08/13/2025
This was written by a veterinarian.
I once stitched up a dog’s 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 ’79, maybe ’80, just outside a small town near the Tennessee border.
There was no clinic, no clean table, and no anesthetic, except for moonshine. But the dog survived, and that man still sends me a Christmas card every year, even though his dog’s long gone and so is his wife.
I’ve been a veterinarian for forty years. Four decades of blood under my nails and fur on my clothes. It used to be about fixing what you could with what you had, not what you could bill. Now, I spend half my days explaining insurance codes and financing plans while someone’s beagle bleeds out in the next room.
I used to think this job was about saving lives. Now, I know it’s about holding on to the pieces when everything falls apart.
I started in ’85, fresh out of the University of Georgia, with hair still on my head and hope still in my heart. My first clinic was a small 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 when it felt like it. But people came — farmers, factory workers, retirees, even the occasional trucker with a pit bull riding shotgun.
They didn’t ask for much — a shot here, a stitch there, euthanasia when the time came. We always knew when it was time. No debates, no guilt-shaming on social media, no “alternative protocols.” Just a quiet understanding between a person and their dog that the suffering had become too much. And they trusted me to carry that weight.
I’d 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 hadn’t eaten in days. I’d sit beside the owner, hand them a tissue, and wait. No rush. Because back then, we held them as they left. Now, people sign papers and ask if they can pick up the ashes next week.
I remember the first time I had to put down a dog — a German Shepherd named Rex. He’d been hit by a combine. The farmer, Walter Jennings, a World War II vet, was tough as nails. But when I told him Rex was beyond saving, his knees buckled. He didn’t say a word. He just kissed Rex’s snout and whispered, “You done good, boy.” Then he turned to me and said, “Do it quick. Don’t make him wait.”
I did.
Later that night, I couldn’t sleep. I sat on my front porch with a cigarette and stared at the stars until dawn. That’s when I realized this job wasn’t just about the animals. It was about the people. The love they poured into something that wouldn’t live as long as they did.
Now it’s 2025. My hair’s white, what’s left of it. My hands don’t always cooperate, and there’s a tremor that wasn’t there last spring. The clinic is still there, but now it’s got sleek white walls, subscription software, and a 28-year-old marketing guy telling me to film TikToks with my patients. I told him I’d rather neuter myself.
We used to rely on instinct. Now it’s all algorithms and liability forms.
Last week, a woman came in with a bulldog in respiratory failure. I said we’d 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. I just nodded. What else could I do?
Sometimes I think about retiring. Hell, I almost did during COVID. That was a nightmare — parking lot pickups, barking behind closed doors, masks hiding the tears, 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 full of kittens he found in his grandpa’s 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 old man calls just to thank me — not for the treatment, but because I sat with him after his dog died and didn’t say a word. I just let the silence heal.
That’s why I stay.
Because despite all the changes — the apps, the forms, the lawsuits, the Google-diagnosing clients — one thing hasn’t changed. People still love their animals like family. And when that love is deep enough, it comes out in quiet ways: 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 won’t make it to fall.
A few months ago, a man walked in carrying a shoebox. He said he found a kitten near the railroad tracks. Its leg was mangled, ribs like piano keys. He looked like hell himself. Told me he’d just gotten out of prison and didn’t have a dime. Could I do anything?
I looked in that box. The kitten opened its eyes and meowed like it knew me. I nodded and said, “Leave him here. Come back Friday.”
We splinted the leg, fed him warm milk every two hours, and named him Boomer. The man showed up Friday with a half-eaten apple pie and tears in his eyes. He said no one had ever given him something back without asking what he had first.
I told him, animals don’t care what you’ve done. Just 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 who 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 clinic’s 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.
Back when we held them as they left — and we held their people too.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: You don’t get to save them all. But you damn well better try. And when it’s time to say goodbye, you stay. You don’t flinch. You don’t rush. You kneel down, look them in the eyes, and you stay until their last breath leaves the room.
That’s the part no one trains you for. Not in vet school. Not in textbooks.
That’s the part that makes you human.
And I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
