When I first graduated from veterinary school, I took a job near where I grew up. As I told most of you before, I grew up in suburban Maryland, 20 minutes or so from Annapolis. My first job as a veterinarian was at a 10 doctor practice that had been started by two vets about 15 years before I got there. One of them was Harrison Monk. Dr Monk lived in a subdivision called Sherwood Forest. I remember going to his house for the interview. His wife made me a roast beef sandwich. I had interviewed in DC and in another practice in Maryland, and both potential bosses had brought me out to a dinner. The first interview I had was in Georgetown. The owners of the clinic brought me out to a dinner at a Country Club and told me that the shad roe was to die for. So I nervously ordered the shad roe. Now for those of you who don't know already, shad is a fish, and roe refers to eggs. I mention this because I did not know this and I don't want you guys to find yourselves in a situation where you are interviewing for a job while trying to eat fish eggs. For one reason, they stick in your teeth. I was pretty sure that practice wasn't for me, so I was relieved when I met Dr Monk at his home and they made me a sandwich. With pickles. Long story short, I took the job in Annapolis. My salary was to be 22,000 a year. I was on call two nights a week and scheduled to see clients for 50 hours/week. They had evening office hours and weekends, and the new vets were expected to do more than the normal share of those shifts. I learned a lot in the 3 years I was there. Immediately out of school, I saw there were at least 10 different ways to approach medicine and surgery. We had rounds in the morning to discuss the cases in the hospital. We even then had electronic medical records. Two of the vets were excellent surgeons. Another was to give me the blueprint for incorporating my own style into my practice of medicine. Still another showed me how to do thyroid surgery. I told you guys about the hamster that Judy sucked up into the vacuum. ...and Dr Monk, who started it all ended up giving me some of the pearls of wisdom that I wouldn't truly appreciate for years. Isn't that always the way it works? Now my memory of him was that he was a pretty rich middle aged guy. He lived on a river that emptied into the Chesapeake Bay. He had a beautiful sailboat. He lived on Maid Marion Lane. He also had a great head of hair. As I write this I am 3 years older than he was when I worked with him. I have a canoe and live in the woods on Mill Creek Rd. You guys know about the hair thing. The wisdom I remember most from him was that he once took the phone from a staff member who was getting an earful from an angry client who was being abusive to the 19 year old receptionist. Dr Monk overheard some of the conversation and calmly went over to the phone and took it from the staff member's ear. He told the client who he was and asked what he could do for her. The client apparently kept going with the nastiness because he said very calmly: "Ma'am, I understand you are upset, and I will send you a refund on your entire visit. If you send me the bill, I will pick up the tab of any diagnostics you have done at another practice if that vet believes that we didn't do an excellent job. But no matter what, you will not talk to my staff or me like this again. You will not be coming back to my practice." Several things surprised me that day. First of all, Dr Monk was extraordinarily charming and polite. I had never seen him talk firmly to a client, or to his staff for that matter. So I asked him about it afterward. He said something I will always remember (and I've told a few of you through the years) "If you see 10 people in a day one will be absolutely difficult. They believe that to get good service, you have to put up a stink to set those people straight. Another person will connect with you completely. You will seem like you knew them for many years. You will probably go home thinking about the miserable person. You will tell your spouse about them and how unreasonable they are. You will decide what you are going to tell them next time you get a chance. You tell the staff the next day how crazy the client was. You really wish everyone was like the really nice client that you connected with. "The reality he said, is that your practice is really the 8 people in between that you didn't pay attention to because you were obsessing over how unreasonable client number one was." Dr Monk 1, new grad smartypants vet 0. The more time goes on, the more I recognize the wisdom in this statement. How much time do we spend on the people that tick us off? How many opportunities do we miss to be truly present with the rest of the people we meet? Negative energy multiplies inside of us if we let it. ...and you gotta admit, we let it way too much. The other pearl he gave me was when he brought me out on his sailboat. We were sailing on a beautiful morning and the water was so quiet. I never did master sailing, but the times I've been I am struck at how you are one with the water, using only the wind to make forward progress. Suddenly I was aware of the sounds of the water on the hull of the boat, the ripple of the sail, the sea birds flying by. As we went out into the bay he explained that he was part of a group that was re-seeding the Chesapeake Bay with baby oysters. They would sail out and dump tons of baby oysters in hopes of rebuilding the declining oyster beds. It was a volunteer organization of citizens. There was a long silence as he steered the boat across the wind and I watched the boom turn from one side to the other with a snap. Maybe it was the silence, or the power of the boat and drama of the moment.... He said simply "If you see something that is wrong, and you can make a difference, you need to act. Don't talk, act." For those of you keeping score, that is Monk 2, smarty pants 0. "Action speaks louder than words." If I ever made this into a feature length film, the protagonist would speak those words just before a porpoise broke through the water. I would cast Harrison Ford as Harrison Monk. I would ignore that porpoises don't live in the Chesapeake. I would be played by a young Steve Carell. Flash forward to Maine. Now I am played by Vin Diesel Its my movie dammit...I want Vin. and in my movie, the Patriots win the Superbowl. | 
