Vet on Call My First Year as an Out-of-hours Vet

Marc Abraham was something of a free spirit. While his contemporaries were becoming partners in veterinary practices, Marc was still skipping town every few months to go snowboarding. Then came the day when Marc's father sat him down and gave him a challenge he couldn't ignore: it was time he 'made something of his life'. Still dedicated to doing things the hard way, Marc talked a local practice into letting him set up an 'after hours' emergency clinic dedicated entirely to animals. And so began the hardest period of Marc's career yet. If getting used to the long nightshifts wasn't bad enough, emergency cases are by their very nature complicated. Whether it was a dog in cardiac arrest or a gerbil in need of an emergency caesarean, every decision could be life-changing, and every case had the potential for heartbreak. Often there was a panicked owner who needed TLC themselves. But animals and their owners also brought about the most comic series of events, such as the local lord who unwittingly gave his St Bernard four testicles or the cat that laid an 'egg'. And then there was the time Marc provided a donkey for the local school's nativity, who mid-perfomance ate the Baby Jesus a Over the course of twelve tough months, the ER begins to flourish, and Marc proves to his father - and himself - that perhaps he has substance after all. Writing guilelessly about his early mistakes, and the terror and joy involved in attempting to save an animal's life, Marc Abraham's memoir is a heart-warming, compelling and thoroughly entertaining look at the life of an ER vet.