Last month NPR aired a short piece about the high rate of suicide amongst veterinarians (Veterinarians Are Killing Themselves). Shortly after, Time published a column on the topic. It’s not news; late last year the CDC published a study in an academic journal that caught the attention of the media. Nor is it surprising to any of us who have known vets well. I’ve seen vets at work for as long as I can remember. I did not need statistics to know that the stress of being a vet may sometimes outweigh the satisfaction of helping animals and their owners.
A short story
Just hearing about the high rate of suicide in veterinarians would not have prompted me to write this. Coincidentally, the same day I heard the NPR piece there was a post on one of the many Facebook horse fora I follow. A woman told the story of how, three years previously, she had turned her horse over to her vet to be euthanized. The vet had told her that s/he would take the horse to his/her home, put it down, and bury it in the pasture. All for $250. Or so the woman claimed.
Now, three years later, the woman had become suspicious because the vet had called (or she’d called) and said the horse had been put down long before she calculated they could have made it to the farm, etc. Many people immediately commented that it was suspicious, etc.
Many told her she was a terrible person for not staying by the horse’s side when it was put down. (BS)
So many things were wrong with the story and the subsequent comment thread.
I cannot know what happened, but what I thought at the time was that vet had no obligation to take the horse to his or her farm to bury. Maybe the vet was crooked and sold the horse, who knows, but the woman said she had trusted the vet. They had had a good relationship. It was only with the passage of time that she began second-guessing.
I thought, probably the vet was honest. Maybe the vet euthanized the horse at the clinic and cremated it (a lot easier than trailering, euthanizing, and burying with a backhoe). I thought, that was going above and beyond. I don’t know the truth, and I suspect anyone’s memory after three years.
But my experiences with vets have led me to expect the best.
An early memory of what it means to be a vet
When I was nine, my mother’s mare Avis colicked about three weeks after foaling. Our vet at the time–Dr. Q.–spent the most of three days or so at our house. At least, that is my memory. Particularly clear are my images of him late at night, checking the catheter and holding up the jug. Avis didn’t make it. The autopsy also stuck vividly in my memory.
The foal, Fancy, was a spoiled bottle baby afterwards, and became an excellent broodmare.
Later Dr. Q dug the horns out of the first wether I bred with my 4-H dairy goats. My dad hadn’t yet learned the art of merciless horn bud destruction. (Which is in fact a mercy, since it saves the goat from having half its skull carved off months later). I couldn’t watch the horn removal (I tried. I fainted behind a trailer, or maybe it was a shed).
Another colic, years later
My mother lost other horses to colic, but my first personal colic loss happened when I was 24 (I think). I had leased a four-year-old mare, Florita, to race. She was a challenge for many reasons. She was difficult to ride, and a bleeder (Exercise induced pulmonary hemorrhage). You couldn’t use Lasix in Spain (in the USA, furosemide is used to combat EIPH in horses). Our vet worked with us to treat Florita’s bleeding. I spent hours riding and hand-walking her to fix her brain.
My debut was on Florita, in a night race on the dirt track. I lost a stirrup and learned I had better ride “bareback” (on a pad, no saddle), and teach myself to pick up my (short) stirrups at a gallop.
In December, Florita won a race for us.
That evening (or possibly the next day), we had a celebratory barbecue at our stable. Our vet (and many more vet friends, see below) was there. Midway through the BBQ, I noticed Florita was colicky. She’d colicked a few months ago, so I wasn’t unduly worried. I led her around to the BBQ, had the vets look at her. Probably gave her banamine. I don’t remember.
I ended up staying up all that night, and the three following nights, with her. When I wasn’t sleeping in her stall. We ended up putting her down. We couldn’t have afforded surgery (the autopsy showed it was just as well we hadn’t tried). I had a vet with me almost the entire time, from the BBQ till the end.
The smell of DMSO and straw will always remind me of Florita, but it will also remind me of the friendship, and stress, of vets.
