It is time for the spring hoof care package. Our donkey patients in the region await us.

We start our trek in the area from Beslen, a village nearby the Bulgarian border with Greece. It is one of the few remaining villages in the country where donkeys are still used for labor. This is largely due to the steep terrain – there is virtually no infrastructure, which makes donkeys the only means through which local people access their horticultural land.

We already know where our four-legged patients hang out and we need no booking in advance. It’s nice that after a few years of work in the region, we are not just anticipated but welcome too. People and animals know us and trust us, which saves us a lot of time and allows us to do more good work.

We always find this particular friend grazing outside his ‘property’ which boasts the most picturesque view.

It’s a big team today. We trim the donkey’s hooves, we check his teeth, we give him a good scrub and brush to help him shed his ‘winter clothing.’

Something noteworthy: donkey owners in the region don’t have the habit of brushing the coats of their animals. They wait for spring and even though donkeys don’t actually grow a winter coat, they still get their grooming then, with their owners trimming away any excess hair.

Next stop – a special case. Our four-legged friend gets his regular hoof maintenance but he also needs prophylactic checkups and treatment on account of his intolerance to high spring grass. In the past, it has given him a bad case of eczema every year with spots that well up with puss and take a long time to heal.

Once we figured it out, we knew what to do. We start prophylactic treatment about a month before the eczema spots usually show up. Today we are happy to note that our friend’s legs look good, with some old scarring visible but no new sore or oozing spots this spring.

We can see signs that this donkey is overweight. The owner confirms that his friend does nothing all day but graze on the lawn outside the house. The man is very fond of the animal and always gives him a double helping of barley and some bread to boot! We advise him to put the donkey on a diet and cut his food consumption in half.

It’s not like encountering street dogs is rare in our line of work – if it were, we wouldn’t need to have our neutering campaigns. There is also the local tradition to allow pets to go outside. We usually see them having a lazy stretch outside their ‘kingdom’s’ gates. But in this case, our eye is drawn to the dog because of the large growth on her mammary gland.

By word of mouth, we end up meeting with the woman who looks after the dog. We offer our help: we can operate on her friend in our clinic with very high chances of success.

Our offer is accepted gladly and the woman takes the dog to our car. She tells us that some time ago her sweet-tempered companion was bitten by a snake and subsequently, the growth appeared. (In fact, it turns out to be a cyst.) It’s big, it often gets sores, and it oozes, causing discomfort and difficulties for the poor animal.

We are at the clinic, about to start surgery.

Four days later, our unexpected patient is fine and ready to go back home.