When local colleagues became fed up with my endless moaning about not getting any letters published in the DCV Newsletter; or the shortcomings of recent DCV Conferences; or the DCV in general, they decided to nominate me to the committee. Thus, having spent years complaining about not being listened to as a mere pleb, I was thrust into the position of either attempting to speak up or shut up.
Having qualified from Glasgow in 1988 I spent the next seven years flitting between intensive dairy practice in the North of England and climbing mountains. A climbing trip to New Zealand in ’89 convinced me this was the better place to do both, but it was still a few years and some big Himalayan trips before I escaped and started work in Te Awamutu.
Having always wanted to work in the Waikato I found the experience fascinating but became frustrated at the distance to the Southern Alps, and so, following another stint in Nepal, joined a growing band of dairy industry dreamers and headed to Southland. Seven years on, and I’m still here, climbing days seemingly long-gone and the peaks of the ACVM Act looming as the biggest challenge ahead.
Now a director of Central Southland Vets, we employ nine vets and service around 90,000 dairy cows. This year I finished my dissertation for my Masters in Epidemiology, which, though the four year course was hard work whilst in full time clinical practice, was well worth the effort. My daily work is now split between dairy work and research work; the practice manager takes care of the managing and all the other things I’m not so good at, such as being nice to the staff. We have just moved into a new, purpose-built clinic, which is both fantastic and long overdue, but was not without a disproportionate amount of stress, so it has been a busy year. But over this and the previous few years, the best team of vets I’ve ever worked with has minimised all of these stresses and made the job worthwhile.
My excuse for being a persistent thorn in the incumbent DCV committee’s side has always been my passion for being a dairy vet, and ensuring it continues to be an exciting profession. Having now been transferred to the role of some sort of gamekeeper, it will be an interesting period of transition. I have always admired the vast time and effort that individuals contribute to the DCV (and the NZVA for that matter), when the easiest thing is to not bother. I look forward to the opportunity to do my share in the coming year.
