The Secrets Pets Bring Us

 The hidden world.

The best part of the job. Hands down.

I was always trying to get there. That other place. The place just on the other side of the fence. The end of the rainbow along the road I hadn't yet gone down. The woods on the other side of ours. Another state maybe? What about a country? I suppose I should start practicing their language now? You know just so I could find the loo should the need arise.

I was that kid. The kid not settled on here and now. There was no value in it; The present. This place I am already. It isn't a terribly detrimental character trait for a kid, but, these kids should try to grow out of it for fear of being trapped in 'never good-enough-land'. No one wants to grow old feeling like a foreigner. A nomad without a home to call your own. This feeling of not belonging in a world already full of coldness.

Frippie. Our morning wake up ritual.

But reality is that I was always this kid. I keep, and always have kept her alive inside of me. Albeit quiet. No one wants to build a relationship with a gypsy. 

Stealing a kiss before surgery. Maybe after too?

Well, almost no one. For me, then, now, always, the companions who left me feeling grounded, belonging, were just my animals. Named or not, they kept me at a constant. They provided the only place that I wasn't feeling alone.

I never let her grow up into any other kid. The kid who had relationships so deep that you grow deep like the roots of a Sequoia. Strong, formidable, permanent, present. It was never that I didn't value fortitude, strength, and mightiness, it was that I could never decide if here was where I belonged. If the exchange for staying-a-while was worth the potential of not being able to go again. What if staying here meant I had to forego the greener grass elsewhere? Was I ever ready to take such a gamble? 

Looking back I don't know why I was so unsettled. It wasn't so much the loss, or absence of what I didn't have, it was a longing for always something more. More in the way of experiences, places, people and all of the stories that they brought. It was the stories. Making them, finding them, living them and amassing them. More in the way of options, freedoms, liberty, and self-reliance.

Elvis. One of the 54 cats we helped rehome from a hoarding case.
He was brought to us with 4 littermates, 3 had died over the weekend the owner was away.
The previous owner had no idea how many cats she had, or how many were spayed/neutered and she begged us to allow her to keep him, "because he was the healthiest." He would have died like his siblings had he not been taken away. We spent months trying to keep them all alive. We did. He was here to be neutered marking the end of his kitten struggle saga. After this litter we realized that the problem was far bigger than our clinic could manage and we called Animal Control. They have removed dozens of additional cats from her property.

There were very few constants in this life of meandering. There was a dream, a goal, and, a constant companion beside me. Those pets were my guide as much as they were my inspiration to keep moving forward. It was the pets. As a young girl who only wanted to be surrounded by animals all pets held a place of great importance, but very specifically, my pets were of paramount importance. They were my constant. My grounding, the reason for understanding who I was and wanted to become. The sense of belonging in this world I never fit into that provided meaning and substance. They were everything in my world that I saw as just passing by.

My parents, more accurately, my mother, decided to leave Long Island, New York when I was very young. They moved to the country for all of the imaginary wonders and miracles that they believed a country life afforded, and were not attainable in the city. Grass, trees, land to get lost in, and peaceful discussions about days lacking agendas and human bustling. For me it felt more like being removed. I was being removed from some place with lots of lives, to a place without humans lives to interact with. It was the first time I ever felt lonely and alone. Lost and taken away. It was the beginning for me, and I think my mom too, that there was a world we were without within.

Autumn, one of our technicians, and the lead for the 54 cat rescue, kept Oaken. He was one of the 54 cats we helped from a hoarding case 2020.

