Patti Eddington – Don’t Look in the Freezer
What’s it really like being married to a veterinarian? This week on Animal Writes, host Tim Link welcomes award-winning author and journalist Patti Eddington to discuss her delightful memoir, Don't Look in the Freezer: The Very Strange Life of a Veterinarian's Wife. Patti shares the heartwarming, hilarious, and occasionally poignant true stories behind decades of life alongside a small-town veterinarian—from opening a veterinary practice with just $200 to unforgettable clinic adventures, quirky staff, memorable animal encounters, and the realities of balancing family life with the demands of veterinary medicine. Patti also reflects on her journey from journalist to award-winning author, the inspiration behind her memoir, and why preserving life's stories matters. Whether you're an animal lover, aspiring writer, or simply enjoy heartfelt tales filled with humor and compassion, this is an episode you won't want to miss. Enjoy!
Listen to Episode #254 Now:
BIO:
Patti Eddington is a former newspaper and magazine journalist whose favorite job ever was interviewing the famous authors who came through town on book tours. She never dreamed of writing about her life because she was too busy helping build her husband’s veterinary practice, caring for her animal obsessed daughter—whose favorite childhood toy was an inflatable tick—and learning to tap dance.
Then fate, and a DNA test, led her to a story she felt compelled to tell and in 2024 “The Girl with Three Birthdays,” launched. Now she has followed that story with her second memoir “Don’t Look in the Freezer — The Very Strange Life of a Veterinarian’s Life.” Today, the mid-century modern design enthusiast and dance fitness teacher enjoys being dragged on walks by her ridiculous three-legged dog, David, reading with her Siamese cat Symon Francis O’Toole on her lap and watching the egrets and bald eagles from her deck on a beautiful bayou in Spring Lake, Michigan.
Transcript:
Welcome to Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio. This is your host, Tim Link, and I'm super excited you're joining us today. We're going to have a great, insightful, fun, happy show, and we're going to learn a lot to boot.
Like how are we going to do that? Well, we're going to talk to award-winning author and journalist, Patti Eddington, about her latest book, Don't Look in the Freezer, The Very Strange Life of a Veterinarian's Wife, the real stories behind it all. So we're going to talk to Patti a little bit about the book and what's it really all about. What's it like being a veterinarian's wife? And then of course, before we let her get out of here, we'll find out what's it take to be an award-winning author and journalist.
And by the way, I hear through the grapevine, Patti likes interviewing authors. I wonder where we've heard that before, maybe on Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio, possibly. So everybody hang tight.
We'll come back right after this commercial break. You're listening to Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio. Welcome back to Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio.
Joining me now is award-winning author and journalist, Patti Eddington. Patti, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me.
Super. I'm glad to have you. And I love the book, love the design.
We got to talk a little bit offline about it, but the book's called Don't Look in the Freezer, which catches you right away, The Very Strange Life of a Veterinarian's Wife. So, you know, immediately I know the horror stories, I won't give away all the tidbits in there, but I'm like, oh my gosh, those stories are real, what I hear about Don't Look in the Freezer. So tell us a little bit about the book and how it came about.
Yeah. As you mentioned, I was a journalist all my career, and one of my last jobs when I worked for the Grand Rapids Press was interviewing authors when they came into town. Everyone knew I liked to read and I loved to do that job.
I never really thought about writing a book, but I was working for newspapers and magazines and, oh, this goes back probably to 2010, 11, 12, right in there. And I could see that journalism was changing and I knew that I was not yet 50 and I wanted to keep doing something. And I was sitting around one day with my husband, our daughter was leaving for college, and I said, I wonder if all these stories that, you know, keep coming up at parties or just talking with friends, if anyone else would be interested in hearing them.
And most of them are funny, a few are poignant. And he said, well, I don't know. And so I didn't really have any knowledge about how to put a book together, but I began writing a blog and gathering stories and the funny things that we knew.
Wrote a manuscript, showed it to exactly two agents. They both said almost, but both of them said it was, this was my working title. And they said, both of them said, whatever you do, never ever change your title.
And so I'm very happy. I don't know if listeners, viewers will know, but most books don't go to press with their working title, but I think this one pretty much says it all. I don't go anywhere without someone saying, oh, do I have a story for you? I love it.
Well, without giving away the whole book, tell us about the stories and then how they all came about. Yeah, well, we started, we opened our practice, which is called Harbor Front Hospital for Animals. I live in Spring Lake, Michigan, which is right on the Lake Michigan shoreline.
Small resort community, a few thousand people. And we opened our practice here in 1988. In fact, July 11th, we're coming up on our 38th anniversary.
Yeah, it's incredible because we started with nothing. We furnished our clinic with the lobby and everything, except for maybe the, you know, the medicines and so forth for $200. It wasn't a very fancy building.
I hung little plastic pots of geraniums out. And the day before we opened, I checked in on my husband and he was, I swept the mats and he was in looking at everything. It was just him.
It was just going to be him. I worked as a public relations person at a big hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And I would come home at night and do the dirty laundry and I would work at the clinic on weekends.
But otherwise Jim did, he answered the phones, he saw the clients. But the day before we opened, I said, it's going to be great, honey. And he said, I just hope someone comes.
And honestly, standing there in a little kind of shabby lobby, there was a knock on the window and there was a lady with a broken cat and she said, I know you don't open until tomorrow, but my cat. And he's like, oh, come in. And we came out a few minutes later.
