Sign-In
Cart
Snippets of a Vet's Life: The Learning Years
Paperback
Series: Snippets of a Vet's Life, Book 2
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN13: 9781764459341
Publisher: Snippets Press
Published: Aug 31 2026
Pages: 422
Weight: 1.24
Height: 0.86 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The second volume of Snippets of a Vet's Life.
When Rob McBride graduated from veterinary school, he knew a great deal about animals. His first job taught him how much he still had to learn about being a vet.
Working under Doug, an experienced country practitioner, Rob begins his real education. There are sick horses, difficult foalings, cattle that object to treatment and owners who remember an important detail only after he has reached the wrong conclusion. Some calls go well. Others leave him driving home over dark country roads, wondering what he should have done differently.
Doug is there when advice is needed, even if asking for it means climbing the stairs and admitting that Rob does not know the answer. When Rob eventually leaves to establish his own practice in the Yarra Valley, the stairs, and the reassurance they represent, are gone.
Now he must make the decisions himself.
The practice grows around him, held together by Joan, whose calm efficiency often conceals how close things are to falling apart. There are unpaid accounts, unreliable horse dealers, loyal clients, good friends and the ordinary problems of running a business when Rob would rather concentrate on treating animals. Emma becomes an increasingly important part of his life, although Rob's understanding of women does not advance as quickly as his veterinary judgement.
Then he enrols in law.
For the next ten years, horses and textbooks compete for his attention. Foals prefer the middle of the night, colics arrive at dinner time, and university examinations show little sympathy for either. Rob sometimes drives from a sick horse to a lecture and then back to another sick horse. His fellow students carry casebooks. Rob occasionally brings the smell of the horse with him.
Law does not replace veterinary practice, but it changes the way he listens. A horse dealer becomes a lesson in contract. An accident raises questions of negligence. An unpaid account develops legal possibilities, although seldom enough money to interest an actual lawyer.
Set among the farms, paddocks and small communities of Victoria's Yarra Valley, The Learning Years follows Rob as he builds a practice, studies law, makes friends, makes mistakes and slowly becomes the veterinarian he once assumed he already was.
It is a story about the distance between knowing something and being able to do it.
Illustrated by Veronica Oborn Jefferis.
Also in
Biographies General
Bluesland: Portraits of Thirteen Major American Blues Masters
Toby Byron (ED.)
Pete Welding (ED.)
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 Bc0-400 AD
Freeman, Charles
Hardcover
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Isaacson, Walter
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
Cooper, Christian
Hardcover
The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Williams, Olivia
Paperback
The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
Fotheringham, William
Paperback
The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
Wittman, Robert K.
Kinney, David
Paperback
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Womens Political Culture, 1830-1900
Sklar, Kathryn Kish
Paperback
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Purnell, Sonia
Hardcover
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Paperback
Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives
Cordingly, David
Paperback
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cherington, Gretchen
Paperback
Gift of Power: The Life and Teachings of a Lakota Medicine Man
Erdoes, Richard
Lame Deer, Chief Archie Fire
Paperback
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa Wander
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself
Lawson, Jenny
Hardcover
Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor
Kuehn, Christine
Hardcover
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
Hardcover
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Fedarko, Kevin
Paperback