Tag Archives: gardening

Different

Blog, Scotland, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, Vet, , , , ,

I’m not going to miss duty vet. It’s no coincidence that I applied to the poultry practice shortly after receiving the 2026 rota and putting all the dates in my diary. Entries in spring were relatively far apart, but the summer months were going to be intense. The thought of it set my teeth on edge.

And then bird flu hit and all my work days were filled with notifiable disease work. Real vet work: the kind I signed up for all those years ago. I’ve massively enjoyed the last few months at work and for a good while, I didn’t follow up on my application. I was meant to meet one of the partners on 14th January – the day I was sent to West Linton to investigate the latest outbreak. I sent a message to say I couldn’t and received one in return, which I skim read. Then in a whirl of printing forms, rearranging evening engagements and finding care for Triar, I headed off.

In truth, I was so busy and engaged, I probably wouldn’t have checked back in at all, if it hadn’t been for Liz, my sports massage therapist. I started going to Liz last year, to ease shoulder tension, which was one of my better life choices. Before she begins, she catches up with how things are going. She asked about my application and it was only then I actually looked back to review what my contact had written. To my surprise, his message didn’t say we could arrange a different time for an interview. It said he wanted to inform me about the job, and terms and conditions to see if it would help with my final decision. I told Liz I would reply later. She said, in essence, “Why wait? Do it now!” I sent a message there and then.

I met him in a cafe in mid-February. We got on well, but I still wasn’t sure. The job itself might be better, but weighing up the differences between public sector and private practice is difficult. I was working out how to say I was going to turn the position down when the more senior partner in the practice messaged to ask if we could chat. He asked me, in essence, how they could make this job the perfect fit for me. What would I enjoy? What problems could I foresee? I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that before.

I am probably beginning to sound like I never make decisions by myself, but having discussed the pros and cons with Donna the night before, she had suggested that maybe a few days at Inchcolm would resolve my doubts one way or another. So I suggested to E that I would book some time off and spend a couple of days with them, seeing what they do.

Those two days were honestly great. They genuinely were listening to my concerns. One of them was the age of my car. The more senior partner called yesterday, in the middle of a nightmare day of duty vet, to tell me they’re getting a pool car I can use sometimes. Not sure how it will work, but even before I’ve arrived, he’s finding ways to make my life easier.

But yesterday was a good reminder of why duty vet is so tough. I know what I am doing a lot better now, so juggling the questions and problems that come in isn’t quite so difficult. The biggest challenge is when the cases come in so fast that there isn’t time to deal with them. You resolve one and find two more waiting. Each situation is a unique puzzle, needing research and consideration. By yesterday afternoon, my brain was frazzled. And then I called an estate owner to tell him that we’d had a report of sheep scab on his farm.

The procedures and laws around sheep scab are inflexible. If we receive a credible report, we are obliged to put the animals under a movement ban until the owner shows the sheep have been treated or their vet has certified the animals as clear of parasites. This leaves farmers at risk of malicious reporting. I check records to see the history, such as frequent reports or recorded objections from farmers of over-reporting, but there was nothing on this account to suggest anything of the sort.

I’m usually good at handling people, but this time it didn’t work. I was roundly shouted at when I explained I couldn’t say who had made the report. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t as the report was anonymous. I was abused for the system being bad. The system is awful, but I was only the messenger. It was after three on a long day, with two more cases waiting for me and it was just too much.

I made myself a coffee and pulled myself together and carried on, but it was a stark reminder of how awful duty vet is. I got home from work late and wished I could have a glass of wine, or that there was someone there to hug, but I was on call. I’m on call all weekend, which is fine. I can cope with whatever is thrown at me. I’ve said before that one of my aims is to help farmers through incredibly stressful events. I’m good at it. But being shouted at when there is no need, for something that’s not my fault, leaves me drained and empty. I won’t miss duty vet.

