Yesterday was my last shift in the vet practice, marking the end of my student job there, now that I have graduated with a Masters Degree in Creative Writing, and found a new publisher. I worked at the vets for almost four years and I'm not going to lie - it hasn't always been easy. While lots of people love animals, me included, working with them is another thing altogether. Its the kind of job that takes over your life if you let it, and for the past few years, it feels like my own life has quite literally gone to the dogs! And cats...and rabbits...and wildlife. You get the idea.
I worked for a large practice with several branches. The first branch I worked in was a small one, with a small team. It had a very family-like atmosphere and because it was so small, it was limited in what it could do. I was there for almost two years, then I transferred to my local bigger branch, which was one of the emergency hospital branches and I noticed the different immediately.
Working there was akin to working in the A&E unit in a hospital. Everything that an A&E unit deals with - heart attacks, heat strokes, seizures, broken limbs, accidents, emergency C-sections, RTAs, dementia, neglect/welfare cases and so on - we had coming through our doors. The only difference was that our patients had four legs not two, and they couldn't tell us where it hurt. Working at such a branch meant that we were constantly run off our feet. It was always busy. It was always stressful. It was frequently very upsetting. It often meant dealing with abusive clients and sometimes, aggressive animals too.
It meant stretchering in very poorly animals and dogs who had collapsed. It meant being the one to take bloody, broken cats from the arms of distraught owners or members of the public, who had just seen the cat be hit by a car, reassuring them that the vets would do what they could, without offering false hope and at the same time, offering kindness and counselling to the people who brought such animals into us. It meant holding the oxygen mask over a pet's face, talking to it and holding its confused gaze, while the vet tries to raise a vein for the catheter and the nurse monitors the heart rate.
It meant holding animals while they were put to sleep. It meant searching through the freezer of dead animals, trying to identify if the DOA stray that was brought in yesterday, is the same missing pet that a worried owner is currently reporting to us on the phone, and if it is, defrosting it with a hairdryer so that the owners can see/collect their beloved companion for home burial. It meant helping the pet-crematorium collection-driver load up his van with cadavers. It meant working through a global pandemic as a key-worker, doing twelve hour shifts, with one single 30 minute break all day, while wearing full PPE at all times.
I have done all of this and more, for minimum wage, and I can tell you from personal experience that it is not a job for the faint-hearted! Euthanasia is a daily occurrence. Excessive breeding has to be flagged up and reported. It is a high stakes environment, with life or death situations happening everyday. Some people just can't hack it and they leave after a few months, because they find it too upsetting and the job isn't what they thought it would be. I'm very proud of the work that I did at the vets and that I stuck at it for so long, despite its challenges. I have learnt so much and it has made me stronger and more robust in character than ever.
Having said all of that, there were also some very lovely moments that made the job more bearable. I was lucky enough to cuddle puppies and kittens, virtually everyday and get paid for doing it! I have experienced things that I would not have been able to do, had I not worked in a vets. Hand feeding a tiny bat for instance, or feeding fruit to a stray parrot, or stroking the thick soft fur of a real silver fox, all ghostly white and magical. I have fed poorly hedgehogs, held injured wild birds close to my chest to calm them and tickled a bearded dragon under the chin. These are not the kind of things you get to do, unless you work in a vet practice and for all such lovely moments, I feel very grateful indeed. As an animal lover, that was the best part, and being able to hold and nurture wildlife, seeing them released back into the wild where possible, was the best part of the job.
So I am very happy to have had the experience of working in a vets and I'm glad I did it. It was a good student job and probably the most secure part time mundane job I've ever had. The pandemic didn't shake that security at all and while other sectors were crashing, my job was totally safe, so again, I was very grateful for it and if you are looking for job security, I would suggest you aim for a veterinary/medical environment if you think you can hack it.
I worked within the most dedicated teams of people I have ever met. Vets working 12-14 hour shifts straight through, not having time for a lunch break because of the emergencies that came in, and chugging down water between consults, just to try and keep themselves going. The pandemic was awful and to say people were told to stay at home, we had never been busier than we were during lock-down. There were tears of exhaustion and stressed out tantrums and we were all guilty of snapping at one another during those horrendous months of restrictions. We couldn't breath through the face masks, or see through the fogged up plastic visors we were forced to wear. We couldn't see our family members, but we worked with far more colleagues than the restricted 'bubble' limit, so before the team was vaccinated, we were all at risk. To add insult to injury, people who worked in vet practices were not prioritized for vaccines either, so we all had to wait our turn like other members of the public who were staying safe at home, despite the fact that we were dealing with hundreds of clients! It was a very tough time and not one that I would ever want to repeat.
So it was with a certain amount of relief that I handed my notice in a month ago. One of the senior vets has been teasing me since that day, saying he thinks I'll be asking for my job back in six months time, and while its nice that they are leaving the door open for me, I don't think I would want to go back. It's time for me to move on, to leave the student job behind and return to my cosy life, working from home in my study, writing for a living again. Now that I have a new publisher, I can do just that. Plus, I do believe that it is selfish to remain in a job when you don't need it anymore. It is better to step aside and let someone who does need the job have the role, perhaps another student just beginning their degree for instance, thereby giving them the experience I have been lucky enough to have had.
Yesterday was my final shift and my lovely colleagues had bought me a cake, a gorgeous bouquet of flowers, cards and writerly presents as a farewell. Yet even our momentary gathering of a leaving do was cut short, because someone had to cover reception and see to clients. It just never stops and you can't even have a piece of cake in peace! But I did appreciate the effort they went to and my lilies are opening up beautifully in the sunshine and filling my room with their fragrance. My home smells like a summer meadow.
I'm now taking a couple of days to rest and reflect, then next week I will be cracking on with my new writing projects, picking up my old life as a full time writer once again. This is what I have been working towards for the past few years, so I am so happy that I have achieved my goal of returning to a life in publishing again. I have lots of exciting new projects to get on with, but I'll write a separate blog post on that soon. For now, I'm going to make a cuppa in my new Writer's mug and settle down to read a good book. Enjoy the weekend and look out for new posts and titles from me coming soon!
Blessed Be
Marie x
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