Vet Tech Tales: The Early Years by Phoenix Sullivan Read Free Book Online Page A

load turned into much more than that. Advanced Biology and Animal Science – two sophomore courses I had fought hard to get into in just my freshman year – required long labs. History and Literature required hundreds of pages of reading. And Calculus and Chemistry required hours of meticulous calculations. Suddenly there just weren't enough hours in a day. Never one to accept failure, I refused to drop any of my classes. I slogged through as best I could, denying the obvious and convincing myself I still had a firm grip on both work and school.
    Even Animal Science, which I had looked forward to all summer, had become painful. Many of the labs were held on university grounds that were off-campus. That meant longer commutes by bike or bus, and my work schedule rarely allowed the additional time off I needed to get to the remote classes. I missed two labs, the most allowed before they forcibly expelled you from the class, and was tardy to several others. Only my grades for the lectures, which I fought for, kept me in class.
    Oh, but what a class it was! For a city-raised girl, it was eye-opening and fascinating. Learning the different breeds of swine. Judging the conformation of quarter horses. And for a confirmed vegetarian who didn’t believe in the exploitation of farm animals, it proved a bit unsettling too. We judged live steers during one lab, estimating such things as what their dressed weight would be, the size of their rib eyes and how much marbling they would produce. Next lab, the slaughtered steers were presented to us neatly laid out on little foam trays ready to validate our guesses.
    In the cattle barns, I made friends with a black bull calf, only just weaned when I first met him. I made a point to visit him whenever I was by. He’d take bits of hay out of one hand while I scratched him on the head with the other. A playful tyke, he’d sneak up behind me, stick his nose between my shoulder blades and give me a gentle shove that usually staggered me into the stall fence. The more growth he got, the farther I went.
    I was picking myself up off the stall floor after one such push when I heard a male voice behind me.
    “Know what’s in store for that calf, don’t you?” A first-year vet student sporting a checked cotton shirt, worn denim jeans and scuffed boots that had seen their share of barns spat a wad of tobacco into a dark corner of the stall and climbed down from the fence where he’d been watching. “One of the students’ll be castrating him in class next month. And next year he’ll be part of the Animal Science lab.”  
    “So?” I said, trying to sound as nonplussed as possible, though I was plenty plussed at thought of the little calf’s future.
    He smirked. “Just don’t go getting too attached to anything around here. One way or another, they all wind up dead.” He sauntered off toward the dairy barn without a backwards glance.
    And that cowboy’s going to be a vet? I thought. I bet he doesn’t even graduate. I had read the books. Vets weren’t cynical. They were caring, decent people. Even the large-animal vets who worked with money-making meat herds. That’s because the ranchers cared about their animals’ health and wanted them treated as humanely as possible.
    At least that’s what I thought until the Animal Science class visited the neighborhood slaughterhouse. The abattoir was a small one, catering mainly to the needs of the university. The pens outside held only a few dozen head of bawling cows, not the few hundred to be found on any given day at a regular commercial facility. Inside, carcasses chained by their back legs hung from the ceiling while blood drained from their necks down to the concrete channel below. Swine, cows, goats and the odd sheep waited their turn in the hot building.
    The man demonstrating that day was stout with muscles that bulged under his overalls and the heavy rubber apron he wore – an obvious match for any of the animals that might rebel