Chapter 1, Part 4

As the last year of vet school came to an end, I was considering several job offers, and Emily and I were trying to determine where we wanted to relocate after spending the last seven years living in Stillwater. Every preceptorship that I went on resulted in an offer of employment. The teacher salary crisis was over, and Emily was optimistic that she would be able to find a teaching job near wherever I decided to practice. Despite a great relationship with her parents, neither of us was much interested in returning to the area where Emily was from in southwestern Oklahoma, so Elgin was out. North-central Kansas was a little too flat, a little too remote, and a little too far away from our families for us to consider. The area around Siloam Springs in northwestern Arkansas was beautiful, and I had really enjoyed my time at the practice there. Emily and I considered the offer seriously, but I ended up vetoing the idea due to my fear of not being able to get along well enough with all of the veterinarians at the practice on a long term basis. So we finally decided to return to my hometown and join the practice where I had worked as a veterinary assistant in high school.

In the back of my mind, I had always had the idea of coming home and joining the T-Town Veterinary Clinic. The owners of the practice, Dr. E and Dr. L, had taken care of my family’s animals for as long as I could remember, and they had long been mentors and role-models for me. So after several meetings, we hashed out a starting salary that was satisfactory to all of us, and I agreed to take the job. The best part was that they knew me well enough that they were prepared to let me buy in as a full partner as soon as I was ready to do so. Although I may have been able to have gone somewhere else and received a larger starting salary and more benefits, nowhere else was the partnership option going to be offered so readily.

That settled, we now needed a place to live. My parents, thrilled that we were moving back home, suggested that we purchase a trailer house and move it onto family land near their house. Lacking the finances for a more independent option, we agreed. Shopping for trailer houses is a lot like shopping for cars. We visited lot after lot…new, used, single, and double-wide. It wasn’t the home of our dreams, but we finally found one that was pretty nice and more importantly, affordable, and made arrangements to have it moved to the family land. I spent the few weeks between graduation and starting at the clinic sprucing up the place, building a wooden deck off the back door, and putting up a chain-link fence around the back yard for us to keep the three dogs that we had acquired over the course of veterinary school.

I officially started my career as a veterinarian on May 15, 2006. The first week was a bit of an adjustment as I became accustomed to working with the appointment schedule, determined the locations of the various drugs and instruments that were to be my livelihood, and generally got my feet under me. This process was made much easier by the fact that I had worked in the practice at various times in the past as an unlicensed technician, but I had much to learn before being on call the next week. My second week of practice I was on call Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and as it was Memorial Day Weekend, I was on call the following Monday as well. It was a bit trial by fire, I admit. I spent most of it in a fetal position on the couch at home, praying the pager didn’t go off. When it inevitably did, my heart rate would soar. I’d break out in a cold sweat, and my hands would start shaking. I often had to call Dr. E or Dr. L to ask advice on diagnoses and treatments, where to find the drugs in the clinic, and how much to charge at the end. To their credit, they were always patient and extremely willing to help me when I needed it, which was often. I don’t remember all of the specific calls that I went on that weekend, but one stands out in my memory and is one of my favorite vet stories to this day:

“This is Dr. Carpenter from the T-Town Veterinary Clinic,” I say. “I got a page that you are having trouble with your dog. What can I do for you?”

“Well my dog actually died,” the man replied.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, a bit confused.

“But I don’t think his juices have congealed yet. Do you think you can shock him with those paddle things and bring him back?” the man asks seriously.

I swear to God. He actually asked me that. I couldn’t make something like that up. This guy, who didn’t sound drunk or high, was seriously asking me to bring his dog back from the dead with a defibrillator.

Struggling to keep a straight face, I respond, “Well sir, first of all I don’t have a defibrillator and second, that only works if the animal is having a heart attack and you shock them as soon as their heart stops. Out of curiosity, how long ago did your dog die?

He thinks a minute. “Probably no more than four or five hours ago.”

“I don’t think there is anything I can do to help you at this point," I say. "I think you should probably just dig a hole and bury him.”