February is the month we celebrate people who mean the most to us.
It’s the month of flowers and red hearts filled with candy, but the person I’d like to honor shows up in a red truck filled with tools, medicine, supplies and most importantly a huge heart. She shows up, rain or shine, day or night, answers the phone on a Sunday morning at 7 a.m. and comes at my beck and call. My valentine is my veterinarian.
Over the last year, we have certainly seen for better or worse, in sickness and health and God knows, for richer and poorer. Horses aren’t cheap! As my daughter regularly likes to holler in jest from the warm-up arena, “Hey mama, how do you like watching your money run in circles?”
The last year has seen its share of for worse, with midnight exhaustion and shared tears as she tried with more heart and intention than I have ever seen to save an injured orphan foal from the Navajo reservation in my garage. She treated a little horse that could have so easily been overlooked as if he were Secretariat himself and handled my children and me with compassion beyond words when he couldn’t possibly survive the circumstances his short life had been dealt.
She has shown up for another foal with a broken femur and tried when no one else believed there was hope, to give her a chance and she is alive today because someone other than me believed. She answered the call on an early Sunday morning, when she herself was sick in bed, for my daughter’s barrel horse with a severed artery and flew into her truck to come save the day. She always saves the day. She has answered those calls and every call.
My veterinarian has talked me off the ledge when it would have been easier to just shove me. She has entertained my ridiculous and usually gross texted photos of, “Is this normal?” and never ghosts me. She has been rear-ended in a parking lot because she showed up to help me and ended up needing help. She has shown up at the barn to save my horses lives and shown up in our lives too, saving me and my kids in ways she can never even know, by being at rodeos to buy hot dogs for my kids or to help manage my littlest mutton buster get on the sheep.
For every “worse” time she has been there, there have been plenty “for better” times too. She has been there for tears of joy and celebrated equine achievements in my families life, to scream and holler at barrel races for my daughter and the horse she has doctored, to sit on the tailgate and laugh about life and to share advice with my daughter who dreams of becoming a large animal veterinarian.
The world not only needs more large animal veterinarians, they need more like mine. There is a striking nationwide shortage of large animal veterinarians, especially in rural areas like ours. Colorado is one of the top 10 states with the highest demand for large animal vets.
According to nationwide data, only about 3.4% of veterinarians practice in the equine field. That equates to long hours and exhaustion for vets and leaves horse owners struggling for care. Springtime is often one of the most tiresome times of year for both. With foaling season upon us, emergency after emergency is waiting in the wings. There simply aren’t enough veterinarians or enough hours in the lives of the veterinarians here to save every animal or serve every horse owner.
I hope my daughter grows up to work in the field of veterinary medicine and I hope there are more vets by then so she isn’t as exhausted as those are now.
Programs like the 4H CSU Vet Science Camp are terrific ways to get kids interested in the subject. As a community, we need to encourage youth who are interested in agriculture and help make it more accessible for them to pursue degrees and celebrate those professionals who have no option other than to spread themselves thin.
Every single large animal vet in the area is tired and will tirelessly show up for you and your horses. We need to show up for them by keeping the future alive with new generations of valentines in red pickup trucks.
Cupid may be the valentine angel, but I swear my veterinarian has a halo and wings. I have never seen someone work so hard and put their entire heart into every animal they come across. I’ll take that heart on her sleeve any day over one filled with chocolates in a box!
Jenny Johnston is a four-generation Durango local, part-time rodeo announcer and full-time wrangler to two lil’ buckaroos. You can reach Jenny at jl.johnston@outlook.com.
