Back To Where It All Started…My Personal Story. Get To Know Why I Became A Vet

If you ask most veterinarians when they realized they wanted to become the ultimate animal saviour, most would reply with something along the lines of “I don’t know, I just always knew,” accompanied by a dumbfounded shrug – like you had just asked them a silly question. And that’s because most of us have dreamt of fixing animal “boo-boo’s” since we learned that dogs go “woof” and cats “meow”. Whether it be wrapping a bandaid around the broken tail of a dinosaur figurine, or chasing the family dog to stick a band aid on their hips, curing them of their old-dog arthritis (both of which I was saddened to learn in vet school, don’t do squat). Fortunately for me, I was lucky enough to remember my “ah-ha” moment of when I first realized how fascinating other creatures were, and how much I enjoyed seeing them be happy.

My story kind of went like this…

I recall sitting in the living room during an early evening of a winter night, making portraits out of macaroni like all the cool 8 year olds. The front door had opened and my grandpa walked up the stairs clutching something gently, yet firmly within the palms of his hands. Intrigued, I walked over to uncover my grandpas mystery. “Want to see?” he said with a smirk on his lips. That’s when I heard the rustling sounds of feathers from within his fingers, and a head popped through a tiny hole from between them. My grandpa had bought home the cutest baby pigeon! I later learned he had found the bird on the back porch, lying lifelessly frozen by the cold with no nest nearby. He could have sworn it was already dead until he picked it up and saw it blink, and its chest slowly rise and fall. Some food, water and a warm cardboard box nest for a few days was all it took to get the little bird feeling better. And after the third day, we placed him in the same spot we found him and watched him fly away. I kept the cardboard box nest out on the porch just in case he wanted to come visit again.