My Patients and Other Animals: A Veterinarian’s Stories of Love, Loss, and Hope, by Suzanne Fincham-Gray. Spiegel & Grau, 2018

This is the memoir of a vet, but it’s not the jolly, feel-good type like James Herriot. It starts with her having to fire a gun at a pony’s forehead by way of euthanasia, as part of her veterinary training. Then she comes to the US to train more at a prestigious teaching clinic, meaning to go into research after attaining her license. But the exposure to the animals while training made her change her mind (she had never had a pet); she decided she wanted to work directly with dogs and cats instead. This, despite the intense hours, the pet owners who were sometimes not terribly agreeable, the sadness of losing a patient, and the basic lack of a life outside the clinic.

Once working for a regular clinic, she finds that it’s not like the university; in the ‘real’ world, there are a lot more financial constraints to deal with. She couldn’t just order up every test available, but had to work within the owner’s budget. She also finds that the staff isn’t ready to do everything she tells them to do the way the university interns did, and she manages to upset more than one technician- they never taught human relations in vet school.

But during these years, she gets her first pet- a senior cat- who is soon joined by a second one. She also meets the man who becomes her husband, who is a dog person. She learns the incredible bond that can form between people and their companion animals. While I felt that when she first started, she was lacking something, she describes as she becomes the complete animal person. I enjoyed the book a lot, even though it’s not a ‘warm fuzzy’ animal book. She’s an internal medicine specialist, so her cases are more complicated than the usual run of spay/neuter, worms, etc vet visits. Four stars.

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All My Patients are Under the Bed, by Dr. Louis Camuti. Fireside, 1980

In the same vein as “All Creatures Great and Small”, this is a vet’s memoir. Instead of the English countryside, though, Camuti works in New York City, doing house calls. He found that a routine of starting his rounds in late afternoon and finishing around midnight worked best for his clients. His wife drove him around, and stayed in the car while he treated his patients. Some of his clients were show business folks; some were even famous. But fame doesn’t mean anything to Camuti; he judges his clients on how much they love their cats.

The book intersperses the doctor’s biography (he was born in 1893, so we get a lot of stories from the early parts of the century) with stories about this clients, both human and fuzzy. While some of his advice is out of date (book was written in 1980), the book is primarily enjoyable for the cat anecdotes. Five stars. 

The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something- anything- from Amazon, they will give me a few cents. 

This did not influence my review.