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.

Remembering the Vet Who Inspired Me Most. My Grateful Farewell to Dr Stephen Barsanti.

We never walk alone.

The building and shaping of a veterinarian is a collage. A little bit of pieces you borrow, collect, and compose from the others around you. While I know that compassion is the force that pulls you toward the journey of amassing the degree to publicly share your trade, the essence of who you are once you get there is made of little pieces of the peregrination you walk to that place where paper represents your destination.

There are mentors who come in all sizes and shapes, often in obscure and unintentional places or events. I was always that little girl..

The little girl who sought solace and comfort inside the calling of being alone with the animals. There was not ever another calling. When you are little and compelled it can feel lonely. I didn't have much guidance and veterinary medicine wasn't one of the options that met parental consent for "career" criteria. It was someone else's opinion and it drove too many decisions that my vote never counted for.

Then I started to try to spread my wings. As every resourceful child knows, false pretense can provide parental neglect and opportune access.

My childhood vet was Alton Veterinary Clinic, in a very small town by the bucolic Lake Winnipesaukee of New Hampshire. My parents had left the suburbs of Long Island to live the picturesque New England life. Again, it was not the postcard life I had ever contemplated. The singular exception to benefit my new quiet boring existence was the addition of having pets. In short order of buying land, old salt box home and a barn they acquired a horse, a dog, a cat, and a sheep. It was also the same time that I found Dr James Herriotts books for companionship. If divine intervention existed this was my beacon of hope to survive the winters even bird brained geese knew to flee from.

When the small town vet, of the newly minted Alton Veterinary Center, had their first child the opportunity to increase the veterinary staff from 3; Dr Stephen Barsanti, veterinarian, hospital receptionist, his wife Sherri, (who in short order became my second mom), and vet tech assistant, grew to 4, which now included a babysitter. I knew that this was my chance to get inside the building for longer than a nosy clients kids visit.

If you could time your transit to school by the Alton Veterinary Center (which was conveniently and tiny NH small town apropos two blocks down from the intersection of school and main streets) accordingly you could get front row unobstructed seats to the big picture window that faced the street for the weekday lunchtime cinema. Surgery!

That big flat glass window shielded me from where I knew the heart of the practice lay. That big multi-paned window, obscured from the neck down with a gossamer veil to keep the patients innards clandestine, was the peep hole to all the secrets of the magic that I longed to be elbow deep in. With the coveted title of "vet assistant" newly donned I was now allowed the back stage pass to see the innards in person, finally! Day by day I was lucky enough to be tolerated as the shy, intrigued, girl who got to spend lunchtimes, babysitting breaks, and eventually anytime I could sneak away from the banal obligatory school days. My earliest happy memories were those covered in smelly dogs, porcupine tatted pups, and Primo the parrot who barked when the afraid cat was the the adjacent exam room, or the pathetic meow when the hound was. That little home on corner was my utopia incarnate. I lived Dr Herriott's life for only that short time with Dr Barsanti. It was the magic of my adolescence and the compass to my lifelong path.

Dr Stephen Barsanti was the epitome of every professional veterinary battle we have forgotten to cherish. He was kind to everyone. He was sincerely compassionate. He was also inherently humble and generous to everyone and everything. He answered every 2 am call with a plan absent of an estimate. He was who I will spend my whole life trying to be more like. There are vets who leave two page obits in the veterinary professional rags, and there are vets like Steve who quietly walk out of a world they made a real tangible meaningful difference in. Not just in alleviating the suffering of their four legged patients, but in the hearts and souls of the communities they humbly served. The small town heroes who shaped lives, provided a foundation for dreamers, and passed on a legacy far beyond buildings, bank accounts, and honorary accolades.

Thank you to the whole Barsanti for sharing Steve with me during every Monday through Friday matinee surgery. On every 2 am cold downed horse call-out, and to a little girl lost in her own place in a world few others understood.  I will miss that smile of his, that charm destined to be much bigger than a baby blue off buttoned attendee shirt, and that laugh where any reality was not an impossibility.

Related blogs; Alton Veterinary Clinic

me, steve, diedra

Post script; I spent the day at home today after a long troubled interrupted sleep. Diedra's 15 year old rescue needed an emergency cholecystectomy (gall bladder removal) surgery yesterday. It was not a surgery I had ever done before, but her condition was grave and it was either jump in and try or surrender your patient to a possibly treatable disease. I always think of Steve in these cases. How he would have encouraged me to never be afraid. To always be the veterinarian I had dreamt of becoming. If I could diagnose it, and there was a possibility, you jump in. You never learn or grow otherwise. I know he would have been proud of me yesterday. I know he would have been singing praises regardless of the patient outcome. I know above all that there is grace in compassion and that it can be passed on beyond our days on earth.

