Dr. Mary Bell, a highly respected Equine Vet, kindly agreed to my request to meet and talk about my idea for this new service. Being in great demand during the day, we decided to meet for dinner at a beautiful rustic country restaurant. I was unsure how she would react to the idea of being on hand during a euthanasia and making myself available for “counselling” afterwards. Dr. Mary is a no-nonsense person and I knew that she would “shoot from the hip”.
As with Dr. Rolf, she listened carefully and then said, “Yes, | think that would be very worthwhile and most helpful to clients …” Big sigh of relief on my part — again.
We spent the rest of our dinner talking about the “gap” in education about this particular area of a vet’s education and that when she attended school, it was simply not discussed. She had several great ideas and even gave me the names of a few people to contact. I was thrilled.
Between the time that I had seen Dr. King and this visit, I had started what would be my first course of instruction, and so we briefly talked about that and how I could get the word out to the vet community, and beyond.
I left her that evening with a request to attend her next euthanasia. Dr. Mary told me that she didn’t do many euthanasias at this point in her long career, but if one came up and her client agreed, she would contact me.
Little did I know that it would be within the next 3 days.
