Free The Gift of Pets: Stories Only a Vet Could Tell by Bruce R. Coston Page A

toward me and he fixed me with a questioning look, which made me feel all the worse.
    “Wait, what did you say?”
    “I said I am planning to attend college in Tennessee. It’s the college that both of my brothers attended. I’m really looking forward to it.”
    To my utter surprise, Dr. Evers broke into a peel of laughter that went on so long, I began to get angry at him. He had belittled me, bemused me, and berated me all morning long. My intelligence had been questioned, my knowledge demeaned, my future derided. Why, even the receptionist at the clinic had looked at me askew. I was frankly sick of it! And here was this man, whom I admired beyond words, laughing at me yet again. I was about in tears when he turned to me.
    “Bruce, we owe you one great big apology, all of us!” And he went into another prolonged round of laughter. When he had gotten himself under control, he wiped the streaming tears from his eyes and looked at me with more warmth and compassion than I had felt all day.
    “When you said you were a senior this morning at rounds, we all thought you were a senior in veterinary school. We had no clue that you were about to graduate from high school. Wow, with that piece of vital information, I have to say that you have handled yourself amazingly well. No wonder you didn’t know the answers to even the simplest of questions. O my stars, I can’t wait to tell everyone at the office. You know, the only one who was even close was the receptionist. She said you looked awfully young.”
    Immediately, I felt a heavy weight roll from my shoulders. Together, we rehashed the morning’s events through the eyes of each other’s incorrect assumptions. Things got funnier and funnier, till we were both laughing helplessly. Needless to say, the afternoon was considerably more enjoyable than the morning had been.
    As I think back on my day with the horse doctors, I still chuckle at the comedy of errors that played out at my expense. At this point in my career, I may be surprised that I do not practice equine medicine. But I doubt that Dr. Evers and his colleagues at the Maple Plain Equine Services practice are surprised one little bit.

 
    Lisa
    I first met Lisa Spalding when she responded to our ad for a kennel attendant. There was nothing extraordinary about her. She had nondescript brown hair pulled into a tight ponytail. Her face was long in both dimension and demeanor, with puffy, sad eyes and buckteeth. She was lean, but not because she was in especially good physical condition. Her movements were fluid in a rather careless, almost exasperated way. The fingernails of her thumb and index finger, I noticed as I shook her hand, were nicotine-stained. I judged her to be in her late twenties, though her hardened face hinted at many more years. There was about her a veneer of self-protective nonchalance, a carefully applied indifference, as if she didn’t really care whether or not she got the job. But around the edges, the veneer was a little loose, and below it I sensed an eagerness that pressed unwillingly to the surface. True, the job for which she was applying was not very exciting: walking dogs, cleaning cages, refreshing litter boxes, a little sweeping and mopping. But I detected a spark of enthusiasm behind her mask of studied detachment. Lisa really wanted this job.
    It is just this desire that I seek in applicants for openings at my hospital still—the yearning that pivots around the essence of what it is that makes a good employee in a veterinary hospital. Let’s face it, it is not the fantastic pay scale that attracts people to the field. Nor is it the glamour. There’s very little of that. It certainly is not the pristine work environment. Rather, it is the intangible but far more fulfilling currency of earning the trust and confidence of unruly, hurting, and confused patients and bringing them relief from their pain and discomfort. It is the compensation of seeing the tense face of a worried owner