Vet Tech Tales: The Early Years

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by Phoenix Sullivan




  P H O E N I X S U L L I V A N

  Steel Magnolia Press

  Foreword

  In the late 1970s, Phoenix Sullivan was among the first of a progressive generation of dedicated animal care workers to claim the newly instituted title of Registered Veterinary Technician.

  The 70s were a time of political upheaval and social change. A time when women were finding their voice in the world. A time when we could still reach out and touch the moon – and be reminded that anything was possible.

  One constant from that time remains: our relationship with animals.

  While Phoenix Sullivan is a penname and the names of the vets, clients – even the dogs and cats – in these Tales have all been changed, their stories, insofar as memory and a distance of 30 years allows, are true.

  Commentary from an older, wiser Phoenix flavors these Tales with a balanced perspective. If you’re new to the field of animal care, you’ll identify closely with the young Phoenix finding her way into the field of veterinary medicine. More experienced techs and vets will recognize the observations shared, realizing how the animals we meet teach us the great lessons about being human.

  ~~~

  What shapes someone’s desire to work with animals?

  The Early Years introduces us to Phoenix, whose passion for animals was clearly established at an early age. Through her eyes, we discover how upbringing, education, volunteer service and life circumstances all conspired to help land her first job in veterinary medicine.

  Later volumes follow Phoenix on her 6-year journey across two cities and multiple clinics, sharing the joys and heartaches of the profession and helping us understand her eventual disillusionment with an industry too often focused more on income than ideology.

  The stars of every volume, though, are the animals and owners Phoenix meets along the way. For without the insight each encounter brings, a certain naïve teenager might never have had the courage to become a pioneer.

  Prevarication, Pets and Parents

  From the time I understood what a veterinarian was, I knew I was destined to be one. Like many with "the calling," I believed I had been born with my deep love and respect for animals. Nature over nurture, it had to be, for I certainly didn’t pick up that love from my parents or my environment. Not that I didn’t grow up with pets, but my brother, Dan, and I were both plagued with allergies, and for a long time anything with fur or feathers was prohibited from entering our house.

  Still, our parents were of a mind that children should have pets. So when I turned three and the threat of salmonella had yet to ban their sale in pet shops, I was given a small turtle. Dan, who was seven at the time, and a lover of all things reptilian, received a baby crocodile. At least that’s what everyone called it then simply because no one knew any better. Only much, much later did we figure out it was no doubt a speckled cayman lizard that took up residence in our house.

  I loved my turtle and would spend countless hours watching it wade around its little plastic turtle bowl, then trundle up the molded turtle ramp past the plastic palm tree, finally settling on the cold basking shelf to sun itself under an imaginary sun. The cayman, on the other hand, lived out its lonely days in the bathtub, wading in a shallow bit of water.

  We fed them regularly on steady diets of generic turtle food, which the little guy glutted on, and generic lizard food, which the growing cayman mostly ignored. Clueless as to how to properly care for our charges, parents and kids alike were convinced turtle and lizard were enjoying healthy food and good shelter. Add in the stress of literally being loved to death and the outcome was never in doubt.

  Neither turtle nor cayman lived very long or very happy lives.

  So it was on to goldfish, then tropical fish, then sea horses ordered from a magazine ad. For some mysterious reason, all failed to thrive. Undaunted, I begged for a new pet each time one died.

  When I was six, Mother relented a bit on the no feathers/no fur rule, conveniently deciding that just a small amount of feathers couldn’t possibly bring on a severe allergic reaction. She opted for a finch for me, chosen from a cage full of colorful birds at the local department store. I kept my small prize in my room until the day it escaped during a cage cleaning and flew into a window. I picked up the unconscious bird and it came awake in my hands, alive but unable to fly. We put the bird, peeping softly, into a box and made my first trip to an animal clinic.

  The stainless steel table and the doctor’s white coat were far from comforting sights, reminding me of too many shots experienced at my own doctor’s office. After the vet examined the bird, he and my mother exchanged a long look.

  “Honey, Pretty Boy will be just fine,” Mother assured me. “The doctor’s going to make him well again.”

  The man of the hour nodded, and I knew right then I, too, wanted to make tiny birds well again when I grew up. With all the trust in the world, I handed my little friend over to this strange man in the white coat.

  A few days later, Mother told me, “Hurry and get dressed. We’re picking up Pretty Boy today.”

