorised. The ovarian artery was ligated with extreme care. We really don’t want these to bleed.

Then the uterine horn was detached from the mesometrium and the left ovary treated in a similar manner. After both ovaries and the Y shaped uterus were removed, the abdominal muscle was neatly repaired with a very high quality, synthetic, absorbable suture, and then the skin was similarly closed. Under a warm blanket, she was monitored until fully recovered.

So. Yes. It was extra special, but was it any different from any other procedure I have ever performed? Not a bit of it! They are all extra special!

You can only be as careful as you can be and everyone’s pet should be treated like your own.