09/07/2026
The following is longer, more personal, and more blunt than what we normally share on our clinic page. It also contains strong language.
I have spent most of my adult life serving the public—as a cashier, then a nurse, working in the hospital and in public health, and now as a veterinarian. But I have never encountered as much hostility, entitlement, and outright hate as I have since opening my own veterinary practice.
Someone actually told my husband and his dad that I would be out of business within five years.
Maybe she is right.
God, I hope she isn’t.
I have poured nearly everything I have into building this clinic and serving this community. But caring deeply does not make someone invincible, and owning a business does not make someone immune to cruelty. The people who work here are human beings with families, emotions, responsibilities, and limits.
I wrote the following from a place of deep exhaustion after being told—once again—that we do not care. It is an honest look at the human cost of veterinary medicine, the toll that constant criticism and mistreatment can take, and the boundaries we must establish to protect the people who work here.
And this message extends far beyond veterinary medicine. Whether you are speaking to a receptionist, mechanic, gas station attendant, waitress, barista, physician, nurse, plumber, teacher, pharmacist, cashier, paint factory worker, real estate agent, or anyone else serving the public, please remember that there is a human being standing in front of you.
Please read this with that in mind.
Be kind.
———————————————
I AM SO DAMN TIRED.
And no, I’m not pi**ed at myself for crying now, again.
I’m bordering on depression and genuinely wondering whether I need to throw in the towel on veterinary medicine because of burn out and the absolute insanity we deal with from people over and over and over again.
Today’s review we received is another round of the same vicious cycle. If it’s not in person, it’s online.
I break down. I cry. I wonder what the hell I am even doing anymore.
I wonder why I’m sacrificing this much of my life for a profession that can make me feel this awful.
I wonder if I should quit.
I wonder if any of this is worth missing my children’s lives.
I wonder how many more times we can be lied about, publicly attacked, blamed for things completely outside our control, told we approached someone’s dog wrong and that’s why he bit one of us, or told we don’t care, before something in me finally says enough.
And then eventually?
I compose myself.
I wipe my eyes.
I put myself back together enough to function.
And I start masking again.
I’ve been perfecting that skill since I was a little girl.
I rebuild whatever wall I’ve learned to build around myself so I can keep being Dr. Silvey.
So I can walk back into the clinic.
Answer the next question.
Listen to the next person’s problem.
Care about the next sick animal.
Comfort the next devastated owner.
Make another hundred decisions while pretending there isn’t a part of me underneath all of it screaming:
“I CANNOT KEEP DOING THIS.”
And then something else happens…again…
Another phone call. Another accusation. Another person who doesn’t get what they want. Another lie. Another bill somebody doesn’t want to pay. Another social media post. Another person who decides that because we couldn’t meet their demand, we must not care. Another comment about how we should charge less money if we really wanted to help animals.
And the wall comes crashing down again.
That is the vicious cycle.
Today’s review didn’t single-handedly put me here. It was just another hit in a profession that has been hitting me over and over while I keep forcing myself to get buck up and act like I’m okay.
And lately?
I’m not.
I’m exhausted. I’m bordering on depression. And I’m seriously questioning whether I even want to be a veterinarian anymore.
Not because I stopped caring.
THE IRONY IS THAT I’M HERE BECAUSE I NEVER FIGURED OUT HOW TO STOP CARING.
Someone wrote today that “we don’t care about pets.”
And that absolutely gutted me and disgusted me at the same time. It honestly drives me to the point of insanity and anger and then tearfulness all in less than a minute.
That level of cruelty toward your fellow human must take skill.
People will say, “It’s just a review. Don’t take it personally. You need thicker skin if you own a business.”
Well, I don’t have thicker skin.
And frankly, I don’t want to have to become an insensitive rhinoceros in order to survive being a veterinarian.
I deeply care about people.
I deeply care about their animals.
I care when your dog dies.
I care when your cat is sick.
I care when your cow isn’t getting better.
I care when you’re scared.
I care when money is tight, and I still care for you, even when you haven’t paid your vet bill.
That’s because I did not enter this profession to profit from suffering and pain. Yet somehow, veterinarians are expected to defend even earning a modest living—as though caring deeply means we should not be paid fairly for the work we do.
I care when I couldn’t fix it.
I care when I lie awake wondering whether there was something else I could have done.
I care when I wonder what the hell is going on after some people just decide to stop communicating with us.
