Please find attached a letter from Principal Dr Stuart Williams, regarding some important updates and regrettable changes to the afterhours services for Yass & Murrumbateman Veterinary Hospital.

Being a vet A lot has changed for me in the last year but coming to work still provides me with some sanity and knowing that I am helping all your animals is still a great motivator. Having a child has meant that I have cut my hours back and finding that work life balance is a lot more challenging but getting to see you all and your pets makes it all worthwhile. I have worked as a vet since 2009. During my studies in Sydney I also did some after hours work. Vets deal with people from all walks of life and must handle some hairy situations. I have a couple to share. As a student vet in Sydney I had a knife pulled on me in consult as I started to discuss the costs involved with trying to save a puppy. The clients were clearly distressed about their puppy and acting inappropriately. It is very difficult as a vet to balance the need to fix and help every animal with the needs of the business. Verbal abuse is something I have had to deal with quite often unfortunately, but a physical threat was incredibly confronting. The situation was diffused but it is certainly something I will never forget. As a freshly minted vet up in Queensland, one of my first weekends on call dealt me a case that I was not prepared for in the slightest. There was the sweetest little dog that came in and I was advised that she had been sexually abused. I was required to report this to the police and the case became very involved. The dog required surgery and was then rehomed. Unfortunately, she became aggressively overprotective of her new family and had to be euthanased. This case will forever be in my mind and strengthens my drive to be the best advocate for my patients that I can be. During my first year I also vividly remember the day that I was required to euthanase 10 animals. A litter of 4 puppies and 6 other individually owned animals. At the time I felt that my world was ending as well. It took a large toll on my mental health but also helped to teach me resilience. Euthanasia is a necessary common procedure, but it is still difficult to perform. In most cases I am aware I am doing the right thing by the animal, but I would much prefer that I could fix the animal. I guess as vets and pet owners it is something we learn do deal with if not accept. It is not all doom and gloom though. Most of the time I can help my clients to be more comfortable and live a better life. I especially love working out a diagnosis and treatment plan for medical cases, my problem-solving brain delights in it. Reproduction is also a favourite of mine, making new pets is very rewarding. I look forward to seeing you all in clinic to help your pets live their best life!

The Magic of Mayhem By Keeley Adams Your usual shift as a veterinary receptionist is about to begin. Glancing at your schedule for the day, it will undeniably look remarkably different by 6pm. You inspect the clock and view the hand about to tick over to 8am – it’s almost time for the phone lines to open. You square your shoulders and bravely meet the eyes of the other receptionist across from you as you prepare like soldiers would for war; it’s go time. Your headset starts ringing and you have seven callers on the line in the span of a few seconds. The schedule looks full already but you don’t give up, searching to see where you can possibly fit them all in. Moving around the colour-coded appointments like a real-life game of Tetris, you fist-pump when you accomplish what seemed impossible 10 minutes ago. This continues for a few hours; an endless cycle of being seemingly full for the day but not able to turn away callers with sick pets who you know from experience may be urgent cases. Some of the calls are decidedly less urgent. You spend 6 minutes on the phone with a client who assures you that their dog has been getting ‘oxtun’ for years and they need to order some more. You rack your brain trying to work out what ‘oxtun’ could be, presuming it to be some sort of drug, before realising that the elderly caller is actually trying to order “ox tongue” for her dog… You provide her the correct number for the local butcher. Meanwhile, you can see your other receptionist carrying her fifth boxful of injured wildlife out the back for a vet or nurse to assess; by the way the box is bouncing about in her arms and making an awful screeching sound, you presume it to be a boisterous cockatoo. Good luck with that one, guys! By the time the clock reaches 11am, you scurry into the break room to boil the jug for your second (or third) cup of coffee before retrieving the multiple vials of blood for the external pathology courier whom you all lovingly refer to as “The Blood Man.” You don’t let the sight of the four different types of bodily fluids you see being tested in the lab deter you from that coffee you were making. And yes, that’s right, I said four bodily fluid types… use your imagination! Back at your desk, the cutest puppy imaginable is in for its first vaccination and hobbles behind the reception desk to say hello. And while many would assume that veterinary receptionists only cuddle puppies all day, the reality is that they also have to be constantly prepared as the first to assess and respond to any emergency calls. Both phones ring at 1pm, and with your receptionist’s equivalent of the “spidey-sense”, predict that these will be the “big calls” for the day. As suspected, one caller describes how their puppy has eaten a whole box of rich, Belgian chocolates while they were at work and the second client requires urgent help for a calving at a rural property. You get to work quickly, asking the dog owner to bring their pet into the vet hospital immediately and confirm the address and contact details of the client for the calving which a vet will have to go out to as soon as possible. You race out the back to let the vets and nurses know while your other receptionist works at rescheduling some of the non-urgent appointments to slightly later in the day. One vet is out the door with his nurse as quickly as he can to the calving, while the others prepare for the urgent case coming through the door. A short time later, you watch as the cheeky chocolate-eating puppy is out the back, vomiting