How realistic a portrayal of the veterinary profession?

Hello!

(Forgive any grammar mistakes and don´t even mention punctuation )

Yes, I heard it, too, that the suicide rate among vets is comparatively high.
But, in the first place I can´t imagine, how anyone could build up illusions about the veterinary job after reading Herriot´s books . I mean I don´t see, that Herriot glorified his job and pretended it to be the most wonderful thing in the world to do. For him it was definitely the work he wanted to do in his life, because he had an immense love for animals, nature and the people of the Yorkshire Dales. Nevertheless he didn´t conceal the ugly parts of his job - unfriendly and gruffy countrymen, who won´t pay the work, one has done, and think vets to inflate their bills, cold winter nights, when one has to get out of bed at two a.m., because a horse got a colic and one has to satisfy the customer, even if you don´t get the thanks you deserve, incapable colleagues, annoying customers, the lack of a private life and of enough money, even the vet´s dealing with losing a patient and not having the power to save every animal.
I´m not a vet myself but I had a job training in a vet´s practice (I have no idea how you call that apprentenceship in english ) and I enjoy watching the series very much, because I find similiarities to the time I´ve worked there, even now - nearly seventy years after the time portrayed in the series/books. Maybe an actual vet thinks otherwise...
All things considered the job as a vet isn´t something to do halfheartedly. You have to like or better love working with animals and dealing with all sorts of different characters among your customers. I don´t think it´s easy, but if you possess the right enthusiasm I imagine it to be a fulfilling job.



"You shouldn't keep souvenirs of a killing.You shouldn't have been that sentimental."

Well, when one compares the James Herriot books to Alf Wight's real life, the books ARE romanticized. Not so much the veterinary work itself, but the whole bucolic setting of Darrowby and the people. having read Jim Wight's book, it is clear that Alf Wight wrote about life he WISHED he had versus the one he really lived.

A bit about myself, there were two sets of works that I read through several times between about the ages of 11-18 - Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Herriot/Wight's All Creatures Great and Small et al. As an adult, I realize that they were both "fantasy" in their own way. They ended up striking me in a similar way - a land and time to enter into as escapism, and were formative to my late childhood. And just as I now read passages of Tolkien's works with an academic backdrop of anarcho-catholicism (and so lose some the "magic"), I read chapters from ACGAS et al with the actual information in Jim Wight's biography as a filter.

In short, it's hard to read the semi-biographical novels the same way when you are aware of Alf Wight's mental problems, his paranoia, the shock treatments, and that Donald Sinclair (Siegfried) committed suicide. While we may actually enjoy a wistful bit of time under an elm tree, or enjoy the beauty of the wild Dales, the realities of life are always there. Snatching bits of happiness and positive memories is always within a struggle to stave off pain and death, knowing all the while we are doomed to suffer pain and die. I think Alf Wight lived a life more in dread of this reality than James Herriot did in the books. Alf was riddled with anxieties that James never was shown to have had. James had doubts and failures, but the fictional vet overcame. I'm not so sure the actual vet really did.

So was there a "bait and switch" for those who followed into the profession? Perhaps, but not intentionally. I don't think Alf had any interest in writing, nor would anyone care to have read, his REAL biography. Alf became a "teller of tales" and was very good at it. Even in my advanced adulthood, the Yorkshire Dales of Alf's books are still a fantastical place I'd like to visit, even if the rational side of myself knows it doesn't/didn't really exist. It's been as good a "stave" for me as any other.

I have a friend who's a country vet, and I wouldn't say that Herriott sugar-coated the life too much. There's constant driving from large animal client to large animal client, being called out at all weathers, having to deal with people in their homes where they feel free to be as eccentric or crazy as they like to be, and who may or may not pay on time, but who'll feel free to demand more services if they don't.

One thing the books left out was the constant money worries. Modern vets are paid very little if they're on salary, they only way to make money is to go into business for themselves, and that means dealing with a ton of paperwork in addition to 16 hours of work a day including late-night calls. And it also means that dealing with clients who aren't prompt with paying their bills is a huge strain, it's never easy but once they fail to pay and become the people who are imperiling your mortgage it's worse!

So I'd say that the one thing that Herriott/Wright absolutely sugar-coated was rural poverty.