A Country Practice
Scenes from the Veterinary Life
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Chuck Shaw is a vanishing breed--an old-style veterinarian with a quarter of a century of experience who runs a "mixed practice" in rural New Hampshire, treating everything from house cats to milk cows. Week after demanding week, he and his associate, horse expert Roger Osinchuk, make house calls and farm calls, and spend sleepless nights on call, to see to the well-being of patients whose only common denominator is an inability to speak. But the practice is booming, and Chuck decides to take on a third associate, Erika Bruner, fresh out of veterinary school.
Whynott follows these three practitioners into the world of contemporary veterinary medicine, as a witness to memorable encounters and daily dilemmas. He watches as they play gynecologist to cows and horses, obstetrician to calves and colts, podiatrist to creatures whose feet are life and death to them. He captures the struggle to learn a difficult craft on the job, describes the confluence of skill and intuition that is the essence of diagnosis, and depicts the ongoing effort to balance the needs and desires of animals and owners without compromising his creed. A Country Practice is a vivid portrait of the rapidly changing face of an ancient profession.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this frank, engaging look at life as a country vet, Whynott (Following the Bloom) shows that it takes more than good training and a love of animals to make a mixed-animal practice successful. He shadows two seasoned associates in rural New Hampshire as they tend to the health of local dairy herds, treat skittish horses and minister to all manner of pet needs, from routine spayings to emergency amputations. Faced with an increasingly daunting workload, Chuck Shaw and Roger Osinchuck decide to hire Erika Bruner, who's fresh out of veterinary school. Though Whynott gives ample pages to each practitioner, Erika's experience in particular highlights how the profession is changing. "My friends in vet school have no idea why I like this," she says, referring to her hours spent ankle-deep in manure and "arm-deep in ." "But there's something rugged about it that's appealing." But eventually she finds taking farm calls and clinic hours on her own too stressful and opts to join a more limited practice, where it's "more about the animals and less about herd health." Though one can easily sympathize, Roger's concern that bright but ambivalent students like Erika are taking vet school slots away from "some dumb farm boy wanted to be a vet his whole life" raises provocative questions about the future of the rural mixed-animal practice.
