Carving out your own path

Over the next three months you will hear from the Presidential team about the challenges we faced in our careers.

‘You’re a girl, you’ll know how to feed the sick lambs,’ the shepherd said.

I was in my first year at vet school on my first lambing job. I was eighteen and went off to the shed to mix up the milk powder, muttering under my breath. It may have been minor but it really rankled.

After graduating, in my first job as a farm vet I was shielded from physically demanding farm animal cases, preferentially sent to cases of mastitis, calf pneumonia and scour. I relished the chance of a calving when my male boss was tied up at another call. I remember one afternoon, the hours it took to replace my first prolapsed uterus, the farmer repeatedly offering to call my boss as I sweated to get the oedematous tissue back in situ. I was so delighted when I finally succeeded, my arms like jelly, face caked with dust and a fire burning in my belly.

The farmers, although they’d never encountered a female vet before, treated me the same as my boss, right down to offering me a dram of whisky at midday during a brucellosis test. My boss liked a polished floor so if I needed to ask for a weekend on-call swap I would sweep the lino floor of the consulting room before sinking to my knees to rub in red polish and then finish off the job with a heavy silver machine whose rotating bristles buffed the surface to a sheen. Coming into the surgery after his afternoon calls, my boss’s nose would fill with the smell of fresh polish as a smile creased his cheeks. It worked every time. I did get frustrated though that when there were not enough calls to go round, I was the one left in the surgery boiling up calcium and magnesium solutions on the Aga for bottling as preparations for milk fever and staggers.

This is a special year for women in the veterinary profession. Not only is it the first time the RCVS has fielded an all female Presidential team, it also marks the centenary of Aleen Cust’s registration with the RCVS, the UK’s first female veterinary surgeon. Bruce Vivash Jones has published a series of articles on veterinary women, including Aleen Cust and Joan Joshua and reading those I reflect that the challenges I have faced pale into insignificance.

Back to my nineteen year old self. As vastly less experienced than the shepherd I said nothing but did as I was bid, working as a member of the team and learning how to feed the sick lambs. Nowadays, every time I use my yoghurt maker and open the foil packet to tip in the milk powder, the sour smell reminds me of that lambing job. While I was annoyed at the time it was a lesson. I have made many decisions, some right and some, as it turned out, wrong. However I learned from each and every one of them. By the way, I’ve not polished any more floors.

Now the portraits of Aleen Cust and others which adorned the walls of Belgravia House have been crated for storage, prior to the move to our new headquarters in Clerkenwell, it seems a fitting time to reflect on their achievements and how they paved the way for others. While the challenges facing this generation of vets are different, I believe it is our mindset and attitude which sustain us throughout our careers and I particularly admire this quote from Mindy Kaling.

'If you don’t see a clear path for what you want, sometimes you have to make it yourself.’