Anthony Bennett - Village Vets

We hope that you have as much fun reading this book as we had writing it. Mark Whittaker is a great friend and client and we thank him for helping us transpose our stories onto paper we both looked forward to our afternoon sessions telling our stories to Mark and not once did he make us feel that this was just a job for him. Thanks for all your work! Let it be said that Mark is much better at faking interest than our wives!

This book would never have happened without the vision and commitment of Brigitta Doyle, Kate Mayes and Mary Rennie from ABC/HarperCollins. Their passion for this project from the very beginning is what got the book off the ground and it has been an absolute pleasure working with them all.

Of course, our lives changed dramatically when the one and only, the whirlwind, the phenomenon that is Rodney Richmond walked through the Berry Vet Clinic doors some three years ago now and initiated what would one day become Village Vets. What started as an idea soon became a pilot and, in the hands of Screentime and Foxtel, a television series. Rods mateship and dedication have been unwavering.

Thank you also to Simone Landes for helping guide us through the wild media world and for putting up with our rowdy conversation and unfunny jokes on a weekly basis we can appreciate why you dont like conference calls.

Thank you to everyone that has helped us in our careers, and especially the vets who took the gamble to employ us as the new green graduates we were. Ben Gardiner, Geoff Manning and Geoff Scarlett, you taught, supported and mentored us in our formative first few years in the profession and continue to do so today.

The vets and nurses that we have worked with, worked for and met through our profession have all helped shape us as vets and people, and we are immensely proud to be part of the veterinary profession.

Thanks to our wonderful clients, friends and their animals in Berry and beyond. We may live in the best part of the most privileged country in the world, yet dealing with lovely people every day makes our work so much more fun. Your commitment to your pets and livestock never ceases to amaze us and we thank you for involving and trusting us with your animals care.

The Berry Vet Clinic staff and their families deserve a particularly big thank you. Our workplace is a lot like a family and your hard work is much appreciated. You keep the ship afloat when we are gallivanting around the countryside and further afield. We cannot thank you enough for your professionalism and friendship, and it makes coming to work every day a pleasure.

Thank you to our wives, Sidney Bennett and Veronica Carroll. You both knew you were marrying vets but we bet you didnt expect this. We appreciate your unwavering support and constructive criticism, but mainly your unwavering support. We know we work long hours and we both wish we were home a lot more often with our families. We probably occasionally come home a bit grumpy but we hope you know that we are doing it all for you we love you both very much.

Thank you to our parents for raising us in such a caring and nurturing manner and endlessly encouraging us to keep working hard. Without the support of our parents and siblings we could never have survived our high school and university days, and undoubtedly our careers would be significantly different.

While clearly not an instructional manual on how to be a vet, we hope that this gives people an insight into what its like to be in a mixed-practice, and that vets and aspiring vets can relate to the stories and the fun and variety of challenges we are privileged to experience every day!

James

It is dusk and a storm threatens as we flap our arms about like were birds, whooping and urging the big black cow to go where we need her to go. We need to get her up the race and into the crush so we can save her life. She, however, is wise to our bluff. With head erect and nostrils pulsing, she wants to be far, far away. And, if she cant get there, it looks like her next favoured option will be to tango on our heads. Lightning flashes, ever closer, across the deep green flats of the Shoalhaven River. If there is thunder, we cant hear it for the wind.

Barely half an hour earlier, my new veterinary partner, Anthony Bennett, and I had been warmly ensconced in our clinic performing a delicate procedure on a cat called Ginger Meadows. Ginger was the beloved moggy of an elderly gentleman, Peter Meadows, and it was with great sadness that Id had to tell him that Ginger had a tumour. Hed given us the go-ahead to do a biopsy to discover what sort of lump it was.

A steady hand and a high degree of coordination were required to guide a needle into the lump using an ultrasound as our navigational tool. I held the needle in place while Anthony pulled the plunger back to suck out a sample of Gingers cells.

And then the phone rang. Trish Rosa, our dynamic veterinary nurse-cum-receptionist-cum-practice manager answered. I heard her close the call with, Someone will be out soon. Not what you want to hear late on a cold August day with the wind starting to howl. Theres a problem calving at Townsends, she said as she put the phone down.

As I ran through my mental checklist of everything I might need, Anthony piped up. Ill come with you, mate. We can take my car. I was relieved. Im sure its the last thing he felt like doing, but at least he knew where the farm was.

Even though Anthony is my best mate from university, this is the first large-animal vet job weve done together in the twelve years weve known each other. For five years at uni wed done everything in cahoots, but after that wed gone our separate ways. Id worked out bush in northern New South Wales, then in Wales, London and more recently in a wonderfully climate-controlled veterinary hospital in Sydney, performing delicate operations on kittens and guinea pigs, with every advanced piece of equipment imaginable on hand, and at never more than a few steps away from the tea room.

But Id moved to Berry, a little town two hours drive south of Sydney, to go into partnership with Anthony and now hes showing me the ropes. I havent delivered a calf in more than four years. There isnt much demand for this sort of work in south-east London or Sydneys upper North Shore.

The blackness is fast approaching as the farm caretaker, a gentle old soul and former dairy hand called Tom, eventually manages to shoo the grunting cow into the crush while keeping a wary distance from her. Anthony squeezes the crush onto her neck to hold her fast so I can examine her. There isnt a moment to lose before this storm hits, so I go straight in lifting the cows tail with my right hand and sticking my bare left hand through her vulva and into the birth canal.

You might be surprised how calmly most cows accept such an indignity, but Our Girl isnt most cows. She tenses and snorts and kicks as I gently feel my way in through the narrow opening. It takes a few moments to get my bearings while I guide my hand around the slimy protrusions of bone and limb inside the huge fleshy cavity of the cows uterus. There is a calf in there as expected.

But prod and pry as I might, I cant find the head. Or the feet.

In a calving, the front feet should come out first, followed by the head, in what we call the Superman position. When you put your hand in, you want to feel the front hooves and the nose right there near the entrance, ready to do their up, up and away thing. But all I can feel here is tail.

Its trying to come out bum first, I say.