Bruce Fogle - Call the Vet: My Life as a Young Vet in 1970s London

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

FIRST EDITION

Bruce Fogle 2020

Cover layout design Claire Ward HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Cover photographs Author (mans portrait), Shutterstock.com (all other images)

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Bruce Fogle asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008424305

Ebook Edition October 2020 ISBN: 9780008424336

Version: 2020-09-28

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To the kind staff and volunteers at Hearing Dogs for Deaf People (www.hearingdogs.org.uk) who provide such incredible dog buddies for people, young and old, that find themselves isolated by impaired hearing. And to the diligent, dedicated people at Humane Society International, especially those in Canada (www.friendsofhsi.ca). You operate under the radar, sometimes in dreadful circumstances, but you do brilliant work defending animals worldwide.

Another overcast, moody, gunmetal grey day. London, 1970. Drizzle. I am a 26-year-old Canadian, fresh out of the Ontario Veterinary College, working as an assistant in a veterinary practice in Knightsbridge in the heart of the city. Im here because well, I dont actually know why Im here.

Its far from home. Thats exciting. I speak their language, so I can make my way around, get a job, have fun. I think of myself as British. At home in Toronto I grew up singing God Save the Queen as often as O Canada. The Queen is on my Canadian money. I vote for Members of Parliament, not Congressmen. But three months in London has me questioning that assumption. What Im learning is that although I share their language, I dont share how they think.

A distinguished looking man in his sixties, in a tailored pinstripe suit, brings in his dog, a sad, grey-faced, female black Labrador, for me to put down. Not a twitch of emotion from him. His mother comes with him. Except it isnt his mother. Its his nanny. Not his childrens nanny. His nanny. The woman who looked after him when he was a child. Where is his wife? His grown children? Why is there no feeling, no passion?

I am already feeling a bit antsy today, a bit out of place.

Bruce, Ive received a complaint about you, my boss Brian Singleton politely but firmly tells me when he arrives at his surgery. Meet me in my office at 8.45.

I cant finish my coffee, cant do anything but go over in my mind all the dogs and cats I have seen in the last few days, trying to work out where Id made such a grievous diagnosis that the animals owner had gone out of their way to complain about me. I have limited clinical experience, so my confidence in my ability to diagnose and treat effectively is years away. At that time in my life, I still reacted to events. I didnt yet have the ability, the maturity, to understand that life is more likely to go in the direction you want it to go in if you make things happen, not just respond to stuff.

Thats it, I think. Ive killed someones pet, but if I go back to Canada now, I can start afresh and no one there will ever know whats happened.

I meet Brian in his office.

Bruce, the lady who you saw yesterday, Mrs Pilkington, has complained about your attire.

My clothes? I burst with relief.

Brian wears a dark suit and tie to work and expects me to as well. I do. I have no problem with that. The Beatles wear ties. My own father wears a tie when he crawls under our summer cottage each spring to turn the water supply back on.

She didnt like my tie? I mock, and Brian replies, You were wearing sandals. She doesnt feel, nor do I, that sandals are appropriate footwear at a veterinary surgery.

This is 1970. In Canada, I had flower decals on my car. My suits are velvet. My trousers have flares. My thick chestnut-coloured hair tumbles down my neck. Of course I wear sandals. How on earth could that be so reprehensible that someone would complain to my boss? And why would Brian agree?

I dont get it. It is another seed in my mind that although we speak the same language, there really is a gulf between the English and me.

I come from a demonstrative family. The Fogles can be reserved but my personality comes from my mothers side, the Breslins, and they dont do reserve. They can be loud. They laugh outrageously. They question authority. They argue for the simple joy of words. They cry liberally. And when you need emotional support, theyre with you, like an infantry platoon of aunts, uncles and cousins.

So when it comes to putting down this Labrador, the dogs sweet, gentle face looking up at me, at her owner and at her owners nanny, I feel just awful. Why doesnt the owner feel as upset as I do? How can this man be so cold on such a poignant day, when his dog is to die? Why isnt his family with him? What is it with you Brits?

I was in my twenties before Canada had her own red maple leaf flag. The schools my brother and I went to in Toronto, Allenby Public School and Earl Haig Collegiate, both named after World War I British field marshals, flew either the Union Flag or the Red Ensign, a flag with the Union Flag in the corner and Canadas coat of arms on its red background. English-speaking Canadians of my era were raised more British than the British. The Queen was my queen. Britains Parliament was the mother of all parliaments. I read Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hardy at school. I knew the names of every British prime minister of the twentieth century. Thats why when I arrived in Britain, I thought I understood the British.

But inside I really wasnt British and part of me already knew that. My father was born in Glasgow, so I proudly claimed patriality (and I continue to feel a strong affiliation with Scotland). His family emigrated to Canada in 1907 when he was a year old, but enough of Scotland remained in him for him to name me Bruce, my brother Robert and our dog Angus. My fathers grandfather, a blacksmith, was born in a town with different names in German (Lasdein), Russian (Lozdzee), Polish (Lozdzeije), Lithuanian (Lazdijai) and Yiddish (Lazdei). The Fogles called the town Lazdei because they were part of the great Jewish emigration out of Eastern Europe that began in the 1870s. My mothers family, the Breslins, were also part of that biblical exodus. They came to Canada from what they called in Yiddish Tolotshin, the Lithuanians called Talacynas, the Russians Tolochin. They too were part of the Great Other that arrived in Britain, the United States and Canada at the end of the nineteenth century. And as much as my parents families had become part of the weft of twentieth-century Canadian life, prominent in medicine and business, I knew I was an outsider, that I wasnt part of Canadas founding British or French heritage.