Vet Tech Tales: The Early Years (6 page)

Everything in the kennel area was cleaned, fed, disinfected, bathed and/or walked by 10:00 the first morning of volunteer hospital duty. True to his word, the clinic owner, Dr. Norris, invited Lisa and me into the exam rooms to observe for the next two hours. I shadowed Dr. Norris while Lisa shadowed Dr. Reese. My primary duty that day was to entertain the puppies and kittens that came through and feed them treats while the vet sneaked up behind them with a thermometer or needle. It was generally routine medicine we saw that day: puppy and kitten exams, annual shots, heartworm checks, flea problems. Saturday mornings were mostly reserved for the 9-to-5 working people who couldn’t get in with their pets during the week. A bread-and-butter day of high-profit-margin invoices that the vets pretty much sleep-walked through, while Lisa and I were wide-eyed at every turn.

Outside the exam rooms, Kathy showed us how to draw up serum for vaccinations. We also got to peer through the microscope at fecal exams, catching glimpses of a variety of parasite eggs: hookworms, roundworms, whipworms. Who knew worms could be so interesting?

Noon and our ride came all too soon.

“Thanks for coming,” Kathy said as we were going out the door. “Dr. Norris let our other assistant,
Ashley,
take the day off because he knew you’d be here. You really helped out a lot.”

What could be better? We’d made a real contribution, even if it took two volunteers to equal one paid assistant. We’d been around animals for nearly five solid hours, and we’d learned a few things along the way. We were eager to work at the next clinic on our rotation.

The following Saturday, Lisa and I showed up for work at Dr. Sharpe’s clinic a few miles away. Animal care basics being pretty much the same everywhere, the facilities looked very similar to Dr. Norris’ clinic, except the hallways were a bit more open and the kennel area a bit brighter. Not that we saw much of the clinic, other than the kennel. Dutifully, we cleaned the cages, fed the animals, walked the dogs, and bathed and dipped a half dozen or so flea-infested pups. Carol, a petite woman in her mid-20s wearing a white lab coat with a stethoscope around her neck, showed Lisa and me where the cleaning and bathing supplies were, then left us to our own devices. She would pop into the kennel every now again carrying in one of the dogs to be bathed and dipped, or to carry out one of the other animals.

Two of the dogs in for a bath had long, matted hair. We brushed a collie for nearly an hour trying to get the mats out and spent another 40 minutes de-tangling a Maltese. By the time the dogs to be groomed were bathed, dipped and dried, it was 11:30. Lisa and I stepped into the hallway, hoping to be seen and invited into one of the exam rooms. We were indeed seen, but only by Carol, who began asking us to shuttle dogs from the back kennel to the front lobby and their owners’ waiting arms. In all the time we were there, Dr. Sharpe didn’t even acknowledge us.

“We were used!” Lisa wailed when we piled into her mom’s car at noon. “Free labor, that’s all they thought we were. We made them over $100 on those baths and dips alone and what did we get in return? The pleasure of doing their work for them, that’s all.”

“Aren’t you going to Dr. Fiennes next week? I bet things will be better there.” Lisa’s mom, ever the optimist, had a way of ignoring the facts of the present in favor of the possibilities of the future. I, personally, had long thought she was a bit of a twit.

 
Dr. Fiennes was no better than Dr. Sharpe. Lisa and I practically ran for the car at noon. “We’d be better off volunteering at a grooming shop if all we’re going to be doing is bathing and dipping dogs,” Lisa pointed out. “At least at a groomer’s we might learn how to do poodle cuts.”

I sighed. It was beginning to look like the nanny experience all over again. “We’re back with Dr. Norris next week. Let’s see how that goes.”

Dr. Norris himself answered our early morning knock. “Oh, were you two scheduled for today?” he asked, clearly surprised to see us.

My heart sank. If he wasn’t expecting us –

 
“You know, my last volunteers were no shows. I didn’t want to be shorthanded, so I have Kathy and Ashley both here today.”

Here it comes, I thought. My dad’s not going to like having to turn around and come straight back to pick us up.

“But since you’re here, I’ve
been wanting
to talk with you about this volunteer business. It hasn’t been working out too well. The other vets don’t want to work with the Explorers on Saturdays any more. Most of their volunteers have been no-shows, too.”

It was worse than I expected. We weren’t just being sent home for today, but for good.

“You two, though, have shown you’re dependable. Sharpe and Fiennes were both pretty impressed they could leave you on your own almost immediately. And Kathy had some very nice things to say about you when you were here before. So here’s my proposition. I can use one of you here every week. That way Kathy and Ashley can alternate taking Saturdays off. And my business partner, Dr. Vann, is willing to take the other one on. His clinic is just a couple of miles from your high school. If you can assure us that you’ll come every Saturday, you can work through till the end of the school year. I don’t want you to commit, though, and then fall through.”

Lisa and I exchanged looks. We knew each other only too well to not know what the other one was thinking. Dr. Norris was a known value that either of us would be willing to work for, but what was Dr. Vann like?

It was Lisa who asked. “Will Dr. Vann let us spend time in the exam room? The other vets weren’t too good about that, even after we finished everything they wanted us to do.”

