I havent read a book like this before so didnt know what to expect. I feel a new found empathy for vets and the tough career they have chosen. I felt the author was empathetic and educational as well as hilarious and I was fully invested in the journey. Highly recommend.

This is a gritty book about working as a vet. At times it was too dense with information.
It was an enjoyable read

A wonderful book by a successful veternarian. His days are filled with challenges yet he loves his job. A modern day look at this entertaining book of animal antics. I'm gifting it to my animal loving friends.

This is an honest and raw, but fascinating insight into modern veterinary practice. It's an ideal book for those want to work in this type of area or for those who love animals Nd have an interest. His descriptions are very detailed which I like. A great book.

A great book - made me laugh and cry and if you love animals read this. My husband also read and loved it too.

The obvious comparison to this book would be the classic veterinary memoirs of James Herriot, but actually I would say this is more like an animal version of This is Going to Hurt – more modern and with more emphasis on the medical and financial realities of veterinary work, rather than the poignant, witty anecdotes… although those are definitely there too!

Gareth Steel gives a very real picture of the physically and emotionally draining, stressful world of a general practice vet. And when I say ‘very real’, I mean we get everything, all of the gritty gory bits – blood, guts and faeces.

We also get in-depth discussions of ethical issues surrounding pet- and livestock-keeping, TB, the impact of Covid-19, farming practices, breeding practices, specialist surgeries, euthanasia and more. At times, the book did feel a little bit dense with detail – medical and/or philosophical – in a way that made me feel like I was reading a lecture/study text rather than a memoir.

Honest and raw, this is a fascinating insight into modern veterinary work and would be ideal reading for anyone thinking of a career in the field or who is already on that path.

I love a good medical memoir and so I thought this would be interesting and in a similar vain with just the ‘animal’ twist.
Unfortunately this book just wasn’t for me. Too many ‘farm animal’ and serious stories in this book which I found date I say a little boring at times. I was expecting something lighter and a bit more comical.

I enoyed the first half of the book more than the second. The humorous stories were enjoyable but I felt at times I was getting a lecture in animal care.

Brilliant book that is a realistic portrayal of vet life.

As a vet nurse who has worked in the industry for nearly 20 years, I often avoid memoirs of others in the industry as they can often be audience friendly and not what I know to be 'veterinary life'.

However, this book hits different. It's a brilliant portrayal of one vets experience over many years in the industry.

From rural run-ins with farmers, to city dogs and cats, the reader is taken on a journey of what being a vet is really like.

There are lots of truthful and poignant moments as well as plenty of laughs.

I think pet owners, or those with a desire to enter the industry will really enjoy this book.

Oh my, this was just lovely, funny, heartwarming, at times heartbreaking, just my sort of memoir. A great read, I didn’t want it to stop.

This one wasn't really for me. I thought it would be like Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt but animals but it felt more technical than that. The writing is fine but it wasn't what I was expecting.

If you're expecting a All Creatures Great and Small vision of being a vet turn away now. This is a truthful and sometimes uncomfortable read about the realities of being a vet. I was really shocked to learn some of the realities faced. For instance I imagined the wages to be in line with doctors. After all their knowledge has to be wider and it's essentially private practice. But no, vets earn considerably less. And the very idea of accepting the cost of vets treatment but then refusing to pay once treated. What is wrong with people??? No this tells the truth about vets and their clients. Clients who think nothing of phone contracts and £100 TV subscriptions but baulk at the idea of £20-£50 for pet insurance for their pets. I actually was left angry at fellow pet owners.
The writer also presents some ideas about how the thinks things could/should work with farming and pet ownership. It's quite utopian, not at all impossible over generations but will never happen as as much as we profess to be a nation of animal lovers we're just too damn selfish.
So whilst I really did love this book and learned a lot it has left me very angry. And also far less inclined to grumble about vets fees!

A fantastic book and very well written. Thank you Netgalley for letting me review this book. I look forward to their next book!

Honest account of the highs and lows of being a vet.

