Vetwrite: The Textured Life

Vetwrite: The Textured Life:
This month I spoke with Dr. Sid Gustafson, equine veterinarian and author who lives and works in Montana. Sid has just published his third novel, Swift Dam, a story of a veterinarian, Native Americans, and the land. Sid is also the author of numerous short stories and non-fiction pieces, including magazine articles, and a New York Times column. His take on the balance of veterinary medicine with a hobby is refreshing and inspiring for those of us looking for a creative outlet. Here's what he had to say.

Sid Gustafson, DVM, teaching at the University of Guelph

Sid has always written. As a young man in the Air Force Academy and even prior to that working at a cattle ranch away from home, his letters to his parents received accolades. "I didn't think they were any big deal but my father just appeared stunned and commented several times on the nature of the writing in an approving way," Sid says. "When you get patted on the back for writing when you are young, you keep doing it."

The Textured Life

This month I spoke with Dr. Sid Gustafson, equine veterinarian and author who lives and works in Montana. Sid has just published his third novel, Swift Dam, a story of a veterinarian, Native Americans, and the land. Sid is also the author of numerous short stories and non-fiction pieces, including magazine articles, and a New York Times column. His take on the balance of veterinary medicine with a hobby is refreshing and inspiring for those of us looking for a creative outlet. Here's what he had to say.

Sid Gustafson, DVM, teaching at the University of Guelph

Sid has always written. As a young man in the Air Force Academy and even prior to that working at a cattle ranch away from home, his letters to his parents received accolades. "I didn't think they were any big deal but my father just appeared stunned and commented several times on the nature of the writing in an approving way," Sid says. "When you get patted on the back for writing when you are young, you keep doing it."

Sid's third and most recent novel

Somewhere in the combination of Sid's love of horses and the fact that his own father was a veterinarian, he found himself in the mix and graduated from Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine in 1979. His debut novel, Prisoners of Flightwas published in 2003. So, how does one go from a history of writing to vet school, only to produce a published novel almost 25 years later? "All I can say is that's how long it takes to learn to write a novel that a publisher would be interested in," he says patiently.

Sid's debut novel available here

Sid acknowledges there wasn't much time to write in college. I can vouch for that. "Through the entire education, I felt deprived," he says, "because there were no humanities required. Everyone else [in undergrad] was taking philosophy and literature and I was taking chemistry. So I wasn't able to write but I could see in vet school, along with the fact that my father was a veterinarian, that there was a lot to be written about."

After graduation, Sid worked on the track with racehorses. "I was fascinated with horses and still am," he says. Returning to Montana to raise a family, Sid was able to find the time to work on the craft of writing. "What I had to do was read an awful lot of novels," he says of those years. He also took college classes on literature, writing, and poetry.

Prisoners of Flight, although published first, was not Sid's first novel. His second published novel, Horses They Rode, was actually his first written novel. "The first novel I wrote could not get anyone interested," explains Sid. The advice from local writing circles was: "Write another one." And so he did.

Sid's second published novel available here

After the success of his first published novel, he was able to then follow with the second.

I like to bother veterinarians with questions about how they find the time to pursue their creative outlets. I bothered Sid with this question as well. "I've always chosen to live in places where there are a lot of veterinarians," he says. The logic was that then his particular practice was never overwhelmed. "I never had a busy veterinary practice and that in fact was one of the things that inspired me to write. You're expected to be in the office during a certain set of hours so I thought I needed to do something to take up the slack while I'm sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. So I started writing--I've always had free time to write."

"Writing seems to be a more textured life than just being a veterinarian alone."

Sid acknowledges, however, that it's not just time that's needed. It's motivation. "Really, [time] is not an issue for writers. They can have all the time they want. It's just finding that space or motivation to write. You have to find the zone. I was always careful to find that. Somewhere back there I always wanted to write. I don't know what the reason is. You want yourself to be published; you want affirmation; you want dialog. It seems to be a more textured life than just being a veterinarian alone."

Sid not only practices veterinary medicine and writes, but also teaches at the University of Guelph as an equine behavior educator. Animal behavior is Sid's passion and his interest in the subject is seen in his non-fiction writing and how he practices veterinary medicine. "The most interesting aspect of veterinary medicine I've ever encountered is animal behavior," he says. "My point has also been to start educating veterinarians about animal behavior because it is the basis of animal welfare." Sid is a strong promoter of adding animal behavior to the educational repertoire of veterinarians. "My last novel tries to educate people about animal welfare and animal behavior."

