San Diego Veterinarian Writes Memoir About Her Life Treating And Loving Animals

>> It's one thing to write cute stories about your pets but another to write the deep and complex relationships between animals and the people who love them. It's those stories that make up the book of a veterinarian from San Diego. Her book, my patients and other animals, a story of love, loss and hope traces her journey of caring for some for a few days and others before a lifetime. Thank you for joining us, Suzy Fincham-Gray . >> Thank you for having me. >> It's different, caring for pets in the UK and here. >> I was definitely thrown right into a different world when I came here, from the drug names to the way that animals are weighed. Everything the little different. The really fascinating thing which even now 17 years later still fascinates me, is a way that diseases are so different based on geography. Even across the United States this is true. That's a very interesting thing. I think about that a lot when I see my patients. >> Each chapter in your but the same for different animal. How did you choose which stories to include? >> I started to struggle with that a little . the idea I initially had for the book was not what I ended up writing on the page. I went through a number of different animals. There were these little voices in the back of my head that nagged me about certain cases. They are the ones that made it into the book. >> Tell us how you met Monty. >> Monte was a good catch. I met him in Philadelphia. It was several months into my internship. I had just started at the University Pennsylvania. An email went out from some students who had found a black cat on the street and it was getting close to Halloween and they thought he needed a new home. I decided to answer the email. He came home with me and he was an incredible catch. >> It was interesting because at that time I was only planning on being in America for one year. >> At that time in early 2000, the quarantine was still six months to take a cat from America back to England. That was an interesting decision I made. My heart told me I needed him so he became a part of my life. >> We will meet Monty once again in this book. Let me move on for a moment. One of the moments -- issues that you tackle in the book is international pet adoption. You do that to the story of a dog named Ned who was adopted from Mexico. Do you think international pet adoptions are a good idea? >> I think saving any animal life is a good idea. I think international pet adoption brings up a whole new set of questions that we need to answer as a pet loving community. I think one of the questions that I still have is the need for homes for animals still in the U.S. I think that is sometimes overlooked. Unfortunately, there are still many areas of the U.S., and even in California, if we go north to Riverside County or East to Imperial County, there are many shelters needing to euthanize pets because there isn't enough space for them. I would love to solve the homeless animal problem here. I think that adopting pets from other countries is an amazing opportunity to help animals in need, but I think that also there are other ways that we can potentially help those animals. >> Suzy , your focus as a vet is on treating the sick and injured animal. But your writing about Hercules on the the in the book clearly talks about how this can affect the owners as well. >> This is definitely that you may not realize until you are doing it. The animals are only a part of that equation. The owners and their relationships with their animals, their social, economic, ethical beliefs will influence how I can practice medicine as a veterinarian. >> This dog, Hercules, was actually shot. You didn't know if the owner had enough money for the treatment. >> Correct! Yes! Unfortunately, that is something that we see more that we would like to. We would love to be able to do everything for every pet but it's a real world and real life problem that sometimes we come up against financial barriers and allow us to do what we need to do. >> When writing this book, you can bind your two passions, Veterinary Medicine and writing. You have a Masters in fine arts. Did writing this book make you think even more deeply about your veterinary practice? >> Absolutely! Writing this book has change the way I am as a doctor. I see things in a different way now. I really enjoyed the more cerebral, ethical dilemmas that I face as a veterinarian and writing those out and thinking them through, it definitely helps me see a more global and complete picture, and gives me the ability to step back and see things in a way that I may have not been able to do before I started writing this book. It's been an amazing journey and something that has so enriched my practice as a veterinarian. I feel so grateful that I have had this opportunity to write this book and get it out into the world. I do feel that, I hope that my perspective is somewhat unique. I would love for people to understand a little bit more about what we do as veterinarians and maybe think about these questions a little differently, the next time they take their pet to the veterinarian. >> I want to get back to Monty. Your final chapter is about the euthanasia death of your cat, Monty. It's a heartbreaker. It really is. What do you want people to consider when their pets are at the end of life? >> That's such an important part of my practice as well. Unfortunately, as an internal medicine specialist, I see a lot of very sick animals who sometimes are days, minutes, hours away from the end of their lives. I think that the one thing that I have always tried to hold true to in my practice, and I think I would really love for everyone who has a pet out there, and to has an animal member of the family to think of too, is trying to remember to do what is best for the animal. That is a very hard thing to do. It is something that I think we all imagine we will do, but when the time comes, and is a piece of our heart that we are talking about, and it's an animal that we love as much as any human memory of our family -- human member of our family, that can be a difficult decision to make. That is something I have always thought of myself, when I think about my pets, but also for my patients. The thing I would like to think is, what would I do if they were mine. I always try to keep that perspective as well. >> Doctor Suzy Fincham-Gray has a veterinary practice and she will be discussing her book, y Patients and Other Animals: A Veterinarian Stories of Love, Loss, and Hope" next Tuesday night at Warwick's in La Jolla. Thank you so much for speaking with us. >> Thank you so much for having me. It was an absolute pleasure.