This book, merit-wise, is very good. The stories of pets and their owners, their trials and tribulations, are interesting enough. Likewise with the daily operations of a vet''s ER room. Unfortunately, I think the audience is far too niche. You have to be young. You have to be an animal lover. You have to maybe one day aspire to be a veterinarian. If you can't tick all those boxes, you may quickly lose interest.
That's not to say it doesn't belong in the children's section of a library. It certainly does. I think there are far too few books like this that really give the day-to-day details of an interesting job. Nothing is held back and there is complete honesty. Some days are bad, and some are real bad, but many are good, and the rewards of the profession keep you coming back every day. It's the sort of reality-of-the-job portrayals that children need more contact with. ( )

What do you want to be when you grow up? If you answered a Veterinarian then this book is for you! This book encounters several accounts of "animal emergencies" that happen at any given time in an emergency room vet. Some stories have a happy ending with pets ending up at home recovering with their families and some pet friends unfortunately cross over the rainbow bridge. The book includes a typical day in the life of an ER Veterinarian and also some great tips for pet owners about monitoring the health of their beloved animal friends. The cover draws attention because who doesn't love puppies? The table of contents is a bit disjointed, including a few unrelated sub-topics without page numbers, but it does contain a thorough, and easy to navigate, glossary and index. The many photographs, accompanied by informative captions, invite us into the sometimes emotional journey of being an ER Vet and also a pet owner. This book is a great learning resource for any child who shows interest in a future career in Veterinary medicine! ( )

From an accessibility standpoint, this book offers quite a bit. First, the cover draws anyone with a heart in with a resounding "Awwwwwww" coming from every teen audience I showed it to. The endpages also add to the appeal and continue inviting the reader in with a warm sort of hug. The table of contents is descriptive and well organized . The index is also very in depth for a book of this length going out of the way to offer a sort of double coverage in defining medical terms by pointing readers to the terms themselves that are actually defined within the context of the narrative (which are almost ALL compelling) There is no glossary but there really doesn't NEED to be as any words that might need to be defined, are done so within the narrative. The photos tell the story that is needed and the captions explain adequately what the reader is seeing. There is no bibliography per se. However, as the main source for the book is a subject matter expert and she offers plenty of explanatory notes on the people she interviewed (also veterinarians or residents), I feel that the subject is well documented however as the average reader will not have access to these sources, this will make it difficult for a reader to research this matter more thoroughly. Overall this is an informative and easy read that gives the reader more insight into the world of emergency veterinary science. I would recommend it to any reader I had who was interested in this subject. ( )

I didn't have pets growing up. We had 6 children living under one roof, so, according to my parents, that was enough animal antics for our household. My father-in-law is a veterinarian and you would be correct in assuming that my husband grew up in a home very different from mine. I never really considered myself an animal lover. I liked animals just fine, but I was always a bit timid around them. Fast forward to a few months after our wedding and guess who ends up working at the in-law's vet clinic? Yes, it was me. I spent 6 years working at my father-in-law's small animal practice and the stories I could tell from my time there are innumerable. Some are sweet, some are shocking, some have more to do with the pet owner than the pet, and some are just heartbreaking. This book reminded me more of the difficult times I experienced there, as the book focuses on the true nature of losing, or almost losing, a very loved pet.
With a title containing the word "ER," the reader expects to learn of some sad occurrences of families going through difficult times with sick or injured pets. The book provides just that, with some stories having happy endings and others portraying some all too real examples of heartbreak. I attempted to read this book to my own children (ages 3 and 8), but aside from the pictures of some poor, hurt animals, they were not very interested. The text is informational, which is to be expected, but the information presented did not appeal to my young, animal-loving children.
Donna Jackson does a nice job with her table of contents and index, in keeping with traditional standards of access feature presentation. The book also contains a wide variety of stories with many types of animals, including a horse and a snake, and she describes each tale in enough detail to give the reader an impression of the situation. Her stories not only portray the actual events that each pet and pet owner endured, but they also provide the reader a view from the doctor/nurse standpoint.
While the book is interesting and the colorful photographs throughout certainly add to its appeal, the overall impression of the book may not have a lasting effect on me. I would have maybe preferred more stories of even more types of pets and possibly less commentary from the medical professional's standpoint. Good presentation of information, but not the most page-turning book. ( )

This book begins with the ER, or emergency room. It explains what constitutes an ER for an animal and how animal ER's work. It explains the other types of vets consulted by ER vets and gives a brief history of vets and animals. The book then explains how two people chose to become veternarians in an animal emergency room. The author chooses a man who is also a teacher at a veterinarian hospital and a woman who is an ER vet. The book has a topical structure with a narrative structure within each chapter topic. The author spent time at Colorado State University Veterinarian Teaching Hospital while researching her book. She lists sources notes by chapter and lists a further reading and terms to know. The book contains a table of contents which are helpful in navigating the various topics about ER vets. I liked that the book begins with the veterinarian's oath. The book's title page includes photos of a bird, cat and a lizard so I expected to find stories about these three pets in the book; however, the book tells the story of animal emergencies for a dog hit by a car, a snake that got too cold, and a horse born premature. All the stories were good ones but not what I expected from the title page photos. I do think the author made a great choice to place the story of the snake emergency in the middle of the other two animals as the snake, despite great emergency room veterinarian care, eventually dies. The death of pets is addressed following this story. The author then follows with the sad story of a foal born premature who with successful treatment and care survives to become a strong healthy horse. Although sometimes confusing with so many images and lots of sidebars of text, the book is filled with good information so it would be a great first book for anyone interested in becoming a veterinarian. ( )