Summer is a slower time of year at our veterinary clinic. The majority of our clients are at their summer homes either on Long Island or somewhere more exotic like Turks and Caicos. But we still have our steady flow of the regular ingested socks and injured paws. We also have a lot of boarders.
Petra is an heiress Maltese. Her owners passed away and left a giant trust-fund in her name. I have never seen her board with us until last weekend. She came in on a Thursday along with her special food (complete with instructions on how she likes it served) and a fluffy silk pillow that she likes to sit on. We set her up in a cage, and she perched herself on her throne.
The next day, I noticed that she had green/yellow eye boogers crusting on her face. She had even scratched her top knot ponytail trying to fix her eyes. She ended up looking like emo llama.
This gave me the giggles all day, and my co-workers and I kept making fun of her as she moped on her pillow. When we got a break in the day, I took her out of her cage and along with Dr. N we cleaned up her eyes…and I fixed her ponytail.
The next day, she had her emo llama look back on, along with fresh eye boogers gooping her snowy white fur. So when I got a moment (late in the busy day), I took her to Dr. N and asked if maybe we could examine them. She did a Schirmer tear test which checks for dry eyes caused by immune-mediated issues. Her eyes were bone dry. So once again, we cleaned them up, and this time Dr. N prescribed two different eye ointments which we applied to her dry little orbs. I fixed her ponytail (girl’s gotta look good) and put her back in her cage.
When I walked by an hour later, a whole new dog greeted me.
She was all smiles, doing twirls around her cage, making polite little yips. All the emo gone from her. I went to get Dr. N. We stood in front of Petra’s cage as she twirled and twirled.
“I just figured this is probably why you became a veterinarian,” I told the doctor. “You made a difference.”
“This is better than Prozac!” she said, smiling. We enjoyed the moment before we had to rush off to the next appointment. But those little moments. They’re everything.
Chrissy's Blog 
Hi! I just found your blog and I love it! You’re such a great writer. I’m planning on pursuing a vet tech career and have been researching my options lately. It’s hard because I work full time & don’t live close to any schools that offer vet tech classes. I started researching online options for classes & certification. If you don’t mind me asking, how did you go about becoming a vet tech? I’m just worried online courses won’t be as informative or as educational as attending an actual school. I’d appreciate any input you might have. 🙂 Thanks so much!
Hi! I’m so glad you like the blog! That means a lot to me. I kind of fell into being a vet tech. I was a receptionist at a clinic and offered to become one if they trained me. I’m on the verge of getting my license and did so through Penn Foster which I have mixed feelings about. I was actually planning on writing a post describing the pros and cons of the program, so hopefully that will give you an idea if it’s right for you or not. I’ll have it up in the next week or so. Feel free to shoot me more questions!
Awesome! Thank you!