I carry your animals home in my head.
I carry your grief home.
I carry my own inadequacies and failures home.
I carry the cases that didn’t go the way I wanted. The cases a colleague can’t figure out and then sends my way—when we still don’t find an answer, or when I miss the problem just like he did. I teased him about that the other day when I went to visit him and eat lunch at his clinic.
Yesterday, I worked all day while Briggs was showing his riding instructors old show Appy at the new Buchanan County Fairgrounds.
That sucks.
Those are hours I don’t get back.
There will always be another appointment. Another emergency. Another phone call. Another animal that needs me.
But Briggs will only be this little once.
My boys only get one childhood.
And if I’m being truthful, I have felt absent from huge pieces of their lives since they were babies.
Before veterinary school, I was working as an RN, driving almost an hour one way for work…then I decided to go back to school.
I was pumping breast milk between classes and shifts. I worked for the health department. I worked for our family veterinarian getting the shadowing hours I needed for veterinary school. Then came veterinary school itself. Then graduation. Then opening a clinic almost immediately afterward.
I have spent years trying to build something meaningful and fulfilling.
But somewhere in the process, I don’t feel like I ever really got to “just be”.
I have very few mom friends.
I don’t know all the kids in their classes or all of their friends’ parents.
One time I went to pick Briggs up early from school and was asked to write down his teacher’s name.
I had to tell Kaylee that I couldn’t remember who Briggs’s teacher was. She was very kind and reminded me.
Maybe that sounds small to somebody else.
But it felt humiliating inside.
Because I love my children more than anything.
I want to know those things.
I want to be present.
I want to actually be THERE when I’m home.
MY BOYS ONLY GET ONE CHILDHOOD.
AND I ONLY GET ONE LIFE TOO.
And today should have been a good day.
A client who became a friend sold us her Belgian draft horse, Cindy Lou and delivered her to us today. 🥹❤️
She has raised Cindy Lou since she was two years old.
She’s 14 now.
For twelve years, she has loved that horse, cared for her, and raised her—and now she has entrusted her to us.
Cindy Lou is my first draft horse, and I am so damn excited about her. I want to drive her in parades. Maybe even show her someday.
But there is also this horrible little voice in the back of my mind asking:
Will I ever actually get to?
Part of me genuinely wonders whether I’ll ever have enough time to enjoy the things I keep telling myself I’m working so hard FOR.
And that breaks my heart too.
Veterinary medicine hasn’t only brought difficult people into my life.
It has brought me some incredible people who started as clients and became genuine friends.
Those people and those relationships are what make walking away from veterinary medicine so damn complicated—including the charity work I love to do for the animal shelter and the less fortunate.
Today I should have been excited about our new horse, enjoying my family, and trying to get caught up on the mountain of unlocked Shepherd records hanging over my head.
Thank God for AI note-taking because, at this point, I will take every ounce of help technology can give me.
And then—
DING.
My phone goes off.
A review from an entitled, ungrateful, ugly-acting client because he didn’t get his way.
A client who told my staff he would be looking for a NEW veterinarian and then hung up on them before they could even finish their discussion with him.
And now he gets to go online and tell everybody that we don’t care about pets.
Are you fu***ng kidding me?
I am so tired of being treated like I am disposable.
I am tired of people behaving as though my staff have zero feelings and that because they are frightened, angry, or disappointed about their pet or livestock animal, they are somehow entitled to run their mouths and treat the human beings trying to help them like s**t.
THIS IS THE WHIPLASH OF VETERINARY MEDICINE.
Yesterday I’m missing Briggs horse show because I’m taking care of other people’s animals. And to be honest, I’ve basically missed every horse show for the last two years.
Today, someone who started as a client and became my friend trusts me with a Belgian draft horse she has raised for twelve years.
And then somebody gets angry because he doesn’t get his way, hangs up on my staff, and gets online and attacks my character.
And somehow I’m supposed to absorb all of that, finish my records, get up tomorrow morning, put my stethoscope around my neck, and act completely normal. Thank God it’s Labor Day, at least.
And this is NOT just about one review.
Because this crap keeps happening, and some crap happens to continually stick out in my memory.
A few months ago, a man personally messaged me on Facebook at approximately 7:30 on a Sunday morning demanding to know why I had failed to return an emergency call he said he had made more than a week earlier.