"I honor every single veterinarian. What a rugged way to make a living." 

It's an awesome thought to combine one's creative outlet with a subject that one advocates and this seems like a good tool to prevent burnout. "I was careful not to let veterinary medicine overwhelm me like it seemed to overwhelm a lot of my associates," Sid says. "I think you have to do other things to survive. It's a brutal business. I honor every single veterinarian. What a rugged way to make a living. You got to diversify, get out of the trench a little bit. Avocations of veterinarians are equal to their vocation."
Anna O'Brien DVM Vetwrite: The Textured Life:


Dr Gustafson is a practicing veterinarian, equine behavior educator, and novelist. The application of behavior science enhances optimum health, performance, soundness, contentment, and longevity in animal athletes. Behavioral and nutritional strategies enrich the lives of stabled horses. Training and husbandry from the horse's perspective result in content, cooperative horses who are willing to learn and perform.

Swift Dam Novel Review

Prairie Mary reviews Swift Dam:

"The best novels, however one defines them and judges them, include the knowledge of something we’ve known little about on the level of expertise that the practitioners have.  Consider “Moby Dick.”  In this novel Moby Dick is a monumental rebuilt dam and the special knowledge is about horses and veterinary meds and instruments.  Flesh of several kinds." 

Praire Mary's Blog






1.  Rain:  The set-up begins, the “Water Dream.”
2.  Water:  How Swift Dam was built in Blackfeet vision dream country.
3.  The Black Bag:  Moon drivers and car sleepers, a demanding son.
4.  Spirit:  The story of Spokane, a famous race horse.
5.  Pavlov:  Relationship between Bird Oberly, sheriff, and “Fingers” DVM.
6.  Luck:  “Mardo” brings in the quilled dog of “Riel Du Pré.”  Some will guess who these people really are.  How a vet became a writer.
7.  Medicine:  About Pondera County livestock practices.
8.  The Storyteller:  Mardo comes through as an agent.
9.  Recapitulation:  Surgery under the moon.
10.  Sun:  Sleeping in the street, in broad daylight.  Doctor Sally Jo’s intervention is nearly a seduction.
11.  Shine:  Interviewing the vet’s wife, Maple, leads into an early rescue story from above Swift Dam.
12.  What Horses Know:  How “Fingers” tried to save his friend Ivan and at least brought back his body.
13.  The Living:  Bird Oberly makes a double discovery.

When it comes to books, one of the more stupid on-going literary wrangles is about what is true and what is “fiction”.  Stupid, because stories are always mixtures of the writer’s experience and the underlying structure of the world.  Neither one is known or knowable, however entwined they are.  But is it convincing?  Does it move us with passion and regret?  Does it recommend strategies for survival?  This one does.  

Especially in a place which might be called the East Slope of the Rockies, the Blackfeet Reservation, Pondera County, the Crown of the Continent, and so on, the fancy names hide the fact that around here success is really more of a narrow escape.  But it sure does encourage the circulation of blood.  It’s healthy if you can keep moving, which is also the secret of horse health.  That and a bonded buddy.

The best novels, however one defines them and judges them, include the knowledge of something we’ve known little about on the level of expertise that the practitioners have.  Consider “Moby Dick.”  In this novel Moby Dick is a monumental rebuilt dam and the special knowledge is about horses and veterinary meds and instruments.  Flesh of several kinds.  The Gustafson family is full of veterinarians and in fact Rib was our veterinarian in the Sixties, when we presented him with the challenge of bobcat kittens and pet badgers as well as horses and occasional rodeo stock used as models.


Sid’s father Rib was colorful.  (Sid is, too, but in a different way.)  Imagine Max van Sydow.  He was very much a family man and when he and his wife had aged, his children — Sid, Kris, Erik, Barr and Wylie — put their careers on hold and returned to the area to care for them.  A few years ago, when Rib realized that I was friends with Sid, he took me to lunch to see what I was about.  Of course, he was also curious about my marriage to Bob Scriver.  We had a good time, telling stories.


For reasons of his own, Rib sent teenaged Sid out to be a range rider/cowboy with Billy Big Springs, a massive Blackfeet Indian whose allotment turned out to have an oil well.  Billy was a second father and took that seriously.  The effect was much like Bob Scriver being sent out as a teenager to the Jim Stone ranch where Mrs. Stone, Blackfeet, took him in hand.  The result in both young men was a yearning affinity to Blackfeet life that cannot be challenged or thinned.  But they were somehow unsettled for life.  Neither found a partnership with a woman that lasted.

