By Karen McCarraher
Driving Home Naked by Melinda G. McCall, D.V.M. is filled with tales of the event-filled life of a female large animal veterinarian. In vet school, Dr. McCall is not encouraged to specialize in large animals. She is told that all large animal vets are men. This only makes her more determined to succeed.
From tranquilizing a cow from the basket of a tractor to euthanizing an elderly dog for a client who himself was in poor health, she claims she is “living the dream,” Dr. McCall provided vet services to six species of large animals as well as the occasional small animal emergency and her practice covered fifteen counties in rural Virginia. Once she had to euthanize a rabid cow and send the head to the state health department to have it tested for rabies. The cow belonged to a farmer with a wife and four children and Dr. McCall’s expertise in knowing what she was dealing with and her quick action saved the family from contracting rabies from the cow. When she removed a stone from a goat’s urinary tract, he peed all over her, she slipped in the mud and had to take off her filthy overalls and drive home naked. At times like this she wondered why she spent 21 years in school and $90,000 to be a glorified plumber!
Her work took a toll on her body and she suffered a broken arm, broken wrist, severe concussion and entrapped vertebrae in her back. But it seemed like nothing could keep Dr. McCall down for long. She got pregnant and delivered a healthy baby girl two months prematurely but she kept on. Her mother came to help with the baby so Dr. McCall could resume her services to her clients but she still wanted to breast feed her baby. As she was driving her truck from one farm to another, she was pumping breast milk on the way. A truck full of teenagers passed her and well, the boys were flabbergasted at what they saw! She spearheaded Operation Noah’s Ark by contacting the sheriff, local animal control, a volunteer animal rescue organization and as many other volunteers that she could find to rescue 514 animals from a neglect situation. Eighty-five of the animals were female guinea pigs and they were all pregnant! In the end, all the animals were placed.
The adventures revealed in this book were sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartwarming, and sometimes heartbreaking. I shed a number of tears while reading this but it was an especially good book—well written and packed with information about the life of a country vet.
Melinda McCall, DVM owns a large animal mobile veterinary service in central Virginia. She and her all-female staff specialize in beef and dairy cattle, herds, swine, small ruminant animals (like goats) and camelids (llamas, alpacas, etc.). She earned a BS in Biology at Queens University and a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. A woman in a male-dominated field, she has mastered the ability to do the work she loves while educating and inspiring others through her expertise, passion, and grit. She resides in Louisa, Virginia with her Daughter, Lucy and their beloved border collie, Cap.
Driving Home Naked is published by She Writes Press and is available at www.amazon.com