He made sure to tell me how “disappointed” he was in me for failing to return his call.
Sir.
WE NEVER GOT THE VOICEMAIL.
I cannot return a voicemail I never received.
Technology fails.
Phones screw up.
Voicemails sometimes never arrive.
Messages don’t get delivered.
Has nobody else ever had somebody swear they called or left a message, only for absolutely nothing to show up?
Instead of considering for even five seconds that perhaps there had been some sort of technological failure, this man apparently felt entitled to message my personal Facebook account at 7:30 on a Sunday morning to tell me how disappointed he was in me.
The audacity.
And this wasn’t even the only weird boundary-crossing interaction I’d had with him.
This same man had previously offered to teach me how to dance and sent me an inappropriate Fear Factor video.
I laugh about weird s**t like this because laughing is how I brush things off, but—
WTF?!?!😳😵💫
At what point did “I am your veterinarian” somehow become “you have unlimited personal access to me and can send me whatever bizarre s**t crosses your mind”?
I am your veterinarian.
I am not your personal entertainment.
I am not your Sunday-morning complaint department.
And my personal Facebook account is not an extension of the clinic phone system.
Then, after all of that, he went on Facebook and made a smug post about veterinary clinics not bothering to call him back, followed by praising another veterinarian in the same damn post for caring for his dog when other clinics in the community supposedly didn’t call him back. And this is just ONE example of how social media has be weaponized against people simply because someone has a platform and feels entitled to use it.
Again:
WE NEVER RECEIVED THE MESSAGE, SIR.
Another veterinarian was able to help you.
Wonderful.
I am genuinely glad your dog received care.
Why was it still necessary afterward to track me down personally and publicly tear other vets down while praising another vet who could help?
Did he personally message or call every other veterinarian that he claims didn’t return his ER call????
I bet he didn’t…
Why does someone else have to become the villain in order for another person to be the hero?
Then, recently, another client came INTO OUR CLINIC, stood in OUR LOBBY, and started trash-talking us to another client.
He told her a story about what supposedly happened at our clinic.
Except the person he chose to tell was my friend.
But we checked the cameras to humor ourselves.
And the story he told does not match what our video footage shows happened. In fact, he went even further and said we were lying about the video footage.
Think about the absurdity of that.
We are trying to take care of animals, and I am having to maintain security footage to protect ourselves because people decided to stand inside our own clinic and fabricate outright falsehoods about us that doesn’t match what our cameras recorded.
What the actual hell has happened to people?
And this isn’t even limited to people beating up on me.
I recently had to stand there and listen to a client tell me that a colleague of mine was a horrible veterinarian.
NO. HE IS NOT. 😭😭😭
I absolutely love this colleague.
He is my friend.
He is my colleague.
And I told that client directly:
“Your veterinarian gave you sound medical advice, and I concur with him. We are more than happy to refer you to a specialist for your dog.”
Because I’m tired of watching my colleagues get beat to hell too.
Someone gets angry with Veterinarian A and goes to Veterinarian B and tells them how horrible Veterinarian A is.
Then Veterinarian B eventually gives that same person an answer they don’t want to hear.
Suddenly Veterinarian B is horrible too.
At some point:
MAYBE EVERY VETERINARIAN IN THE REGION ISN’T THE PROBLEM.
Then there are the farm calls.
Farmers get angry because they don’t like my medical recommendation.
Then they bitch about the bill.
I recently had someone complain that I overcharged my hourly rate when, in reality, I had discounted about 30 minutes of my time.
Then they tell me I should build a haul-in facility so services can be “cheaper” for them.
Are you kidding me?
Absolutely. Let me walk outside and pluck $200,000+ off the money tree growing on the hillside beside the clinic parking lot.
We’ll just add that on top of the already enormous expense of operating a veterinary clinic.
Then people complain that veterinarians don’t make farm calls—but when I actually do, I get told things like:
“Every time a vet comes to the farm, there is always death and loss of money.”
Thanks. But, I’m not the one who waited too long to have my several thousand dollar lame bull evaluated.
But yes, let me spend hundreds of thousands of dollars building you a facility so veterinary medicine costs YOU less money.
Then there was the guy who stopped me in Tractor Supply while I was literally bent over looking at a bottle of vaccine. Never met the dude in my life.
But he saw my truck outside and somehow figured out I was the vet bent down looking at vaccines.
