Suzy Fincham-Gray - My Patients and Other Animals: A Veterinarian’s Story of Love, Loss, and Hope

Trees lining the country lane forced the air into an irregular rhythm that buffeted my eardrum through the Land Rovers open window. Sunlight flitted through branches, splashing the windscreen with unpredictable brilliance. The clean, savory perfume of the cow parsley clustered in the passing hedgerow mingled with the less subtle notes of manure clinging to my clothes. Beneath my stocking feet lay my lunch, along with empty syringe casings, odd scraps of paper with medical notes, and less identifiable detritus from our days farm calls in the Herefordshire countryside. And beside me, expertly guiding the SUV around the twists and turns of the narrow lane, sat Peter, the large-animal veterinarian with whom I was seeing practicethe UK term for gaining experience as a veterinary student by shadowing veterinarians in various settings.

We slowed, and Peter maneuvered the Land Rover into a gateway with a narrow dirt turnout that led to a long paddock running next to the road. There was one small gray pony in the field. We got out and walked to the back of the SUV, where I removed a pair of khaki Wellington boots and bottle-green coveralls from the boot. Peter was already suited up and pulling on his wellies with practiced ease by the time Id unfolded my outfit. I stuffed the too-long pant legs into my socks before stepping into my wellies, holding on to the car for balance.

Shuffling around in the boot, he located a black case the size of a laptop beneath the piles of syringes, rectal examination gloves, medication bottles, and shiny stainless steel implements that made me want to cross my legs. Peter opened the case to reveal what looked like an old-fashioned pistol. Made from blackened metal, it was small and sturdy with a brown wooden handle. The grip had the patina of age, cured by the skin oils embedded in its crosshatch. It was the sort of thing I imagined from back in the Wild West, thousands of miles from this English field. Alongside the gun was a box of ammunition that served one specific purpose. This was a single-shot pistol, and I was about to shoot my first horse.

I had been volunteering at the small-animal clinic in the veterinary practice that Peter co-owned since I was fourteen, when my determination to become a vet had driven me to make weekly visits to observe Peters small-animal partner, George, conducting his evening surgery.

The practice was a ten-minute walk from my childhood home in Hereford, a small cathedral city nestled on the Welsh border. In autumn, the short trek to the clinic was scented by delicious, yeasty apples fermenting at the cider factory across the street. During the spring, I was accompanied by the woolly odor and noise from trucks full of sheep and cattle on their way to market.

Id logged hours upon hours in the small-animal clinic, watching vaccination after vaccination, cleaning hundreds of cages and walking every conceivable size of dog.

George was a Scotsman with a booming brogue and generous stature, both of which were barely contained by the thin walls of the consulting room. The clinic was in a converted Edwardian house, and the waiting area, which had presumably once been the drawing room, was always filled with eager owners and nervous pets awaiting their turn with the Scottish vet. After each appointment, George would stand in the doorway, his shoulders filling the frame, and call out for his next client in the high-pitched, slightly girlish tone he used to talk to his patients. Every consultation started the same way: Hello, Mrs. Jones. How are you and Fluffy doing this lovely evening? And he would narrate the entire visit: Just a wee poke, when administering a vaccine; Well be in and out in a flash, when describing a surgery. Medications were prescribed by color and shape rather than their pharmacology. His parting words to every owner were Take them home and love them.

Over the years Id heard all of Georges jokes and grown impatient at the unscientific language he used with his clientsI aspired to learn the precise name and clinical description of every diseasebut Id bided my time in anticipation of the moment Peter would invite me into the passenger seat of his Land Rover. And, finally, after four years of formal veterinary education, I had graduated from my unobtrusive corner of the exam room to the passenger seat, ready to visit horses, cows, sheep, and any other beast too big or messy to fit into a consulting room. Now it was my turn to entertain high school volunteers in the kennel room with tales of calving successes, hoof trimming, and cesarean sectionsthe same stories I had once listened to with rapt, jealous attention.

Although my upbringing was essentially urbanif a city with a one-screen cinema, a handful of shops, a nightclub called Marilyns, and a Pizza Hut was considered urbanthe countryside Peter and I traveled through was familiar. It was where my family took walks through bluebell-carpeted woods in spring, picked strawberries in summer, and stomped through piles of crunchy autumn leaves. The gamboling lambs, grazing cattle, and hard, stiff earth of a plowed winter field had once been little more than fun distractions. But riding with Peter on large-animal calls, visiting farms for TB testing, calving, and managing herd healthcare, I had come to realize how integral farming was to my home.

Peter was well known in Herefordshirewith his muttonchops, and his cravat and collared shirt regardless of the days duties. He was no match for George in physical stature, but he occupied an equally substantial place in the practice and community. Peters energy was suited to the outdoors; his wiry forearms and strong grip were made for wrangling horses hooves, not tending to soft kittens paws. He carried the vaguely aloof brusqueness and rounded vowels of a country gentleman, and I felt nave and weighed down by my need to prove myself in his presence. Over the prior two weeks of our working together wed developed a good, if slightly distant, rapport. Compared to George and his jovial bedside manner, Peter had a more formal approach. But the rigor with which we discussed timely topics in veterinary medicine, and our meticulous daily reviews of clinical practice, more than made up for the lack of amiable banter.