doctor Vet

By Brenda Meyers

Brenda was born in the Ottawa valley in 1952. She has two younger brothers who with their own families and their mom still live in the valley. After high school she attended the University of Guelph, and graduated with a degree in Veterinary Medicine. Her first job took her to the Rainy River District. The book "doctor Vet." includes a collection of short stories from her years practicing veterinary medicine in the area. Over the years, she and her husband Kim Meyers built up a dairy herd and milk quota and opened the Canning Lane Veterinary Hospital.
This book is a collection of Dr. Brenda's recollections of her life first as a student at university and then as veterinarian, wife and mother.
She practiced veterinary medicine in the district from 1977 until 2000, when due to health issues, she had to retire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brenda Meyers
• Release date: Mar 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476229218

Brenda Meyers

Brenda was born in the Ottawa valley in 1952. After high school she attended the University of Guelph, and graduated with a degree in Veterinary Medicine. Her first job took her to the Rainy River District where she and her husband Kim built up a dairy herd, and opened Canning Lane Veterinary Hospital. The book doctor Vet. includes a collection of short stories from her years practicing veterinary medicine in the area, where she worked from 1977 until the spring of 2000. At this time she had to close the practice for health reasons. Brenda then moved west, first to Hinton, Alberta, and eventually to Oliver, B.C. Many of the stories tell how her three daughters interacted and "helped" with the dairy farming and veterinary calls.

Book preview

As long as I can remember, I have felt that I needed to try and help any sick or injured animal I stumbled across. The following are a couple of examples of how things sometimes turned out. Both of these happened while I was growing up on the farm.

One summer, my brothers, Doug and Stephen and I had a job baby-sitting young ducklings for the neighbour. They brought over the duck’s swimming puddle, a child’s wading pool, and feed dishes. Dad arranged a fence to keep the ducks corralled. One morning we went outside to find a disaster. The ducklings were all floating in the water. Somehow the board which we had wedged in the pool, so they could climb in and out, had gotten dislodged. The ducklings couldn't get out of the pool and eventually had gotten so fatigued, they couldn't keep swimming.

We grabbed the little limp things and ran to the picnic table. I'm not sure why I thought we could use artificial respiration on ducklings, but I got my brothers pumping their legs up and down and moving their wings. I gently compressed their wee chests, and as miracles would have it, they started to breathe. I can’t remember if we told their vacationing owners how close a call they’d had, but Dad changed the ramp attachments.

Another winter, the barn cat had had a batch of kittens, and they started to die of distemper. I felt I had to do something, so I asked Dad to bring the last survivor into the house, and I set her up in a box by the wood stove. She was so weak and sick by that time that she couldn’t eat, so I warmed milk every few hours and fed her with a syringe. Breaking apart some amoxicillin capsules that I found in the medicine chest, I put a few granules into the milk. Surprisingly, she started to recover; in fact she got so strong that I had to put a board over the box with a weight on it so she wouldn’t crawl out overnight.

One morning just when I was considering moving her back to the barn, I came down stairs to find that she had tried to escape and gotten caught between the box and the board. She had hung herself. After all the tears were over, I realized something very important about myself. I couldn't save all my patients, I just had to be able to say that I had done my best. This is a necessary skill if one is to become a doctor. By that time I had set my sights set on becoming a Veterinarian. Dad had gone to the University of Guelph when he was younger, and I planned to follow in his footsteps.

In this book, I will share a few stories that have stood out in my memories both from my years at university and afterwards while working. The profession of Veterinary Medicine never made me rich in the monetary sense, but it did provide for the three girls and myself. Most importantly it allowed me to have them with me many days when they were tiny, when otherwise they would have been with a baby-sitter.

Here’s our stories, hope you enjoy them.

Chapter 1

Doctor Vet.

All of my years practicing veterinary medicine were spent in a small farming community in north-western Ontario, called the Rainy River District. We were closer to Winnipeg than to Toronto, a fact proven to me one year when I had to contact the supervisor for all Veterinary Meat Inspectors in Ontario. For a number of the early years I lived in the area, I inspected the beef and pigs butchered at the abattoir at Stratton each Monday, When called, the inspector told me I should have contacted the Manitoba office. I had to explain that no, we were still in Ontario.

Trust me, the name Rainy River came from historical weather patterns. Sometimes in the summers, especially during haying season, it didn’t seem that the sun ever shone. In May and June the hayfields grew so fast, that an outsider like myself, just couldn't believe it. Often at the middle of May, the alfalfa was only inches tall and had just started to grow, but long before the end of June it was out in bloom and ready for mowing. That is, if the sun would shine. I often felt that you should not stand in the hay field during those growing days, because you would be knocked over by the moving stocks. The challenge, of course, was getting the hay cured and safely into the barns.

