More extraordinary stories from Veterinarian Bradford Brown

Just One More Thing, DocAfter reading Brad Brown’s first book, While You’re Here, Doc, I couldn’t wait to dive into his second, Just One More Thing, Doc.

And sure enough, just like his first book, once I began reading, I couldn’t stop, racing through the non-stop astonishing stories of Brown’s career as a veterinarian, focused on farm animals.

In his first book, Brown was trampled, dragged, mauled, and more by farm animals, especially horses. And the beatings continue in book two.

In the very first story, an enraged cow chases Brown into and through a house, destroying everything in its path. “Talk about a bull in a china shop!” he writes. “I never heard so much thrashing and crashing. The one-horned monster destroyed the whole first floor, butting into cupboards, the refrigerator, and the stove. He rampaged into the front sitting room and completely destroyed the farmer’s tattered furnishings in a matter of minutes.”

Eventually, the cow followed Brown out through a window, shattering the glass and busting out the entire window frame, charging back into the barn after Brown, who hid behind a tractor. “Killer smacked into the post with colossal force,” Brown reports. “The whole building shook like a minor earthquake, raining ancient hay chaff down from every crack… Trembling behind the tractors, I heard Killer emit a groan, followed by a tremendous thud. I peered over the tractor to see that the mighty beast had knocked himself out cold.”

And there’s a lot more to this entertaining story, with lots more stories ahead.

Brown defined hard work. In one story, he has just returned home at 3 am on a Sunday morning, after seven hours of farm calls following a busy Saturday in his small-animal hospital, to get a call from an adult son of a farmer who didn’t dare tell him what was wrong. “Uh, ah, can you come right out here, uh, Doc?”

“What’s the matter, Lucas,” asked Brown.

“I can’t say nothin’ over this party line,” he responded. The son asked Brown to go into the house first, to see his father, before he went into the barn.

As he went into the dark entrance to the house, Brown tripped, tumbling down into a woodpile four feet below and scattering the contents of his bag all over the woodpile. And the story just gets more interesting after that.

The farmer turned out to be the one in need of attention. He’d been sick for three days, with pneumonia. He didn’t like people doctors and figured that the veterinarian could fix him up. Brown ended up calling an ambulance and transporting the farmer to the hospital.

There are some remarkable stories in the book, about desperately ill farm animals that Brown saved, and a few that he could not save.

Bradford Brown grew up on a farm in Vassalboro, and like his two brothers, graduated from Cornell University School of Veterinary Medicine. He and his brother Phil shared a veterinary practice in Belfast. He retired to the family farm in Vassalboro – where, I hope, he’s keeping his distance from these wild and crazy farm critters!

Both of Brown’s books were published by Tilbury House, the first one in 2006 and the second one in 2007. Fortunately, both are still available in paperback. Just be sure you’ve set enough time aside to read the entire book, because you won’t want to stop reading!

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.