Header image photos taken from https://www.amivedi.nl/detail/?meldingid=2200133 and used with kind permission (1 December 2025).
This blog reflects my personal experiences and opinions and does not represent or reflect those of DierenAmbulance Nederrijn.
Homecoming
My last shift with the Animal Ambulance was 2 weeks ago, and before that it was a month so coming in this afternoon almost felt like I was coming home! Familiar faces and surroundings, I know where things are and how (some) things work – I could relax!
Christmas decorations and background music made that relaxation easier, and at this point in the day (i.e. after 4 hours at Avolare) I wasn’t going to complain about more than 4 weeks before Christmas being too early!
On the table I saw small cuddly animals to be given away as a comfort gesture for people coming to the base to pick up their dead cat. They’d been embroidered by the driver’s mother – a really nice gesture! Some time ago there was a motion to cut off a little bit of the deceased cat’s hair and present it to the adoptive parents in a small glass bottle. There was a discussion surrounding which part pf the cat to cut the hair from and the required cleaning process (Dutchies love discussion…). I don’t know what was decided in the end. I’ve cleaned a few deceased cats, but until now haven’t gone through the difficulty of handing it over to the owners.
Anyway, now wasn’t a time to relax! I was here to rescue some animals, and indeed there was already something in the air!
What was in the air
A dog without a collar was found in someone’s garden. He was “a bit darker than a Belgian Shepherd, and very thirsty.” The details had been passed to the local “Dog Finders Group” but as nothing had been heard from them we were to go to the location see what was going on; read the dog’s (compulsory) chip and if possible, reunite him with his owner.
The finders met us outside on the drive. Even though they’d only recently moved into the area, they knew this dog didn’t belong to any of them. The driver asked a few questions about the steps they’d taken to find the dog’s owner, but nothing more could be done.
Questioning and discussion over, we went inside to meet the dog.
I realise I say this about many animals, but what a beauty!
Some 1 on 5 time
3 human finders, 2 animal ambulance crew and 1 energetic dog crammed inside a hallway! It was cosy, especially with (- I’ve gotta give him a name instead of “the dog”-) Diesel jumping up at us! I’d taken some dog biscuits from the ambulance and gave him some to see if he’d calm down a little bit. In fact, this made him more excitable because now he knew he could get some treats!
“Courage is not overcoming fear – it’s doing something when you’re still afraid.” – my mate.
I admired the driver who was nervous around Diesel; a strong energetic creature who was easily able to knock us over, and whose panting and barking didn’t help subside her fear either. Perhaps 5 strange humans standing around a dog in unfamiliar territory must have been intimidating for our canine friend, so I crouched down to help put him at ease and stroked him – and got 2 paws on my shoulder and a face-full of slobber for my effort!
(I must admit I was loving this! I’m a cuddler, but cuddling and stroking my cat is like starting a fire – I gotta do it slowly and in its own time before it takes light and grows; do it too quickly and I smother the flame and the fire-cuddle goes out and my cat runs away. But not with Diesel! No pussy-footing around here! He came to me, jumped at me (in a friendly way!), responded positively to stroking…I loved it!)
Reading the chip
It didn’t look like it was going to get easier any time soon, so the driver took the chip-reader and tried to read Diesel’s chip with the over-sized, bulky chip-reader.
I’ve had problems with this thing before, and according to the volunteers’ meeting notes from a few weeks ago, I’m not the only one. But I also remembered its operation is not logical; it’s a case of switching it on, ignoring the LCD picture of an expectant animal and waiting half a minute until it says “reading…”. There’s a limited time it tries to read a chip before it gives up and cuts out. It’s not a long time; in fact it’s considerably less than the warm-up time! So it’s really cumbersome to use when reading chips on timid / moving / excitable / aggressive animals because as well as trying to keep the animal calm and still, and trying to find and read the chip, we need to keep checking whether the chip-reader is still trying to find the chip and hasn’t switched off.
So reading the chip wasn’t successful.
But the poor driver! She was so brave to face her dog-faced fear, but I noticed something. Another thing to keep an eye on with this chip-reader is holding it by the handle and wafting the other end to read the chip. This sounds obvious, but not when the part that reads the chip is shaped like a handle – which is where the driver held it whilst she waved the real handle over Diesel!
I gave it a go the right way around, and found the chip – it’s the first time I’ve ever had a positive reading with this thing! The number showed – a dimly lit 10+ digit number that’s visible for a limited time before the reader conveniently auto-switches off. How long until that happens? No-one knows, so the protocol is to take a photo of the number.
I usually make photos using the tablet because then the photos are automatically stored in the administration. But the tablet is (and sorry to offend old canines…) an old dog. And it needs 2 hands to operate which is difficult in a crowded and confined space with a moving dog after some dog biscuits in one hand and a chip-reader in the other.
I took the photo – which was out of focus. Then the reader switched off. Re-reading the chip number proved a challenge for the chip-reader, but we got there on the 4th attempt. This time I used the mobile phone to take the photo, and from that photo we could type the chip number into chipnummer.nl, where we could find details of the registered owner.
Except either the owner hadn’t registered their dog, or Diesel had no owner. What a sad loss for human kind 🙁
Diesel in the Ambulance
Finder’s form completed, we slipped a lead around Diesel and led him into the ambulance.
There was a slight kerfuffle over where we should bring him. The Animal Ambulance and a number of town councils and rescue centres have agreements concerning which animal from which district goes to which shelter. It happened that Diesel’s find location was right on the border of 2 districts. But even though Diesel may have come from either of them, he was found in one and that determined where we should take him.
The ambulance rocked as Diesel settled himself in the back, but it wasn’t long until he was calm. We phoned ahead to the shelter and got on our way.
At the Shelter
Two expectant workers welcomed us in the shelter carpark. We updated them with the information we had and I brought Diesel out on his lead.
It was like flying a big ground-based kite! Diesel was strong but manageable. Again, this was a heartwarming moment for me! And even though I’d ‘known’ him for only a short period of time, it was heart-breaking to hand the lead over to the shelter guy. Then again, hopefully, if he has owners then hopefully they’ll come and take him back home again. If not, the shelter will find him a loving home!
I don’t know how he did it – or even what he did – but Shelter Guy knew how to be with a dog and even command respect from Diesel! He lead him to an open but fenced off area, but not before I chased after him; I’d forgotten to take pictures of Diesel so that I could put them onto amivedi.nl, a site that reunites lost animals and found animals with their owners.
I took some photos, although it turned out that the shelter would later put Diesel onto amivedi for us. In hindsight this makes sense because the shelter have people trained with dogs who’d be able to determine more valuable information (such as age) about Diesel. And it’s also handy because the photos I took came out blurred, and in one case, Shelter Guy was in the centre of the shot. I told him to be careful in case someone adopted or reclaimed him instead of Diesel!
Back at the Base
We got back to the base after a stop for diesel (the fuel 😉 ). It was already dark but far from the end of our shift. The driver remembered to wash the mat in the ambulance that Diesel had sat on. Although it would have helped pass the time, I was secretly glad no more rescue calls came in. This shift, which was immediately after an animal care shift at Avolare had knocked it out of me.
But Diesel has made it one of my favourites! 🙂
And he’d sort of left his mark at the base too; when the replacement team arrived, the co-driver took the tablet and wiped the screen clean with a tea towel. I apologised for its smudginess and explained it was probably dog slobber. The tea towel went straight into the laundry room and out came the disinfectant for the tablet. My mistake!