Alton Veterinary Clinic, Alton NH

Last weekend was my 25^th high school reunion in Wolfeboro, NH. I attended a small private school called Brewster Academy and we (me, Diedra, and Joe), decided to make a long weekend of the event and visit our old house were we grew up and meet some of our old friends from our early days.



Me and Diedra at our old house

My first stop in NH was at Alton Veterinary Clinic. Stephen Barsanti has been practicing veterinary medicine there for almost 35 years. When I was there we saw every pet within a 40 mile radius. This included horses, cows, goats, dogs, cats, birds, wildlife, and just about everything else in between. It was one of the things I loved most about being at his practice; we never knew what was going to walk-in, or be driven up in the bed of a pick-up truck.

It was simple, rural, country veterinary medicine at its finest.

Entering Alton Veterinary Clinic

I remember spring meant lots of babies of all species. Turns out I was a very devoted foster mom from the smallest beginnings. If it needed time and attention, then I was volunteering for the job. I sort of imposed myself into helping. Looking back on this I understand why it is important to keep fresh young blood and energy in your hospital. Taking care of a helpless needy babies fuels your fire to learn, and binds you to the mission of the veterinary hospital. It is the ultimate sense of purpose anyone in veterinary medicine. (I should really think about forcing my new summer interns to take a kitten for the summer. It is sort of like the high school kids who get forced into carrying a sack of flour around for the semester so they understand what proper parental care entails, not that this project ever lowered the teen pregnancy rates).

A warm "Hello!"

The three of us took a short tour through the vet hospital with Steve. Very few things have changed there. The rooms all have the same layout and the same décor. He has updated his anesthesia equipment, but I think that’s about it. The same rooms (he does have a nicer surgery room than my 5 doctor practice has) and areas are all consistent with my far visions of what I remember it to be. It is a small, happy, soulful place. I was lucky to have learned from him and I am a veterinarian in much part because of him. He still has his sweet gentle kind patient demeanor and I would benefit now from learning to just smile more often, nod, and say “OK,” as much as he does. He reminds me to not internalize, to not blame, judge, or argue. Our clients may not always listen to us, no matter how sure we are of ourselves of being right, but we don’t have to drive ourselves crazy trying to win. He reminded me to should just nod, smile and say “OK.” Seems I do struggle with trying to save everything, teach everyone, and it is exhausting to feel as if you are always falling on dumb ears. I will start practicing his “smile and say ‘OK’” more often.

Me, Steve, and Diedra

He has built a veterinary practice that is solid and a vitally important part of our old community and he is still happy, successful, and respected.

We swapped our best and worst horror stories, and reminded each other of how much has changed with the passage of decades and how much remains the same despite the worlds attempts to sway us. There were lots of kisses and hugs and smiles and I feel blessed to have friends that have guided me through the best and worst and still love me in spite of knowing all my secrets.

He is now looking towards retirement. He showed me his note for the day, (which he still writes out each morning and stores safely in his front left pants pocket). “Think about hiring a vet” was written on the 4 in by 4 in white paper. He has never had a fellow vet share his exam rooms or staff. His ex-wife and I talked about this and we both wonder how that transition will go? It is hard to share anything when you have never had to. I love that fact that I have 4 other vets around me at my practice. I can swap ideas, questions, cases, speculations, and go on vacation without fearing for my clients needs. I couldn’t be a single doctor practice and I told him that hiring a vet was a department I could absolutely give him some assistance in. I know what new vets are looking for and I know what he can offer them.

He has an apartment above the clinic. It is where he raised his first child and spent his first decade practicing. It would make a great place for a new vet school graduate. They could live there rent free and have the world’s easiest commute to work. He is also a great mentor and teacher. He has a calming smile, rock solid un-quivering demeanor, and can teach any skill to any new vet willing to try. It is a great opportunity for any new grad. He also provides a practice for them to buy somewhere down the road. (I think I will be his agent, I could totally do this!). This is exactly the job I would have wanted out of vet school.

Diedra, my sister, reconnected with Steve’s 32 year old parrot Primo. Primo was the one creature that I saw over the weekend that hadn’t aged one single tiny little bit. (If anything he looks better than I have ever seen him). But like the rest of us he has slowed a little. I remember being in the clinic with him and hearing him scream his “hello!” down the hallway, or signing his bird chants to the point of us needing to close doors and provide time outs. He has slowed his chants, chimes, demands, and harassing a tad, but he remains the effervescent social butterfly he always was.

As we sat and swapped our best cases, worst cases, drama cases, and “how the times have changed” stories I watched his teenager technician behind him clean a cage, monitor a waking patient, and clean the treatment room, and I thought of those many years ago when that was me, and I smiled quietly to myself. Seems I have come a long way too. He helped shape me into who I am, and he continues to do that to this day. I am lucky to have had the Barsanti’s as my other family, and I am happy to be following in his footsteps and forging my own path in what is now “our profession.”