PETE THE VET!
We visited him at home in Bray to learn about his book ‘Pet Subjects’
THE SIGN at the entrance to Pete Wedderburn’s home warns ‘Beware of the Dog’ – though it is hard to believe that the affable labrador which comes out to greet visitors is a threat to anyone.
It turns out that this cheerful mutt is not formally a member of the Wedderburn household in Bray, just a neighbour’s hound which drops in regularly. There are plenty of full-time resident animals, with a big black dog and a small terrier to the fore, not to mention a ginger tom on the kitchen table, with a flock of hens and ducks out the back. The man who is surely the country’s best known vet clearly does not restrict his interest in matters furry or feathered to the time spent at his clinic on Old Connaught Avenue.
As he makes a cup of tea for the caller, he offers a token apology for the presence of the kitten – a huge pedigree ginger Maine Coon called Aslan – he has shushed gently off the table. But he makes no effort to brush this splendid feline away again after it jumps back up, maybe in search of attention or perhaps to rise above the dogs which also have free access to the room.
Over the cuppa, as his pets mill around, Wedderburn traces the career which has recently added the title ‘ book author’ to a list that already includes ‘journalist’ and ‘ broadcaster’. Remember, the endless stream of writing, radio programmes and TV broadcasts on all matter veterinarian are produced by a man who also o has to hold down his day job at the clinic.
The 55-year-old confirms that he is from Scotland and traces of his upbringing in the Kingdom of Fife may be detected in his calmly reassuring voice. His father was a psychologist, his mother a midwife, and Pete followed family tradition in n one respect at least by also marrying a midwife. .
He first met Joyce from Malahide in Edinburgh, where the pair were both students in the early 1980s and the couple have two adultt daughters. However, Wedderburn junior knew w from an early age that he would not be following g his dad into psychology.
‘I was five years old when I told my parents I was going to be a vet. It was definitely something g coming from within me,’ he recalls. Childish aspiration was reinforced in adolescence by reading the James Herriot books which spawned the ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ television series about a country vet. The Scottish teenager reckoned that he would love to live Herriot’s s kind of life – and in many respects he has done e so. When he first qualified, he spent a year in Africa carrying out research into cattle ticks as part of a research project in Swaziland.
However, his first posting on return to cool- er climes was pure Herriot, working as junior vet with a rural practice on the border between England and Scotland. Regular clients were e the local dairy farmers, along with the hill l beef and sheep producers, though there were e
also plenty of pets to be treated.
The new recruit made a good impression, so much so that he was invited to become a partner in the business despite his inexperience.
He could be in the Borders to this day but the proposal, which many another would have accepted as ticket to a secure future, focused his mind.
‘I was flattered to be offered the partnership, of course, but I wasn’t ready to settle down,’ is how he looks back on that crossroads in his life.
He also had reservations about becoming a long-term cog in the chain of commercial meat production. As he pondered his decision, he underwent an experience on a windy hillside which helped him make up his mind. During a day spent castrating and de-horning a large herd of stirks (bullocks), the vet received a kick in the face from one of the cattle he was neutering. He picked himself up and performed the honours on the remaining beasts but the indignity and injury left him cast iron sure he did not want to be tampering with stirks for the remainder of his working life.
So he and Joyce bade farewell to Scotland, filled their rucksacks and headed off on a twoyear world tour, subsisting on a tenner a day.
Pete’s skills and qualifications proved useful, as the couple paused along the way to replenish their bank account with stints of duty in Hong Kong and Australia.
Finally returning to base, they were staying with Joyce’s parents in Dublin where he found temporary work at the veterinary college in Shelbourne Road.
This led on to the practice in Bray which was run by Noel Kelly and John Wilson, the latter well known as the radio vet on Gay Byrne’s enormously popular radio show.
AS THE established pair expanded to serve Greystones as well as Bray, they took on Pete and colleague Andrew Byrne, who together ended up buying out the clinic at Old Connaught in 1995. The roving Scot had finally landed for good and he has become a well-liked figure in the area over the 22 years since, living and working in the town.
The clinic has modernised along the way with its skilled team of professionals backed up by X-ray and laboratory hardware, with a new building erected to replace the original structure.
Over the same time Pete The Vet has also become familiar to thousands, if not millions, of people through his writing and broadcasting. The way he tells it, the emergence of this multi-media personality had its origins in a creative writing class he attended at Bray’s St Thomas’s College – now BIFE. Armed with the confidence instilled by the course, he decided to make an approach to the ‘Bray People’ newspaper.
Most writers are encouraged to stick, at least for starters, to familiar topics so Pete’s first effort in the press was about fleas – published in the ‘People’ in January of 1995. He has filled the spot every week since, ranging far and wide over the diseases, discomforts, diets and all other diverse aspects of caring for animals.
That adds up to more than 1,000 columns, reproduced across all the titles in the newspaper group, broadening the appeal as far as Sligo and Kerry.
And it proved to be just the start, as it led on to an invitation to come to the studio of East Coast Radio not far from his home.
He came to reassure listeners in the wake of a fatal attack by a dog on an unfortunate child and has stayed ever since, enjoying his time at the microphone dispensing advice and common-sense. His reputation as someone who was knowledgeable about pet care and still able to retain the attention the wider audience with his soothing Scottish tinged birr was soon growing.
He was approached by RTÉ to make the leap into television and ended up on the ‘Echo Island’ series addressing children about their four-legged friends in the company of such luminaries as Daire Ó Briain, Blathnaid Ní Chófaigh and Derek Mooney.
When the five-year run of that show came to an end, he was picked up by TV3 and now heads weekly to the station’s studio at Ballymount for his slot on ‘Ireland AM’.
The written media were also on his trail, as he took on weekly assignments with ‘Ireland’s Own’ and ‘ The Herald’. Just over ten years ago, he found that he was up each morning at 6 a.m. to write his various pieces before heading off to work and putting in a full shift at the clinic.
‘It was untenable,’ he now recognises. ‘I stopped enjoying it all. I felt physically unwell.’
His wise GP considered medication for depression but then came up with a much better remedy – ‘go away and review your schedule’.
So that was what the veterinarian-cum-journalist did, taking on a part-time locum to cover for him at the practice so that he could write and broadcast without burning the candle at both ends.
HE THEN had the freedom go out looking for yet more newspaper work, landing columns with the ‘ Tuam Herald’, which ran for eight years and his enduring ‘Daily Telegraph’ residency. The Wedderburn name is now familiar across Britain, answering ‘ Telegraph’ readers’ queries about tumours in their cats, obsessive compulsive behaviour in their rabbits or whatever else happens to be troubling their pets.
Now the ‘ Telegraph’ has packed a series of his contributions to the paper into a book, along with a series of case notes under the title ‘Pet Studies’ – a sure-fire winner if ever there were one.
He is chuffed at becoming a published author but has no intention of giving up the practice as all his work in print and on airwave is anchored in the reality of his professional life.
Even if P Wedderburn author turns out to have the best-selling power of his hero J Herriot, he knows that the inspiration comes from his encounters with all those pining pups and colicky cats – not to mention their owners.
‘I love animals. I can’t imagine life without animals around me. A cat in the lap adds to the quality of life,’ he says before offering a little advice to anyone who would follow in his footsteps: ‘Budding vets should realise that you have to like humans as much as you like animals – the people are your customers.’