OVER A YEAR LATER, he was still upset because we had not dropped everything to go look at his ewe that was lambing.
He wasn’t an established client.
We physically could not go out that day.
He attempted to handle it himself, and unfortunately, it still ended poorly—and somehow I was left standing in Tractor Supply feeling as though I was being blamed because I hadn’t abandoned everything else and gone when he demanded.
Then he told me he had established with another DVM who had come to his farm because they had the same requirements for establishing a VCPR.
Great!
That is exactly what you should do.
Except, then he actually asked whether running into me in Tractor Supply could count as “meeting with me” so the NEXT time he called, I would drop everything and come out.
Sir.
NO.
A chance encounter with me while I’m bent down squatting looking at livestock vaccine in Tractor Supply is not a veterinary appointment.
It is not a farm visit.
It does not establish a VCPR.
And it does not obligate me to drop everything the next time you call.
Sometimes we can help immediately.
Sometimes we cannot.
Sometimes every appointment is full, every employee is already doing three things at once, and we physically cannot add another living creature to the schedule without compromising somebody else’s care or completely destroying ourselves.
And when our staff tells someone we physically cannot do it?
People get ugly.
They yell.
They argue.
They insult them.
They threaten to find a new veterinarian.
They hang up.
They attack us online.
Okay.
GO.
I mean that.
Our staff are not punching bags.
AND NEITHER AM I.
And maybe part of what is wrong with the world is that we have allowed people to run their mouths, treat other human beings like absolute s**t, and experience absolutely no consequences for it.
So they never learn.
They scream at the receptionist—and everybody stays polite.
They hang up on somebody—and we still accommodate them.
They trash-talk a business inside that business’s own lobby—and everybody is expected to smile because we’re supposed to be “professional.”
They berate one veterinarian to another veterinarian.
They invade somebody’s personal Facebook at 7:30 on a Sunday morning instead of waiting for business hours and making a legitimate complaint through the appropriate channels, even though their complaint is well over a week late and their dog is alive and fine due to another great vet!!
They get on social media and say whatever the hell they want because they are angry they didn’t get their way.
And everybody around them keeps bending over backward trying not to offend THEM.
Maybe that’s part of the fu***ng problem.
WHERE ARE THE CONSEQUENCES?
At what point did basic human decency become optional because somebody is a paying customer and we are “professionals”?
Well—
I AIN’T DOING THAT ANYMORE.
How you treat other human beings matters.
If you are rude to my staff, there will be consequences.
If you verbally abuse the people who work here, there will be consequences.
If you repeatedly treat us like s**t, you will lose the privilege of being our client.
That isn’t retaliation.
THAT’S A BOUNDARY.
You are allowed to be upset.
You are allowed to disagree.
You are allowed to ask questions.
You are allowed to decline my recommendations.
You are allowed to tell me you cannot afford something.
You are allowed to seek another opinion.
You are allowed to find another veterinarian.
You are NOT entitled to mistreat another human being because you are angry.
And apparently we need a visual reminder, because I have decided we will be hanging a GIANT-ASS SIGN in our lobby.
Courtesy of Captain Woodrow Call:
“WE DON’T TOLERATE RUDE BEHAVIOR IN A MAN.”
—Captain Woodrow Call
Frankly, I’m beginning to think Woodrow Call had the whole damn customer-service policy figured out.
And for clinic purposes, consider “in a man” gender-neutral, because we believe in equal opportunity around here.
Don’t be an as***le to my staff.
That’s the policy.
It really shouldn’t require a sign.
Apparently it still does.
So we’re getting a big-ass sign.
And people really need to comprehend where all of this is headed.
The older generation of rural veterinarians is aging.
The Boomer generation of vets is retiring.
Some of them are dying.
And there are not infinite young veterinarians standing in line waiting to replace every one of them while happily signing up to be treated like s**t.
What exactly do people think happens when enough veterinarians finally say:
“F**K THIS. WE’RE DONE.”
Who answers the farm call then?
Who comes when your cow is down?
Who helps when the farmer waits all day before calling at 7 p.m. for a calving? And deep down I know we are walking into a dumpster fire that isn’t going to end very well, and I will take the blame.
Who treats your horse?
Who sees your dog?
Who stays in these little towns and serves rural communities?
DO YOU COMPREHEND WHAT THAT MEANS FOR RURAL AMERICA?
