To our wives Ally and Chick who, through all the ups and downs, made it possible
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Foreword
In The Beginning — PJ
Early Days — PA
After-hours Ripper — PJ
Wake-up Calls — PA
Molesworth — PJ
The Worst Day of My Career — PA
Pachyderms and Potatoes — PJ
Race Day — PA
Pony Club Anecdotes — PJ
Cock and Bull Story — PA
Nautical Matters — PJ
Mr Scrope and Toby — PA
Debt Collection — PJ
Flying and Work — PA
The Galloping Major — PJ
Driving to the Job — PA
Flannelled Oafs — PJ
Alternative Medicines — PA
Deer Things — PJ
Roo — PA
Faecal Facials — PJ
Dropping Bulls — PA
Trusting Friendships — PJ
Flying and Passengers — PA
Punctuality — PJ
At the Zoo — PA
The Two Ronnies — PJ
The Other Side — PJ
A Stint in Kosovo — PA
The Wall of Death — PJ
Ima Dreamer — PA
Gymnastics and Testicles — PJ
Deer Capture Days — PA
Of Roofs and Fingers — PJ
Fainters — PA
Traffic Cops — PJ
Hospital Visits — PA
Dogs Who Will Always Love Me — PJ
Large Animal Practice — PA
All at Sea — PJ
Reflections — PA
Darkness and Light — PJ
Copyright
FOREWORD
Two recurrent themes ebb and flow throughout this highly engaging and informative book — a sense of fun and a sense of dedication. Those themes will be recognised by many in the Marlborough community who have dealt with Peter Anderson and Peter Jerram over some 35 years, and carry into print the very attributes displayed by these larger-than-life characters in their veterinary practice.
These two blokes have successfully struck a balance, both in life and now in print, between these attributes. One is the mix of knowledge, skills, empathy and sensitivity required to successfully operate as dedicated vets servicing both small and large animal veterinary needs. The other is what one passage describes as a ‘larrikin’ approach to life.
The outcome is a series of anecdotes that inform and delight. They also convey realistically, and oft en highly amusingly, the colour and feel of the Marlborough countryside and the people who make a living within it.
The emphasis on sheep and beef farming practices and their associated humour will strike a ready chord with the farming community and those who service that community in provincial towns. But the appeal of this book is broader than that. The humour and the insights into country life will equally intrigue and amuse a wider audience in the cities.
The focus is naturally on Marlborough’s dry country, encompassing major valleys and rugged mountain ranges, and the influence of the Marlborough Sounds complex. The authors’ travel antics and experiences have arisen from the challenge of servicing a far-flung clientele across a large and geographically challenging province. To many, the descriptions of the reliance of the ‘flying vet’ Pete Anderson on a variety of aeroplanes, and his mix of good luck as well as good management in surviving a series of close calls, will add a uniqueness to this book not encountered in any other.
But the book also ranges far beyond those Marlborough settings. Intriguing chapters describe a voyage on a vessel carrying some 100,000 sheep to Saudi Arabia, and an extended advisory stay in war-torn Kosovo.
I highly commend this book to anyone keen to catch a glimpse of veterinary life in a New Zealand provincial setting, while at the same time enjoying the humour and warmth that life naturally provides.
In short it is a cracker.
Ron Crosby
Blenheim
April 2011
IN THE BEGINNING — PJ
I’ll never forget the day I first met the man. I had walked into the Graham Veterinary Club on a Monday morning. It was 1978 and the appraising but friendly eyes looked at me in penetrating fashion.
‘Hello,’ I said, ‘I’m Peter Jerram.’
‘Gidday. Pete Anderson.’ The expression relaxed and a grin spread across that friendly bear-like face. By the end of the day we’d laughed at several things, mostly smutty, and at the end of a week we were friends.
I was a student then, with a year to go at vet school. Pete had worked in Blenheim for three years. We were similar ages, but I’d stuffed around for a few more years than he had, and we had a lot in common.
Thirty-one years later, as I write this, we’re still good friends. We know each others’ families almost as our own. We’ve shared fun, pain, triumph and disaster. We’ve had a financial roller coaster, usually on the lower part of the sine wave, and occasional successes. I’ve visited him in hospital on at least eight occasions that I can think of (and once even took an Elizabethan collar in — so he couldn’t lick out his sutures — when he’d had his piles operated on; at least the nurses thought it was funny). We’ve holidayed together, camped, tramped, hunted, fished and sailed together. We’ve socialised together, and still do, though never in each other’s faces.
I’ve been privileged enough to speak for Pete at his father Derek’s funeral after that lovely man and Pete’s mother, knowing Derek was dying, had instructed Pete before he left not to interrupt a major European holiday.
Peter Anderson (PA) is a legendary sheep veterinarian, who developed into a primary consulting veterinarian, but many will not know he was a very fine small animal soft tissue surgeon for several years. He’s a lovely warm man, as all who know him will agree. And I have been extremely fortunate to work with him. I was philosophically a sheep farmer’s vet also, and that was a primary bond between us.
