their fate at the last minute. Deftly, he caught a procession of doomed beasts and showed us the proper technique for killing each species. An electric jolt to the forehead seemed to be the favored method of the day.
Another man, built much like the first, hooked up the dead animals and demonstrated how they were bled and made ready for the tanner. The tanner then expertly skinned each animal from nose to tail with a single long stroke that flayed the skin in one continuous piece. In a matter of minutes, a bleating cow or pig had been divested of everything that had made it a unique, living individual and had been hung anonymously on a conveyor line, ready to be processed and shipped to market within the day.
The lab reinforced my decision that large animal medicine was not for me. While a humane endeavor, keeping animals healthy that were destined for the slaughterhouse seemed counter to all I believed. I would, I vowed, never be a part of that particular cycle.
That is, if the choice between large and small animal work was even one I would ever get to make.
As the semester drew to a close, it became obvious that between the demands of work and school my grades were perilously close to slipping. Since I was obligated to continue working to pay the bills, my only choice for next semester would be to cut way down on course hours if I were to have any chance of keeping up a high grade point average, meaning it would probably be an extra year or two before I could apply to vet school. It was a catch-22 that I never expected, never planned for.
I was humiliated. How was it I couldn’t successfully juggle a full-time job with a full-time course load and cope with all the baggage of living on my own for the first time? I took it as a personal failure and returned home for the Christmas break with all the confidence of a whipped pup, dejected and beaten. I wouldn’t – couldn’t – go back to school. Not there. Not yet.
Not surprisingly, maturity comes with age and experience. At the time, I had neither. Nor did I have a family who took my education seriously, waiting as they were for the day I would simply marry someone who would take care of me. All I knew then was that four months in the real world had taught me life was a choice between following your dream or earning a living. You couldn’t do both. Not well enough to suit a perfectionist.
In a fit of teenage angst, I made a rash decision. I quit school.
I took a full-time job at the warehouse where I had worked the past two summers pulling merchandise to fulfill customer orders. The work was tedious, monotonous and not in the least challenging. But it earned me enough to buy my parents’ old car and rent a small two-bedroom house near the downtown area closer to work.
It also gave me a chance to try to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, something I was pressed to do quickly, before it was too late.
After all, I was already 17 years old and time was fast slipping away.
Love Is All You Need
For seven months after leaving Texas A&M I pulled orders at a warehouse. When I began pulling them in my sleep and couldn’t get the looping list of item numbers out of my head, I knew the job was threatening my sanity.
I swallowed my pride and called my friend Lisa. Over the past year she had continued to volunteer weekends at Dr. Vann’s clinic. A month before she had graduated from high school and taken a permanent, paying position with him. The type of person who could be supportive through anything without judging, Lisa was the only friend I had kept in close contact with since returning from A&M.
“Dr. Vann wouldn’t need anyone else, would he?” I asked. Only with Lisa could I not care how vulnerable I sounded.
The voice at the other end of the phone was, as usual, sympathetic. “I don’t think so. We’re pretty full up. I barely got on myself.” She was quiet for a moment, then, “I think Ashley over at Dr. Norris’