A HEREFORD veterinary surgery put into practice their medical knowledge and skills to save a poorly dog who they now call their 'spring miracle'.

It is thought that the terrifying symptoms that five-month-old Jack Russell Benji presented with at Belmont Vets at around 10pm on one Sunday evening in March were caused by rat bait poisoning.

Only just able to stand, Benji had very pale gums and a shallow, rapid respiration rate at approximately 88 breaths per minute, with an elevated heart rate of 140 beats per minute.

He also had extremely dull lung sounds and a chest x-ray revealed that fluid was filling his lung space rapidly, while blood tests showed Benji had a red blood cell volume of 24% (35-57% is the normal range) which was rapidly dropping.

It was determined that little Benji was bleeding internally into his chest, which was why he was finding it more and more difficult to breathe.

It was discovered early on that Benji had possibly had access to rat bait a couple of days previously, and so the preliminary diagnosis was of rodenticide toxicity (rat bait poisoning), whereby the toxin damages the body's ability to clot its own blood.

The on-call vet Hannah and nurse Rebecca immediately began to treat Benji with injections of Vitamin K, which is essential to enable the body to clot the blood.

Although this treatment is enough in some cases, Benji had already lost a lot of blood and was continuing to bleed.

His signs were severe and it quickly became a race against the clock so it was decided that a transfusion of specific clotting factors was also needed to replenish Benji's diminished supplies. Hannah and Rebecca stayed up with Benji throughout this as he needed to be monitored every 10 minutes, with his breathing still extremely laboured.

At one point, the decision of potentially having to put Benji to sleep had to be discussed with the owners.

However, he was determined to pull through and, after a total of 55mls blood was drained by needle from his chest, he slowly began to stabilise.

The next morning, Benji travelled to a referral centre where he received a whole blood transfusion, and was improving by the hour. He was up and moving comfortably the following day and returned home on oral Vitamin K tablets to take daily until his blood clotting times completely stabilised.

These days, Benji's still having treatment and laboratory tests to monitor his progress but is now running around and is the sprightly fun loving terrier of six months old that he should be.