Journey from little Irish townland to advanced veterinary surgery in UK

HE runs one of the most advanced veterinary practices in Britain, treats some of the hardest-to-cure pets, deals in cutting-edge techniques, and is the star of Channel 4’s The Supervet.

Noel Fitzpatrick learned most from the Dunmanway-based vet, David Smith, with whom he worked for two years, early in his career.

“He is, bar none, the best I’ve met. I’ve never met anyone who could look at a dog or cow at 20 paces and not know what was wrong with it. He taught me how to examine an animal properly, with the rules in the background and removing preconceptions from my head.”

Smith also taught Fitzpatrick that clients “don’t care what you know, until they know that you care”.

Born in what he calls “the middle of nowhere” — in Ballyfin, Co Laois — and now in his mid-40s, Fitzpatrick runs a multi-million pound pioneering neuro-orthopaedic specialist facility in Surrey in England. Here, he pushes the boundaries of veterinary medicine, creating bionic limbs and performing procedures never tried before on animals or humans. He sees the cases other vets won’t deal with.

“I get everything, from routine fractures to a paralysed dog, from routine arthritis to complete rebuilding of joints, from removal of a lump to full-blown cancer, where I replace part of the skeleton.”

On the Sunday I speak with him, he’s expecting a patient from Scotland on Monday, one from Wales on Tuesday, and one from France on Wednesday. One of his patients has made it into the Guinness Book of Records — Oscar, a cat that got his back legs severed by a combine harvester. Four years ago he became the first cat in the world to have a skeletally-anchored endoprosthesis.

“We implanted both back legs. There’s a piece of metal sticking through the skin, which is rigidly anchored to the skeleton and onto which the skin actually grows, so as to prevent infection. That was the Holy Grail, developing the special metal onto which skin would grow. It was a first in man or animal.”

He has since done the procedure over 20 times, mainly on dogs, though one other cat, Pixie, has benefited.

Fitzpatrick performed his first orthopaedic operation on a kitchen table in West Cork. A cow had kicked a dog. “The farmer said, ‘It has a broken leg, it has been hopping like that for a week’. Like I could fix a fractured femur with a bottle of penicillin?” Instead, he used heavy-duty wire to build a splint, a Thomas extension splint like those used in the World War I trenches.

Today, his practice is a state-of-the-art facility located in converted farm buildings, which he likens to a hotel, the “Fitz Ritz”. His staff numbers 117, in departments ranging through surgical to sterility to wards. “We’ve got four wards. We don’t call them kennels. There are no bars. I didn’t want it to seem prohibitive for the animals, they’re in a very difficult psychological situation recovering from surgery.”

There’s TV for dogs needing visual distraction, radio and daylight — making it “as comfortable and like home as possible”.

After completing veterinary studies in Dublin, Fitzpatrick did a number of working scholarships in America. The first years of his career were spent in Ireland, where he “only looked after horses, cows and sheep”. He recalls an occasion dehorning cattle in West Cork. “The bullocks were lined up in a makeshift crush. Then I saw these two tiny feet sticking out from under a rusty rain barrel. This little boy was going to crouch down at the end of the crush and be the gate!”

Such humorous anecdotes are never far from Fitzpatrick’s mind. His first job was at a practice in Mountrath, Co Laois, where he didn’t have a driving licence, and drove a Ford 7600 tractor to call-outs. By the time he went to Paul Rigney’s practice in Birr, he had a £250 car that was rusty and “drank more oil than petrol”. Having done a Caesarean on a cow one night, he got a puncture on his way home, repaired it ,and miles further along the route, realised he’d left his spare wheel back on the road.

“I had to go back, none-too-pleased, and the force of throwing everything back ripped the bottom out of the car. My penicillin bottles were falling out the whole 10 miles back to the practice.”

Having grown up on a farm with cattle and sheep, why did he opt eventually to cater for small animals? “I needed an environment where every animal would get the best treatment available in the world. With large animals, everything has to be done on the farm, the operating theatre is the farm. I didn’t believe I was able to make much difference to quality of life in that environment.” Only horses, dogs and cats could be looked after in a controlled environment — and horses were out, for him. “I wasn’t a natural horsy person. The last horse I treated kicked me in the chest, flipping me back onto concrete.”

Today, he mainly treats dogs, cats, some wild animals, occasional zoo animals, and occasional pet pigs or sheep. The ratio of dogs to cats is 80:20. “Cats only need my services if they fall, get hit by a car, or have disease of the spine. The latter is less common in cats than dogs. Hip dysplasia occurs less commonly in cats too. If I do 100 hip replacements in a year, three or four will be cats, the rest dogs. I do hip replacements on anything from a Great Dane to a Chihuahua.”

Among the many animals he treated in the most recent series of The Supervet were a Labrador with a life-threatening tumour in his leg, a rabbit with a badly broken hind leg, and a cat with a smashed pelvis. His criteria for the animals he’s most prepared to save are that the animal will have quality of life and something to look forward to. “My work is also holding someone’s hand when that life has to be let go.”

Dramatic energy at core of vet’s genuine passion for animals

Noel Fitzpatrick says he learned to read from Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare. He wanted to act once he heard Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood on the radio as a child. Early in his veterinary life he studied for a London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art qualification. He once appeared in the Casualty TV series, on an episode of Heartbeat, and in The Bill.

But he’d grown up with animals as best friends. “I had solidarity with them, companionship of purpose. I was always going to be a vet.”

He never saw science as separate to art. “I saw the theatre of the operation as very little different to the acting theatre. They’re both part of the same essence of creation.”

He’s passionate about what he does, sees vets as the “gatekeepers of unconditional love”, and considers himself a biological gardener. “People might think orthopaedic and spinal surgery is all about carpentry, putting animals back together again. What I do is tend the garden. What grows is, to a large extent, dependent on being careful to preserve the biology of the environment, not disrupting the blood and nerve supply too much, but still getting the job done. Anyone can landscape a garden, only a good gardener can keep flowers growing.”

He describes as arrogant viewpoints like, ‘They’re only animals, why bother?’

“We’re all only animals, we’re all going to die,” Fitzpatrick said. “The world would be very lonely without animals, I believe they’ve as much right to the planet as we do. And without them, humanity can’t have any drug or implant.”

He believes his late dad wouldn’t have understood why he opted to work with small animals.

“He’d have been most proud if I’d been a large animal vet. I still hope he might have been able to see that I followed my heart,” Fitzpatrick said.

Fitzpatrick didn’t think a lot about having his own family, until recently. He has a dog, a border terrier, Keira, but he hasn’t yet met the love of his life.

“I’ve given everything to this [veterinary practice] for 15 years. On an average day, I don’t sleep much. I start at 8.30am, finish at 2pm. I mostly sleep at the practice, I have a room there. I try to get home on a Saturday evening. It would be difficult for a woman to put up with that. It needs to change, if I’m not going to be pushing a pram and a zimmer frame at the same time!”

He still smiles at the best chat-up line he has ever had. It was from a mother, speaking for her single daughter: “My daughter was thinking her boots would look woeful good under your bed.” And where was it said? Where else but West Cork?