Last three days had been very hectic, there were five colics, three were serious, luckily there was no mortality or did not require surgery. I am investigating what went wrong and couldnot get any clue. Anyway that is how it goes. I was particularly worried about two mares which were to foal in the first week of january, they are fine now. Many times we are in a dilemma, to use some of the drugs, which are contra indicated in the last trimester of pregnancy, when we have no other options, we have to take risk. Once the foaling season starts, our movements will be restricted, and even if i go out i cant enjoy the atmosphere, even if it is going to be some celebrations like birthday parties. This is how the life of a stud vet goes...

As some one who had been doing private practice, I understand the difficulties of vets practising in janadriya, i met a friend a few days before he was thinking of winding up the business of doing private practice there. Some owners owe nearly 60000 riyals and giving some lame excuses for the non-payment, one even told him that he will not pay now as he was upset with the service, when a very costly yearling was colicking, the vets did not attend to it immediately.This is non-sense, dont the vets have their private life, they were attending to a birthday party that night and asked another nearby vet to attend to that case, and the attending vet had advised the owner to take the animal to a referral clinic as it was a surgical case. But the owner refused to take and the horse died. Now the owner has stopped the payment and the vet in a big trouble. I hate this and that is one of the reason i left, imagine in the middle of night, during winter, with temperatures near zero, attending to dystocias and colics, the next day when you go for your money, they will drag you for a month or so and ask for a discount and finally pay half the amount. Sometimes i felt like a beggar.

It is very cold 1`C here in Riyadh. i just imagine how difficult it is for my friends who are working in places like canada where most part of the year is below zero. Everytime i handle an animal i have to wash my hands, but the temperature here makes it difficult. is there any other way i can clean my hands.

Most of our working time is different from others, many times my friends ask me whether i do some work or not, because when i call them it would be mostly the busiest part of their work which is free time for me. I start work at 5 in the morning and mostly it will be over by 10. between 10 and 3 is spent leisurely. During the breeding season we spend a lot of sleepless nights due to foalings and related complications. So when some friends call me during day, i will be at home and they start thinking that we are paid even while sleeping at home, they dont realise that we work at night also.

As we get older, it shows on the aches in different parts of our body. Especially the sixteen years i spent with horses i sustained many injuries to different parts of the body and it shows up now. Apart from getting injuries, we also get some psychological problems, whenever i go out with my family or without them, i am a bit nervous, that anytime i may get an emergency call from the farm, this makes me restrain my travel for longer distances. When i am away and if my assistant calls me to inform that there is a colic or a dystocia, that is enough to damage my happiness and peace. Luckily my family understands my situation and co-operate well, otherwise it would have been hell.

TARGET

It is very tough to achieve targets in the horse breeding, many things are not in our hand(this is also an advantage we can put the blame on the nature for our failures?????). When I joined the present job i was given a target of 95% pregnancies in october, which is almost impossible(if any one got please let me know), i could get 92% (47 out of 51 mares)at the end of May, but by october we lost two due to resorption and two due to abortion, one mare died of colic. So now it is around 82%. Also when we are offered percentage commissions on the basis of sale, again it is going to be like a lottery, many factors like global economic melt down affects the sale of yearlings. This year in the tattersalls and other sales many good horses were available at affordable prices. The buyers prefer to buy from USA and UK.

YOU DONT GET WHEN YOU DESPERATELY IN NEED

When i resigned from my previous job and left to india, i thought that i am not coming back again to this country, i tried to get jobs in a few farms. In one farm there was a position vacant for a senior veterinarian. So i approached them for a job, but they refused me saying that i am too young to hold the position of a senior vet. I have spent 16 years in equine industry, and hale and healthy, what else they expect from me. Do they want some one who had retired from other farms? the job of a equine vet is physically demanding it should be a combination of experience with fitness. I was very upset with this.
I made another mistake, the usual one which many NRIs do(we should spend all our skills and energy to our mother land?), i invested a few lakhs in a poultry farm, which bit my hand to about 8 lakhs rupees. Another farm which i was in constant touch for a job had informed me that they had employed another vet, so at present there is no vacancy. The equine field in india is a bit narrow and we dont find many openings. As i had a good exposure in saudi arabia, i was offered a good salary and other benefits which i could not have got in india, more to that there is no intervention by any non-professionals.
After i took up the present assignment, i received a mail from one of the leading stud farms in india saying that they are interested in employing me.

Accidents

On many occasions i had a very narrow escape from grivious injuries while attending to horses. The groom or the owner always say his horse is well behaved and never kicks and bites. I never take these words, every time i approach a horse, i do it as if i am handling for the first time. I am not in the battle ground to receive any medals posthumously. I am forced to write this after seeing a news item on www.equine-reproduction.com which says"

Respected Veterinarian Dies in Tragic AccidentIt is sad to report that Theriogenologist Dr. John Steiner has died following an accident he experienced May 20th 2008 while working on a Morgan stallion. The horse apparently struck Dr. Steiner in the head causing massive trauma, and although hospitalized, a spokesman at Rhinebeck Equine Hospital in Rhinebeck, New York told the Poughkeepsie Journal that Dr. Steiner was taken off life support on Monday morning at Albany Medical Center and died around 4pm. Dr. Steiner - a diplomate of the American College of Theriogenologists, and former president of that organization - had moved back his native New York State earlier this year, having previously been located in Lexington, Kentucky, where he began the Equine Fertility Unit at the Hagyard-Davidson-McGee (now the Hagyard Equine Medical Center). This is an unsettling reminder that even the most knowledgeable and talented can experience tragic moments of danger when working with horses as a whole, and stallions in particular. Our deepest sympathies go out to Dr. Steiner's wife, family and friends."


If we dont want to be in such a news item, we have to tread cautiously.

Living in a foreign country

It feels very bad to live in a foreign country when such terror attacks happen in our country. The whole of last week i was mentally and physically upset. Watching the television and grieving the death of so many securitymen. I felt ashamed of what happened in Mumbai, it is the result of inefficient politicians who think about the votes than the welfare of people.

We had a very bad sale this year in the annual yearling sale, people attribute to the global economic melt down.

I am back to business preparing the barren mares for the coming breeding season. Busy taking uterine swabs, treating them, changing the diet,etc. We have to carry on with our regular chores whatever happens back home.