Call the Vet and hope your pet can be seen by Bruce Fogle!

I remember Bruce Fogle being a huge influence as a vet in the 1970’s. I bought his dog training manual when purchasing my first puppy. The cover of the book suggests it might be about Bruce’s quirky interactions with pets and their owners and indeed it does include quite a few of these. However it is so much more and one realises how veterinary practice has improved in its acknowledgement that animals have feelings, as well as medical needs.
Bruce introduces himself as a newly qualified Canadian vet starting in his first post in affluent Knightsbridge. He meets people from all walks of life and advises Harrods which sold animals at the time. The animals are many and varied and his veterinary nurses teach him compassion and to think around the diagnosis.
Bruce is brutally honest about practices which were common at the time which seem lacking in any feeling for animal welfare. A particularly upsetting incident which is described, the action of another vet, has stayed with me long after I finished the book.
I enjoyed reading about his courtship of the actress Julia Foster, whom I remember from her appearance in ‘Half a Sixpence’ with Tommy Steele. The relationship between Bruce’s mother and Julia is powerfully described and I see that this book is the first of an autobiographical series.
It is not the comfortable book of amusing anecdotes which I thought it would be, but I am glad I have read it and know so much more about the knowledgeable vet who helped me to train my dog so well.
I look forward to reading more about Bruce Fogle the father, the vet with increasing experience and the development of veterinary innovation from the seventies onwards.