Dr Ferox's life as a veterinarian

I feel sorry for horse owners sometimes.

Several of them seem to live in a near-constant fear of colic happening to their horse, and fair enough too. Colic can be scary when it happens. Suddenly, for no clear reason, the horse which that person loves (or is worth a ridiculous amount of money) is gripped by pain. Pain that they can’t treat, can’t reach and could be caused by any number of things.

The fear of colic gets worse as the day goes on. The pain can keep up all night, even in a ‘good’ colic. The painkillers wear off and the cause is still there, so it comes back a few hours later. I don’t think there’s any other situation in the world where four people will stand around a horse for hours and burst into cheers when it poos. Even if it’s not a very big poo.

And that, my friends, is more or less why I spent an hour with my good work shoes covered in mud at the bottom of a muddy, slippery hill after discovering the electric fence was not as ‘off’ as previously claimed. [Read more →]

I had been working for 5 days before my first night on call. I was worried about how I’d handle an emergency, even though I was the backup vet on call. I think every new vet worries about these things. I secretly wonder if some of the more experienced vets worry about these things.

I had been feeling pretty good about surviving my first week as a vet, so as a celarbration I had bought a somewhat less-than-thrilling hamburger from the shop down the road. I regretted the burger when I was eating it (not at all worth $7). I regretted it even more as it left me puking my guts out every half hour, whilst suffering acutely violent diarrhoea from 8pm to 4am.

I was as sick as a parvo puppy and I was almost in an emergency clinic, not fit to be veting for one. [Read more →]

Much delayed, this was my story from day 3.

The day started with a fascinatingly tragic case. A dog with a brain that’s pretty much fried and had been for a long time, with an interesting selection of neurological signs which weren’t consistent from day to day. It wasn’t all there, and it wasn’t worth keeping it alive. So I started my morning putting down a much loved dog that needed death much more than it would have benefited from treatment. Brains don’t fix themselves that well.

Then I put a cat to sleep, with the tearful owners requesting to be there as she drifted off. That’s always an anxious moment, because it is their last memory, and while you cannot make it a happy memory you do your best to make it gentle.

I was expecting that sort of morning to put a downer on your day.

Turns out it doesn’t. [Read more →]