So this novel has in its guts something about marriage.  There are two married men, a veterinarian and a cop.  The cop is young enough to have been the veterinarian’s son.  (The vet’s son is named Ricky.)  Both have faithful, fulfilling lives in spite of the often interrupted time of such jobs when emergencies come often, at night, without warning.  I love the description of the veterinarian (called “Fingers” which is the nickname of Sid’s musical brother who did NOT become a vet) returning home chilled and aroused from doing surgery under the moon that has resulted in a new creature being given life.  He comes into the marital bed where his wife is just surfacing from the warm pool of her dreams, her flesh slightly swollen, and embraces her with shared love.


Some of these vignettes have been published as short stories, one of them being about Fingers’ habit of sleeping in the shadow of Swift Dam, which stands like some monument to hubris and human industrialism, ignoring the life-ways ended, the suffering, the little rule-bendings.  This leads to the narcolepsy of aging, sitting behind the wheel of his big old-fashioned car at the only stoplight in Conrad.  The book is dedicated to Rib and is clearly in part a reconciliation with his death.

The Macguffin of the plot, to use Alfred Hitchcock’s term, is the medical black bag with contents so secret but potent that locals imagine all sort of contents, esp since they seem to be kept in the bank safety deposit at least part of the time.  They think drugs.  Some speculate money.  None quite understand Fingers’ fascination with Swift Dam, even knowing that his best friend, Ivan Buffalo Heart was killed in the flood.  Fingers took pack horses and rode along Birch Creek’s flood plane until he found him, tangled in debris in a tree, and took him tenderly home to his wife, Tess.  There’s more to it than that, but you need to read the book to find out.

Since modern books constrained by time and money have stopped including a Table of Contents, I supplied my own at the top, sans page numbers.  It’s a small paperback, 150 pages, but complete and coherent in spite of its many layers.  It is packed with poetry, lyric images. 


I had not heard before the term “orographic lift” which is the term for the contraction of water-laden air struggling up over the mountains, off-loading rain or snow, to become a catabatic warm wind on the other side where it can expand again, creating a rain shadow.  The country of the “Chinook Arch” is one of the most apt and evocative names, a kind of empty blue rainbow that is full of sky.


Alongside the hydraulics of the land, “Swift Dam” is driven by psychological dynamics older than Freud or even the Greeks.  Father and the oldest son of five share a vocation except that Sid expanded his to include thoroughbred racing horses, which brought him into a strong moral culture advocating against treating animals like machines, injecting and confining them out of greedy convenience.  He has a gut-level affinity for the old ways of buffalo hunters.  Rib also wrote, but only small local books illustrated by his wife.  This novel begs for a screenplay.

Dr Gustafson is a practicing veterinarian, equine behavior educator, and novelist. The application of behavior science enhances optimum health, performance, soundness, contentment, and longevity in animal athletes. Behavioral and nutritional strategies enrich the lives of stabled horses. Training and husbandry from the horse's perspective result in content, cooperative horses who are willing to learn and perform.

Swift Dam, the novel

Swift Dam, the novel, a veterinary manifesto

Dr Gustafson is a practicing veterinarian, equine behavior educator, and novelist. The application of behavior science enhances optimum health, performance, soundness, contentment, and longevity in animal athletes. Behavioral and nutritional strategies enrich the lives of stabled horses. Training and husbandry from the horse's perspective result in content, cooperative horses who are willing to learn and perform.

RunHappy... Horse Racing in America

Rather than a doctor of veterinary medicine prescribing the drug and ordering the dosage, as is the ethical medical standard, the trainer is allowed to make these pre-race medication decisions; thus, the widespread use and abuse of Lasix in America.

RunHappy... Horse Racing in America

This is my Breeders' Cup story regarding the ethics of pre-race medication as it applies to the health, welfare, and prosperity of horses and horseracing in America.




Dr Gustafson is a practicing veterinarian, equine behavior educator, and novelist. The application of behavior science enhances optimum health, performance, soundness, contentment, and longevity in animal athletes. Behavioral and nutritional strategies enrich the lives of stabled horses. Training and husbandry from the horse's perspective result in content, cooperative horses who are willing to learn and perform.