Update from Pete plus global ranking of my blog

I was delighted to find this blog listed in the top fifteen global world blogs this week. I’ve been writing this regularly for over a decade now, using it as a central place to record cases from my life as a vet, discussions about pet related issues, information dissemination about animal topics, plus general life chat (triathlons tend to feature). It’s a labour of love: I enjoy writing it, but it can be difficult to fit it in when life gets busy. So it’s encouraging – at at the same time a bit intimidating – to find that it is in a global listing.

Life has been very busy recently

After working full time as a vet in my own practice for over twenty years, I had recently begun to work fewer hours, spending more time on journalism and other media related activities. Full time practice is exceptionally demanding: you work a ten hour day, full on, with total intellectual and emotional engagement. You deal with trauma, grief and sadness every day. By the end of a full shift, you are spent: you just need to go home and chill out. I had loved that life for a long time, but I had begun to find that I didn’t have the time or energy to do other projects that I really wanted to do. And now that I am in my fifties, I had this sense that I was beginning to run out of years to do stuff. So I took a small step back from clinical practice, engaging great vets to do my full time work, still doing a number of clinics every week, but just not spending every waking hour in the clinic.

Part time vet practice has allowed me to do a more diverse range of other animal-related activities

This has been working well: I’ve found myself loving clinical practice more than ever, while still having time to do other projects behind the scenes.

Examples include visiting animal charities, researching and writing about topics that interest me, and presenting at conferences and other gatherings.

However more recently, due to staffing complications at my clinic, I have had to go back to full time, full on clinical veterinary practice. Part of me has loved this, while part of me feels frustrated because I have less time and energy to do the other stuff that I enjoy so much.

And one aspect that has taken a hit has been this blog: I have spent less time working on it.

Watch this blog in coming weeks for more activity

I find this blog is one of those extra activities that I have particularly missed, so as part of a mid-busy-time review, I have decided to get back to regular posting again. So please watch this space, and I hope to engage more fully over this coming summer.

Animal welfare, animal health, innovation in the veterinary world, stories from vet practice, podcasts, triathlons, other general life stuff? I hope to populate these pages with more of these topics during the rest of this year.

Thank you for reading this: you folk out there – and the animals in your lives – are what this is all about: spreading good information to you and beyond.