Dr. Norris laughed. “Paul’s a natural teacher. I don’t think you’ll be ignored with him.” He glanced at his watch. “Talk it over between yourselves and with your parents. Meanwhile, since I have enough help in the back, you can stay up front with Dr. Reese and me. Joan
may need
some help, too, at the desk. The book looks pretty full today, so there should be plenty to do.”

There was, of course, no question that Lisa and I would take Dr. Norris up on his offer. The only question was who would work with Dr. Vann. It turned out Lisa’s parents decided for us. They had committed to a monthly Saturday class and had sports tournaments that fell on the occasional Saturdays. Since Dr. Vann’s clinic was within biking distance where Dr. Norris’ wasn’t, Lisa took the volunteer position with Dr. Vann.

Just as Dr. Norris had said, Paul Vann was a natural teacher who genuinely enjoyed people, pets and his profession. Tall, with thinning red hair and a full beard, Dr. Vann had an easy laugh and a natural way with animals. Lisa adored him, adored his clinic and adored the work. So much so that, after a few weeks, she began going in on Sundays, too, to help out with the day’s cleaning, feeding and treatments as well as with the heavy-duty weekly cleaning chores such as washing windows and waxing floors. And it wasn’t long before I was biking my way over there, too, right alongside her on Sunday mornings, the lure of the animals too strong to deny.

Had we wanted to see the truth, we would have known that Norris and Vann were coming out far ahead in this game. Not only were they getting free labor, they were both getting out of paying an employee on Saturdays and Vann on Sundays as well. Plus, we were generating income for the clinics by grooming a fair number of dogs and cats. It was profitable to keep us on. We were fast learners, conscientious, dependable and good at what we were doing. And all they had to spend in return for our service was a little knowledge, and most of that siphoned out in the natural course of their business.

Like with my job at the airfield – before being drafted into babysitting – I was getting what I thought was a fair return: a few minutes with the animals in exchange for a few hours of work. And at 15, I believed simply being around the animals was pay enough.

Four months after the volunteer work began it was over.
For me, at least.
I turned 16 at semester’s end and summer demanded a full-time paying job to earn money for college. And since I was going to skip my junior year based on my academic
record ,
I’d only have this summer and the next to save up for vet school.

Reluctantly I bade the clinic, the vets, the assistants and the
animals
farewell and turned my attention to filling orders in a warehouse: lugging a cart up and down long aisles in a hot metal building and counting out paintbrushes and skeins of yarn for handicraft stores nationwide. I endured the menial labor and looked forward to fall, the start of my senior year, and weekends once again cleaning cages and bathing dogs.

I began planning my next years – graduation, college, vet school – in meticulous detail, confident of success. Confident that the pieces would all fall with exacting grace right into the holes I so carefully chiseled out for them.
 

College Is Only a Setback Away

The long faces in the kitchen didn’t overly concern me. I was hot and tired after a day of filling orders at the warehouse and a bike ride home. A bit of dinner, a little TV and a good book were all I had mind for.

“Honey, I’m afraid we have some bad news.”

I immediately went into denial mode. The life I was structuring had no room for bad news, so there simply couldn’t be anything bad happening that would affect me. My mom brushed a strand of graying hair off her cheek. “Your dad’s company – well, they’ve laid him off.”

I glanced at my dad, a solemn man in his late-40s with little formal education faced with a sinking economy marked by high unemployment and even higher inflation. Unperturbed, I remained confident in my plan. This was a minor setback, nothing more.
A hiccup in the family.
Dad would find another job and off he would go every weekday morning once more.

But the days turned to weeks, and when summer finally wore down, the best Dad had found was a position as a weekend security guard. With the family car tied up on Saturdays, I had no way to get to Dr. Norris’ clinic when school started back up. Unable to stop it, I watched the first piece of my life plan slip away.

The second piece followed fast.

“I have to get a job.” The look of panic and disbelief betrayed the unnatural calm in my brother’s voice. “It’s the middle of the semester. Where am I supposed to find work now?”

A senior in college, majoring in anthropology, my brother was home for a weekend visit he clearly hadn’t wanted to come back for.

“I thought you had a job.”

“I teach four labs a week. That’s barely enough for groceries.”

“What about your scholarship?”

“It pays for school, but not my apartment or anything else.”

“There isn’t anything left in the college fund?”

Dan shook his head. “Mom and Dad raided it to pay their own bills. It’s gone.”

Gone.
Anger welled in me. Even if Dad landed a job tomorrow, my parents wouldn’t be able to build up any kind of savings before the next school year. If they had to cut off subsidy to my brother now, where would that put
me
in the fall? I would have to rely on what little I had made over the past summer and what little more I would make this next one. So much for the car I wanted to buy. Every penny would now have to be squirreled away for other expenses.

It wasn’t fair.

And what I was thinking deep down wasn’t fair either. That Dan had gotten at least some support for three years, but I would get nothing. That the male in the family had gotten the help he needed to put him in a position to get a job that might one day support a family of his own. Even in the mid-1970s, traditional values from a dying age had managed to win out again.