Unlikely Companions

The Adventures of an Exotic Animal Doctor (or, What Friends Feathered, Furred, and Scaled Have Taught Me about Life and Love)

By: Laurie Hess DVM

Narrated by: Erin Bennett

If you've ever wondered how to clean a ferrets' GI tract or remove corneal ulcers from a pot-bellied pig, you'll soon learn much more than that. Beyond the clinical side of Dr. Hess's experience as one of only a few exotic animal veterinarians, Unlikely Companions tells the story of what the remarkable pets she treats and their equally eccentric, dedicated, and sometimes demanding owners have taught her about the importance of loving and healing ourselves. Unlikely Companions is part memoir, part pet mystery, and part inspirational self-help, an All Creatures Great and Small with a mysterious twist that includes a special message for women about managing our most important relationships - those with our friends, coworkers, children, spouses, and ourselves.

Unlikely Companions is organized into seven chapters chronicling a week in Dr. Hess's life as an exotic animal veterinarian, as she struggles to solve a veterinary mystery affecting her practice and those of vets around the country. During this week, the listener will join her as she walks into risky surgery, life-altering diagnoses, and as she juggles back-to-back appointments with puzzling patients and demanding owners - and that's just at the office. For every day of her fast-paced week, listeners will tag alongside her and become privy to some of the most interesting, entertaining, and profound pet-owner relationships she's had the privilege to experience and observe. They explore universal themes like companionship and commitment, isolation and grief, self-care and acceptance.

If you've ever owned a pet, then you know - animals have a way of speaking the truth, don't they? Heartwarming, heartbreaking, and uplifting all at once, Unlikely Companions will make you want to snuggle up with your loved ones, both the two- and four-legged.

©2016 Laurie Hess (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

No one told me it was a mystery!!

I started this book assuming that it would be standard animal war stories..... wrong!!!
While there are enough typical vet’s tales of life and adventures in the trenches with all manner of mammalian, avian, reptilian, and amphibian critters, there is a surprising jolt well into the first-person narrative when the protagonist/vet happens into a series of severe potentially mortal conditions displayed by some of her patients.
Much, but not all, of the remainder of the story is
taken up by her attempts to discover the cause of the maladies, all of which present identically. They are scattered over the northeast portion of the United States; the pets in the remainder of the US are healthy: therein presents the problem..... and the story/novel . The vet must unwind the cause of the illness with the mortality clock ticking away for many of the small mammals.
Side story: there is a marriage and the presence of two young pre-teen sons thrown in, for a little extra
tension.
I recommend this book with reservations: I NEVER read mysteries or thrillers, so this surprised me. If I had known what type it was, I don’t know if I would have chosen it or not— I’m glad I wandered into the story unknowing .
Recommended— almost, but not completely
highly — recommended. Give it a chance!!