This is the land where my practice of veterinary medicine grew, and where my daughters inherited countless aunties. Whenever I drove into a farm yard, the wife or eldest daughter would meet the car ready to take my babies to the house, while I went to the barn to work. Here, one could trust the farming families, and my girls learned to socialize far better than if they’d been in a pre-school program.

The hub of my practice was Emo, a small farming village, with more churches than any other buildings, and a little post office. Early after I opened my practice, I received an envelope in the mail box addressed to 'Dr. Vet', Emo, Ontario. Now I was the only veterinarian in town, but do you honestly think that such an envelope would have found its way to its intended destination anywhere else but in such a small place. The envelope contained payment for a farm call I had done the week before, and the money was needed to pay bills. So I decided that the title, Dr. Vet, symbolized the rhythm of veterinary medicine in the District of Rainy River.

The small square on the map below roughly defines the area my veterinary practice would eventually service. (mid left edge)

ref_TOC

The Rainy River District

Always four distinct seasons here.

In winter six feet of snow,

With winds blowing roads level between fence posts.

Or freezing rain turning them overnight to skating rinks.

Then spring comes, and water starts dripping.

Birds are back, the sun heats up, roads turn to mud.

The world is green and smells of wet soil,

Baby calves are born by the hour.

This must be the best time of the year.

Then the summer is here, cows lying contentedly in the sun.

The hay and grain growing overnight.

The sun hot, the days long.

Mosquitoes and black flies struggling for the right to bite.

This is the best time of the year.

Next comes fall

Leaves turn yellow, frost coats the grass,

Everything crunches, and out the jackets come.

The air smells like fermented earth.

This is the best time of the year.

Then before you know it- the snow falls again.

The cows are in the barn,

The land is cold and silent once more, resting

The night sky becomes a dancing, rolling panorama of colour.

Northern lights bouncing, snapping from horizon to horizon

THIS is the best time of the year.

written by Brenda (2010)

Preveterinary Hurdles

Hamilton family home just outside of Oxford Mills, in eastern Ontario

Chapter 2

Early Years on the Family Farm

My two brothers and I grew up on a beef farm in the Ottawa Valley, in southeastern Ontario. Dad taught high school chemistry and Mom stayed home until after all three of us were grown up and away at school. Then she learned to drive school bus and later drove for coach tours all over Canada and the States.

During my summer break in my grade twelve year of high school, Dad took me to see the senior veterinarian at the Kemptville College of Agriculture (KCAT). Dad had taught Agricultural Engineering at the College for many years, before transferring to North Grenville District High School. That summer I had talked with my family about my hopes to study veterinary medicine and they supported me wholeheartedly.

My interviewer at the college was in his fifties, and sat looking very distinguished behind his huge wooden desk, while he spoke with Dad and me. Of course I was intimidated, but nevertheless answered his questions about my marks - honor student; my study habits - workaholic; and my hobbies - riding horses and sports. Then he recommended (believing that he was being kind) that as a woman I consider looking into veterinary assistant training. I looked at Dad and saw that wee glint in his eye, which said go ahead, let him have it. I told him that if I were accepted to the veterinary degree program, I would be a great vet. He didn’t see that coming! This was my first brush with male prejudice against women. All I can remember about that day was being angry because this man didn’t know my farm background, or my personal strengths, but looked only at my gender.

A couple of years later, during the summer break from the University of Guelph I found myself talking with a friend of Mom’s who was a retired nurse. She asked what specialty I hoped to take. I was in the first year of the agriculture degree program. At that time, you had to take two years of university level courses, before applying for veterinary medicine which was a four year commitment after that. Mom’s friend suggested that it would be quicker and far cheaper if I transferred to a nursing degree. I told her that I wanted to make the diagnosis, and prescribe the treatment not carry out the orders. Only after she left did I wonder if perhaps I had hurt her feelings. It had seemed to me that she was being discourteous and didn’t understand my desire to honestly help animals when they were in pain. Later I was worried that she thought I didn’t believe the nursing profession was as worthy as veterinary medicine. When I asked if I had insulted her friend's profession, Mom reassured me that I needn’t worry about any hard feelings.

Having these experiences behind me, I hesitantly applied for the Veterinary Medicine program during my second year as an Aggie (student in the Ontario Agriculture College.) I thought back to my orientation assembly in Massey Hall on my first