THE OTHER FAMILY DOCTOR

The pain and joy of loving animals.

Fine, a holistic veterinarian and expert in “the emerging field of veterinary narrative medicine, draws on her 30-year career to create a lively, often moving memoir of caring for animals. As part of her training in vet school, she worked with large animals on a farm in upstate New York, collaborated with a Peace Corps vet among nomadic herders in Morocco, and spent time at a clinic in the Navajo Nation in Arizona. Most of her career, though, has been devoted to treating house pets: cats and dogs—and one family’s 10 ferrets and another’s massive pig—in her native Massachusetts. Fine recalls the many sick, injured, and aged animals she has treated, and she is consistently empathetic about the distress of animal owners facing a dire diagnosis. To augment her arsenal of treatments, she has learned animal acupuncture and the use of herbal remedies from traditional Chinese veterinary medicine. Inevitably, because owners typically outlive their pets, the author has had to euthanize animals, a decision that she knows is traumatic for the owner—and for veterinarians, as well. Noting the unusually high suicide rate among veterinarians, she acknowledges the stresses of the profession, and she applauds the creation of a new field of veterinary social work to address the ethical and psychological issues practitioners face. “Veterinarians are commonly confronted with not only animals in crisis,” she writes, “but people in crisis.” Besides sharing her experiences as a veterinarian, Fine writes about her own relationships with the animals she’s adopted. When one dog was diagnosed with inoperable cancer, the author despaired; when she needed to be euthanized, her death plummeted her into darkest grief. For readers facing the end of an animal’s life, the author offers guidance about how to create rituals for grieving, how to write an animal’s obituary, and where to find support books, websites, and hotlines.

A warm and humane tribute to animals who enrich our lives.