For many of us, the jobs we now do are ones that we just kind of fell into because it was either the best from the list of options we had or it was the first one that hired us.
But for some career paths, the amount of school and dedication they take means that the people doing them either had a passion that nothing could stop them from pursuing or some very strict and single-minded parents.
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And you can often tell who became a veterinarian purely because of their love of animals from the way they go the extra mile to build a relationship with their patients. And the animals themselves notice that level of care too as there have been cases where they instinctively knew to go to a vet’s office when something was wrong.
That’s likely the result of someone showing those critters a lot of kindness because as one video perfectly illustrates, the vet’s office isn’t usually a place that animals particularly like visiting.
On January 26, Dr. Thomas Hamilton posted a video on TikTok that shows how powerful patience and kindness can be when an animal is agitated.
Speaking to Good Morning America, he described the situation that unfolded in his video when one particularly scared dog cowered in the corner of his office.
As he said, “I noticed that we were cowering. We had our head down. We were looking up with the eyes. so in other words, we weren’t posing a threat to me. We were just very, very scared.”
So after softly introducing himself to the dog and offering his hand, Hamilton sat down on the floor and laid in front of the dog with his face up.
He called this move offering his face and said, “It’s kind of a sign of submission to a submissive dog, saying ‘I’m not going to hurt you.”
But while we can see in the full video that the dog was comfortable enough with Hamilton by this point to let him feed it, it still didn’t want to move from that spot.
Of course, it’s hard to give a dog a physical examination while it’s cowering in a corner, so Hamilton’s next order of business was to get it out of there.
He started by leaning against the wall to create some gentle pressure that he hoped would make the corner less attractive to the dog.
However, it stayed put so he created the little trail of food we see here to coax it out. This took multiple attempts, but it worked.
In Hamilton’s words, “I could easily go over to this dog, put a muzzle on, strap it on, saying “OK, I’m going to lift you up on the table” and do my physical exam.”
But while he said he would have got just as much done by doing that, he didn’t see the efficiency as being worth the results of that action.
As he put it, “What’s the lasting damage that would’ve happened with that pet versus building some trust?”
He said that a childhood incident in which his dog saved his life from a sudden attack by another dog not only made him want to be a veterinarian, but taught him how powerful an animal’s love can be.
And so he prefers to take the time and build relationships with skittish patients.
In his words, “You could see their reaction with just some kindness in that video of just how we start to trust.”
h/t: Good Morning America
