The nation’s best-loved vet looks back at the funniest, most absurd and heart-breaking animal encounters and situations he has been in over his long and highly successful career.
Peter Wright reflects on the changes he's seen in a vet practice, farming and pet ownership, and describes how our relationship with our pets has evolved over the decades.
He also remembers his own personal pets and the relationships we build with our animals and recounts his personal grief at the loss of them.
"My mentor and former boss Alf Wight said that the life of a vet is never dull and how true he was. It is funny looking back that he found fame through his James Herriot books, and now his former surgery and myself have been taken to the nation’s heart once again through our show The Yorkshire Vet.
“It just shows what a nation of animal lovers we are and these past few years have been particularly challenging for all of us with the Coronavirus outbreak. But what it has shown me is the comfort and support out pets give us in times like these.
"All the same, it was this, along with recent changes to my working life that gave me an opportunity to reflect, so I want to look back at some of my favorite cases and share them with you."
Strange cases
Winston, the Labrador had a rather tragic start in life.
One of a pair, his sibling was stillborn so in his first months Winston missed the rough and tumble of having another puppy to play with and perhaps that’s why in later life he developed a strange habit.
Winston belonged to a good friend of mine, Mark, who is a former maths teacher, and his wife, Pam. They were both dog lovers. I play bridge with Mark each week and he is a very keen sportsman.
He was a fantastic cricketer and was chair of the North Riding County Football Association. He is an upright character, who loves life and lives it well.
Winston sometimes went to stay with Pam’s parents, who were also dog fanatics. No one knows why Winston developed this strange habit, but it started one day when Winston was on one of his sleepovers.
Pam’s mother wore ‘pop socks’, which are the knee-high tights that older ladies sometimes wear. Winston was having a wander around the house, sniffing around, as he did, and spied these pop socks laid out on a bed.
For some reason, Winston decided these items of hosiery would make a good meal and he devoured them.
One can only imagine how tricky they would have been to swallow but Winston ate both so they must have been worth the effort.
Not long after, he started vomiting as his body tried to eject the foreign objects. When he didn’t stop vomiting and was making no progress in ejecting the offending articles he was taken to the Skeldale practice where I saw him.
After a brief chat with Mark and Pam about his symptoms, it was apparent that one of the potential causes of his distress was that he’d eaten something that wasn’t agreeing with him.
To ascertain what was going on in his stomach he was X-rayed. The problem with soft foreign bodies like pop socks is that they don’t show up very well on radiographs.
However, when I looked at the X-rays of Winston’s abdomen, I could see a slight shadow and buildup of gas which suggested there was something in there that didn’t belong.
Sometimes, when an animal eats something that can’t be digested, it can be left to work its way through, but this only applies to small objects.
The size of the shadow on the X-ray was big enough to give me a reason to open him up, and so he was prepped for surgery.
It didn’t take long to find out the cause once I had cut into his abdomen. Sure enough, there were the pop socks, which I teased out gently.
‘Now Winston,’ I said to him as I worked, ‘what do we have here?’
There were two of them, bundled together and covered in digestive juices and bits of liquefied food. With raised eyebrows, I dropped them into a kidney bowl and set about stitching the patient back up.
After he’d come around, he stayed with us for observation. Generally, after such surgery an animal will stay for around twenty- four to forty-eight hours until they’ve eaten and defecated.
Two days later a sheepish Winston was sent away feeling sorry for himself and I assumed that would be the last of the matter, and that Winston had learned his lesson.
However, it transpired that Winston obviously had developed a taste for footwear because three weeks later Pam was on the phone to the surgery.
‘He’s done it again,’ she said, exasperated.
‘This time it’s socks.’
‘Are you sure, Pam?’ I asked.
‘Absolutely sure, Peter,’ she answered.
‘I saw him. There was a pair of Mark’s left on the bed and he jumped up quick as a flash and wolfed them down before I could get to him and pull them out of his mouth.’
I could only imagine Pam, who is quite athletic, making a dash to avert disaster and get the socks before Winston did, ending with a despairing dive onto the bed. But her efforts were in vain and now Winston was once more vomiting and in discomfort.
‘You’d better bring him in again as a matter of urgency,’ I advised.
Winston arrived soon after, his head hung low.
He gave me a look as if to say, ‘I’ve been a silly boy again, haven’t I?’
‘Oh Winston,’ I said. ‘What have you done?’
We didn’t need to X-ray him this time as we had an eyewitness and sure enough, when he was opened again on the operating table, there in his stomach was a pair of dark men’s cotton socks.
Once again Winston was stitched up and sent away looking sorry for himself after he’d recovered.
From that day on things changed in Mark and Pam’s house. Winston needed to be weaned off his strange addiction and so hosiery, socks and other undergarments were kept under lock and key, out of temptation’s way.
Winston went cold turkey and it appeared to work until some years later when Mark and his sons, who were decent cricketers like their father, went to a cricket match near Wetherby and took Winston along with them.
The local team was playing a team visiting from Australia and the Aussies had batted. It was a warm day and some of the players had left their pads out in the sun and placed their sweaty socks on top of them to dry.
Winston was having a wander around when he spied these abandoned morsels and couldn’t help himself.
He bounded over to the pads, which would have looked and smelled like a sock buffet to him, and before anyone could do anything, Winston had gulped down a sock.
For the third time, Winston found himself back at Skeldale as an urgent admission, on the operating table, abdomen open with me standing over him, fishing out a sock.
The operation was another success, but when Winston left us this time I did crouch down and explain to him that enough was enough and it was time to stop.
The funny postscript to the story is what happened to that last sock after it was removed from Winston’s gut.
Winston’s notoriety spread to Australia and the visiting team thought the sock, which was returned to its owner, had great merit as a trophy.
And so there is now an annual match on the other side of the world in which teams play for Winston’s trophy.
Heaven knows why animals do it, but bye ’eck they eat some strange things.
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About the Author
Peter Wright was born near Thirsk in October 1956 and grew up in North Yorkshire. He worked at Skeldale from 1981 until 2021, where he practiced alongside Alf Wight (aka James Herriot) eventually taking over his practice.
Peter is the author of The Yorkshire Vet and My Yorkshire Great and Small and the star of the TV series The Yorkshire Vet, which follows his life and work in North Yorkshire.
When not working, Peter enjoys playing bridge, gardening, taking part in tractor rallies and spending time with his family.