About 10 years after we’d been in business together we realised that we weren’t running it as a business. In the typical style of professionals of that era, we knew nothing of business principles, nothing of marketing, and computers barely existed. The monthly accounts were shambolic. We employed a facilitator, a business management veterinarian, to look at our business with us. John O’Flaherty helped us identify the need for someone to stay in the clinic and run the business. That person would therefore do the bulk of the small animal work and the other partner would do the large animal work. I realised right then that my life was changing forever. Small animals was never my first choice as a vet, but I was interested in learning about the business, and being in charge of the farm animal health sales, and Pete was very happy to let that be, while indulging in his flying at the same time.
So apart from some sheep AI (artificial insemination) with the laparoscope, and a few after-hours calls, I became a small animal vet — mostly just a competent one, I think — and I had a large input into the business management. But I’ve always missed the farm work, and in particular the contact with sheep and beef farmers, that wonderful group of men and women who have formed the heart and soul of New Zealand for several generations. Because I spent nearly three years of my young life working on sheep and beef farms and runs in the South Island high country, I’ve always had a soft spot for that part of our land and the people who farm it. In the last few years dairying has multiplied at an amazing, and more than slightly disturbing rate, and sheep farmers are becoming somewhat less of a force economically, but my heart still lies with them. (The expansion of dairying is disturbing, because of the nature of the new
, huge dairy farms, really giant farming factories, and the intensity of their production systems. There are animal health and animal welfare issues inherent in systems where individual cows get little attention and have chronically low body condition scores; there are environmental issues in water quality, water quantity, and aquifer nitrification.)
So back to Pete’s and my professional relationship: at that stage our two paths began to diverge.
A lot of the stories in this book are from the earlier times when we were young, pretty uninhibited, and shared mostly farmer experiences. We saw humour in most situations, and with gathering age one wonders why that quality diminishes. But despite the divergence, and some differences in the direction of the business, the friendship has remained. It has been my very great fortune to have had a business partner who I respect hugely for his achievements, who I love like a brother.
Four years into a relatively early retirement, a bit worn out by nearly 30 years on the front lines, as it were, I look forward to many more good times with the Andersons. This book is a small, mostly non-sequential and fleeting look at some of the things which amused us. We hope they do the same for you.
At some early stage in our partnership as Anderson and Jerram Veterinary Clinic, we fell prey to a salesman (or -woman, probably the latter where Anderson was concerned) who convinced us that a ballpoint pen with our clinic name on it would be good for business. We chose the biggest they had — large triangular pens. We shamelessly stole the cartoon figures of Dog and Cecil the Ram, famous Murray Ball Footrot Flats characters. (Murray if you ever read this, which I doubt, would a couple of bottles of Sauvignon be OK?) We had one animal character at each end of the pen and the caption read ‘I Got Nicked at Pete and Pete’s Pussy Parlour’. Where the name came from, the memory fails, but it stuck, and those pens were around for years.
When we came to put this book together, ‘Pete and Pete’s Pussy Parlour’ seemed just the right title. Our publisher, sadly, didn’t agree and our wives were a bit dubious too, so we reluctantly let that name slip. The stories in this book have been slightly sanitised, but it is about the earlier period of our career together when we could get away with being larrikins. And just occasionally we still try.
EARLY DAYS — PA
A vet student walked into the clinic one morning and influenced my life forever. Peter Jerram had arrived to spend some time with us at the Graham Veterinary Club in Blenheim. It all came about after I had been talking to a classmate who mentioned that a good friend of his who had been at Lincoln University with him in a previous life was looking for somewhere to do some ‘prac’ work. Would it be OK if he came to us? ‘Prac’ work is what vet students do to gain some experience in veterinary practice before they graduate.
‘He’s a bit like you and me, Pete,’ Bruce Taylor explained. ‘He’s also done another degree, got a bit bored with his job, and then decided to do the vet degree. Now he’s in his final year. You’ll like him. He’s a hard case and a good bugger.’
Well I’m not too sure that PJ gained much useful experience from me but we hit it off immediately. He was a good bugger. While doing his ‘prac’ work he stayed with my wife Chick and me. It was hard not to like this mature (he is a year older than me) final year vet student with the twinkling eyes and ready laugh. He was exceptionally quick witted and had a delightful sense of humour. We seemed to enjoy similar things and to have similar interests. We soon became good friends.
So why and how did our partnership start the way it did? Well, chance and good luck and making good decisions all played their part. Shortly before graduating with my veterinary degree from Massey University in Palmerston North, I had the good fortune to be offered a job at the Graham Veterinary Club in Blenheim. By chance I had heard one day towards the end of my final year that two local Vet Club directors were in Palmerston North. I made myself known to them and I guess I must have got on well with them. Later I got a job interview and then in the middle of final exams heard I had been accepted. Jobs were not easy to come by at that time so you tended to take what you could get. So after graduating, Chick, whom I had married a couple of years earlier, and I moved to Blenheim. Marlborough would be great for two or three years, then we would get a bit of overseas experience, return to New Zealand somewhere and settle down — well, that was the plan.
