A couple’s beloved Jack Russell has been left deformed after a vet operated on the wrong leg leaving the owners with £10k bill for a specialist reconstructive surgery.
They were also told that the vet performed the wrong operation on Daisy’s right knee which was perfectly fine when it was her left that had a snapped ligament.
Steph Drew, who rescued Daisy, in 2017, noticed that the vet had done the wrong knee when she tried to comfort her dog once at home after the operation.
She said: ‘I put her down on the sofa and looked at her leg and said to my husband “they have done the wrong leg”.
‘He said “what no, surely not” and I was shaking so I rang and I spoke to the receptionist and he said “no, these things don’t happen”.’
Steph first noticed that Daisy was limping she took her to Rase Veterinary Centre in Lincoln, where an X-ray revealed a snapped ligament in the left knee.
Due to this, Daisy’s right side was taking the weight off both sides and she was ‘in a significant amount of pain’.
The former RSPCA worker was told a surgeon would call her to discuss options, but after a week she rang the vets again as Daisy was still in pain and nobody had been in touch.
The vet who performed the procedure has since been struck off after a disciplinary hearing by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons
Steph, 41, said: ‘A day or two later, Emma Bowler, the vet that has been struck off, rang and she talked me through the two options for surgery.’
One of the options was ‘tibial plateau levelling osteotomy’ (TPLO) surgery, a common procedure for treating ligament rupture in dogs, and this is the one Steph agreed to.
The operation, quoted at around £2,400, was booked for the following week and during this time she researched the surgery and how best to support Daisy with rehabilitation afterwards.
On May 20, 2021, Steph took her dog to the Lincoln site, where she was then put in a van and driven to the Rase Veterinary Centre in Market Rasen so that Emma Bowler could do the surgery.
Later that evening Steph, of Lincoln, went to collect Daisy and was concerned to see her being walked out of the practice on a freshly operated leg and picked her up to take her home.
After returning home and realising the operation was performed on the wrong leg she alerted the vets of the mistake.
At around 8pm Steph claims she got a call from the practice manager informing her that they wouldn’t charge for the operation and would repair the snapped knee for free.
Steph added: ‘Within a few days the leg broke in three places and we took her back in for more X-rays.’ Daisy was placed on strict crate rest but the leg ‘just kept breaking’.
Steph was advised to take Daisy, who was seven at the time, to an orthopaedic specialist in Derby who discovered that in addition to the wrong leg being operated on, the wrong surgery had been carried out. Instead of TPLO, Daisy had had a ‘modified maquet procedure’.
For the first three years of Daisy’s life, she had been used for breeding, was malnourished and had weak bones, which caused her issues like hip dysplasia. Due to this, Steph says she would never agree to something that involved drilling her bones.
Steph said: ‘She had done such a terrible job of this operation which we had not consented to that he needed to make a bespoke metal plate to hold her leg together as there was very little bone left that Emma Bowler had not drilled through, which was really inappropriate due to how weak her bones were.’
Steph and her husband had to borrow £10,000 for the specialist reconstructive surgery. Four years later the couple say they still have nearly £4,000 of that to pay back.
Steph said: ‘She is the most loving dog I have ever known in my life.’ Daisy is now ten and doing well, although she did develop arthritis in the leg that was operated on.
Steph has worked with dogs since she was 14 and has described the whole experience as ‘traumatic’.
She said: ‘The stress of this case has caused me to develop an autoimmune system, which has caused me to develop arthritis all over, so I can’t dog walk anymore.’
Steph says that she has still never received an apology from Rase Veterinary Centre, and claims they even blamed her. She said: ‘The abuse that I have got from them is terrible.
‘All along they have blamed me, they have said I told them it was the right-hand side so they did the right-hand side, they said I was a terrible owner and they shouldn’t have to deal with owners like me.’
Steph says that so is ‘too angry to shut up’ and has been sharing her story to help inform other pet owners of her experience.
Emma Bowler has since been removed from the register of vets eligible to practise in the UK after a disciplinary hearing by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.
It was found that the veterinary surgeon had made multiple clinical failings over the course of three years and eight months involving unnecessary injury and failure to provide adequate care to 18 animals.
Rase Veterinary Centre declined to comment.
