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THE BOOK. EXPLAINED BADLY.
Being a vet is meant to be a dream job. Then you read the fine print.
Bite Marks & Burnout is a painfully honest account of life as a vet, starting in rural New Zealand.
You’re a surgeon, dentist, midwife, and equine whisperer all in the same day, and the only common denominator is nobody has any idea what you’re doing, least of all you.
Veterinarian Steve Deels takes readers inside the ten years of his career: from terrified new graduate to rural vet, small-animal clinician, to emergency veterinarian – as well as an ill-advised stint in the pharmaceutical industry.
Darkly funny, brutally honest and unexpectedly moving, this is not a cosy animal memoir. It is medicine at its most rural, raw and ridiculous – where dedication to animals can look dangerously like self-destruction.
READ A BIT. COMMIT TO NOTHING.
Download an excerpt of Bite Marks & Burnout. See what you’re getting yourself into.
The Human Behind This
Steve Deels is a veterinarian and writer. He has worked across rural practice, suburban clinics, emergency settings, and a short detour through the pharmaceutical industry, giving him a rare, whole-system view of veterinary medicine that few people ever see.
His debut novel, Bite Marks and Burnout, is a dark comedy inspired by veterinary practice. It draws on observation, experience, and the stories professionals share when the doors are closed, using fiction to explore the realities of care, responsibility, and exhaustion in high-pressure work.
Steve writes about imposter syndrome, the quiet cost of caring, and the gap between how professions are imagined and how they are actually lived. While veterinary practice provides the setting, the themes will be familiar to anyone who has ever wondered how a “sensible career choice” turned into something else entirely.
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