A SICKENING incident of animal cruelty in Tavistock last Thursday sparked an appeal from a veterinary surgery in the town. Staff at Westmoor Veterinary Centre were shocked when a young hedgehog was brought into the surgery by a teenage girl, who had rescued the animal after she saw a group of youths using it as a football in the Meadows. Westmoor veterinary nurses immediately treated the severely shocked little hedgehog with pain relief and antibiotics and tried to increase his temperature by placing him on a heat pad and covering him with a fleece blanket. Named Geoffrey by the nurses, he survived the night on Thursday but appeared very poorly on Friday morning. Office manager Denise Nordenhall said: ?The hedgehog was weak when he was admitted to the surgery, however, as he had sustained internal injuries as a direct result of being kicked around, he was weakened further and subsequently developed pneumonia and sadly died.? Head nurse Jane Blackburn said staff at Westmoor had been sickened by the incident ? and other examples of animal cruelty which they were often called on to treat. ?It makes me sick that people do this, that they get away with it and even think it?s funny ? you couldn?t print what I?d like to do to them,? said Jane. ?We get a lot of birds brought in that have been hit by air guns ? and cats too. ?Sometimes we get cats in and by chance we X-ray them and find pellets embedded that their owners didn?t realise were there. We had a cat recently that had a pellet lodged in its head and we can?t get it out.? Jane urged people to report any incidents of animal cruelty they may witness ? and not to hesitate to bring injured animals to the surgery or call for advice. ?Please don?t just ignore it,? she said.
