I realized today that I don’t miss doing farm calls. At the morning stops my fingers were numb while I was trying to give vaccines since it can’t be done (at least by me) with gloves on. My tolerance level has gone way down too. Ten years ago when I was doing horse medicine for a living I would have gotten the blood from that stupid yearling stud colt feeling the first flush of testosterone in his system. Today I made a valiant effort, but when he started rearing and striking even with a twitch on, I told them to reschedule when they had his preferred handler (the only one he listens to) available. It is not worth getting hurt over.

It did make me start thinking about doing housecalls for small animal though. Simple wellness care could be done with relatively little upfront costs. We get calls for home care all the time from people who have lots of big dogs or stressed animals or are homebound or who want to euthanize their pet at home. No one in our area does it. I could do it on my days off to see if there is a demand. I’ll have to sleep on this idea for a while to see if it sticks. I get lots of strange ideas and usually they are no longer appealing the next day.