If we had had the choice we certainly wouldn’t have chosen Blenheim. My earlier impressions were not that favourable. All my experiences with the place were associated with hitchhiking to catch the interisland ferry to or from Massey and home, in the Hundalees, south of Kaikoura. I had never found the place easy to hitch out of, although the image I presented probably didn’t help — oft en bearded, sometimes with longish hair, filthy duffel coat, battered pack, and really pretty scruffy. No doubt I smelt as bad as I looked. I got to know a few of the culverts between Blenheim and Seddon, a village south of Blenheim, which while uncomfortable did keep one dry at night.
Despite my initial reservations, though, it didn’t take long after arriving in Marlborough to realise the place was all we wanted. Over 35 years later we are still here! At the time the exciting emerging wine and mussel industries and a fairly buoyant farming community were driving the local economy. For my part I had the ability to fish in some of the district’s idyllic rivers and in the Marlborough Sounds and the East Coast. I quickly learnt to dive and I had the chance to finally learn to fly. Flying had been a life-time dream and getting my pilot’s licence was a promise I had made myself if I ever graduated. Meanwhile Chick pursued her passion for horse riding.
I was also blessed with having two more experienced and great vets to work with and learn from, Alan Stockley and Henk Brethouer. And finally but most importantly the clients, especially the rural ones, were a delight to work for and many were quickly becoming good friends.
However, nothing lasts, and within two years Henk returned with his family to Holland. Apart from David Sim, a very able horse vet who had just set up in the area, Alan and I were for a while the only vets in the northeast corner of the South Island, covering the Marlborough Sounds in the north, to Nelson Lakes and Rai Valley in the west, and as far south as Hanmer Springs. For a while we also had to cover for Kaikoura when they were without a vet.
After Henk and, shortly afterwards, Alan left, a few vets came and went but none lasted too long in Marlborough. What discouraged most from staying was the amount of driving they had to do to get to the farms. A full day might involve only a couple of calls but at least five hours’ driving, mostly on narrow, dusty gravel roads. Many roads are still unsealed in the area but at least we now have comfortable, air-conditioned cars.
Anyway, around the time I first met PJ, Chick’s and my lives were entering another era with the arrival of our first child, Caroline. Any thought of getting some overseas experience were now put on the back burner. We would have to stay a while. It was now the late 1970s and we were becoming very busy with an increased dairy and sheep and beef workload as well as an expanding small animal clientele. Blenheim was growing. So we were on the lookout for another vet to join the team of three youngish vets. I hoped PJ might be interested in being that person when he graduated at the end of the year. He was keen, and it wasn’t hard to convince the committee of the Graham Veterinary Club that Pete would make a great fourth vet. So shortly after he graduated, he and Ally and their young son, Tom, arrived in Blenheim.
Pete’s ability to make the best of any situation, to grab any opportunity, and to enjoy what Marlborough had to offer meant he very soon settled into the area. It didn’t take long before he and I developed a healthy working and social relationship. We respected each other’s strengths and weaknesses and utilised that knowledge in the best way possible. Together we planned how to improve the services the club provided, to get into farmer education and have workshops on animal health issues and to keep ‘upskilling’. We like to think we did, but working in a ‘Club’ environment where one is an employee and on a set salary, a lack of return
for extra input soon dampens any enthusiasm for progress.
So three years later PJ, Ally, Chick and I set up shop down the road and took Jill, one of the nurses, with us. As to be expected it was not a popular move with the club committee, but at least a couple of them acknowledged and accepted our decision with good grace and we will always appreciate their attitude. Neither family, both with young children now, had any cash, so we borrowed and leased everything. In fact Ally gave birth to their third child, Pip, the day we opened as ‘Pete and Pete’s Pussy Parlour’. Having two Petes could create confusion at times, including in this book, so we became known as PA and PJ. Once, a very attractive German vet student doing work experience with us decided that as she couldn’t remember who was who and PJ was a little lighter, he would become Pete-Thin and I would be Pete-Thick. However, in the book we refer to each other by our initials — I prefer that!
In the early days cheap secondhand Datsun Sunny station wagons that bounced and blew all over the road kept us mobile for a couple of years, an old house was knocked into a sort of vet clinic shape over a couple of weekends, and basic surgical equipment was leased from an understanding insurance company. However, it did include the best X-ray machine and the best anaesthetic machine we could get our hands on. We could get by with secondhand cars and a cramped building but we were not prepared to compromise our skills and expertise with second-rate diagnostic and surgical equipment.
We survived more by good fortune than good management. The share market was in its boom days and there seemed to be money around. However, our accountant warned us that really things were not looking too good. We appreciated we were not that efficient, both of us trying to be everything to everyone, and both of us sometimes taking responsibility for everything, and at other times neither of us for anything. We bounced from day to day and then shared the after-hours and weekend duties. We worked long hours right at the time when we should have been spending more time with our young families. We were not oft en there to help our long-suffering and understanding wives, who were also working in the business, looking after the books and on many days manning the office and being receptionist and cleaner. Ally was also teaching while Chick had various other part-time jobs and eventually developed a very successful catering business.
Cock and Bull Stories Page 1