You cannot mentally and emotionally beat the s**t out of an entire profession indefinitely and then act shocked when there aren’t enough people left willing to do the job.
We charge emergency fees for a reason. We are not Superman. We can not work 24/7.
If you were expected to come in after hours at your job, work overtime AFTER working all day, and also miss out on family events or be deprived of quality sleep—you too would expect to be compensated accordingly.
I don’t care if somebody is offended by this post.
I don’t care if somebody doesn’t like my language.
I’M TIRED.
I’m tired for myself.
I’m tired for my staff.
AND I’M TIRED OF WATCHING MY COLLEAGUES GET BEAT UP TOO.
Then today’s reviewer decided to throw in that I’m supposedly “timid around horses.”
Give me a blooming break.
I LOVE HORSES.
I’m not timid around horses.
I am cautious around client horses I don’t know because I’m not an idiot.
I don’t know whether your 1,200-pound horse kicks, strikes, bites, pulls back, has barely been handled, or loses its mind when somebody approaches it with a needle.
I’ve been bruised by horses with zero manners.
Horses can seriously injure and kill people.
Being cautious with an unfamiliar horse isn’t being timid.
IT’S CALLED WANTING TO COME HOME TO MY CHILDREN WITH MY SKULL INTACT.
And yes, repeatedly referring to me simply by my first name in your Google review while publicly criticizing my professional abilities feels intentionally disrespectful too.
I’M DR. SILVEY.
I worked my ass off for that title. YET I’m still one of the most humble and loving people on this planet. I don’t ever throw my credentials around, treat my clients like morons, or get offended when someone disagrees with me or teaches me something cool!
I’m willing to be teachable by both my clients and colleagues. I know, I don’t know everything.
But none of that is what hurts the most.
It’s this:
“THEY DON’T CARE.”
Because caring is quite literally the damn problem.
I care about my fellow human beings even when they don’t seem particularly interested in caring about me.
I don’t know how to turn that off.
Maybe some people can shrug this stuff off.
I can’t.
I can mask it.
I can bury it.
I can rebuild the wall.
But I cannot keep pretending that constantly having to rebuild that wall is a sustainable way to live.
I’ve been enduring hard things since I was a little girl.
I’M TIRED OF LIFE BEING AN ENDURANCE CONTEST.
And I sure as hell don’t want my children growing up remembering that Mom was always at the clinic taking care of everybody else’s family while missing her own.
I cannot make other people care as deeply as I do.
I cannot make people treat my staff kindly.
I cannot make people tell the truth.
I cannot make someone understand that “we cannot see you today without jeopardizing the safety of other animals or ourselves” does NOT mean “we don’t care whether your animal lives.”
But I CAN decide who gets continued access to me, my staff, and our clinic.
And then there is the other side of humanity.
A couple of days ago, it showed up in the simplest possible way.
SAM FROM MFA OIL GAVE ME A HUG. 😭❤️
That’s it.
Sam saw me at my truck and came over just because she wanted to give me a hug.
She didn’t need anything from me.
She wasn’t asking me to fix something.
She wasn’t calling because an animal was sick.
She wasn’t questioning a bill.
SHE JUST WANTED TO GIVE ME A HUG.
And somehow that was one of the most meaningful things that happened to me this week.
Then one of my employees told me something that actually made me laugh. 😂
While Sam was standing there at my truck, their friend said they drove by and thought some random blonde woman had stolen the vet truck because he couldn’t see me anymore. 😂😂😂
Nope.
Nobody stole the vet truck.
That blonde lady was just hugging the emotionally exhausted veterinarian hidden somewhere beside it. 😂😭
And Sam probably had absolutely no idea how badly I appreciated that hug.
She didn’t know I was going to get a ding on my phone later this weekend and read a review that would leave me lying in bed questioning my entire career.
She just chose kindness.
On a day when it feels like people are constantly taking pieces of me—wanting something, needing something, demanding something, criticizing something—
SAM WALKED OVER AND GAVE SOMETHING BACK.
Kindness.
No strings attached.
Sam, if you read this:
THANK YOU. I NEEDED THAT HUG MORE THAN YOU KNEW. 😭❤️
And maybe that’s why I keep coming back to the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians:
Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control.
You don’t even have to believe what I believe.
But there are some pretty damn good instructions for how to treat another human being.
And I LOVE our kind owners.
You have no idea how much.
Some of you are genuinely the reason I haven’t thrown in the towel.