I’m going to leave you with a few pictures of my garden. The camellia has too many buds to count. I’m happy with the pots beside the door, though what comes next is a good question. I’m working on the flower bed that was overrun with ground elder. I’ve dug out masses of roots and planted competing geraniums, compost and seeds, but there’s still lots more to dig out and I’m not sure whether me or the ground elder will win this year. It will probably outmanoeuvre me, as a novice gardener. The good thing is that, even if I mess it up, there’s always next year!

Thank you for reading. I hope you have a good week.

Off to Learn about Chickens

Blog, Scotland, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, , , , , , , , , ,

After all the frenetic activities, work has been a bit slower this week, though no less interesting. I’ve spent time reading up on, and around the new case I’ve been given, which will be very different from anything I’ve done before as I am working in a group of ex-police enforcement and intelligence workers. I’m the one with the veterinary knowledge to their investigative powers. Unfortunately, I can’t really write about it though as people might recognize themselves, or others. I’m sure there’s a novel in there though, if only I ever find the time to write it.

Last weekend, I had a fabulous time visiting Sue at her home and then visiting the gardens at Dumfries House together. Dumfries house is, counterintuitively, in Ayrshire and not Dumfries and Galloway. Sue volunteered there, in the garden, a while back and pointed out a few huge bushes she had planted. Gardening has obviously been a lifelong passion. She wants to help me get my garden in shape. I have let it run wild this summer and finally started cutting the lawn this week. Unfortunately I didn’t get it all done in one go and the rain came after two exhausting sessions, so now I have one half yellow-brown lawn, one half hay field. I will get there…

As you can see Sue’s garden is gorgeous!

I went to the GP earlier this week. I’ve been having headaches, pain when I moved my eyes and sensitivity to light, which has been going on for a few weeks now. It’s been particularly inconvenient as I have been affected when working in front of a screen as well as when driving, especially when it’s bright. The GP couldn’t help, so he directed me to my optician, who has been very helpful in the past when I had some flashing lights in my left eye. I saw her on Friday afternoon and it seems that I have dry eyes, which apparently can cause all those problems. I now have eye drops and a glasses shaped beanbag to heat up in the microwave and use on my eyes for ten minutes twice a day. This should help the oil in the glands along my eyelids to soften and get things going again. I’m mostly just glad it’s not FND related. Hopefully things are starting to get better already, though I’m about to go to Guildford for a week, so will be in a microwave-free zone.

The Guildford trip is for a chicken health and welfare course, so I’m hoping to come back with loads of new knowledge. I feel very honoured to have been selected to attend, so will be making the most of it. Triar will be getting spoiled at Mum and Dad’s. I will miss him, but at least he will be well looked after.

Hope you have a good week and thanks for reading.

Muted Sunshine

Blog, Scotland, The Vet Who Came In from the Cold, Vet, Writing, , , , , , , , , ,

Last Saturday I had an emergency trip to the opticians’. On Friday, or perhaps Thursday, I’d noticed flashes of light in the corner of my left eye. I thought it was a reflection from the headlights of a passing car catching the edge of my glasses, but when it happened again in the darkness of my back garden on Friday evening, then again when writing this blog on Saturday morning, I knew it wasn’t.

Having looked up what flashes of this type could mean, I called the opticians’ as soon as they opened. The receptionist asked lots of questions and said they were fully booked, but that she would speak to an optician and call me back. She did so within a few minutes, telling me they were going to fit me in and to come right away.

I was seen very quickly and fortunately, she didn’t find anything untoward. As a part of the aging process, the vitreous humour (the jelly like substance filling your eye) becomes more liquid and can pull away from the retina (made up of cells which capture the light and send information to your brain allowing you to see). As it pulls away, there’s a risk of tearing. Either the retina can be torn away from the back of the eye altogether (meaning you lose sight over whichever area becomes detached) or blood vessels can tear, with potentially the same effect if the cells of the retina die. Fortunately, my flashes were most likely caused by the edge of the retina lifting a little as the vitreous humour separated. Most likely it would stop in a few days, she said, and it seems to have done just that.