In those days, my life was a series of encounters with vets…
Those vets–the ones who attended Florita, and others at our party–were also amongst my close friends at the time. Our (main) horse vet, Alvaro, was just getting started in Spain. Alvaro was (is) from an old Spanish equestrian family, but he had gone to Argentina to study veterinary medicine. His wife (also a vet) was Argentine. Her sister was a small animal vet; years later she had moved to Spain and became my cat and dog vet. He and his assistants came by our racing stable several times a week as part of the deal we had.
Alvaro and others of that group (plus my ex-boyfriend and I) comprised the 10-person partnership that owned and raced two horses (Baigorri and Bric) in my stable colors. Another vet friend, Jose, was our partner in crime (certainly not winnings) for another horse, Va Savoir. We all partied together (one memorable New Year’s Eve that began at the vet supply store, many many stable BBQs), traveled to the races together. We stood and stared at horses together, puzzling out the whys and hows. We took turns holding up jugs of liquids. We all smelled and smelled of gastric reflux and DMSO.
I still love my vets
Notice I said vets. From June 2014 till May 2019, I owned exactly one horse (though many others cycled through my care). Four different vets attended her. Granted, two are partners in the same clinic (Interstate Equine). After Lady got Sweeney Shoulder, Dr. Julie White worked on her with electroacupunture and chiro. Dr. Kim Rasmussen worked on her as an osteopath. Sometimes you have to have several vets because they all specialize in different areas. Fortunately my “general purpose” vet at Interstate, Dr. Trent Bliss, also does teeth. Otherwise I suppose I’d have five vets.
Choosing a vet
Although you may need several specialists, you will usually have one primary vet. She or he will naturally expect you to deal with other vets in the same clinic. After all they are colleagues who have chosen to work together. She or he should also not have a problem with you consulting other vets. She or he should be willing to recommend others outside their area of expertise. She or he should also be willing to call in another expert (second opinion) if you can’t together figure out a problem.
If not, he or she can probably recommend an equine dentist.
A good vet will listen to the owner… even if s/he comes to the conclusion the owner is mistaken. A good owner will listen to the vet, and be willing to ask questions and learn. The owner or caretaker knows more about the horse than the vet, but the vet knows more about veterinary medicine. You must work together. Don’t be that owner that makes the stress of being a vet that much worse.
**I have a chapter about choosing a vet in my unpublished horse book. I might add it to the blog and link here in the future.
On the stress of being a vet – Owners
Yes, we can be a problem. I will admit to being a bit overly concerned with every misstep. If my horse is unusually reluctant to pick up a lead, I’m going to mention it to my vet(s). If there is a tiny bit more heat in one leg compared with the other, I’m probably going to call the vet. I’m going to ask the vet(s) to watch my horse trot up and down on hard and soft surfaces, in straight lines and on a circle. I’m that kind of owner.
But I will also listen. I will try not to call over the weekend or outside of work hours. I won’t take advantage of having a mobile number or email. I will not tell the vet what I think before the vet has a chance to form his or her own opinion. I won’t blame the vet for missing something. I won’t expect the vet to know everything or to “fix” everything.
I’ll vaccinate my horses on schedule, worm them, keep them well-fed and in good pasture/stalls as best I can.
Don’t make your vet’s work more difficult by not listening. If you don’t get along (and sometimes that happens), it’s better to find another vet.
In another life, down another trouser-leg of time, I am a vet
When I came back to the States to return to university, I gave serious consideration to vet school. I opted for a PhD program because it’s cheaper… There’s no such thing as stipends and graduate assistantships for vet school, and I calculated that UCD would cost me ~$70,000 a year (tuition, living, etc). That would have been after 2 years of chem, bio, o chem (all of which I did anyway on the way to my psych MA). That would have been a lot of debt for a single mother.
Now, looking back from the perspective of having obtained a PhD in May 2018 and not having found a tenure-track position yet (admittedly I’m not looking too hard now)… Well maybe I should have opted for DVM. At least I’d have a job, and it’s far more compatible with what makes me happy in life (horses). And it would have been easy, because at least I can already do the basics (soundness checks, IVs, basic horse handling). And I could be an endurance ride control judge!
I like to think that in a parallel universe, I became an equine vet. Hopefully I have good owners. (Hopefully I have learned to be as good at people as I am at horses.)