to expel the toxins they ingested into a bucket (and no-doubt reminding some staff of distinct instances from their youths which they’d rather not remember). The rest of the day flies by with countless vaccinations, consults and hospital patients, and before you know it, the vet who was sent out to the emergency calving exhaustedly returns, their overalls covered in substances one would rather not think about (or smell) for too long. You dread to think about what their assigned work car must look like inside! Eventually, the clock ticks over to 6pm and the phone lines finally close, allowing any other emergencies to be handled by the appointed after hours vet. The receptionists heave a sigh of relief, finally getting a break from the non-stop sound of the phone ringing and everyone prepares to go home. One thing I have learnt about being a veterinary receptionist is that it certainly consists of more than just booking appointments; it is about managing the “magic of mayhem” that exists in our workplace in which everything can change in the blink of an eye… or the ringing of a phone. But we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Family has always been incredibly important to me; they are people I would do absolutely anything for and support no matter what. I grew up with an older brother and pretty much anybody that has one knows what that means. I remember when he first got his P’s whenever I would be in the car with him and try to drink; he would slam the breaks on and I’d spill it all over myself. Even though he is an incredible driver he can also be a crazy one when he has somewhere to be. Not to mention whenever my parents would go away, I would have to clean up his dishes for him. I knew from the moment that I walked into Yass Valley Vet that it was the place I wanted to be. I just felt safe. After moving from the Illawarra to Yass, I had been working at a vet in Canberra. Although I enjoyed working there, I really wanted somewhere closer to home. When the opportunity arose at YVV I grabbed it straight away. The trust we put in each other is phenomenal (especially the way some of them drive!); and it’s something I value immensely. Not only are my co-workers great people, quite quickly they felt like family! The guys are like big brothers to me. I first felt it when in the car with one of them and I tried to have a drink.... he touched the breaks and made me spill it all over myself (just like my big brother used to do). Another time (which is quite constantly) we have to clean up the dishes for them which they have left lying around. The girls are like sisters, both older and younger. Supporting each other through anything; like when I constantly injure myself in stupid ways.... who else would I want laughing at me when I cut my hand with Nail clippers! Yes the dog ones, not human ones. Or when I constantly jam my fingers in things. Even when I use metho and find a cut or scratch I did not even know existed. Like my co-workers I have always had a love of animals. Whilst growing up I had various pets, dogs, bearded dragons, horses and even a snake. My main problem is wanting to rescue every animal that needs helping but as I’ve been told by my family many times “No Mikky”. There is nothing better than loving the place where you work, the people you work with and your patients/clients. Being able to care for sick animals is so rewarding and I love it. The fun times with my co-workers don’t hurt either! Especially now that they feel like family.

My Journey with the Yass Valley Veterinary began back in 2012 when I approached the clinic for a high school placement. After much discussion and promising that I’d be on my best behaviour I was given a chance to come for 2 weeks placement during the winter school holidays. I was quickly immersed in the life of clinic, holding anxious dogs, being thrown into the air by a horse during a dental and assisting with a difficult calving. What I appreciated most about the placement was that despite my obvious lack of coordination and knowledge I was accepted as part of the team and thrown into the fray. One specific case comes to mind when I think about my school placement time with YVV. It was a busy afternoon and Stuart had just received a call that an alpaca was struggling to give birth. (Known as an unpacking I soon learnt). We jumped into the car and sped out straight away. While I had seen calvings and lambings before this was a different matter entirely. When Alpacas are unpacking, they tend to imitate a person in excruciating pain, and this one was performing like something out of a horror film. Unphased Stuart dived in and extricated one leg, then another and that is when we hit our first hurdle. The Cria’s extremely long neck was bent around over its back and there seemed to no hope in hades that the little fella’s head was going to come out. Stuart however knew better and was able with significant effort to twist the cria out of the womb. The little monster of a Cria appeared quite dazed in the winter sun but was soon sitting up and looking for mum. 8 years later I was starting one of my first weekends on call with great trepidation. As the Saturday morning shift came to a close, I was informed by reception that there was an alpaca unpacking! I packed the car and hit the road with a vague idea of the address, heading into an area with no reception. After an hour of bush-bashing and several attempted phone calls with the owner, I arrived at the destination to find a herd of 200 alpacas in the sheep yards. We found our struggling hembra (female alpaca) and set to work extracting the cria. The little macho (male alpaca) was well and truly stuck with his head bent around over his back and only the left leg showing. I reached in and carefully pulled the right leg up and before I knew it the little fella whipped the left leg back in! With memories of 8 years of ago fresh in my mind I knew I had a trick up my sleeve. I quickly returned the right leg into the womb creating the space to swing his head around and up into the summer air. It wasn’t long after that the little fella was out and trying to stand. As I stooped to assist him a clod of spit and grass landed a direct hit between my eyes! I looked up to see that the culprit was the cria’s mother who wasn’t taking to kindly to my interference and on that bomb shell it was time to leave.

