He assembled some of the best stories from his 36 years of practice into a book entitled, “Don’t They Kick When You Do That?”, released by Driver Works of Regina.
Hoium began in a vet clinic in 1984 as a new graduate of Veterinary College, and started Hoium Vet Clinic in 1989, running it until he sold the practice in 2004. He did contract vet work until 2017-18, and now he works as an employee of the Prairie Animal Health Clinic.
When COVID rocked the world and sent it into lockdown, Gary and wife Shelley found themselves with a lot of time on their hands.
“I wondered how many stories I could come up with from 36 years of veterinary work. I sat down with a notebook and began hand-writing them,” he said, noting he had 65 stories written down the first night he started this, and 125 stories after the second night.
“That’s how it got going. I picked out the top 50 or 60 stories, and that’s kind of the way it evolved,” he said, noting he spent the next three months writing out the stories in more detail.
All of the stories are true-life experiences from his veterinary practice, and he was involved in most of the incidents, either at the clinic or on farms and ranches in the area, and some are from colleagues at the clinic.
One of his favourite tales was about a call that four fox squirrels had become entangled together by their tails, likely stuck together with tree sap.
As he had been watching the NHL playoffs at the time, Hoium’s initial thought was to put the animals out of their misery – but when he showed up at the scene, by the Legion Towers apartment building, the police, the pest control officer and the Humane Society were all there and felt the squirrels needed a vet’s services.
In addition, there were many residents watching from their windows, so he set about trapping them, using an empty box for beer bottles, and he transported them to his clinic where he was able to sedate them and then separate them. The following day he released them by the Legion Towers, with shortened tails.
To Hoium’s surprise, news of the squirrel rescue reached across Canada, and he ended up doing interviews with reporters from Vancouver to Halifax and everywhere in between.
“It was a really good lesson for me on compassion, because we’re supposed to be looking after all creatures, big and small,” he said. “The best part was, every once in a while when I drove by that area I’d see these squirrels with short tails and I knew they were all right.”
Another story, from a chapter entitled, “Cowboys are easy to love”, he related how a very unfriendly, mature 1,800-pound Blonde d’Aquitaine bull escaped from his clinic over a noon hour and ran about two to three blocks before he took refuge in a residential backyard of a lady he knew, not far from the Weyburn Comprehensive School.
“She came home to a crowd of school kids gathering, police cruisers arriving, and the next hour and a half of controlled chaos before the ultimate capture put an end to what was a very dangerous situation that could have ended real bad,” said Hoium.
This adventure involved calling two cowboy friends of his who came over on their horses, and after some effort they were able to rope and subdue the bull, and they loaded the bull back into the cattle trailer that initially brought him to the clinic.
The process of putting together his stories first involved typing them all out after he had hand-written them, and then he passed them on to his niece, Courtney Hinz, who went through them line-by-line. Hoium had also sent some to others like writer Anne Lazurko, who were able to give him feedback and ideas.
He settled on Deana Driver of Driver Works as the publisher, and Deana was able to apply her editorial skills to his stories before settling on the final versions and putting them together in the final published book.
The title of the book took some time to figure out, as Hoium had a list of suggested titles, and the final version was one suggested by the epilogue of his book.
The book is 224 pages in length, and is available through Driver Works website, from himself or through a few vendors, including the Prairie Animal Health Centre in Weyburn, Indigo Chapters bookstore in Regina, or at Hoium’s Agencies in Midale. Each book costs $19.95, with $1 from every book sold going to cancer research in honour of his late sister Lois Hinz, who passed away in 2020.