There was another unexpected surprise when I went to pay. I was expecting a fee of maybe £100 as she’d spent a lot of time looking at my eyes and used a lot of sophisticated equipment, but apparently the whole examination was covered by the NHS. Many of its services may be broken, but this one worked exactly as it ought to. A reminder then, that sometimes peripheral functions can be provided by the private sector, even if central services really are better served in public hands.

It’s been a good week at work. I inspected chicken farms on Monday and Tuesday and felt I was beginning to provide a useful service as my knowledge is growing over time. Once I have been doing it for a little longer, it would be a useful experience to recap by joining another more experienced vet on a visit, if I am allowed to. When you first visit with someone else, you pick up some knowledge and can grow your own as you work, but sometimes going back and watching someone else once the basic knowledge is in place can mean picking up on the subtler aspects that you maybe missed in the steep learning curve at the beginning. I’ll have to discuss it with my line manager though. One of the problems with being chronically understaffed is that there is little spare time for anything beyond the basic.

On Thursday, I had lunch with Fran, the minister of the church I’ve been attending in Lochmaben. It’s been my intention for a while to ask her whether there is anything I can usefully do in my (admittedly limited) spare time to help in the parish, but instead, we got talking about Shetland, where she worked for a few years, and then writing. It seems that she also writes and was very enthusiastic when I suggested she could come along to the writing club I belong to. I will ask about helping out later, but in the meantime, I seem to have made another friend.


The best things come to those who wait, or so it is said. Over the past years and months, I have had so many things to sort out (moving internationally is incredibly intense) that all kinds of other things have ended up on the back burner. A colleague and I had talked about getting a coffee machine at work, but somehow, I’d never got round to it. I had a lovely meal round at Donna’s last Friday and it came up that she had one, barely used, that she was going to take to a charity shop. I guess I should probably make a donation to charity now to cover what they’ve lost, but she gave it to me instead. It is now installed at work and I will buy pods and try it out next week. I hope my colleague is pleased!

I’ve also been putting off making any decisions about the garden, which needs to be tidied, but is taking a firm second place to the building work in the house. I had a gardener for a while, but he sacked me as I was never home. I had vaguely looked for another, but they aren’t easy to find. David, one of the local authority inspectors I work with, unexpectedly offered me gardening tools that were left in a rental house he part-owns and oversees. So now, without lifting a finger, I have a lawn-mower, a strimmer, a hedge cutter and various hoes and spades. Part of what put me off doing my own gardening was the expense and time it would take to go out and buy everything I need, and now I don’t have to. Though the last few years have been incredibly tough, and there are still struggles I’m going through, there are shafts of sunshine in my life that are beginning to break through the clouds.

Most of the pictures this week were taken on the way back from lunch on Thursday. The cafe was in Lochmaben and the road back to Dumfries tops a hill, then drops steeply away, giving marvellous views over the plain where Dumfries lies. As I drove over, I got glimpses of the sun, which was shining through cloud, creating a wonderfully dramatic sky. The village of Torthorwald is halfway down the hill and I often drive past it and look at the ruined castle, clinging to the hillside. This time, I couldn’t resist. Stopping the car, I got out, climbed over the gate and made my way over the muddy stream to see the ancient stones in their wonderful setting. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed my wander.

And last, but not least, after the long, Arctic winters, where everything is silent and frozen for months on end, I was amazed to see that, even after the deep chill of last week, there were snowdrops growing in the shelter of the hawthorn hedges in Blackbird Lane. The birds are starting to sing again as well, on still mornings. On Wednesday, blackbirds vied with robins and greenfinch, as well as pink-footed geese and collared doves in a wonderful morning concerto. It was a reminder that spring is not too far away.

Thanks for reading. I hope you have a lovely week.