Tales from a Young Vet: Part 3 of 3: Mad cows, crazy kittens, and all creatures big and small

Tales from a Young Vet: Part 3 of 3: Mad cows, crazy kittens, and all creatures big and small
Jo Hardy

Caro Handley

Tales from a Young Vet can either be read as a full-length ebook or in 3 serialised ebook-only parts.This is PART 3 of 3.The funny, touching and entertaining story of how Jo Hardy, the star of BBC2’s Young Vets, gets to grips with animals big and small, friendly and not-at-all-happy, on the road to becoming a fully qualified vet.‘Stand well clear. Keep your eyes on them. Oh, and make sure you have insurance.’Not the most comforting words of wisdom, but probably the most useful for a trainee vet, Jo would say. From well-equipped surgeries to windswept hills and ramshackle barns, Jo has to be able to diagnose and treat any animal, at any time of the day or night. It’s not quite as easy as James Herriot made it seem.Jo’s final year of training saw her race from rectal examinations of cows to spine surgery on a Great Dane, and from treating an eventing horse with a heart problem to inserting a contraceptive implant into a monkey.And then there were the owners – the tough guy who sobbed when his cat was diagnosed with cancer, the woman who was convinced her dog was embarrassed by its stomach upset, and the farmer who loved his cows as much as anyone loves their pets.Gruelling days of animal treatments and visits combined with long nights of study and revision made Jo’s final year of training the most demanding and rewarding year of her life. Her book tells of the highs and lows, the pets that stole her heart, and the lifelong friends that she made – with two legs and four.

Copyright (#ufa86acc6-f673-522f-a4ac-ae496b526436)

Certain details in this book, including names, places and dates, have been changed.

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First published by HarperElement 2015

FIRST EDITION

© Jo Hardy and Caro Handley 2015

A catalogue record of this book is

available from the British Library

Cover images © Sarah Tanat-Jones (animal illustrations); Johnny Ring (photograph)

Cover layout © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Jo Hardy asserts the moral right to be

identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008142483

Ebook Edition © November 2015 ISBN: 9780008154325

Version: 2015-09-24

Contents

Cover (#u05774356-b1c7-5134-8e9f-b27b7617f30d)

Title Page (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#ulink_095f284f-4c83-5899-99b8-3a519b97d19c)

Chapter Thirteen: ‘Happy Christmas, Clunky’ (#ulink_c7d9f513-8c03-58f4-a03a-86565728e549)

Chapter Fourteen: Grumpy Lizards and Misty-eyed Gorillas (#ulink_fc46cca2-0c6e-5c31-aa92-07bf990b2ff3)

Chapter Fifteen: Stella the Heifer (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen: Man’s Best Friend (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen: Horse Sense (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen: Luca the Great Dane (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen: The End in Sight (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Moving Memoirs eNewsletter (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘Happy Christmas, Clunky’ (#ufa86acc6-f673-522f-a4ac-ae496b526436)

Home for Christmas, and I couldn’t wait. A whole two weeks off, without having to think about textbooks, diagnoses and beady-eyed clinicians. Time to relax with the family, which meant food, games, walks and riding my horses. And best of all, Jacques was coming over from South Africa to spend the holiday with us.

He was due in a couple of days, but before that the film crew had decided they wanted to come and film me and Ross decorating our Christmas tree. Only one small problem there – we didn’t have a tree yet. Ross and I rushed out to get one, but it was the Saturday before Christmas and all the trees had gone except for the ones nobody wanted, with crooked trunks, spindly branches and a bare stalk sticking up at the top. We picked the least sad of the bunch, were still charged an extortionate amount, and loaded it into the back of the car. Once we got it home we spent a hilarious hour trying to get it to stand upright. It had a distinct tilt, so Ross spun it round and propped things under the side of the tree-holder while I stood across the room, hands on hips, saying, ‘No, up a bit, down a bit, to the right, round that way,’ until he threw a cushion at me and said, ‘That’s it, I give up.’ Tosca was excited by all the commotion and the smell of something different in the house, but moving the furniture to fit in the tree didn’t do her any favours. Trying to get to grips with the new layout of the room she ended up knocking the tree so that it tilted again, at which point we realised we were fighting a losing battle trying to keep it upright.

When Amy and Ash arrived they stared at the tree aghast, but there wasn’t much choice at that point. Ross and I set to, chattering happily and covering its spindly little branches with shiny baubles as they tried to film us from clever angles to make it look less unfortunate. In the Hardy household we had a wonderful box of Christmas decorations, which, the minute it emerged each year, reduced me and Ross to eight-year-olds again. It was full of red wooden characters and trains, tinsel, beautiful shiny baubles in all sorts of shapes, and a long coil of red fairy lights, half of which now didn’t work. We had to try to wind the lights round the tree so that all the broken ones were at the back, a feat that took time and advanced contortion skills.

Once we’d done our best with the tree and had propped a drunken-looking fairy at a precarious angle on the top, Amy and Ash, hoping for something a little more impressive, decided to come with me to see the horses. I was delighted, as it was a chance to show off Tammy and Elli and put them through their paces for the cameras. But predictably, Tammy, who can be a darling or a devil, chose to be the latter. With the camera trained on her she played up in every way she knew, jumping around with her ears back and stubbornly refusing to do anything I asked. Half of the footage involved her prancing on the spot with me saying ‘Calm down, calm down’ in my most patient voice, despite wanting to bawl at her. The rest of the footage was of us jumping a line of big jumps, mostly at breakneck speed.

Thankfully Elli was far better behaved, but by the time I rode her the light was fading, so although she strutted her stuff, let me ride her bareback and generally showed Tammy how it should be done, the crew said it was probably too dark for the footage to be used. Guess which footage made it into the programme!

After that, Amy and Ash took off, waving goodbye and saying they’d see me in the New Year. I’d got used to having them tailing me and at times it was quite comforting to have a little gang alongside me but, in the nicest possible way, it was good to see the back of them for a couple of weeks.

The following day was Sunday and time for our church nativity play. We’re members of our local church; Ross and I both play in the band, Dad is a church Elder, and Mum is deputy washer of the communion glasses. The family nativity is always a highlight; children and adults all get involved and the traditional story is given a modern twist. This year they were adding in a journalist who would report the story, popping up every now and then with ‘Now let’s flash forward and see how Mary and Joseph are feeling.’

Dad inevitably plays a shepherd because of the very convincing West Country accent he likes to put on. Embarrassingly, imitating accents is a Hardy male trait, Ross and Dad won’t stop once they start, especially when they’re together, and between them they can pretty much replicate any accent across the world. Dad’s speciality is Cornish and Ross loves to mimic Russian, probably because he plays Call of Duty on his Xbox so often, although all he can actually say is ‘Cover me, I’m reloading.’

For the nativity Dad had to provide his own costume and he’d left it to the last minute. Searching around for inspiration he picked up the living room sheepskin rug and tied it round himself with some baling twine we had lying around, from the hay bales at the yard. After topping the outfit off with a tea-towel on his head he looked completely ridiculous, strutting around talking like Ted from The Fast Show. Ross and I were both cringing, but in the end the nativity was brilliant and Dad had everyone in stitches.