During the eight years that I worked at Wilshire Animal Hospital in Santa Monica, California, I had a chance to tell my employer and friend, Dr. Ian Coster, about the first vet I ever worked for when I was younger. His name was Dr. Isaac Tucker Burr, and he had a very general country practice in Walpole, New Hampshire, and he was quite a character. Dr. Coster reminded me though, that I was just in my twenties and even though I liked to tell "Old Dr. Burr" stories, that someday too, people would be telling "Old Dr. Ikeler" stories. It probably is true, and I'm sure they're good stories.The best stories though involved unique elements of Dr. Burr's personality. He was raised in Boston and went to Harvard for college, "just to be educated" as he would describe it. He then went to Cornell Veterinary College after his time in the military, after the second world war, and he told that the only reason the Germans were defeated was because they had ten times the power fighting against them, and still it was close!
My years with Dr. Burr were spent rambling through the countryside of New Hampshire delivering calves, testing for mastitis, splinting broken dog legs, and spaying and neutering a lot of cats and dogs. Dr. Burr had the most eloquent vocabulary, but he liked to swear and sometimes it came out so comically. During a Saint Bernard ovariohysterectomy (a dog spay) one time, a ligature slipped, spurting blood everywhere, and Dr. Burr yelled out, "Oh Jesus, Jesus," and then with a little reflection added, "I wish you were here", as though a little help from above was needed and appropriate at that time.
Dr. Burr also did not understand the modern form of the Learning Organization. Because I was a teenager and wanted to be a vet, he somehow assumed I knew everything there was to know about what to do in a veterinary hospital. Instruction was minimal and so I took it upon myself to know everything for how to be a great veterinary assistant. Self-taught, of course.
Dr. Coster was different. He was very much a teacher and, in reality, taught me how to be a great veterinarian. The twelve years of college I have attended only filled in the details. One thing Dr. Coster did though that was very funny and unusual was he couldn't stop himself when he had to tell an employee they did something wrong. He started out with the mistake, and stated it clearly, but then he had some unconscious need to continue, as though to get to the real underlying reason why this person made the mistake in the first place.
He would go beyond the first criticism, then add that they must have done it due to something inherently wrong with themselves, then go further to add that it must be something wrong with the gene pool of their relatives that was inferior that lead to the mistake made in the hospital. I labelled the phenomenon "Coster's Cascade of Criticism" to let Doc know he didn't need to go that far when telling someone they had goofed up. Luckily, I somehow escaped the cascade for the eight years that I worked for him during college and vet school.
Dr. Coster had lived in the back apartment of Wilshire Animal Hospital where I lived while I was finishing up my undergrad studies at UCLA. He said I was the last of the line to have lived in that apartment and then gone on to become a veterinarian like he and his boss, Hal Snow had done before him. I think there was even one vet before Hal who had done the same thing. Johnny something comes to mind. He had a bad drinking problem and Hal spent a lot of time covering for Johnny while he left Hal alone in the hospital to play veterinarian while Johnny went off drinking.
Being able to live and work at a vet hospital was quite a privilege looking back on it. I got paid good and got a free apartment and amenities. Quite helpful to a young man from New Hampshire working his way through college. It wasn't a simple place to live in though as friends would point out when they visited. My brother Fred, summed it up perfectly: He said, "Is it ever quiet here? All day long, it's just ring, ring, ring, ding, dong, and woof, woof, woof, and what am I sleeping on here, some dead dog blanket or something?" "When do you ever get to take a break?" "At night, when I watch the hospital, that's the only time I need a break," was my answer to him.
He just didn't understand the privilege of living at a veterinary hospital.
Dr. Doug Ikeler http://www.ikelerbooks.com/
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