My most challenging day as a vet nurse. It was the middle of summer and on this particular day I was rostered on to work with Dr Stuart. I should have known that working with Stuart, chances were we weren't likely to stay in the clinic and I was right. Just after lunch we were scheduled to preg test some cows. My first thought was "It's going to be hot"🥵. My second thought was "I forgot my hat". Now if you’ve seen me around, you will know that I don’t have much hair on my head, so a hat is a must! Luckily Stuart had an extra hat in his car, and although it was a bit small for my head I was thankful for it anyway. So, I got my overalls on and we left the clinic. We arrived about 1pm and just before we got out of the car, we checked the temperature. It read 38°C and that wasn’t even the hottest part of the day. We got out of the car and said hello to the farmer, who to our dismay was on his own. We got to work unloading everything from the car and walked it down to the yards. As we got closer to the yards we saw them - the cows. I can’t remember if there were 300 or 400 but by the end of the day it felt like there were thousands. We began our set up and luckily Stuart was smart enough to pack a large beach umbrella 🏖with him to keep him out of the sun. It was time to begin! I was on the crush, the farmer was pushing the cows down the race, and Stuart was doing his thing at the business end of the cows. Now these cows were THE MOST STUBBORN cows I have ever dealt with😡. They just wouldn’t move and then they would just bolt at the crush to escape. The farmer told me for every cow I missed I owed him a beer at the pub. Unfortunately for the farmer he had to buy his own drinks because I didn’t miss a single cow. A few cows in and Dr Harry and nurse Emily showed up to give us a hand, but they only stayed for about an hour before they had to head back to the clinic for consults. The day felt like it was getting hotter and hotter. Then about halfway through the cows we lost the farmer. He had collapsed from the heat. So we all took a well deserved break in the shed to cool down and replenish our fluids. The farmer didn’t look in a good way, so Stuart made the decision to send him home. However, because the cows were still in the yards and agitated by the heat Stuart and I decided to keep on going so the cows could go free again and cool down. So we carried on, this time just the two of us. Stuart was on the crush and checking the cows and I was pushing them down the race. The way the yards and race were set up we could only do about five cows at a time. So I had to separate five cows out of the group into a yard and then down the race. As I mentioned earlier, these were some stubborn cows! And to make a hard job harder, some cows had already had calves, so we had to separate the calves from the cows into another yard. The day didn’t get any cooler, our water supplies were depleting, dehydration and frustration were setting in and the cows were only get more and more stubborn and agitated. There were a few choice words yelled at the cows, especially from Stuart🤬. After what felt like 6 years 125 days 19 hours and 24 minutes we finally got the last cow into the crush and ... DONE! We let the cows out of the yard, packed everything back into the car and literally collapsed into the car. We were sore, covered in cow manure, dirt, sweat and super dehydrated but the clock showed it was almost 6pm (which means home time... Hooray 🥳). That was definitely the most physically challenging day I have had at Yass Valley Veterinary but I enjoyed every minute of it.

I still remember walking through the doors of the Yass Vet Hospital. I was nervous as hell while I waited to see Heidi. This was the first time I had attended a formal interview, as I previously worked in the racing industry and interviews were not heard of. As I walked into the room feeling those over whelming nerves, there they were! 3 very confronting faces! Now those 3 people I call great friends. The one thing that stuck with me from the interview was a question I was asked. “How long do you think you will be here in Yass?” Shortly followed with “You won’t be here for long”. At the time I had no idea how long I was going to be here. My partner, now husband who is a livestock agent had only been here for a short period & apparently, they do not always stay in the same town. Fast forward 9 years and I’m still here, now working as the Reception Manager. I can’t say it has been the easiest job mentally, but its definitely been the most satisfying and rewarding job. Second only to being a mother! Working within a great team of people makes a difference. Along with being able to help our clients loved ones stay happy & healthy. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing a patient in hospital walk out the front door, knowing we have made a genuine difference.