You are patient when we’re drowning.
You thank my staff.
You ask how WE are doing.
You trust us with animals you consider family.
You understand that sometimes the answer has to be, “We can’t today.”
You treat us like human beings.
WE NOTICE YOU.
We appreciate the hell out of you.
And we WANT to take care of your animals.
You can disagree with me.
You can decline my recommendation.
You can tell me money is tight.
You can be scared.
You can be frustrated.
You can ask questions.
You can get another opinion.
You can decide I’m not the veterinarian for you.
JUST BE A DECENT HUMAN BEING WHILE YOU’RE DOING IT.
But if you are an entitled, dishonest, abusive, ungrateful as***le:
PLEASE DO NOT REQUEST SERVICES FROM US.
Seriously.
You don’t get to berate us.
You don’t get to trash-talk us in our own lobby.
You don’t get to invade my personal social media because you feel entitled to access me outside work to file a complaint.
You don’t get to tell stories about us that are contradicted by our security footage.
You don’t get to berate my colleagues in front of me.
You don’t get to demand that we drop everything because you decided your problem should immediately become ours.
And you don’t get to treat us like disposable human beings and then expect us to continue providing veterinary services to you.
NO.
I am a veterinarian.
But I’m also a wife.
I’m Briggs and Brodie’s mom.
I’m somebody’s friend.
I’M A HUMAN BEING.
And so is every single person who works beside me.
And so is every veterinarian I have the privilege of knowing—every veterinarian out there trying to hold rural veterinary medicine together!!
And I already know what some people are going to say about this post:
“THIS IS UNPROFESSIONAL.”
A veterinarian shouldn’t vent publicly.
A doctor shouldn’t admit she’s crying in bed.
A business owner shouldn’t say she’s bordering on depression.
Do not mistake what I’m saying to mean that our profession is perfect and that we never make mistakes. That is certainly not true. We do make mistakes. We do say the wrong thing at times. And we do get frustrated.
A professional is supposed to always compose herself, choose her words carefully, smile, and keep all of the ugly parts behind closed doors.
But maybe—
THAT IS PART OF THE PROBLEM.
Maybe our obsession with being “professional” has become another way of demanding that veterinarians erase their humanity for everybody else’s comfort.
Maybe this demand for professionalism erases our humanity and undermines some of the most caring and loving people on this planet to their own detriment.
I’m expected to remain calm when somebody tells me I killed their cat.
Polite when somebody insults us.
Diplomatic when somebody lies about us.
“Professional” when somebody publicly attacks our character.
And then when one of us finally says:
“THIS HURTS. I’M EXHAUSTED. I DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH LONGER I CAN DO THIS.”
THAT is supposedly the unacceptable behavior?
No.
Maybe professionalism was never supposed to mean emotional sterilization.
Maybe being a doctor shouldn’t require becoming a robot.
Maybe admitting that I’m crying in my bed doesn’t negate my education, my clinical judgment, my compassion, or the quality of medicine I practice.
Because there is something people desperately need to remember:
THERE IS A HUMAN BEING UNDERNEATH IT ALL.
A human being who gets hurt.
A human being who has missed watching her sons at most of their school events, sports, and horse shows over the last several years.
A human being who worries about patients after everybody else has gone home.
A human being who can eventually be pushed too far.
And sometimes the most caring, compassionate, and loving people on this planet are the ones being absolutely destroyed by a society that chooses malice over grace, argument over understanding, judgment over mercy, cruelty over kindness, entitlement over gratitude, public humiliation over honest conversation, and the satisfaction of being right over the responsibility to be humane.
People demand endless compassion from those who serve them while offering very little compassion in return. They expect patience when they are angry, perfection when they are sometimes unrealistic, immediate answers when they are scared, and silence when their words cause harm.
Then they wonder why the people who care the most are burning out.
So no.
I’m not polishing this until it sounds like it came from a corporate PR department.
This is what I sound like when I’m honest about life.
This is what I sound like when I’m exhausted.
This is what I sound like when I care deeply and have finally reached the point where pretending I’m unaffected would be the bigger lie.
If that makes me “unprofessional,” so be it.
I’D RATHER BE AN IMPERFECT, EMOTIONAL, OCCASIONALLY CUSSING HUMAN BEING WHO GENUINELY GIVES A DAMN THAN BECOME SOME PROFESSIONALLY POLISHED, INSENSITIVE PRICK WHO MISTAKES NOT GIVING A DAMN FOR PROFESSIONALISM.