  My little friend was coming home! “Is he OK now?” I asked.

  She nodded. “All better.” If her voice was strained, I was too happy to notice. I shucked on shoes and sweater and we were off.

  But it wasn’t the animal clinic where we stopped. It was the department store.

  “Is Pretty Boy here?” I struggled to figure out why we weren’t back at the animal clinic.

  “Yes. The doctor brought him by for us to pick up.”

  Something didn’t seem right, but my six-year-old logic was hard pressed to figure out what it was that didn’t fit.

  Mother led me to the pet department and pointed to the cage full of finches. A store attendant stood by, net in hand. “Show her which one is yours.”

  I squinted into the cage. A dozen small birds, nearly identically marked, flitted among the perches. Which one was Pretty Boy? None of them felt right, but two adults were waiting for me to answer, and I couldn’t very well let them know that I didn’t recognize my own bird. I lifted a finger and pointed. “That one.”

  The attendant poked the net in and deftly caught the little finch. Mother went to the cashier to pay the “vet bill,” and we took a miraculously recovered Pretty Boy home.

  I wanted so desperately to believe in the lie that I almost convinced myself of it. But deep down I knew the truth, and I never forgave my mother for trying to shelter me from heartbreak and death. Better to have confronted it square on than to pretend it away.

  I thought about Pretty Boy many years later when one of my cats went missing. A neighbor found her, dead, under their bushes. I went to collect the body and laid her on the porch to examine her, to discover why she had died. A couple of deep puncture wounds in the abdomen told the grisly story.

  Mother walked up behind me and peered over my shoulder. “Maybe it isn’t Allie,” she said helpfully.

  Not Allie? When I’m looking right at her? Wasn’t the pain of finding my cat mauled to death enough? Did I also have to defend the fact that she was dead?

  “Right. Maybe another orange cat just happened to show up here and die. Mom, I’m not six years old anymore. You can’t keep denying the truth to protect me. You can’t just wish death away.”

  Maybe if I had stopped to think about the small wrinkles beginning to line my mother’s face or the stray gray hairs beginning to peek out from between her chestnut ones, or stopped to think about her parents making their inevitable march into the sunset, I wouldn’t have confronted her. She didn’t like to think about death. Didn’t want to think about it. It wasn’t bad parenting skills that drove her to substitute life for death. Rather, it was her own fear,
her own denial of it that caused her to react the way she did. It wasn’t just me she was protecting; it was herself as well.

  Vulnerable, exposed, she turned away and disappeared into the house.

  I can’t be sure, but I think that’s the day, at 49, my mother looked life in the face and began to die.

  In the Company of Dogs

  Despite having only a handful of pets of my own throughout my childhood, I wound up with more four-legged friends in the neighborhoods where I grew up than two-legged ones. Moreover, I had empathy with most beasts and "a way" with animals that my father admired but never really understood.

  Wherever my love of animals came from, it obviously wasn't from Dad. Dogs seemed naturally distrustful of him. There was a Doberman from his youth remembered with particular loathing that ripped his britches and left scars on his back cheeks. As he would tell it, the dog, sitting behind an ornamental picket fence, barked at him every day as he passed on his way to school. One day, he decided he was tired of being barked at and launched a brick at the dog. Never mind the dog was on its own property. Never mind Dad could have simply walked on the other side of the street.

  The brick missed. The dog, sailing easily over the fence, didn’t. For 20 yards Dad dragged the dog down the street, the dog firmly implanted in his butt. At last he was able to clamber onto a parked car and the dog, having proven who was the alpha male that day, returned home.

  A short time later a policeman, called by a nosy neighbor, showed up, persuaded the boy down from the car and led him to the house where the dog lived. A woman answered the policeman’s knock.

  “Ma’am, do you own a big Doberman?”

  The woman eyed the boy whose hand clutched at his torn and bloodied britches. She nodded.

  “Well, seems the dog attacked this young lad here.”

  A black-and-tan head peered out from behind the woman’s leg. The dog growled. “Officer, Brutus would never attack anyone.” The woman stared pointedly at Dad. “Not unless he was provoked.”

  The policeman tousled Dad’s hair. “Son, you didn’t do anything to provoke the dog, did you?”

  Solemnly, Dad shook his head. “No, sir. I just threw a brick at him, that’s all.”

  It was clear Dad must have been carrying his brains in his bitten cheeks that day. Or maybe it was simply that Dad may have been a lot of things when he was young, but a liar wasn’t one of them.

  “You did what?” The officer slapped the tousled head. “Sorry to have taken your time, ma’am. As for you, son, I encourage you to find another route to school from now on.”

  Dad took the policeman’s advice, but he held a grudge against the entire canine species forever after.

