10/16/2025
https://www.facebook.com/iloveveterinary/posts/1272379131587128
ââA veterinarian wrote this.â
I once stitched up a dogâs throat with fishing line in the back of a pickup, while its owner held a flashlight in his mouth and cried like a child.
That was in â79, maybe â80. Just outside a little town near the Tennessee border. No clinic, no clean table, no anesthetic except moonshine. But the dog lived, and that man still sends me a Christmas card every year, even though the dogâs long gone and so is his wife.
Iâve been a vet for forty years. Thatâs four decades of blood under my nails and fur on my clothes. It used to be you fixed what you could with what you had â not what you could bill. Now I spend half my days explaining insurance codes and financing plans while someoneâs beagle bleeds out in the next room.
I used to think this job was about saving lives. Now I know itâs about holding on to the pieces when they fall apart.
I started in â85. Fresh out of the University of Georgia, I still had hair and hope. My first clinic was a brick building off a gravel road with a roof that leaked when it rained. The phone was rotary, the fridge rattled, and the heater worked only when pleased. But folks cameâfarmers, factory workers, retirees, even the occasional trucker with a pit bull riding shotgun.
They didnât ask for much.
A shot here. A stitch there. Euthanasia when it was time â and we always knew when it was time. There was no debate, no guilt-shaming on social media, no âalternative protocols.â Just the quiet understanding between a person and their dog that the suffering had become too much. And they trusted me to carry the weight.
Some days Iâd drive out in my old Chevy to a barn where a horse lay with a broken leg, or to a porch where an old hound hadnât eaten in three days. Iâd sit beside the owner, pass them the tissue, and wait. I never rushed it. Because back then, we held them as they left. Now people sign papers and ask if they can âpick up the ashes next week.â
I remember the first time I had to put down a dog. A German Shepherd named Rex. A combine had hit him. The farmer, Walter Jennings, was a World War II vet, tough as barbed wire and twice as sharp. But when I told him Rex was beyond saving, his knees buckled in my exam room.
He didnât say a word. Just nodded. And then â Iâll never forget this â he kissed Rexâs snout and whispered, âYou done good, boy.â Then he turned to me and said, âDo it quickly. Donât make him wait.â
I did.
Later that night, I couldnât sleep. I sat on my front porch with a cigarette and stared at the stars until sunrise. Thatâs when I realized this job wasnât just about animals. It was about people. About the love they poured into something that would never live as long as they did.
Now itâs 2025. My hairâs white â whatâs left of it. My hands donât always cooperate. Thereâs a tremor that wasnât there last spring. The clinic is still there, but now itâs got sleek white walls, subscription software, and some 28-year-old marketing guy telling me to film TikToks with my patients. I told him Iâd rather neuter myself.
We used to use instinct. Now itâs all algorithms and liability forms.
A woman came in last week with a bulldog in respiratory failure. I said weâd need to intubate and keep him overnight. She pulled out her phone and asked if she could get a second opinion from an influencer she follows online. I just nodded. What else can you do?
Sometimes I think about retiring. Hell, I almost did during COVID. That was a nightmare â parking lot pickups, barking behind closed doors, masks hiding the tears, and saying goodbye through car windows. No one got to hold them as they left.
That broke something in me.
But then I see a kid come in with a box of kittens he found in his grandpaâs barn, and his eyes light up when I let him feed one. Or I patch up a golden retriever who got too close to a barbed fence, and the owner brings me a pecan pie the next day. Or an older man calls me just to say thank you â not for the treatment, but because I sat with him after his dog died and didnât say a damn thing, just let the silence do the healing.
Thatâs why I stay.
Because despite all the changes â the apps, the forms, the lawsuits, the Google-diagnosing clients â one thing hasnât changed.
People still love their animals like family.
And when that love is deep enough, it comes out quietly. A trembling hand on a fur-covered flank. A whispered goodbye. A wallet emptied without question. A grown man breaking down in my office because his dog wonât live to see the fall.
No matter the year, the tech, the trends, that never changes.
A few months ago, a man walked in carrying a shoebox. Said he found a kitten near the railroad tracks. Mangled leg, fleas, ribs like piano keys. He looked like hell himself. He told me heâd just escaped prison and didnât have a dime, but could I do anything?
I looked in that box. That kitten opened its eyes and meowed like it knew me. I nodded and said, âLeave him here. Come back Friday.â
We splinted the leg, fed him warm milk every two hours, and named him Boomer. That man showed up on Friday with a half-eaten apple pie and tears in his eyes. He said no one ever gave him something back without asking what he had first.
I told him animals donât care what you did, how you hold them now.
Forty years.
Thousands of lives.
Some saved. Some not.
But all of them mattered.
I keep a drawer in my desk. Locked. No one touches it. Inside are old photos, thank-you notes, collars, and nametags. A milk bone from a border collie named Scout, who saved a boy from drowning. A clay paw print from a cat that used to sleep on a gas station counter. A crayon drawing from a girl who said I was her hero because I helped her hamster breathe again.
I take it out sometimes, late at night, when the clinicâs dark and my hands are still.
And I remember.
I remember what it was like before all the screens. Before the apps. Before the clickbait cures and the credit checks.
Back when being a vet meant driving through mud at midnight because a cow was calving wrong and you were the only one they trusted.
Back when we stitched with fishing line and hope.
We held them as they left â and we held their people, too.
If thereâs one thing Iâve learned in this life, itâs this:
You donât get to save them all.
But you damn sure better try.
And when itâs time to say goodbye, you stay. You donât flinch. You donât rush. You kneel, look them in the eyes, and wait until their last breath leaves the room.
Thatâs the part no one trains you for. Not in vet school. Not in textbooks.
Thatâs the part that makes you human.
And I wouldnât trade it for the world."
