Diary of an Eventing Vet

Firstly the boring bits. As my mother always taught me to shake hands firmly with, and smile warmly at, any new acquaintances I’ll try to do the virtual equivalent so that we get off to an amicable start. Who knows, some of my clients may even be reading this so I’d better be polite!

My name is… actually, it’s not strictly relevant. Suffice to say that I’m an experienced, accomplished and professional equine vet and slightly less experienced, accomplished and definitely-not-professional eventer. Up until a month ago I was safely ensconced in a fairly non-challenging job in rural North Yorkshire spending most of my time pootling round country back-roads listening to The Archers, counting the minutes until I could go home and try to drum some sense into my horses and wondering at the bizarre life of a grown-up which means that I am outside appreciating the lovely weather and gorgeous sunshine whilst at work but confined to riding my horses in the cold and dark at 6am and 7pm. After much deliberation, and a gin or two, I decided that my career path required some more challenge so I made the enormous and life-changing step of packing up my horses, dogs, house and husband (pretty much in that order) and wrenching myself out of my comfy little village where I knew everyone and set sail down the A1 to a new job starting up an equine branch for an established veterinary practice in a market town in the East Midlands.

The good bits: civilisation! I no longer have to travel 3hrs+ to get to most events. I have moved to a yard with a school which doesn’t look like the set from Revenge of the Swamp Monster for most of the winter months. My nearest BS/BD venues are now an hour nearer and there’s an FEI event within 10 minutes of my house.

The bad bits: civilisation! I got slightly off track on a hack today and nearly found myself riding down the fast lane of the A1. Thank the lord for HGV-proof ponies! I also have to cross the East Coast mainline to get anywhere and today spent a record 9 minutes sitting in my car at the level-crossing in our village whilst 5 trains went past. I was hugely grateful that I was in my car with the heating on, a magazine to read and Facebook on my phone and that I was not sitting on my rather unpredictable young (though old enough to know better) horse who finds pausing at junctions to check for traffic a chore, never mind waiting for nearly 10mins on the same spot whilst trains whoosh past his nose at 120mph.  He has had to cross the railway twice thus far – once by bridge and once over said level-crossing whereupon the bravest XC horse I know felt obliged to perform an exaggerated passage over the rails ‘just in case’.

The other bad bit – I now have a 1 in 2 rota. This means that I am on call every other night and every other weekend.  For those of you who aren’t vets (I’m guessing that’s most of you) ‘being on call’ means sitting around being scared to do anything or go anywhere (because the moment you do your phone will ring), turning down invitations (whereupon your phone will inevitably go silent) and spending a lot of time gazing longingly at the bottle of Bombay Sapphire in the kitchen which is silently pleading with you to just unscrew its top and splash it over some ice and lime. The minute you give in your phone will ring. If you’re a good girl and resist its lure nobody will call you out.  Guaranteed! Still, although being unable to hack or compete every second day and weekend will be a chore and a logistical nightmare, being unable to drink 50% of the time will do wonders for my waistline. And my liver!

So lastly (unusually) I’ll introduce my horses. Sadly I had to cut down to move down here, so four have become two.  One that I had in to sell got sold (always a bonus) and one that I rode for an owner I have had to give up – though I will still meet him at events to compete him. I am only mucking out two now – result – and wondering where I ever found time to ride four every day.

The first horse who survived the cut is a 7yo 17.2 of enviable eventing pedigree who is competing at Novice. I’d have liked to have finished last season with a CCI* on him but weather and jockey idiocy thought otherwise.  I have an outstanding ability to mess it up when it really counts and on the few outings that weren’t ‘Rain Stops Play’ I managed to mess it up big-time. Monumentally. Persuading the husband to get out of bed at 5.30am and surviving a 2hr traffic jam only to slip and fall over in the show-jumping at one northern event will give you an idea. This was swiftly followed by persuading the husband to get out of bed at 5.30am, driving 6 hours to Great Witchingham and messing up (yet again) in the CIC* show-jumping . Suffice to say I was not Wife of the Year! So I decided not to make the poor horse suffer any further in order to further my ambitions and we finished the season instead by having fun and notching up some rosettes and points. The CCI* will come. Maybe this year?

My other horse is one that I rode for a client and ended up buying when he came on the market. Whereupon, as these things usually happen with horses, he instantly broke. It was a quiet night in the Eventing Vet household when I had to explain this to the husband, who had urged me to buy him in the first place so that he could be my Next Big Hope.  The ‘break’ manifested itself at Belton where I’d dragged my husband, having persuaded him to get up at….. go on, guess! The poor horse napped horrifically and embarrassingly publically (inevitably in front of several Olympians) between the first four XC fences and I decided that jumping round Belton on a horse that’s onside is hard enough, let alone one who clearly doesn’t want to be there. I pulled him up and he subsequently had surgery for kissing spines and a minor leg op. The bill was eye-watering and my insurance company (always insure your horses, kids!) hate me, but I got to do the KS operation with the surgeon which was immensely cool, rather physically challenging and hugely gory. Not one for youtube! This horse is now back in work and a lot happier. I’m not making the mistake of making any great plans for him – he’ll start at the bottom and work his way back up. If he doesn’t successfully come back into work I’ll be abusing my blogging position and appealing for a happy hacking/hunting home for him. It’s either that or take up BSJA (which is where his talents lie), and there ain’t enough bling in my tackroom for that!

So, a long intro but hopefully I’ll be able to share the ups and downs and slightly crazy existence of  an equine vet with you. I’ll let you into a world of crazy horses and even crazier clients (names will be changed to protect the guilty). I aim to give you some idea of how I manage to shoehorn eventing two horses into my life (clue: I don’t do much housework) and how the horses try to shoehorn their incomparable senses of humour and comic timing into everything I do.