Practice can teach you a lot about life

This month, I want to share some of the nuggets of wisdom I have learned in private practice over these wonderful years. I hope you can relate.

• Cows cannot get pregnant from eating breeder's cubes.

• I know an owner who loved her dog so much she would chew up its food because she knew the dog's teeth hurt.

• I have pulled a calf from a cow within the confines of a module builder.

• I had an owner present a cat for a chronic ear infection. When asked how long the infection had been present, he said, "about 13 years."

• I have removed grandma's giant toenail clipping from the back of a dog's throat.

• When someone says "money is no object," it usually means they are not going to pay anyway.

• If you stay somewhere long enough, everyone's dog will eventually die from something you can't fix.

• Never say "whoops."

• I have been chased around a farm by a man-eating goose that looked like it had a horn.

• I have done a C-section on a goat in our kitchen.

• I have seen a dog throw-up an entire cat.

• I have been called in the middle of the night to deliver a dead calf from a dead cow.

• I have had a 2,000-pound bull get loose and run through the streets of my hometown, Lamesa, Texas.

• We have castrated close to 6,000 animals.

• We have spayed close to 1,300 animals.

• We have seen around 800 dogs with parvovirus.

• We have done around 2,000 Coggins tests on horses.

• We have given close to 17,000 rabies shots.

• I have done around 1,000 emergency calls.

• We have had 12 veterinary interns.

• If the owner says, "He won't bite," it's only because he has never had a cold thermometer put in his fanny.

• If you stress out a Pekingese dog too much, its eyes might pop out.

• A half-sedated goat can still outrun me for the first 250 yards if it gets loose.

• Dogs that bite the hardest do not make any noise prior to letting you have it.

• I have learned to be more afraid of a Chihuahua than a Doberman.

• I have seen a horse come to the clinic in the back of a pickup, loaded up like a dog.

• I have used more than 90 yards of suture material at one time to sew up a flock of sheep that dogs visited.

• I have castrated a pig in the end zone of a six-man football game while the game was in progress.

• I had a lady bring a cat in the clinic and the entire time she was telling me the history of what was wrong with her cat, her left false eyelash was half off and bouncing around with every blink. Have you ever tried to focus on the history of an animal with something like that going on?

Bo Brock, DVM

Isn't practicing veterinary medicine wonderful?