‘One pig, one peso; big pig, two peso’ Let’s not let facts get in the way of a good story. The following story can be confirmed by three eyewitnesses who can confirm that at least some of this story is true, for a more accurate (and more boring) account, please see the diligently detailed case notes. On a cool Autumn day, I was approached by a fellow with a small, somewhat unusual task which he felt fell under the broad umbrella of veterinary medicine. Mixed veterinary practice brings with it all the unusual, out of the way, and uncommon animal tasks, and this was no different. The task you ask, the care of this fellow’s pet pig’s feet! Not one to step back from a challenge, I whole heartedly agreed to this porcine pedicure! I was bolstered by the recent success of a nail in clipping in a particularly prickly Pug so I thought a particularly prickly pig would be the next step up. Boy was I wrong. I set out optimistically for this somewhat obscure problem, however, I was not totally naive, and I thought perhaps indeed that this could be a big job, so I of course brought along the secret weapon, Daniel ‘Django’ Gerrard, self-proclaimed ‘Chief Pig Wrangler’. Fortunately, it was Django’s day off and he was overly excited to watch me handle this hog. His only terms and conditions were regarding to payment, ‘one pig, one peso’. An absolute bargain I thought! We had along with us Alicia, a fantastic nurse with experience in pigs which rivaled mine, that is to say, very limited. Alicia was also excited to see how things would turn out as I was confronted with my first piggy problem. After a brief drive though the countryside and after a final stretch around the side of a timbered hill, we found ourselves at this site of what was to become, the infamous, ‘Great Pig Wrestle of 2020’. In a small sty, sat a hefty sow, at least 350 kilograms (it gets bigger every time I tell it). Upon seeing my baconer patient, the first misgivings began to enter my mind. Here I was, a new grad vet, dealing with my first hoggy hurdle, armed only with advice I’d read in a textbook, which now seemed woefully inadequate. Daniel, who by this point is starting to sense my concerns, carefully looks at me before saying in a calming voice, “just consider this a great learning opportunity”, before starting to giggle at my present dilemma. After introductions were made to the owner, we met our cantankerous patient, ‘Hogzilla’ (name changed for the pig’s privacy). ‘Hogzilla’ was a fine pig specimen, who’d been fattened on pumpkins and squash and other assorted garden produce. She was as tall as she was wide and twice as long, she had a long fierce snout and two beady eyes, glinting with rage. Her curly tail twitched as she watched our approach. She snorted and huffed and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. On closer inspection, once immediate terror had settled, we saw her problem, her front toes had grown and curled with age and were now causing her some grief. In these cranky creatures, sedation is a must, so I was back to the vehicle to grab a little bit of ‘soothe in a syringe’. Once I’d drawn up my dose, I just had the minor inconvenience of getting it into the provoked porker. The problem was solved simply by reaching over the fence as ‘Hogzilla’ walked by snorting through the rails, and sticking the needle into her rounded rear end. Surprisingly, this went off without a hitch. I injected the sedation with barely a hiccup from ‘Hogzilla’. Then we sat back and waited. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen minutes passed. Nothing. ‘Hogzilla’ stood still, staring furiously back at us. You can only imagine my disappointment (and fear). As vets, and particularly new grad vets, we want to get the right amount, of the right sedation, into the right animal, every time. It seems that this wasn’t going to be the case, this time. I wasn’t too proud to say that I’d underestimated our patient’s size and weight and attitude. So I trudged back to the car and drew up more sedation. Round two of ‘poke a needle into the backside of a displeased pig’ began, and surprisingly, it all went well, again. Quietly confident that we were on to a winner now, I collected the hoof trimming gear as we waited. This time, things were more successful, with ‘Hogzilla’s’ irate eyes slowly drooping, until eventually she lay down, sedate. Unfortunately, that was the end of our sedation effects, and although she was down, she was still wide awake and not wanting to be handled. We still had the task of rolling her on her side and trimming her feet. I’ll be honest, if it was just me, that would have been it, there was no chance my lean frame was going to be shifting that pile of pig anywhere. But of course, the secret weapon. Enter, ‘Django’, our chief pig wrestler. Standing at six foot four, and weighing in at 96 kilos of rippling muscle, undefeated in eleventeen bouts, our champion. But this was going to be his toughest battle yet, an even though ‘Hogzilla’ was sedated, I was worried this pig might prove too much, oh boy I was wrong. He rolled up his sleeves and flew on in, there were squeals, there were howls, there were yells, there were yowls. He wrestled and wrastled and snaffled and spat, there was dust, there was mud there was all kinds of sludge, and then, just like that, this big piggy problem was a small swine solution. ‘Hogzilla’ tamed, lying peacefully on her side. I went to work with my hoof trimmers as Django held ‘Hogzilla’s’ head, and in moments, it was done. Alicia politely smirked, ‘well, I’m not sure what all the fuss was about’. We left ‘Hogzilla’ to snooze off her sedation and we returned to the car, happy that things had gone well. As I was packing a few things away, Django turned to me a quietly said, “one pig, one peso; big pig, two peso”. Which I still thought was a pretty good deal. (note: no pigs or veterinarians were harmed in this dramatized affair. Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story).