  ~~~

  One summer when I was 12 I helped Dad distribute advertising flyers for his company. We criss-crossed the city going from neighborhood to neighborhood, leaving leaflets on hundreds of doors. He would go down one side of the street and I would go down the other, trying to stay cheerful in the face of scowling homeowners who didn't seem to appreciate the terrific real estate opportunity we had to offer.

  Invariably I marched in the company of dogs. Blue heelers, poodles, labs, Yorkies, collies – I never questioned why so many dogs were allowed to roam the neighborhoods, I simply reveled in their company.

  "No! No! Git!" I quickly got used to Dad's commanding voice, often raised over the growling of dogs of every conceivable size. From little mops of Malteses to long-legged Danes, they growled at him and he chased them away.

  "Hey, puppy, puppy!" I'd call, and the growling brute terrorizing Dad would come bounding over – tail wagging, tongue licking and eager to follow me from house to house to house, only to threaten my dad again if he dared cross the street to check on me.

  In the company of dogs I felt safe and protected. In the company of dogs I was confident and assured. In the company of dogs I was accepted.

  ~~~

  In high school, with college closing fast, I registered for as many accelerated math and science courses as I could, thrilled to know there was a respectable career where I could make a living being around the creatures I loved.

  Not that I had often seen the inside of an animal clinic with my own pets. Every penny in our household was carefully watched and there were no frivolous expenses. My parents dutifully had what few outdoor dogs and cats we were eventually allowed to keep vaccinated yearly. And if there were any chance the animals might be carrying something contagious to people, my folks had them checked out. But spaying and neutering and treatment for most ailments was simply not in the budget.

  Mother doctored as best as she knew. Unfortunately, her knowledge was limited and she didn’t bother with much research. Of course, 35 or 40 years ago, no one had the easy access to information we do now. My family prided ourselves on the set of 24 rather anemic encyclopedias kept on display in the living room.

  When an outdoor tom contracted feline leukemia, my mom treated him with Tylenol, a drug which causes severe liver damage in cats. Little did she know that the medication she was giving was ravaging his body just as thoroughly as the feleuk was, hastening him to an early death.

  That kind of wisdom fed my keen ambition to understand more about biology and physiology. I wanted answers to all the why’s circling in my brain like vultures. My high school years only sharpened my resolve to be a vet. I had read all the career books on the subject, but what I really wanted was some practical experience. A small taste of what veterinary medicine was really about.

  In my sophomore year, I got the chance to find out.

  Of Spotter Bulls and Cherry Eyes

  When a veterinary chapter of the Explorers – a career-oriented affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America -- formed in my area, I jumped at the chance to be a part of it. We met at various animal clinics a couple of times a month, dividing our time between small animal clinics and large animal ones. Sometimes we met for a lecture, but more often than not, it was to see a surgery being performed. Incredibly, there I was at 15 watching veterinarians cutting into living flesh and getting a step-by-step account of exactly what they were doing and why. Slicing open fetal pigs in biology class couldn’t hold a candle to this real-world experience.

  The first surgery I attended was at a ranch where a vet was turning bull calves into “spotter bulls.”

  We sat on a corral fence while Dr. Bentley, dressed easily in jeans and hat and boots, brought out the surgical tools he would be using. “Any of you know what a spotter bull is?” he asked in a thick Texas drawl.

  I looked around at the dozen or so avid faces next to me, hoping I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know. No one raised hand or voice.

  “Well, getting a cow bred by the right bull takes some pretty good timing. Mostly, if you’re using a breeding bull, it just isn’t very practical to leave it in with a group of cows and hope nature takes its course. Not when your Christmas money depends on that cow calving. Besides, most of your larger ranchers artificially inseminate anyway. Now, cows are in estrus for only a short time, and if you miss your window of opportunity, you’re losing money.

  “So what we’re going to do is take four little bulls and, instead of castrating them and making them into steers, we’re going to give them vasectomies. That way, they’re infertile, but they still make testosterone, which means when a cow comes into heat, they’ll mount her. That tells the rancher he’d better get moving and get that cow legitimately bred.”

  I hoped the sun sliding off to the west was bright enough to hide my blush. Not only had I never been on a working ranch before, I had never been around such frank talk about a cow’s sexuality. At my house, sex, whether between human or non-human animals, was a taboo subject. In fact, my parents apparently agreed between themselves to let the school be responsible for any sex education because I never got “the sex talk” from either of them.

  I watched Dr. Bentley and a ranch hand, Lou, catch and tranquilize the first bull, then lay it on its back. When the scalpel flashed in the d
ying sun, I wondered how I would react when it bit into flesh. In only a moment, the blade was through the first layer of skin, and Dr. Bentley was explaining that it would take a second cut to open the testicle cavity completely. A couple more cuts, a few sutures, a slug of penicillin and it was over. Lou was already tranquilizing the next bull.

  I sneaked a peek at my fellow Explorers, catching the odd sideways glance of others doing the same. We exchanged brave smiles, then turned our attention back to the second bull down for the count. Three and four quickly followed. In less than 45 minutes Dr. Bentley had given four bulls a special purpose in life.

  By the time the last stitch was put in, bull number one was already back on his feet, blinking slowly at his audience, clearly trying to figure out what had just happened. I stretched a hand through the corral fence and touched his shoulder. He swung his head toward me as if hoping I might have some answers. I tched my tongue at him a few times in what I hoped was a soothing way. The bull, however, seemed rather bored with it and stumbled over to be closer to his “spotter” pals, already starting to get their feet under them as well.

  Our troop leader, Dr. Norris, a short, stocky man with prematurely graying hair and beard, gathered us outside the corral as parents started showing up to drive us home. “Next month we’ll meet at Dr. Diaz’s clinic on the west side. He specializes in ophthalmology and promises to have something like a prolapsed eyelid for his surgery demonstration. We’ll see you then.”

  I had no idea what a prolapsed eyelid might be, but I was already eager to see it. Any trepidation I may have had over whether I was cut out for the reality of veterinary medicine had vanished completely as I watched Dr. Bentley work. I had felt nothing but fascination and a sense of awe. I wanted the knowledge that these professionals had. I wanted the ability and the confidence to treat an animal in need. I wanted to be close to the animals I loved so much. And I wanted the respect this profession could provide.

 

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