Welcome to our new equine vet column, “The Village Horse Doctor” by Madison Seamans, M.S., DVM, with this unexpectedly humorous tale about starting vet school.
Photo by Annette Seamans
A stiff, new white smock, a stethoscope and a necktie are an unlikely set of items in the context I recall from over 40 years ago. The undergraduate years, those needed to complete the prerequisite courses, were five years of just plain hard. They included history, chemistry, physics, and the ever-popular calculus. (To this day I still don’t understand the need for calculus. I have never once, in over 40 years of practice, needed to know the area under a curve!)
It took me seven years to get in. Once I heard some guy in a movie say, “In the end, it will be OK, and if it’s not OK, then it’s not the end.” Perseverance is a virtue, but seven years is rapidly approaching stupid. I learned a lot during that time.
For example, after applying to veterinary college, there are only two things that can happen; both come in the U.S. Mail. One of them is bad. A skinny letter is a basic, boiler-plate form letter that has all the compassion of an IRS audit. It starts out: “Blah, blah, blah, there were many qualified applicants …” and ends, “BUT YOU AIN’T ONE OF THEM!” Or something to that effect. I have several of them.
The fat letter is the one you’re looking for. It’s fat because it has the registration packet enclosed. It took a long time to get mine.
The First Day
Summer in College Station, Texas is hot and humid. The mosquitoes are about the size of small chickens and are more like flying piranhas than insects. September isn’t much different, but at least there’s football. That doesn’t improve the climate any, but it holds the promise that cooler fall weather is near.
So wearing a stiff new shirt and a tie under an equally stiff new white smock was not the most comfortable attire on that muggy September morning in 1981. But it was the first day of vet school, so some compromise was in order.
Forged in Fire
Room 5 was a large classroom with a stadium-like atmosphere, sans cheerleaders, seating about 200. The lower doors opened directly to the parking lot and the site of many first introductions among my classmates.
The first day was … a bit strained. The atmosphere was a complicated mixture of camaraderie and competition, confidence and complete panic—like the car-chasing dog that finally does catch one: Now what?
It was tougher than you’d think. We had two or three drop out during the first year, and one at the end of the third. Later though, most of the faculty and staff admitted that our group was special. The class of 1985 had an intangible “something” that set us apart from others. We were close. We were friendly. We were a team.
Those four years forged friendships, and a few marriages, that would last a lifetime—and some that didn’t. I remember the first day, not because of some inspiring professorial oration about the joy of academic achievements and saving lives, but because of a motorcycle—or rather, because of the guy riding it.
Biker Eddie
Several of us were standing in the parking lot outside Room 5, stiff from the combination of new shirts and attitudes that straddle a vague line somewhere between smug and abject terror. (There was a dress code at A&M then—ties for boys and dresses for girls. Students who failed to comply would be excused from class).
Into this rather rigid scene, a most unlikely addition was about to loosen things up a bit. His first name was one of those that the bearer doesn’t like, so they go by a middle name. In this case, he wanted to be called Eddie. The mere mention of his first name … well, nobody did that more than just the one time.
So, a few of us were standing outside Room 5 in acceptable apparel waiting with guarded anxiety for the 8 o’clock bell to mark the start of a new adventure.
The relative stillness of that first morning was broken by the roar of a large motorcycle, a Harley “chopper.” It was ridden by an equally large, almost mythic character who was to become a most unlikely, though truly loved, leader of our class.
The sight of this Arnold Schwarzenegger-as-Conan clone, clad in a new white smock flapping irreverently in the wake of his Harley, tie loosely knotted in a flippant, half-mast style, certainly broke the ice. This giant stepped off his bike with easy grace and introduced himself. He was not cocky or rough; he just grinned and stuck out his
hand irresistibly.
Eddie would be elected class president not once, but twice. An NFL prospect, he left training camp with the Atlanta Falcons to spend an amazing four years with us at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine. He was just one of many friends I made during my time there.
Reality Check
Promptly at 8 a.m., the bell rang and the brand-new members of the college of veterinary medicine entered the hallowed halls just beneath the ivory towers of vaunted academia. The introductory lecture, hosted by several faculty members, was unsettling. The basic message was: “Yesterday, y’all were all A students. Them days are gone. Most of y’all will survive academically, some will not.”
The silence in that room was deafening.
The final blow to our collective egos was: “The anatomy lab will be open on Saturdays.” As brilliant, amazingly successful students, none of us thought any extra study on weekends would be required. That attitude was reversed, coincidentally, on the Saturday following the first anatomy exam.
What followed was the most challenging, maddening, joyous four years imaginable. A normal course load was considered 15 or 16 semester hours. Vet school was 22. That gave you just enough extra time to eat, but sleep was to be rationed out in small increments. I guess they figured we could sleep after graduation or death which, at times, seemed perilously imminent. Despite all the unbelievable work, I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.
Stay curious, there’s more to follow.
This first edition of The Village Horse Doctor appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!
