Vets should care about all animals

On Friday morning at 5.30am, my sister and I were doing an exercise run in the village. We were climbing the stairs in Patricia Road at about 6am when we heard yelping .
We thought it might be a cat stuck in a tree. The sounds were horrifying and of a distressed animal. My sister then found a little blue duiker yelping his heart out, stuck in a fence while a dog was tearing at his rear end. The only reason the dog was not able to ‘’free’’ it from the fence was because the poor little guy’s horns were stuck.
My sister was able to free it when I sprayed my water on the dog to get it to let go. We then walked towards Ballito Drive as fast as we could while she was holding the yelping duiker in her arms, bleeding profusely from his behind.
By this time we were distraught and crying for help too. We then passed a man sitting in his car in his driveway. I ran towards him as fast as I could asking him for help. He refused to take us to the vet even though he could see my sister holding the visibly hurt duiker! He had no reason why he didn’t want to take us, apart from the fact that he ‘just got home’.
To him, I would like to say, sir, you do not have a heart! If you had a heart, you would have just given us a lift to the vet. (Or were you perhaps too worried that you would get sweat and blood on your car seats?)
When we eventually got to the vet, we phoned the emergency number and were told they would try to find a vet. An hour passed. Eventually after 7.15am a vet showed up and had a look at the little guy. There was so much damage to him and he had gone into a seizure. He had to be euthanized, as there was nothing the vet could do for him. She then explained to me what the actual problem was and cried with me.
It took so long for her to get there as she was not on duty, but the vet who answered the emergency call WAS in fact on duty, but didn’t want to deal with it since he is not a ‘wild life vet’ and did not know how to treat a duiker!
There are so many issues with the events. The vet who was on call could have been there in 10 minutes and just euthanized the animal, to prevent his suffering.
Apparently this is not the first time this has happened. Wildlife die because emergency vets don’t get there fast enough, or they don’t know how to deal with it, or perhaps don’t want to deal with it. To the vets who care, don’t let this carry on. There must be something that can be done, since this is not a problem that we can afford to have. We have such little wildlife as it is on the Dolphin Coast due to developments.
Come on people you took an oath to care for those animals too, not just domestic dogs, birds and cats.
LIZETTE FISHER
Ballito