Ted, Jess & Ruby

Gary and Nikki rush to the practice with an evening emergency, as their pint-size four-month-old Shih Tzu Ted has been injured at home on the eve of his first outside walk. A CT scan shows a broken right humerus, a very bad fracture which has not only splintered up into the humerus but has also broken through a growth plate.

Heidi and Peter arrive with their nine-year-old Schnauzer Jess who is booked in for complex spinal surgery after an earlier operation on her knee. Scans reveal that since birth, Jess’s spine has been growing with a deformity, but Noel also notices a separate potential problem when he finds a fast-growing lump on her thigh.

Two-year-old dachshund Ruby is rushed to Fitzpatricks by a distraught friend of her family after being run over by a car and sustaining life-threatening injuries. Mum Maria is on holiday so Noel has to break the news to her on the phone that her beloved dog has multiple fractures of her pelvis, sacrum and femur bone, which have damaged her nerves and rendered her back legs paralysed: in fact Noel counts thirty-four separate fractures.