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* For the past 30 years, colic surgery in the middle of the night has been an unchanging ritual at Brock Veterinary Clinic. And for 20 to 25 of those [...]

They told us somewhere, in some class, in veterinary school that we all had a reason we wanted to practice veterinary medicine, that it was different for each of us, [...]

When the doorbell awakens you at 1 o'clock in the morning, it takes a few minutes to get your brain working again. My first instinct was that it was my [...]

Horses are strange creatures that often come with many caveats. Since they don't have muscle tissue below their knee or hock, when an injury that removes the skin is present, [...]

It seems like every plant in West Texas has a thorn and every animal has a sting. Dry, dusty environments breed some of the toughest critters. I have spent my [...]

The worst nightmare occurred at Brock Veterinary Clinic in Lamesa, Texas. Gophers had invaded the lameness pad. I got to work one morning and noticed mounds of dirt neatly piled [...]

Persnickety is a word I've come to know quite well. The dictionary defines it as 'placing too much emphasis on trivial or minor details,' and in my 20 years of [...]

Working up lameness in a horse can be tricky. It is a task best accomplished with full concentration and focus, which is almost never possible. Most of the time we [...]

The first Thanksgiving after I graduated from veterinary school brought together my sister, mother, brother, and 2 grandmothers for a visit. My grandmothers were just 'so proud' of their grandson. [...]

In veterinary school, lab classes taught us how to do the things we were going to do in real life when we graduated. We learned all kinds of stuff in [...]

The trailer rolled into the clinic parking lot, eliciting sighs of amazement from a group of onlookers. Mr Pep was the client's name, and he was bringing in his sick [...]

We prefer to do surgery in the morning--my favorite time of day--before the telephone starts ringing and emergencies begin showing up. It's peaceful, and surgeries usually can be done without [...]

The rooster was crowing so loud that Dustin McElwee, DVM, could hardly hear the man he was talking to on the phone. After-hours calls on a family-oriented Sunday afternoon are [...]

We said goodbye to the last of their 2 Dachshunds today. I felt their tears as the black one fell asleep for the last time. Nearly a year of poor [...]

A few years back, I started taking Friday afternoons off and I love it. One Friday afternoon, I was in town running errands and stopped at a local convenience store [...]

Josh was a fuzzy old gray dog with eyes like Marty Feldman and a raging underbite. I estimated him to be about 25 pounds and 15 years old when I [...]

There are times when practicing veterinary medicine that you just need to stop and think for a bit about the patient you are examining. It is during these moments that [...]

One of my very first cases was a horse that had been bitten by a rattlesnake. Oh my, that poor horse was about to die by the time it was [...]

The lady handed me the lead rope after she unloaded the 3-year-old gelding off the trailer. She had a disgusted look on her face and a strange tone to her [...]

How long should a veterinarian's office desk chair last? That depends less on the quality of the chair and more on the pace of your work. I have been thinking [...]

My daily route to work is a nine-mile stretch of road that is so flat and treeless that on a dark night you can see the lights of towns 15 [...]

I've been blessed--blessed so much that I don't really understand it. As we start a new year, I look back on this wonderful career and wonder how it all happened [...]

Time is something busy veterinarians don't have enough of. This is especially true when things have to be done during business hours--like getting your driver's license renewed. My good friend [...]

September was a busy month for the Brock clan. Two of our daughters were due to have babies. The oldest was having her fourth and the youngest her first. Great [...]

Large and mixed animal veterinary practices expect some great escapes here and there. But why do these critters always seem to head for the biggest highway or a residential district? [...]

When I travel, I usually leave from the airports in Lubbock or Midland, Texas. Both are relatively dinky. The security line takes less then 10 minutes to get through. I [...]

Every year there's a rodeo in Lamesa, Texas. It's a fairly big deal, lasting four nights and featuring local talent as well as circuit cowboys and cowgirls. I went a [...]

Years ago, my good friend Dr. Mark Justice, a veterinarian in Hobbs, New Mexico, advised me that we needed to start a group for veterinarians who like to fish. I [...]

Joe Benny Brock. Most everyone called him Joe Benny, but I called him 'Daddy.' He was a big man, 6 feet, 4 inches tall and about 250 pounds. But his [...]

The 2.5 miles from my house to the veterinary clinic was great. The equine birthing emergency when I got there I liked a lot less. Until a racehorse backed over [...]

What do you get when you combine a senior citizen, a veterinarian, a mansion and a varmint? Chaos and conquest. It was 5 p.m. and I was winding down my [...]

February 11,2019, was a Monday. I know this because our entire family had been anxiously awaiting this day for almost a year. At 7 a.m., veterinary residency match posting would [...]

Our veterinary clinic is on the south side of Lamesa on the business route of Interstate 87--I mean right on that road. Nothing separates an unbound animal from cars going [...]

It was about 6 o'clock on a dreary Monday morning when the phone rang, giving me a dreadful premonition of how the week would be. The man described what could [...]

Every veterinarian has someone to thank for getting them there. In most cases it's one of the 'big six' in life--that is, the four grandparents and two parents. One of [...]

My daughter took a creative approach to combat her 4-year-old's fibs. If only the method worked on veterinary clients.Just today a fella came into the clinic with a horse that [...]

I can't make this stuff up. What's more--I don't have to. When summer arrives at Brock Veterinary Clinic, change abounds. The old interns leave, the newly graduated ones arrive, and [...]

It takes years of blood, sweat and tears to get a veterinary degree. It only takes five seconds in the real world to feel clinically incompetent It's June, which means [...]

I was in a farmers barn looking at a sick pig when I met Randy. He was putting shoes on an old gelding and I watched him work from across [...]

There are about 25 yards of parking lot between the two parts of our vet clinic, and I had a smile on my face as I carried a chart from [...]

Dr. Dustin McElwee could hardly hear what the man was saying on the phone. Emergency calls on a Sunday are hard enough to stomach, but when a rooster is crowing [...]

The sight of a prolapsed uterus on a cow makes my back sore. You know how hard it is to get an inside-out, caruncle-covered uterus about half the size of [...]

The dog was a 20-pound brown-and-black mutt with fuzzy hair and one blue eye. It was about a year old with a great personality and an endless amount of mischievous [...]

You'd like to think every surgery can be a success, but that's not reality. Here's how Dr. Brock tries to learn from those moments. I just got off the phone [...]

As a teenager, Dr. Bo Brock heard tell of a giant in the equine lameness field. Decades later, he got to work with him for a week If a basketball [...]

I've always spoken to others about the importance of the human-animal bond. Until Hank, I hadn't realized just how incredible it is. My oldest child Emili just had to have [...]

In 1978 I walked into a woodworking class at Fannin Junior High School in Amarillo, Texas, with no idea how it would influence my life. The shop was in the [...]