Veterinarian Shares the Reality of What Vets Go Through and It's Heartbreaking
Veterinarians, veterinary students, animal rescue workers, and volunteers, who devote themselves to saving the lives of these dogs and cats conduct amazingly difficult work. Saving injured or ill animals and performing life-saving operations are all part of the job. Dealing with abusive and dangerous customers should not be.
The TikTok account of veterinarian @Drforbeez recently uploaded a video where she describes what happened when she was interviewing a potential employee. It should really make you think about how some people treat the staff who care for our pets.
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It's not surprising that the interviewee said they were good at deescalating conflict. Earlier this month an employee of a veterinary clinic in Kentucky was shot and killed by a pet owner during an argument.
Between caring for sick or injured animals that don't make it to dealing with aggressive dogs and making the devastating decision to euthanize them is just part of what they go through daily. Add to that abusive clients and it's no wonder there's a nationwide veterinarian shortage.
There is magic in watching the transformation of an animal rescued from neglect or abuse. Watching an injured or mistreated pet mend its wounds and find their forever home is one of the best things ever. But sometimes that doesn't happen. And TikTok user @Queenofcarrotflowers posted a sad video to illustrate what those who save animals go though on a daily basis. Caring for a cat or dog who ends up dying anyway and having this scenario play out day after day is something I don't think a lot of us could handle. Animal workers do this nonstop. My sister was the Vet Services Supervisor and Director of the Emergency Response Team at a Humane Society and I could barely stand to listen to her stories of boxes of starving kittens dumped at their doorstep or rescuing fighting dogs before their owners came to the yard brandishing shotguns.
In the clip above, Morgan references 'The Dead Dogs on My Phone' written by Paige Kim, the Behavior and Enrichment Coordinator at the Irvine Animal Care Center, about grief and the importance of witnessing and remembering the shelter animals who die and it's a touchingly sad glimpse of what these animal care workers experience everyday. Kim writes, "So I keep the dead dogs in my phone to remember those brief, fleeting moments where they were loved and safe, and so they know they’ll always be remembered."
People go into animal work, or volunteer to work with animals, because they love animals. Between cruelty incidents, animal hoarding cases, pets that have been horrifically injured in accidents and pet owners who are either abusive or downright dangerous, this is just another group of essential workers who deserve a lot more respect than they get.
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