Dealing with difficult clients and supporting through heartbreaking decisions.

Ideal for animal lovers.

Having read the James Herriott books as a child Gareth Steel's memoir brings the life and times bang up to date. Written in an easy, humourous style he also presents interesting arguments on homeopathy, putting animals to sleep and modern day farming. There are also plenty of comical moments with that vet staple of hands up larger animals back ends and a very funny swan rescue story.
Hopefully more to come from this author/vet.

A perfect mix between James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small and Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt, Never Work With Animals is the gritty tell-all book about life as a vet - and it's not as romantic and full of fluffy bunnies (okay, a few fluffy bunnies) as you might think. The book starts off with a bang, literally, as the author starts off his vet tales with the time he had to shoot a bull with a broken leg - and it took a few times to get it right. While this was a little bit of a shocking start to the book, I also think it helps weed out those who might not be able for a book that really shows the reality of life working with animals - and the people that often cause their distress and bring about their end. Gareth makes a good point right at the start that the idea of a vet is extremely romanticised yet in reality it's an extremely tough job full of hard hours, not enough pay, often not enough gratitude or respect from the owners, and full of distressing moments, alongside the nice ones that make it worthwhile.

As someone who once dreamed of being a vet, and often thinks about those 'what if' moments, I really enjoyed seeing the day to day life as a vet even with all those hard moments. I appreciated seeing the darker times as well as the nice ones - the puppies that made it, the ones that didn't and the owners who loved fiercely despite those ones who didn't seem to care at all. There are moments in here that boiled my blood as a pet owner and an animal lover - people who breed their dog (particularly bull breeds who have difficulty giving birth naturally) without any care for her health and only thinking about the money, the ones who put their pets down so they wouldn't have to pay a bill that they probably spent willy nilly on other things, and the strange power people feel over their animals and punish them for things out of their control (such as a woman wanting to put down her 10-year-old dog because the kids wouldn't do anything around the house?!).

I appreciated Gareth's stories as a country vet - it's easy to see that farmers often get a hard rap due to them treating animals as entities but that's unfortunately because they are but that doesn't mean a farmer doesn't care for his animals - and as Gareth writes, it's not unusual to see a farmer cry about a cow he delivered himself as a teenager. How different types of government mandates and veterinary standards means that one bad test can destroy a farmer's livelihood, and eradicate a family tradition that goes back how many years. When put like that you can understand some of the desperate measures the farmers take to avoid such moments, as well as (almost) understand the aggression towards vets tasked with delivering bad news. I'd actually love to read a similar memoir like this but with a female vet with experience as a country vet as some of Gareth's stories referenced altercations between farmers and female vets around TB disagreements and I think this voice could bring a whole other type of story to the forefront.

Overall I enjoyed this though I do think the book needed some editing down when it came to some of the tangents/lectures the author tended to write. While I agreed with a lot of what he was saying from the dangers of practising homeopathy without experience, and not believing scientifically approved methods of care, to vaccines and why it's important to vaccinate your pets, as well as the benefits of plant-based diets, some of these ran on way too long and I got bored of what felt like a man droning in my ear about why his opinion is the right opinion. There were paragraphs upon paragraphs that could easily have been struck off. I just didn't pick up a book about a vet's experiences to learn why the planet is dying- I have other books for that.

If you love animals, and you're not too soft-hearted when it comes to them, I recommend picking this one up. It helps that it has a truly adorable cover!

As an animal lover and pet owner, I love any books about vets, animals, dogs etc and this did not disappoint! This was a fascinating, enjoyable and well-written book full of laughter and tears. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

I was hoping for a type of fun, entertaining book about the life of a vet. It started that way but soon became much more difficult to read and I admit that I became bored and did not finish.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the arc of never work with animals by Gareth Steel

5 stars- exceptionally written, very interesting and read fast within 24 hours

Recommend to all if you like animals!

A real insight into the work of a veterinarian, very interesting book, which includes a very real look into the life of a vet outside of the job, as well as some of the most interesting cases he’s dealt with.