Our compassion does not entitle anyone to unlimited access to us.
Our profession does not require us to accept abuse.
Loving animals does not require us to sacrifice ourselves to prove that we care.
WE ARE NOT YOUR PUNCHING BAGS.
I don’t know whether I can keep doing veterinary medicine forever.
That isn’t drama.
That isn’t me fishing for sympathy.
THAT IS WHERE I AM ACTUALLY AT.
I love animals.
I love medicine.
I love horses.
I love our wonderful clients.
I love my colleagues.
But I love my children too.
I love my family.
AND I ONLY GET ONE LIFE.
We have to start caring about the human beings inside this profession as fiercely as we care about the human beings and animals who walk through its doors.
Because I cannot make other people care about us as much as we care about them.
BUT I CAN STOP ALLOWING PEOPLE WHO DON’T CARE HOW THEY TREAT US TO HAVE ACCESS TO US.
And whatever happens next, I refuse to let this profession take everything I have left.
Maybe veterinary medicine doesn’t need us to become tougher.
MAYBE PEOPLE NEED TO BECOME KINDER, DEVELOP SOME EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, AND SHOW SOME DAMN EMPATHY FOR SOMEONE OTHER THAN THEMSELVES.
Because you genuinely have no idea what the person standing in front of you is going through in this life.
Sometimes WE NEED humor and kindness to show up in the middle of an absolutely s**tty day.
PLEASE BE KIND.
And this goes for every other service industry and every profession where people spend their days helping others.
Be kind to your mechanic. Your gas station attendant. Your real estate agent. Your insurance agent. Your waitress. Your barista. Your physician. Your nurse. Your plumber. Your teacher. Your pharmacist. The receptionist answering your call. The cashier checking you out.
Every one of them has a life outside the job you need them to do. A family. Worries you know nothing about. A limit to what they can carry.
You can ask for a problem to be fixed. You can expect people to do their jobs well. You can hold someone accountable and still treat them with basic human decency.
BUT PAYING FOR A SERVICE DOES NOT BUY YOU THE RIGHT TO TREAT SOMEONE LIKE S**T.
And you shouldn’t have to know someone’s entire story before deciding they deserve your kindness.
And if kindness somehow proves too difficult, just remember the giant-ass Woodrow Call sign you’re about to see when you walk through our lobby:
“WE DON’T TOLERATE RUDE BEHAVIOR IN A MAN.”
That is really not too much to ask.
And if kindness escapes you, by all means, take your raggedy, smelly, turd self out to the nearest pasture where you can sunbathe and get crusty all by yourself until you can practice human decency not just when you are in a good mood, or when everything is going your way, but also during the times that try our soul and make our spirit weary.
Maybe changing the world doesn’t require a platform. Maybe it starts with refusing to let people walk all over others. Telling someone to stop gossiping when it would be easier to stay quiet. Asking people to show grace when everyone else is piling on. And then getting off social media and actually doing something for another human being.
People can continue to justify their callous words and behavior. And I will continue being the kind and loving woman that I am.
Be the woman who tries to visit her 98-year-old friend at least once a week. The same woman who volunteered to till her flower beds and spread bags of cow manure over them before winter—not because anyone was watching, not because she wanted recognition, and not because there was anything in it for her to gain. She simply cared about her.
That is community.
It isn’t hearing yourself talk inside your own echo chamber on social media. It isn’t boasting about what a good person someone else is while simultaneously tearing somebody else apart. And it certainly isn’t complaining about everyone around you while doing nothing to make their lives better.
Before we become so comfortable judging how somebody else serves their community or how well they perform their job, maybe we should ask ourselves a much simpler question: When was the last time I did something for another person—even a complete stranger—for absolutely no reason except that they mattered?
Because changing the world probably won’t happen through another Facebook argument or Google review.
It happens when we defend somebody who isn’t in the room. When we tell gossip to stop. When we extend grace. When we show up and set the standard. When we sincerely apologize. When we go that extra mile. When we get our hands dirty. And sometimes, quite literally, when we spread the cow manure.
Kindness without action is just talk. Kindness mixed with condemnation isn’t kindness at all. And kindness without boundaries can inadvertently give cruelty room to flourish—until it chokes out the entire harvest.
—Dr. Silvey
