Vet Tech Tales: The Early Years

Foreword

In the late 1970s, Phoenix Sullivan was among the first of a progressive generation of dedicated animal care workers to claim the newly instituted title of Registered Veterinary Technician.

The 70s were a time of political upheaval and social change.
A time when women were finding their voice in the world.
A time when we could still reach out and touch the moon – and be reminded that anything was possible.
 

One constant from that time remains: our relationship with animals.

While Phoenix Sullivan is a penname and the names of the vets, clients – even the dogs and cats – in these Tales have all been changed, their stories, insofar as memory and a distance of 30 years allows, are true.

Commentary from an older, wiser Phoenix flavors these Tales with a balanced perspective. If you’re new to the field of animal care, you’ll identify closely with the young Phoenix finding her way into the field of veterinary medicine. More experienced techs and vets will recognize the observations shared, realizing how the animals we meet teach us the great lessons about being human.

~~~

What shapes someone’s desire to work with animals?

The Early Years
introduces us to Phoenix, whose passion for animals was clearly established at an early age. Through her eyes, we discover how upbringing, education, volunteer service and life circumstances all conspired to help land her first job in veterinary medicine.

Later volumes follow Phoenix on her 6-year journey across two cities and multiple clinics, sharing the joys and heartaches of the profession and helping us understand her eventual disillusionment with an industry too often focused more on income than ideology.

The stars of every volume, though, are the animals and owners Phoenix meets along the way. For without the insight each encounter brings, a certain naïve teenager might never have had the courage to become a pioneer.

Prevarication, Pets and Parents

From the time I understood what a veterinarian was, I knew I was destined to be one. Like many with "the calling," I believed I had been born with my deep love and respect for animals. Nature over nurture, it had to be, for I certainly didn’t pick up that love from my parents or my environment. Not that I didn’t grow up with pets, but my brother, Dan, and I were both plagued with allergies, and for a long time anything with fur or feathers was prohibited from entering our house.

Still, our parents were of a mind that children should have pets. So when I turned three and the threat of
salmonella
had yet to ban their sale in pet shops, I was given a small turtle. Dan, who was seven at the time, and a lover of all things reptilian, received a baby crocodile. At least that’s what everyone called it then simply because no one knew any better. Only much, much later did we figure out it was no doubt a speckled
cayman
lizard that took up residence in our house.

I loved my turtle and would spend countless hours watching it wade around its little plastic turtle bowl, then trundle up the molded turtle ramp past the plastic palm tree, finally settling on the cold basking shelf to sun itself under an imaginary sun. The
cayman
, on the other hand, lived out its lonely days in the bathtub, wading in a shallow bit of water.

We fed them regularly on steady diets of generic turtle food, which the little guy glutted on, and generic lizard food, which the growing
cayman
mostly ignored. Clueless as to how to properly care for our charges, parents and kids alike were convinced turtle and lizard were enjoying healthy food and good shelter. Add in the stress of literally being loved to death and the outcome was never in doubt.

Neither turtle nor
cayman
lived very long or very happy lives.

So it was on to goldfish, then tropical fish, then sea horses ordered from a magazine ad. For some mysterious reason, all failed to thrive. Undaunted, I begged for a new pet each time one died.

When I was six, Mother relented a bit on the no feathers/no fur rule, conveniently deciding that just a small amount of feathers couldn’t possibly bring on a severe allergic reaction. She opted for a finch for me, chosen from a cage full of colorful birds at the local department store. I kept my small prize in my room until the day it escaped during a cage cleaning and flew into a window. I picked up the unconscious bird and it came awake in my hands, alive but unable to fly. We put the bird, peeping softly, into a box and made my first trip to an animal clinic.

The stainless steel table and the doctor’s white coat were far from comforting sights, reminding me of too many shots experienced at my own doctor’s office. After the vet examined the bird, he and my mother exchanged a long look.

“Honey, Pretty Boy will be just fine,” Mother assured me. “The doctor’s going to make him well again.”

The man of the hour nodded, and I knew right then I, too, wanted to make tiny birds well again when I grew up. With all the trust in the world, I handed my little friend over to this strange man in the white coat.

A few days later, Mother told me, “Hurry and get dressed. We’re picking up Pretty Boy today.”

My little friend was coming home! “Is he OK now?” I asked.

She nodded. “All better.” If her voice was strained, I was too happy to notice. I shucked on shoes and sweater and we were off.

But it wasn’t the animal clinic where we stopped. It was the department store.

“Is Pretty Boy here?” I struggled to figure out why we weren’t back at the animal clinic.

“Yes. The doctor brought him by for us to pick up.”

Something didn’t seem right, but my six-year-old logic was hard pressed to figure out what it was that didn’t fit.

Mother led me to the pet department and pointed to the cage full of finches. A store attendant stood by, net in hand. “Show her which one is yours.”

I squinted into the cage. A dozen small birds, nearly identically marked, flitted among the perches. Which one was Pretty Boy? None of them
felt
right, but two adults were waiting for me to answer, and I couldn’t very well let them know that I didn’t recognize my own bird. I lifted a finger and pointed.
“That one.”

The attendant poked the net in and deftly caught the little finch. Mother went to the cashier to pay the “vet bill,” and we took a miraculously recovered Pretty Boy home.
  

I wanted so desperately to believe in the lie that I almost convinced myself of it. But deep down I knew the truth, and I never forgave my mother for trying to shelter me from heartbreak and death. Better to have confronted it square on than to pretend it away.

I thought about Pretty Boy many years later when one of my cats went missing. A neighbor found her, dead, under their bushes. I went to collect the body and laid her on the porch to examine her, to discover why she had died. A couple of deep puncture wounds in the abdomen told the grisly story.

Mother walked up behind me and peered over my shoulder. “Maybe it isn’t Allie,” she said helpfully.

Not Allie? When I’m looking right at her? Wasn’t the pain of finding my cat mauled to death enough? Did I also have to defend the fact that she was dead?

“Right.
Maybe another orange cat just happened to show up here and die. Mom, I’m not six years old anymore. You can’t keep denying the truth to protect me. You can’t just wish death away.”