THE veterinary road can be long, lonely and stressful and there are many hazards and potholes that can trip the unwary, the unprepared and the careless.

The opportunities for veterinary faux pas are as numerous as cat’s eyes on a motorway, so that the slightest loss of concentration can see you suddenly bumping your way along in a most uncomfortable and embarrassing way, when only a second before everything seemed to be going so smoothly.

There is no doubt that experience helps.

When you have travelled a certain path on many occasions, you are less likely to take a wrong turn but you must always guard against complacency.

Getting sex wrong is a classic example.

Nobody but nobody takes kindly to their male dog being called ’she’ or their charming little bitch being referred to as ’he’. For some, this is a bigger insult than getting the sex of a baby wrong.

Most mothers, however, manage to avoid this trauma by dressing their offspring in an appropriate colour, thereby ensuring that even the casual onlooker can be complimentary. Unfortunately, there are no standard pink and blue collars for pets but it still shouldn’t be hard for the well-educated veterinary surgeon to tell the difference, although neutered cats can be a challenge.

Of course, it can get worse. Wrong sex, after all, is better than no sex at all. Take the recent experience of a young veterinary student who was seeing practice with us.

This enthusiastic gentleman was doing an impressive job; chatting freely and amiably with an elderly blue-rinsed client, as he carefully and thoroughly examined her precious pooch. His clean hands appeared gentle but confident. He stroked at the appropriate moments. He palpated at the right time. His accent was spot-on. The pace, pitch and tone of his conversation was simply charming. He had been to the right school. He was even dressed to her approval. I could see her thinking that this was just the sort of chap that should be entering the veterinary profession. Then, as he expertly, if rather flamboyantly, withdrew his thermometer, he asked the fatal question, “Is it vomiting?”

Time stood still. The room was silent. I bit my lip. The owner gasped audibly. I shook my head slowly as the student, sensing the sudden calamitous drop in temperature, looked to me, his mentor, for guidance. But it was too late.

There was nothing I could do to help.

He had crashed and the whole situation was a write-off. Mrs Blue-Rinse addressed him in a manner similar to a traffic policeman talking down to the learner driver that he was. “Did you say, ‘IT‘, young man?” He had. Not ‘she’. Or ‘he’. But ‘it‘. Unforgivable. He knew it was all over. There was no point in blurting out excuses. There was no going back.

He wasn’t unqualified, he was disqualified.

There are some mistakes you can get away with but referring to a pet as if it was an inanimate object is not one of them. He had learnt a lesson and would never forget ‘it’.