I was bursting with excitement when I wrote my last post. So much so that this week’s might seem flat in comparison. It’s also lacking in food photos, though we did have KFC last night, which was delicious, but not very photogenic.

I was planning to go to Dumfries today. It feels rather odd to have deserted my little witchy house for so long. I’ve bought flowers in pots and a couple of shrubs for my recalcitrant ground elder flowerbed and the lawn must be getting overgrown, but I’ve chosen to stay at Valerie’s in Airth, partly because it’s more restful and partly because it’s a long drive, fuel is expensive and I’m whacking miles on my car like never before with a thirty minute daily commute. There’s a reason I bought a house four minutes from my previous office.

Last weekend, Mum and I finally got her old house into shape for selling. The garden still needed a tidy and some cleaners were going in, but all the boxes were cleared and it all looked neat and in good order. As we stood in the kitchen at the end, I apologised to her and said I hoped I hadn’t made her feel too hen-pecked. She told me that conversations among her generation frequently included comparative discussions on how much their offspring heckle them. Apparently I was relatively moderate! Who knew?

I did find the energy on Sunday morning to take Triar out from the centre of Settle and up through the steep lanes and picturesque cottages to the edge of the fells. The photo at the top of the page is from that walk. It was a beautiful morning.

Work has been all about paperwork this week, with no new flights of fancy. I have courses to do so I can be an “Official Veterinarian” – ironically some of it is the kind of work I was doing at APHA where I began doing that work before I had any qualifications. Yesterday morning, realising my Avian Influenza (AI) course had expired quite some time ago, I pinged off an email to the OV team, then received a phone call to say I couldn’t retake the course because I would have to sit the Essential Skills course.

I was confused by this news. I completed Essential Skills in November 24, a year into my two and a half year APHA career. Before that, I had what were called, “grandfather rights”, which meant that, in essence, APHA accepted I had enough experience to do the work without having completed the course. The qualification has to be repeated every four years and therefore runs out in November 28. I have already signed up for three export courses, in my new job, that I can’t use without it because I don’t have an OV stamp. I had the APHA equivalent, but handed it back on leaving.

I queried it. Of course I did, because it’s insane! I’ve actually been doing AI work at intense APHA, report case levels. I was told that a Vet Lead would have to be consulted. I asked if it would be one of the Scotland Vet Leads, thinking I could simply call one of them and ask them to confirm, but apparently it’s a special, OV Vet Lead, so I couldn’t. Maybe it’s some crazy idea, so a private practice can’t benefit from employing an ex APHA vet to do their OV work, but really? It’s not saving the public purse anything. I very much doubt APHA are about to be reimbursed for the unused two and a half years and for me, it will mean wading through around 8 hours worth of turgid information to sit an exam, which is often unrelated to said turgid information. At least it’s in English and not Norwegian, which is about the only good thing I can say about it.

I also spend some time editing the Broiler Vet Policy. Every one of our farms has to have a Vet Policy each year (to do with legislation – I must read that part again – good to know why I’m doing things). Having completed it, it transpires there is more than one broiler policy. That was the version for farmers in the Red Tractor scheme. There’s another for those without, and that’s before we get onto the pullets and layers and whatever other kinds of flocks we cover. It’s a useful exercise for me, and for the practice. I found at least one reference to 2013 RSPCA welfare standard revisions. The last revision was last year and I don’t know how many there have been in between, but it looks as if my editing and page-numbering skills, honed through writing Hope Meadows (and other unpublished work) will be almost as useful as my client and veterinary skills!

Monday is a bank holiday (hooray!) so next week is a four day week. I have to be in Dumfries on Thursday because someone is coming to fit carpets. I also have to pick up a painting I took for reframing, tidy the garden, move the remaining boxes upstairs and generally pick up the strands of my Dumfries life again, even if only temporarily. Life is rushing in unexpected directions at the moment.

I’m loving it here in Airth and Dunfermline. I currently can’t return properly to Dumfries for work as I still don’t have access to the practice database on my laptop. Nor am I completely sure which clients will be “mine” or how I will structure my visits. All clients need at least one visit per year, to coincide with the issuing of the Vet Policy, so once I have a list, I can start to work through that. Those visits will be done alongside any diagnostic visits, requested by farmers when there is a problem.

I did get some nice work news this week. The aggressive birds I visited last week have stopped pecking each other so much. Thanks go to Naomi for that one, with her excellent information on the destressing of high performance laying hens. I thought I knew quite a lot about bird welfare, but nowhere near what she knows. I love learning though, so by the time I take on a few more cases, I will have soaked up that information and will hand it out as if I’ve known it for years. Really, that is the core of successful veterinary work, at least in the farming sector.

Anyway, I will leave you with a picture of wild garlic, growing near my parents’ house. It appears to have outcompeted the bluebells and it’s almost as lovely, though the aroma is quite different! Thanks for reading and I hope you have a lovely week.