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izzyreadsstuff's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.5
Intense, unfiltered, and absolutely brilliant. An essential read for anyone wanting to venture into the world of veterinary professionals.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cancer, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Blood, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Injury/Injury detail
wordsofclover's review against another edition
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
A perfect mix between James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small and Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt, Never Work With Animals is the gritty tell-all book about life as a vet - and it's not as romantic and full of fluffy bunnies (okay, a few fluffy bunnies) as you might think. The book starts off with a bang, literally, as the author starts off his vet tales with the time he had to shoot a bull with a broken leg - and it took a few times to get it right. While this was a little bit of a shocking start to the book, I also think it helps weed out those who might not be able for a book that really shows the reality of life working with animals - and the people that often cause their distress and bring about their end. Gareth makes a good point right at the start that the idea of a vet is extremely romanticised yet in reality it's an extremely tough job full of hard hours, not enough pay, often not enough gratitude or respect from the owners, and full of distressing moments, alongside the nice ones that make it worthwhile.
As someone who once dreamed of being a vet, and often thinks about those 'what if' moments, I really enjoyed seeing the day to day life as a vet even with all those hard moments. I appreciated seeing the darker times as well as the nice ones - the puppies that made it, the ones that didn't and the owners who loved fiercely despite those ones who didn't seem to care at all. There are moments in here that boiled my blood as a pet owner and an animal lover - people who breed their dog (particularly bull breeds who have difficulty giving birth naturally) without any care for her health and only thinking about the money, the ones who put their pets down so they wouldn't have to pay a bill that they probably spent willy nilly on other things, and the strange power people feel over their animals and punish them for things out of their control (such as a woman wanting to put down her 10-year-old dog because the kids wouldn't do anything around the house?!).
I appreciated Gareth's stories as a country vet - it's easy to see that farmers often get a hard rap due to them treating animals as entities but that's unfortunately because they are but that doesn't mean a farmer doesn't care for his animals - and as Gareth writes, it's not unusual to see a farmer cry about a cow he delivered himself as a teenager. How different types of government mandates and veterinary standards means that one bad test can destroy a farmer's livelihood, and eradicate a family tradition that goes back how many years. When put like that you can understand some of the desperate measures the farmers take to avoid such moments, as well as (almost) understand the aggression towards vets tasked with delivering bad news. I'd actually love to read a similar memoir like this but with a female vet with experience as a country vet as some of Gareth's stories referenced altercations between farmers and female vets around TB disagreements and I think this voice could bring a whole other type of story to the forefront.
Overall I enjoyed this though I do think the book needed some editing down when it came to some of the tangents/lectures the author tended to write. While I agreed with a lot of what he was saying from the dangers of practising homeopathy without experience, and not believing scientifically approved methods of care, to vaccines and why it's important to vaccinate your pets, as well as the benefits of plant-based diets, some of these ran on way too long and I got bored of what felt like a man droning in my ear about why his opinion is the right opinion. There were paragraphs upon paragraphs that could easily have been struck off. I just didn't pick up a book about a vet's experiences to learn why the planet is dying- I have other books for that.
If you love animals, and you're not too soft-hearted when it comes to them, I recommend picking this one up. It helps that it has a truly adorable cover!
As someone who once dreamed of being a vet, and often thinks about those 'what if' moments, I really enjoyed seeing the day to day life as a vet even with all those hard moments. I appreciated seeing the darker times as well as the nice ones - the puppies that made it, the ones that didn't and the owners who loved fiercely despite those ones who didn't seem to care at all. There are moments in here that boiled my blood as a pet owner and an animal lover - people who breed their dog (particularly bull breeds who have difficulty giving birth naturally) without any care for her health and only thinking about the money, the ones who put their pets down so they wouldn't have to pay a bill that they probably spent willy nilly on other things, and the strange power people feel over their animals and punish them for things out of their control (such as a woman wanting to put down her 10-year-old dog because the kids wouldn't do anything around the house?!).
I appreciated Gareth's stories as a country vet - it's easy to see that farmers often get a hard rap due to them treating animals as entities but that's unfortunately because they are but that doesn't mean a farmer doesn't care for his animals - and as Gareth writes, it's not unusual to see a farmer cry about a cow he delivered himself as a teenager. How different types of government mandates and veterinary standards means that one bad test can destroy a farmer's livelihood, and eradicate a family tradition that goes back how many years. When put like that you can understand some of the desperate measures the farmers take to avoid such moments, as well as (almost) understand the aggression towards vets tasked with delivering bad news. I'd actually love to read a similar memoir like this but with a female vet with experience as a country vet as some of Gareth's stories referenced altercations between farmers and female vets around TB disagreements and I think this voice could bring a whole other type of story to the forefront.
Overall I enjoyed this though I do think the book needed some editing down when it came to some of the tangents/lectures the author tended to write. While I agreed with a lot of what he was saying from the dangers of practising homeopathy without experience, and not believing scientifically approved methods of care, to vaccines and why it's important to vaccinate your pets, as well as the benefits of plant-based diets, some of these ran on way too long and I got bored of what felt like a man droning in my ear about why his opinion is the right opinion. There were paragraphs upon paragraphs that could easily have been struck off. I just didn't pick up a book about a vet's experiences to learn why the planet is dying- I have other books for that.
If you love animals, and you're not too soft-hearted when it comes to them, I recommend picking this one up. It helps that it has a truly adorable cover!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death
Minor: Mental illness
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