Village Vets star James Carroll’s painful decision to lose his great mate, Bailey

HIS professional mask couldn’t shield Village Vets star James Carroll from the heartbreak of having to euthanase his own beloved dog, Bailey.

A vet’s ultimate personal heartbreak

IN a sunny beer garden in a country pub near the NSW town of Berry, four people huddle around a laptop, watching a trailer for season two of Village Vets.

Three minutes in, I seem to have something in my eye. All of us do.

The story is bittersweet and sensitively told. The human subject, veterinarian James Carroll, is glassy-eyed as he watches, swallowing hard.

Having to euthanase your beloved dog will do that to a bloke.

“There’s part of you that wants to get someone else to do it, but she just wouldn’t have been as comfortable,” says Carroll, one half of the university friendship-turned-business partnership with Dr Anthony Bennett that is the Village Vets.

Dynamic duo ... Village Vets stars Dr Anthony Bennett and Dr James Carroll. Picture: Supplied

“Bailey was a strange old thing, an introvert.

“She was 14, she had other ongoing issues, horrendous arthritis and we were limited with the medications that we could use.

“We managed her as best we could. We were getting to the point where I was having to carry her outside. Then she got pancreatitis. She was in pain. My rationale was I could get her through, but then wouldn’t be able to medicate her arthritis.”

Carroll swallows and blinks rapidly.

“Her quality of life was ... gone ... it wasn’t fair to put her through a week in hospital. It was time.

“You mull it over, then you have to do it. We did it at the right time.”

The intimate moment is part of the first episode of season two, and while hard to watch, sums up what Carroll and Bennett signed up to showcase when they agreed to do the show.

Their lives and work would be told as they were — warts and all. Filming had to be unobtrusive. You see it as Carroll’s beloved dog breathes her last, and in happier times; as Bennett marries wife Sidney in what they jokingly call ‘Berry’s biggest TV wedding’; as a donkey is given a false foot (it was the carrying of it that was the problem, apparently).

Glamour couple ... Village Vets star Anthony Bennett with his now wife Sidney Roberts.

Television has been a learning experience, which has highlighted a mateship built on easy banter and good-natured sledging as much as their mutual veterinary skills.

“We refuse to do anything contrived in terms of work,” says Bennett. “Although we are very good now at getting in and out of cars — we have to reshoot that a lot.”

“We spend a lot of our day just taking the mickey out of each other — it’s a natural relationship between two friends — and it is a bit of gallows humour in the veterinary world as a way of dealing with the pressure,” says Carroll.

The duo had two criteria signing on.

“One was to be respected within the profession and the other was to be respected in the community. We didn’t care it if was popular,” says Bennett.

“And we haven’t been laughed at — too much — and the community has really embraced it (an average of 70 regulars turned out at the pub every Thursday night in series one to watch along with the vets).

“It’s an observational documentary, but for us it’s a great home video,” Carroll grins.

“And sometimes that home video has farewell stories like Bailey, and hello stories like births and weddings.”

VILLAGE VETS

THURSDAY, 8.30PM, THE LIFESTYLE CHANNEL

Originally published as Village Vets star James Carroll’s painful decision to lose his great mate, Bailey