A patchy memoir of a Canadian vet’s arrival in 1970s London. Informative but occasionally graphic.
Canadian vet, Bruce Fogle, was fresh out of Ontario Veterinary College and on a fellowship at Regent’s Park Zoo when he agreed to join prestigious Knightsbridge surgery, Woodrow Singleton, as an assistant vet working for well-respected Brian Singleton. Despite the absence of a language barrier Fogle found it took a lot longer to understand the English culture with the stiff upper lip, fluency of swearing in general conversation and the love of understatement and irony. Call the Vet is a mix of Fogle’s early experiences with patients, owners and those he worked alongside through to varied observations on London and everything from the political climate, the class structure to some very famous pet owners. Whilst Bruce went native over the course of the next decade his first two years working for Brian were a baptism of fire in many respects. With the surgery just five minutes walk from Harrods and the lab coats and scrubs that he was used to in Canada replaced with Savile Row suits, Fogle met everyone from dog breeders to the wealthy right through to those owners who simply let their dogs out in the morning for an entire day!
Fogle makes clear how far the world of veterinary medicine has come and freely admits how primitive some of the treatment methods of the 1970s were and the complete absence of concern for the pain management of the animals. I admired his honesty in admitting that many of these issues he has simply never thought of until either nurses suggested and his recognition of the value of the veterinary nurses who encouraged him to consider the animals welfare is commendable. Whilst Fogle acknowledges that his recommendations for transporting animals bound for the now defunct pet department at Harrods to the ethical treatment of the wildlife animals they sold were long overdue I found it more shocking that he was the first qualified animal practitioner to raise these concerns. There are a few rather graphic descriptions of procedures (that I found too technical to comprehend) but in the main I found the book an informative read and would recommend for anyone interested in advancements in the field of veterinary medicine. Given many of the treatments sound cruel by today’s standards the book was rather more serious than the premise had led me to expect with far fewer animal and owner anecdotes than I had hoped for.
As well as rapidly bringing the reader up to speed with Fogle leaving Brian Singleton’s employment and becoming his own boss in 1973, the later part of the book covers his relationship and marriage to actress, Julia Foster, and hobnobbing with the stars of stage and screen and it was here that my interest waned significantly. I did feel that the book would have benefited from a more coherent structure and on several occasions a topic which had previously been covered was referred to again and this lack of logical progression made for a bitty read. The book also seemed to use a confusing mix of present and past tense and the hindsight commentary on the 1970s treatment of animals and their welfare might have been more suited to a complete chapter of its own as opposed to interspersed throughout.
Fogle makes clear how far the world of veterinary medicine has come and freely admits how primitive some of the treatment methods of the 1970s were and the complete absence of concern for the pain management of the animals. I admired his honesty in admitting that many of these issues he has simply never thought of until either nurses suggested and his recognition of the value of the veterinary nurses who encouraged him to consider the animals welfare is commendable. Whilst Fogle acknowledges that his recommendations for transporting animals bound for the now defunct pet department at Harrods to the ethical treatment of the wildlife animals they sold were long overdue I found it more shocking that he was the first qualified animal practitioner to raise these concerns. There are a few rather graphic descriptions of procedures (that I found too technical to comprehend) but in the main I found the book an informative read and would recommend for anyone interested in advancements in the field of veterinary medicine. Given many of the treatments sound cruel by today’s standards the book was rather more serious than the premise had led me to expect with far fewer animal and owner anecdotes than I had hoped for.
As well as rapidly bringing the reader up to speed with Fogle leaving Brian Singleton’s employment and becoming his own boss in 1973, the later part of the book covers his relationship and marriage to actress, Julia Foster, and hobnobbing with the stars of stage and screen and it was here that my interest waned significantly. I did feel that the book would have benefited from a more coherent structure and on several occasions a topic which had previously been covered was referred to again and this lack of logical progression made for a bitty read. The book also seemed to use a confusing mix of present and past tense and the hindsight commentary on the 1970s treatment of animals and their welfare might have been more suited to a complete chapter of its own as opposed to interspersed throughout.