The Next One In

Clara recently graduated from the University of Bristol Veterinary School in England and has come home to Ontario to begin her career with us.

She arrives with a great deal of knowledge, a veterinary degree earned a long way from home, and—as every veterinarian eventually discovers—a whole lot left to learn.

I don’t mean that as a criticism. I think it might be one of the most important parts of becoming a veterinarian.

Where veterinarians are really made

There is a point somewhere between veterinary school and practice when you realize that knowing the answer and knowing what to do are not always the same thing.

The cow doesn’t read the textbook. The horse doesn’t present exactly the way the lecture notes said it would. The weather doesn’t cooperate. The equipment breaks. The treatment that worked perfectly last time doesn’t work this time. And sometimes you’re standing in a barn at two in the morning with a farmer looking at you and waiting for an answer.

That is where a veterinarian really starts to be made.

Learning from more than one mentor

Clara will learn from all of us here, but not necessarily the same things from each of us.

She’ll ride with Ted and benefit from a career’s worth of cases, stories and lessons learned the hard way. She’ll spend time with me, and I’ll try to pass along what experience has taught me—both about veterinary medicine and about the farms and families we serve.

And she’ll learn things from Julia that Ted and I simply can’t teach her.

Being a young woman in large-animal veterinary medicine comes with experiences and challenges that I can understand and support, but haven’t lived myself. Julia has. There is something valuable in having someone a few steps ahead of you who has navigated those same farmyards, earned the confidence of producers, found her own way of doing physically demanding work, and established herself as a very good farm veterinarian.

Brett has that perspective too. She’s still away on maternity leave, but I know Clara is looking forward to having her back—not only as another veterinarian to work alongside, but as another example of what a career in this profession can look like through different stages of life.

I think that’s one of the strengths of learning within a practice. No single mentor has everything to teach.

Clara will take a little from Ted, a little from Julia, Brett and me, and eventually add enough of herself that she won’t practise quite like any of us. That’s exactly how it should be.

The people who teach us most

But she’ll also learn from you. Our producers teach us so much.

You’ve taught me to look at the whole herd instead of just the sick cow. You’ve taught me that sometimes the theoretically perfect answer isn’t the practical one. You’ve taught me the value of knowing the history of a farm, the people running it, and what they’re trying to accomplish.

And you’ve taught me that trust is earned slowly.

So when Clara comes through your laneway, I hope you’ll give her the opportunity to earn yours.

Ask her questions. Tell her what you’re seeing. Challenge her when something doesn’t make sense. Show her the things about your farm that aren’t written down anywhere. And every once in a while, give her a little room to figure something out.

How communities make veterinarians

Because rural veterinary medicine needs young veterinarians who want to do this work.

Not just veterinarians who are capable of it—people who genuinely want to know their clients, understand their farms, answer the phone when something goes wrong, and become part of the agricultural community they serve.

Those veterinarians don’t appear fully formed on graduation day. We make them.

Veterinary schools provide the education. Practices provide the mentorship. But communities provide the experience, trust and sense of purpose that turn a new graduate into someone’s veterinarian.

From the new grad to their vet

Years from now, Clara will pull into a farmyard she’s visited hundreds of times. She’ll know where the cows are, which gate sticks, who likes to talk things through and who would rather just get to work. Someone will call and ask specifically for her because she knows the farm.

And at some point, without anybody really noticing when it happened, the new grad won’t be the new grad anymore. She’ll simply be their vet.

After travelling across an ocean to earn the right to put “Dr.” in front of her name, we’re awfully glad Clara chose to come home and put down the first miles of her career on the roads around here.

Welcome home, Dr. Clara Phillips. And welcome to Miller Vet.