Veterinary Story Time: Dogs & Gross
Look, your working day as a vet is a very, very busy one. Especially in a mixed practice, you don’t really get ‘lunch breaks’. It’s more a situation of scoffing food down while you can, or hoping you get a spare five minutes to run to the milk bar next door before all the kids get out of school across the road and nab all the potato cakes.
So, you end up eating a lot of junk. And you eat fast. I mean ravenous Labrador levels of fast, and you may well swallow a bunch of air.
It’s not great for your digestion, and the air has to go somewhere.
And some forces of biology cannot be denied.
A typical day in mixed practice will fill the afternoon with consults. You try to get your surgery done as early as possible during the day so that patients have time to recover before you close. Which means that if you wolfed down ‘lunch’, whatever it was, you’re likely to go straight into consults immediately after.
Even if your gastronomic decisions haven’t been the best that day.
As a veterinarian you are expected to have a certain professionalism, maintain a certain decorum, but you’re also rushed off your feet and poor for time.
Which is how I unfortunately found myself in a consult, with a pair of lovely clients and their dog, with that distinctly uncomfortable feeling of gas building up in the lower intestine that very urgently needs to escape.
(I am pained writing this, dear Vetlings.)
I thought I could hold it. I was a fool. A naive fool.
I leaned over the dog as I was examining it, and out crept that gas. Silent, but fragrant.
I tried not to die from embarrassment. I thought quickly. My brief expression of near-blank concern replaced with a brief flash of disdain in the dog’s direction.
“So, what do you feed your dog?” I segued into quickly as they stammered a reply in their embarrassment.
Thank you pupper for playing along at the time.
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