Description
“The lessons that these animals taught me have been subtle, startling, and inspirational, playing a small but vital part in helping to shape the person you see with the stethoscope around his neck.” —Dr. Nick Trout
New York Times bestselling author Nick Trout has captivated readers by taking them behind the scenes into the heartwarming—and sometimes heartrending—world of veterinary medicine. In Ever By My Side, Nick turns the lens inward to offer a funny, moving, and intimate memoir about how the pets he has had throughout his life have shaped him into the son, husband, father, and doctor he is today. Using his relationships with those beloved animals to tell his life story, Nick shares the profound lessons he’s learned about friendship, loyalty, and resilience. The result is a moving story that speaks not just to animal lovers, but to any reader who appreciates the bonds we have with our loved ones, be they animal or human, and the lengths to which we go to nurture those bonds.
Nick waxes nostalgic about his boyhood in a working-class British suburb, where a large German shepherd named Patch was the perfect companion to a scrawny, bookish boy in a neighborhood full of bullies. He writes about his relationship with his father, the man who nurtured Nick’s dream of becoming a vet, even though he couldn’t have imagined the career would lead his only son 3,000 miles away. He describes wooing his future wife and stepdaughter and (perhaps most difficult of all) their ornery cat. And he offers a poignant chronicle of his daughter’s devastating diagnosis of cystic fibrosis and how a little yellow Labrador retriever played an important role in bringing joy to their family when they needed it most. Alongside Nick’s warm reflections, the pets in these pages come alive as irresistible characters in their own right and showcase the power of animals to offer a lifetime of consolation, guidance, and abiding affection.
Tender, wry, and ruminative, Ever By My Side is a tribute to the power and beauty of ordinary life and a celebration of how pets make it all the sweeter and richer.
About the Author
I’m from England and I’m a veterinary surgeon working at the Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston, one of the biggest animal hospitals in the world. If I had to sum up the best part of my career in one word it would be ‘unpredictable’ because what’s great about coming to work everyday is the certainty of surprise. It might be a Chihuahua or a Great Dane, a Maine Coon Cat or an iguana. It might be the heartache of saying goodbye to a best friend; it might be the elation of a surgical cure and a relationship to a true companion restored. It is all of this and more. What’s not to love! In my first book, Tell Me Where It Hurts I tried to capture the rush and the passion of modern veterinary medicine. In Love is the Best Medicine, I have focused more on the pets and their owners, trying to expose the more vulnerable, more emotional aspects of what it means to heal sick animals. In my latest book, Ever By My Side, I turn the lens inward and consider the animals I think of as my own pets, taking an opportunity to relive some of the defining moments of my life in which an animal took their cue, stepped up and gave me a chance to appreciate a different perspective. This is my attempt to show them off and share their subtle, startling, and inspirational lessons, which have played a small but vital part in helping to shape the person you see with the stethascope around his neck.
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