Animal Patients: 50 Years in the Life of an Animal Doctor

When Scanlon began practicing veterinary medicine in the mid-1940s, house calls were popular, yet ""most vets were given little more respect than blacksmiths."" Looking back over a half-century career, this unpretentious memoir eschews cuddly, heartwarming stories, although Scanlon, a deeply caring vet with a lifelong habit of talking to his patients, treats animals with endless curiosity and wonder. The former chief veterinarian of Pennsylvania's SPCA and pet care columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer offers a realistic glimpse of the unpredictable, often exasperating, nitty-gritty work of tending to sick animals. While most of his patients are dogs, he also treats cats, horses, goats, a pot-bellied pig, an ocelot and sundry other creatures. Even more varied, perhaps, are his human clients, including a menacing Mafioso; newspaper publisher Walter Annenberg; and an eminent judge who unjustly accuses him of butchering his Doberman pinscher. Scanlon is a witty observer of both human and animal behavior, and his practice gets him into some odd situations, as when he operates on two huge dogs who have been slashed by a drunken john in a brothel or when he adopts a surly cocker spaniel from a woman on trial for murdering her husband. Yet the author is modest about his own achievements, which include pioneering fieldwork on the first successful canine distemper vaccine and a patent on a device to reduce trauma and lameness in harness horses. This pleasant book should capture many readers with its understated charm and wit. (Aug.)