My mom countered the cricket cacophony and automobile silence by amassing pets. Her little farmette crawled slowly with the menagerie to make it look like a legitimate country living poem. There were two dogs, three cats, a pony of my very own, and a sheep she bought unknowingly at the county fair. The little cottage-cape in the country my parents had purchased came with  shabby two car garage and a field, but, no barn for the livestock to cohabitate. They never fully planned much of the jumping into they did. They tended to jump, best intentions in hand, and land wherever the free-fall dropped them. The barn, or lack thereof, was a very good example. The idea that you would purchase a horse and a sheep and not have a barn for them to be safe in snowy-laden New Hampshire is ludicrous. And yet that is what happened. My parents converted the well house, a wooden structure about 8 feet by 10 feet into a barn-ette for their newly Christened farmette. Few creatures are born into immediately having to flee the nest and wander alone the rest of their days. How would one survive if they awoken from delivery, set off swimming, and hoped for the luck of the draw to magically and successfully make it to a ripe old age? Unless you are a single-celled organism you need a buddy to help walk you through the perils of life. For all of the alone-ness I felt, there was a togetherness that these pets supplemented to dispel the solitude. We weren't put together to remind each other of the holes we had as individuals. We came together for the friendship of each other, Maybe the sheep, her name was Lambie (as original as the thought process in acquiring her had been), or Memory,, the pony that my parents helped me purchase,, a lifetime of savings for the gift I wanted more than anything I could have ever imagined. Memory was $500. Five hundred dollars to a ten year old girl in 1980. Memory, was short for Sweet Memory, and that she still holds firmly. 

Cali. Here for a knee injury repair. Always smiling!

I think that there are a lot of small animal vets by default. We start out as a little seedling intent on animals, but most specifically it is the horses. The vast majority of little girls love horses. We love them so much we want to fill our lives, every minute of them, with more horses. As kids we might grow up with dogs and cats in our homes. Closer to them in proximity, but, there is some allure to horses. Little girls love the idea of the smell of the hay. The aroma of the flat coat that can be brushed for days and still never luster. Horses are big, yet gentle. Soft muzzles always inquiring for a peppermint snack. It is a feeling of belonging that horses give to little girls. Solid, strong, yet soft and safe. You can wrap your arms around their necks. Breathe in the musty, earthy, perfume of their massiveness and still cuddle up near them as they graze contentedly by your side. Horses capture and transport. It is the glitter of every little girls dreams.

It was that horse, Memory that started it all. The cement of a relationship that I hadn't yet ever figured out started with her. A horse vet was born from the days on that farm that was so far away from everything I thought I needed to have more. 

Dexter waits for me to come visit.
Here for his annual exam and a hug, of course.

The isolation that moving to the country also brought me a kindled a purpose. I learned from a very young age that where these pets brought me the only true friendship I had known. But this friendship came at a price of being vulnerable that I was not prepared to accept. A farm animal, and to this designation my parents cast a wide net (all pets, i.e. all animals, were pets for as long as they were healthy and free of trouble) when a medical need, or a behavioral nuisance presented their stature on the ladder of importance fell to below my parents being designated as responsible for. I joke about it now, twenty years into being a veterinarian myself... that my parents had to be the worst pet parents my poor childhood vet, and lifelong mentor, ever had. They were the clients who called him at home at 2 am to notify him that our dogs had just returned from their all day expedition with a face, and frontal chest-full of porcupine quills. The dogs were muddy, bloody and keeping my parents from being able to get back to sleep. My dad asked if he "could drop the dogs off now (at his clinic conveniently located downstairs from where he and his family slept each night) so they could try to get a few more hours of rest before work the next day?" That saint of a veterinarian, said "ok." I remember listening from the top of the stairs, (these were the days of one corded to the wall phone per household), and feeling so relieved that the dogs were A) going to get veterinary help, and, B) they weren't going to have to suffer with a face, chest, and mouth (yes they were in the mouth and tongue) of sharp quills. I know now that Dr. Barsanti opened the door at 230 am, pajamas and robe on, took the dogs by their leashes. Placed them in the dog cages in the back of the main floor kennel area and immediately aced the dogs into a few hours long nap to face the task of pulling them out one-by-one the next morning. It is what I would do now. Who starts a 3 hour quill removal surgery at 2 am? Heck, who answers a phone, and their door at 2 am? Not me. (Damn, I hope he charged my parents out the nose for that one. I'm sure he didn't my dad would have never paid for it if he had tried).

