As an animal lover, it’s ridiculously difficult for me to read, watch, or hear about animals getting sick, hurt, and so on and so on. So what prompted me to buy a book written by a veterinarian surgeon about an emergency animal hospital is beyond me.

What I DO know is I started reading the book at 6pm and was done with it by the next morning.

Tell Me Where It Hurts follows Dr. Nick Trout, the author, through one day of his job, which included encounters with many pets and their humans. The stories are interjected with Dr. Trout’s stories and memories from his life experiences as a vet.

His efforts to draw the reader into the emergency room of the Angell Animal Medical Center (apparently one of the country’s biggest and busiest animal medical centers) are effective – you even get a glimpse into the hectic life of an animal surgeon, which, honestly, doesn’t seem to be much different than the life of a human surgeon (think early morning wake-up calls and home after everyone in the family has gone to bed).

Also effective was the first person, story-telling style of the writing, which made the book a quick and easy read. Plus, this first-person style makes you care just as much about the furry patients as the doctor. The only downside to this style of writing was that the stories sometimes felt like tangents, especially since I wanted to stay in the present to find out what happened to the patients!

Overall, this is a great read for any animal lover. I can honestly say that reading this book taught me a few things about doggie medical ailments that I hadn’t known about before, and I definitely learned about the veterinary world. Let’s just say that I have a new-found appreciation for our vet….