Today we conclude our discussion about vet love in the 21st century …

It is a known fact around the Kentucky Bluegrass that many Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital employees, from techs to interns to veterinarians, fall in love and in like with each other, even though it is not encouraged by higher-ups. (“Don’t fish in the company pond,” one of the partners repeatedly says. But he’s happily married. He’s doesn’t have to worry about a date to the Christmas party, or have to go out and get his own chicken soup when he’s sick.) Some relationships last the length of a foaling season; others go on to marriage and babies. Hearts break and come back together.

I looked for a love affair to write about, but I couldn’t find anything quite right. The two European interns who were dating and looking for residencies near each other were shy and matter-of-fact; the two long-married veterinarians I tried to interview were close-mouthed about their lives outside the hospital’s stalls.

Then I realized that the reason I couldn’t find anything compelling enough was because the greatest love affair going on at the hospital is between people and horses. That devotion is evident in the veterinarians who skip lunch and dinner, miss time with their young kids, and endure the silent treatment of a spouse because they want to stay at the clinic into the night trying to figure out the origin of a baffling illness (blister beetles? yellow star thistle?) É or the tech who wept when recognizing that the corpse of a horse that came into the hospital to be analyzed for a study was the filly she’d cared for the previous year É or the prominent owner of hundreds of horses who buries every single one that dies on his farm, refusing to cremate. That love never runs hot or cold