Jenn is the office manager in her office. Never alone with our clinic house cat;
Seraphina, and my pup Storm.

I have written about it before. The pivotal place where my childhood trauma of feeling like my most beloved, and often only friends, were continually at the mercy of another humans decisions transitioned into an adult obsessional determination to find that the place where my destiny rested was in protecting these, and all others, pets. I would never be left sobbing in the corner while someone else decided who was, or was not, worth the effort, or expense, to heal them. It would become only mine to decide. That place where no animal in my purview would be denied care based on anything other than fate, and even she would be dealt blows to humble her if not frighten her away for at least a few more moments. If I had to give up, travel on, and never have left a footprint behind, then so be it. Is there isolation when there is purpose? I think I learned very early on that to have my dream of becoming a veterinarian to come true I had to have dedication and determination to a level that no one else possessed. I had to make sacrifices and decisions based on the long game. Always the long game. Every relationship I had was based on that premise. There was a here and now but I was not going to get stuck in it. Not for longer than that semester allowed. I lived my life for many years, a decades worth, in semester blocks. One at school trying to maintain straight A’s to dilute the Academies implicit bias and baseless defamation via the measure of academic and excellence. And the other at sea, working as a deck officer aboard a cable laying ship to fund the quest into its next chapter. There is very little chance at life, its tapestry of relationships on a schedule built like this. Going to sea for a decade was the most challenging, and even lonelier existence than moving to rural NH brought. No pets out there. Not much of anything except hard work and too much time to self reflect.

It had to happen. A relationship had to evolve from a lonely girl who lived for the tomorrows she lived to see and she wished the present day away.

My kitty Magpie. A cuddle in the sunshine.

My parents never understood my chosen path to get to vet school. They never accounted for veterinarian in the same light as lawyer, doctor, politician. My mom loved animals, to be sure, but she never wanted me to have to deal with the clients the likes of my dad. Too much heartbreak in vet med she thought. Animals might die, (she didn't waste time on the ins-and-outs of why, how or by who's hand), they died, it was sad. I should avoid sad, and poor. My dad knew the kind of people he was to his vet and he thought I would be far happier being far wealthier and steered me away from vet med at every chance he got. He got about 3 decades of chancing me out of this profession. In the end I was always more determined than he to not live the life he wished for me. It has made all things possible. And an even lonelier girl on the other side of it. 

I think it is a deal many vets make. I am not alone. My story is not unique. So many veterinarians left humankind to stay firmly grounded in the pet loving world. We left our souls tied to the hearts of the pets who never live long enough, never hurt your sense of not belonging, and never question your life choices even when you aren't quite sure of them yourselves.

There are secrets we all hold. For me, and the little girl still living quietly by herself inside of me, the secrets are in the days, years and lifetime that I shared with the creatures who always mattered more than everything else could. 

Seraphina. She loves me, and more importantly, we need each other.

I think that while I recognize now the cost of the sacrifices I made to make this dream my profession, I am not sure it was an even exchange. So many of us forego relationships, friendships, two legged children and even our too compassionate souls for this profession. We die, or at least sacrifice so much along the way to help others who will never enunciate a human "thank you." All for the power of this purpose. It is the secret so many of us share, and one of the many cracks that remains us we are all too human and ever fragile.

Related blogs;

We All Need Options.

Remembering The Vet Who Inspired Me.

Safe Harbor Vet Style

Hoarders, Surrender, and the Worst Fate of All.

The hardest part is looking into the eyes of the patients who want to live and knowing you can't do anything to save them.

New Beginnings and Old Responsibilities.

The Measure.

This is a blog about my life. A place to put the feelings, experiences, troubles, and many of the great successes of the lives we share with our patients, and furried family members. It isn't a testimony, a plea for help, or a call out to the profession that struggles so much. It is a diary. An open love letter to the life I live and the choices made to stay alive and happy here. It is about purpose and contentment, and these often feel mutually exclusive while you serve the human public who "own" pets.