Yuzu is a girl who gets sent to live with her uncle while her mother’s in the hospital. The uncle is a kind but overworked veterinarian, who expects her to help out with everything. She’s afraid of animals, so this is difficult. Everything intimidates her, from facing a kennel full of barking dogs, feeding demanding cats, taking an overly-eager dog on a walk or even just wrapping bandages on a large breed’s paw. But she’s always doing her best and finishing the tasks, no matter how nervous she is. This volume has four chapters, each with a standalone storyline centered on one particular animal patient. There’s also an overall story arc going, of Yuzu missing friends she left behind and trying to make new ones, gradually getting over some of her fears (you’d think this easy to accomplish with the clinic’s resident chihuahua, but he’s pretty fiesty!) and even facing her mother’s illness. When she goes to visit her mother in the hospital, she shows a lot of avoidant behavior and doesn’t want to hear any explanations. But after her exposure to the veterinary work, seeing how the pets are treated and recover (or don’t, in one case) and how her uncle helps owners deal with it all, she can better face the facts of her mother’s condition.
In the first story, Yuzu meets a young boy with a large dog who has always been his friend and protector- quite literally, this dog puts herself between the boys and kids who bully him in public. The dog is aging and her health faltering. When her heart condition becomes too serious, the boy is devastated and finds himself at the mercy of the bullies, but Yuzu’s uncle steps in to confront them.
Next story is about a girl obsessed with her social media image, she has a channel where she performs with her dancing toy poodle. The poodle is ill with cushing’s disease, which causes some hair loss and will require lifelong treatment. The girl’s parents pressure her to get a new look-alike poodle to replace it on the show, but the young owner is sad at leaving Popo aside, and also upset at the idea that she’s deceiving her audience with “a fake Popo.”
In the third story, a family brings in their cat for a health checkup. Yuzu is baffled by how unconcerned, even hostile, this girl seems about her cat. Then she learns the owner had lost her previous, much-beloved cat to cancer and she feels that loving a new cat would betray her memory of the old one. Yuzu and her uncle help her see that both can be loved.
Final chapter, the clinic takes in a lost dog that exhibits some odd, disordered behavior. They finally diagnose it with dementia. Then Yuzu has more patience instead of outright annoyance, at its strange mannerisms. Eventually they find the owner, who is sad that her dog doesn’t seem to recognize her. But Yuzu realizes that some things the dog does, show that he can remember things, just not quite what you’d expect. Recognizing that, and learning how to accommodate her pet’s limitations, puts this owner at ease again.
This book is very cute, though I felt that some of the animals were drawn a bit awkwardly. I was surprised to see all the serious subjects it tackled- dealing with a parent’s illness, facing fears in a new job with challenges and high expectations, keeping a friendship going at a distance, grief over loosing a pet and adjusting to getting a new one, some of the dangers pets face (one ingests a coin battery), even the frustrations of being a vet- clients who are demanding, or won’t accept the treatment recommendations, or leave and seek another vet (who will probably tell them the same thing they don’t want to hear). I’m going to look for more of this series.
Borrowed from the public library. Completed on 4/28/24.
