Out of the Starting Gate

Follow the journey of Dr. Jennifer Selvig as she experiences the ups, downs and surprises of life as a new equine veterinarian.

A real balancing act July 22nd 2008 By Jennifer Selvig, DVM

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Happy middle-of-summer already! My widely spaced blog entries as of late are a testament to the general craziness of life for me right now. Having a seven-day-a-week job for almost five months of the year can prove tiring, especially when combined with major life events such as getting married and buying a house.

 

My track practice is clicking along. The busy days seem to come in bursts, where I will get six requests for digital radiographs on the same day five people want joints injected, and one wants four sets of teeth floated. Other days are much slower – an Adequan here, a pre-workout Lasix there. My problem this year is that, as Jodi and I have gotten fairly efficient at most of those tasks, we’d really like to have more work to do. But with a surplus of veterinarians on the backside (six regulars!), it’s hard to still be “the new guy” (or girl). But regardless of how many clients I have or how much work there is to do, I still have to be at the track during certain times – for training hours, pre-race medications and the races themselves – even if I’m “secretly” grabbing a nap in my truck with my cell phone ringer turned on high. My somewhat ambitious (ridiculous?) schedule this year has made that occurrence much more frequent.

 

The biggest extra event I added to this summer was getting married. I’d always wanted to get married in June, but when I took this job, I knew that might be an issue. Matt and I had been engaged a year and eight months by the time we got married, and I was determined to make my original plan work, even if it meant stuffing it into a short weekend. Just a couple of months before graduation, at an externship with a track practice at another track, the vets scolded me for even considering such a ludicrous thing: How could I expect my clients to understand taking a couple of days off to get hitched? Why not just do it in September, after racing season was over? My answer, naturally, was that I didn’t want to get married in September – I wanted to get married in June, and why should any job take that away? I brushed off their warnings and forged ahead planning our wedding for June 21 anyway. As I have most of my life, I don’t really like being told I can’t do something. In fact, that warning usually makes me try all the harder to make it happen (more on that later).

 

At the beginning of the meet, I enlisted the help of one of the older veterinarians on the backside, who agreed to double up and take care of my horses for the Friday before the wedding, the Saturday of and the Sunday after. (Last year, I had my boss Kathy take over for me so I could ride in a horse trials over Labor Day weekend. My clients weren’t thrilled with a “non-track” vet trying to muddle through, so this year I decided to leave the rest of my clinic out of it, and my clients were much happier and more understanding.) With the major problem solved, I just had to get all the planning done while working every day. Thank God my mom was able to fly in a week before the big day – she, along with my very dedicated aunt and grandmother – really helped out. Despite my procrastinating nature, I had managed to get together most of the major elements before the track opened, so the tasks left were mainly related to small details.

 

I needed an excuse as to why we had to get married during racing season, so Matt conveniently came up with the idea to have our reception right there at the racetrack, on the frontside, in plain view of all my clients. As it turned out, we pulled it off nearly flawlessly. We held our ceremony at noon in a beautiful outdoor garden about 20 minutes away from Canterbury Park, and afterward our guests made their way to the track to enjoy the races (1:30 first post) from a shaded private room on the mezzanine level. After the race card was complete, we all moved downstairs to one of the bar areas for dinner, drinks and dancing. We took pictures in the winner’s circle, the saddling paddock and in two different barns on the backside. Who else can say they sat on one of her client’s pony horses in her wedding dress? Everyone had a good time learning how to bet and seeing the live racing. My dress was shredded and covered in barn dirt by the end of the day. But Matt and I had a blast, and we got lots of compliments on the whole concept.

 

I suppose my point is that I try not to let people tell me that things can’t be done. I was given a similar lecture while on a small animal medicine rotation in school. I had to endure two SAM rotations in a row – four weeks of torture, as far as I was concerned, that were scheduled right over the same Labor Day horse show I went to last year. My horse, whom I’d just gotten in February (again, despite many warnings that it was a stupid idea to get a new horse just before beginning clinical rotations), was ready to go, and I wanted to take him to the horse trials. So I pow-wowed with my SAM classmates and struck a deal to take most of the work on my non-show weekend while they took over for me on my show weekend. I had a fabulous time at the show and proved to my many doubters that SAM does not have to rule one’s life entirely.

 

Our next challenge is buying a house. Matt and I are set to put an offer on one tomorrow, and it’s a bit frightening. Right now, we’re living rent-free in my parents’ house, taking care of it while they are on a temporary assignment in Anchorage, Alaska. Moving out, beginning to pay a mortgage and adding another loan that is coming out of deferment are all high-stress events, and we have to deal with them as newlyweds with very demanding jobs. I have to secure a place for my two horses that I have been keeping in my parents’ pasture. It’s going to be hard for me to help move when I never have an entire day to spend packing or unpacking, but we’ll make it work. So far we always have.

 

You have to always remember it is important to make time to do the things that keep you sane. My horse – the one I wasn’t supposed to get while in school – improved my quality of life so much that my family and friends commented on my attitude change. Now, if I have to go a few days without getting to the barn, I get pretty intolerable. I’ve also taken up once-per-week yoga classes. If that’s not a way to get oneself focused, I don’t know what is. It’s become an absolutely vital part of my routine. The trick is to make yourself do those things, and don’t fall into the habit of NOT doing them. Even when I only have two or three hours between my morning and afternoon work at the track, I will try to buzz out to the barn for a ride. It never fails to improve my day.

 

Just seeing my husband can be a challenge these days. Despite just getting married, Matt and I have had to really work to make time together. I convinced him to take me to see the new Batman movie the other night, and it was amazingly refreshing. We sacrificed getting some things done at home (and maybe a couple of hours of sleep), but it was worth it.

 

There are only a few more weekends of racing to go, and I’m already looking forward to having my first weekend truly “off” in months. (No, I am NOT counting the wedding!) But until then I have to focus on keeping my clients happy and their horses healthy. And the only way I can accomplish that is by maintaining this balancing act of life.

 

And for the record, my name is not changing. J

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