Vet on the Loose Read Free Page B

a whirl of academic and social fixtures.
    I almost didn’t become a second-year veterinary student because, during the summer of first year, I got married. I had met Donal almost four years previously, all because of Gracie, a pony which his father grazed in a field behind my parents’ house. I had often admired the pretty little Connemara cross and she enjoyed nuzzling through my pocket for the slice of apple that I always brought her. I had met Donal’s father by chance one day while out walking in the fields with my dogs. When he told me that he drove down twice a day to check Gracie, the mare, I offered to do it for him, delighted to get a chance to be involved.
    When Gracie foaled the following summer, I met Donal. From then on, we both took a huge interest in Star, the foal, and diligently met up most days to handle him and discuss his progress despite the fact that I was supposedly studying for the Leaving Cert. By the time Star was old enough to begin his training in long reins, we had got into the habit of meeting daily and we used to spend many hours each evening walking the back roads with him. Gradually, we took to going out to buy tack for him and then to the local horse shows under the pretext of checking out the competition.
    By then, Star had a little brother, Maxwell, and so our meetings became even more frequent. I don’t think anyone was surprised when we finally started going out without the horses. Around the time Merlin, the third foal, appeared, we decided to get married and give the mare a break.
    Back at college, I was advised to change my name to avoid confusion at a later date. I followed directions and duly notified the registrar. However, when second year started, it turned out that the authorities, in their wisdom, had deleted me from the register under my former name of Gillian Kelly but had failed to re-enter me on the register as Gillian Hick. It took a lot of persuasion, and finally a letter from the dean of the veterinary college, to convince the authorities in Belfield that I was indeed a bona fide veterinary student.
    That year, we left Belfield behind and were established full-time in the veterinary college. The year focused mainly on animal husbandry and especially on the farm end of things. Our weekly visits out to UCD’s research farm at Lyons Estate in Kildare were supposed to introduce us to the management of cattle, sheep and horses and level out the differences between those students reared in a farming background and the impostors like myself – a born and reared Dub. In anatomy, Patch was replaced by a stunted-looking Hereford cow and a small chestnut pony.
    During this second year, much of the holidays were spent doing what was known as farm experience, where we went out to work on farms to learn the basic concepts of animal management from the skilled stockmen who, in a few short years, would hopefully become our clients.
    The other main subject for second year was the combined physiology/biochemistry course which had the highest failure rate for that year. Three-hour written exams were followed by two sets of practicals and then, finally, just to really see if you would crack under the pressure, each student had a twenty-minute oral exam with three of the professors who would decide your fate.
    To this day, the way I felt the morning of that exam is always the barometer by which I assess how much pressure I am under. Of the three interviewers, one was a lecturer with whom I got on reasonably well, the second was the head of the department and the third was an external examiner – a departmental head from an English college, brought in to standardise the results.
    The biochemistry questions went fine as I managed to conjure up the required metabolic pathways, although I wouldn’t even remember the first step now. Physiology was usually easier, and I thought that I had tackled a question from the extern on respiratory patterns in horses fairly well. I was beginning to