Snippets of A Vet's Life: The Learning Years

When Rob McBride left his first veterinary job and began working for himself in the Yarra Valley, he believed he was ready.

He had a veterinary degree, some practical experience and a second-hand car containing most of the equipment needed by a horse vet. What he did not have was a senior partner upstairs to consult when things became difficult.

The apprenticeship was over. At least, that was what he thought.

The animals continued his education. There were sick horses, difficult foalings, cattle, dogs, cats and one white rat called Rufus, whose life mattered greatly to the small boy who owned him. Some cases went well. Some did not. Occasionally Rob knew exactly what to do. At other times, he simply tried not to let anyone notice that he was still working it out.

The people were often more difficult than the animals.

There were horse dealers, unpaid accounts, misunderstandings, loyal clients and people who remembered the most important part of an animal’s history only after Rob had reached the wrong conclusion. There were also friendships, kindnesses and the people who helped him when he was not yet able to admit that he needed help.

Then, for reasons that were not entirely clear even to him, Rob enrolled in law.

For the next ten years, veterinary practice and legal study competed for the same hours. Horses did not observe university timetables. Foals preferred the middle of the night, colics had a habit of interrupting dinner, and examinations usually arrived after a week in which everything else had gone wrong.

Rob sometimes drove from a sick horse to a lecture and then back to another sick horse. His fellow students carried law books. Rob occasionally brought the smell of the horse with him.

Law did not replace veterinary practice, but it changed the way he listened. A horse dealer became a lesson in contract. An accident raised questions of negligence. An unpaid account became a legal problem, although seldom one involving enough money to interest a lawyer.

Along the way, Rob began to understand that knowing how to treat an animal was only part of being a veterinarian. He also had to run a business, manage money, choose his words carefully and accept that two people could hear the same conversation and remember it quite differently.

The Learning Years is the second book in the Snippets of a Vet’s Life series. It continues Rob McBride’s story through the years in which he built his own practice, studied law, made good friends, made mistakes and slowly became the veterinarian he had once assumed he already was.

Mostly, though, he was still learning.