“Having children has changed the way I think about my job. To an extent, it was just a job before, it was a job I was passionate about but I would like to think that if something happened and I could no longer work as a vet, then I’d still find meaning and value in the act of doing some other career.

But for me, now, work is a relief. Children is the hard stuff, the challenging stuff, and going to work is easy, really easy compared to dealing with small people at home who have big emotions.

Clinics can be crazy work environments but, oh man, it is so organised compared to little kids.”

“I think I got into it because I loved animals but if it was just a love of animals as a sentient entity, I don’t that’s a sustainable way to stay a vet, because it would be too heartbreaking.

You have to move beyond the, ‘I really love the relationship that people have with their dog or cat or horse or rabbit,’ to the medicine side of it and the surgical side of it, the technical side of being a vet.

Because if what attracts you to the industry is a human-animal bond, you’re going to get your heart broken.”

“When I was younger, I was under the impression that it was more of a positive workplace. I mean, the workplace itself is positive, the people are positive, but the things they have to deal with aren’t always positive. And you have to see a lot of people suffering.

So I would suggest to anyone who was interested to try and do a work experience placement or something like that, to come in and see what it is they have to do each day.”

“Something that I have learned is that love has no limits, that there are no limits to the number or type of animals a person can love or develop connections to. For most people, that experience is with a cat or a dog, but the same depth of love, and loss, also applies between people and horses, birds, rabbits, guinea pigs and reptiles.”

“You are going to come into contact with the public, in rapid succession, boom boom boom, and everybody will have a demand on you. They don’t come in to say, ‘Hi, how are you going?’ They come in with a problem, every 15 minutes. Emotionally, to deal with that, you have to find ways of coping.”

“Success is not the key to happiness
Happiness is the key to success.
If you love what you are doing
You will be successful.”

“We got Violet through Greyhound Rescue in Sydney about two years ago. We chose her because she was the only dog there that didn’t immediately try to take a bite out of our first dog, Stitch. She had only been with Greyhound Rescue for two weeks, and was still rake-thin, and covered in both healed and open sores. We don’t really know how old she is, or anything else of her history. Greyhound Rescue guessed her to be about two when they got her, but we now think she might have been as old as four.

She didn’t recognise anything other than meat as food at first, and it took a few attempts to get the hang of stairs. She had a habit of freezing when she was scared, which was most of the time. We didn’t work with any specialists, just with the help of the vet and some advice from the ACT Greyhound Support Network. I credit much of the work in teaching her to be a dog to Stitch. She’s always been the most affectionate dog, right from day one, and she’s greatly loved.”

“I do appreciate the work/life balance of this job. Everyone here is really good at making sure you’ve have time off. Fiona [Dr Starr] gets very worried when you don’t have time off. After my time here, I can definitely understand why. If I was working like this all day, every day, I wouldn’t want to do it.”