I said, honey, somebody came. So these are just the stories that, you know, oh, there are animals, the clinic cats that we've had over the years. Jim's funny experience is he's not a bird lover.
And he's had a few funny experiences with birds and the book is not necessarily completely linear, but the first part of it is it kind of tells our story and then there's just stories about all different kinds of things. The staff that we've had and how most of them are wonderful. And then there were a couple and all of the cats we've had at the clinic and our marriage too, and how it's been a wonderful, wonderful, we've been married almost 45 years, a wonderful experience.
This has been the biggest part of our life was owning a veterinary hospital. Yeah. Fantastic.
I love that. I love that story. And it is amazing.
You know, what I found at least is if a neighborhood practice comes in, it's always good because you always need a vet at the last minute. You always need someone new. You always have a little bit of a twist, you know, a certain thing that pops up.
And so starting that practice from scratch and building it up to what it is today, it's, it's a great accomplishment. And the stories themselves, that's the funny part. Cause you know, I, most of the stuff I write is self, you know, is sort of stories, funny stories, memories, things about animals.
And for me, I know that most of the stories, I don't have to write them down to say, okay, well, I'm going to remember this for a book or for an article or something they're part of my life. They're ingrained. And I'm assuming that's from what you're saying, that's exactly the situation for you as well.
It is, you know, writing a memoir and that's a little bit of a fraught thing. Cause you're going back in time and remembering conversations and so forth. But a couple of things helped me there.
I knew that I wanted to be a journalist from the time I was 13 years old and Watergate happened. My parents were big avid news watchers and newspaper readers and hearing the stories of Woodward and Bernstein and how they had to remember facts because they couldn't necessarily take notes at the time. I'm like, if I want to be a journalist, I have to really focus and remember.
So that was one thing that helped. Um, I never dwelled too long on conversations. I know the gist, there's a few conversations I remember completely related, but the one where the man came to our house with a gun, I'll never forget that one.
Um, but, uh, yeah, I think it's a really, it's my favorite way to read a book is to read a memoir. I tried writing fiction. Can't do it.
I'm not any good at it. I think as a journalist, we were trained to just the facts and, you know, don't make things up. So that's probably why, but I kind of like it, but yeah.
At memoir and they came really close together. I actually started writing this one, set it aside. And then when my, the second book I wrote, which is called the girl with three birthdays and adopted daughters, memoir of Tiara's tough truths and tall tales.
When I had that accepted for publication, I was really enjoying the process. And I thought, Hey, I've got this other manuscript sitting here. Maybe I'm not done.
So I went back and revisited it. It's been worthwhile. Nice.
I love that. And you know, I love that, that situation that you didn't give up on it was something that was going to be there. Yeah.
I've had things published that, you know, I thought would be, you know, go out there and get published and it didn't. So I put it on a shelf. I present something else.
Maybe it got picked up. Maybe it didn't. Then all of a sudden, you know, the, the publishing house or the editor will say, Hey, do you have anything like on this topic? And I'm like, well, hold on, blow the dust off of it.
Yes, I do, by the way. Yeah. And so I love that part of it.
And I love the fact that no matter what happened in my view, whatever happened to this, this memoir, it is part of your, your guys' life and journey and everything that goes along with it. And, uh, you know, whether it got published or not, which thank God it did, you know, uh, it was going to be a great thing to have and just have, have available and remembering all those funny stories and, and making people laugh and smile about it and probably boring some of them because you've told the same story about 20 different times. Especially now that I've been doing a lot of media, I'm like, Oh, am I, anyone's going to listen to any of these are probably the same stories, but everyone is asking different questions.
And I appreciate that. And one thing that I love is that we have one grandson, James, he says he's not little anymore. He's medium and he opened my box of books for me this time.
We took a video of him. And so James will, who knows, you know, how long we will be in his life, but when he's 30, he can read the book and know about Gigi and Papa and know, you know, maybe things, most, maybe things, most, um, grandchildren would never think to ask their grandparents. Did you ever fight? Did you ever, how did you deal with troubles in your life and so forth? And so that's one of my favorite things about it.
Well, yeah. And, and, you know, we, we forget or don't know to ask those questions until oftentimes it's too late. So you've got a well-documented and I tell people all the time, put it in a book because this lasts forever.
As long as we have a library of Congress, this little code will be in here and people can find it and, uh, uh, may not be the, the, uh, we'll date ourselves here, the Dewey decimal system, but you know, you can, I'm really dating myself. Oh my gosh. Well, I know with our veterinarian, uh, our favorite veterinarian staffs, you know, they really become family and part of our, our lives.
And, um, I'm notorious for telling, going in every time I visit to tell a story and, um, half of them get it. Half of them have no clue. And I realized the age differences between us.
I get that every day. Yeah. You know, that's another, another joy for me of this book is that someone said, what was your goal? And I was like, well, I needed something to do and with a foot, but really if I could walk away from this with one experience, and I think it's already happened, it's to really bring to light the sacrifices and the hard work and the incredible bravery that a veterinarian staff has to have.
We had one day this last winter when it was maybe over a five day period, I should say, when three of our staff members lost a pet and they each took one day and then they were back helping a client say goodbye to one of their pets. I don't know that I could do that. So we are so lucky to have these people, you know, in our world that can, and they put their own grief aside to be able to help other people.
And at my book launches, I had little red carnations for anybody who was mentioned in the book. And then I had them sign it too. A lot of staff members, a lot of former staff members that are mentioned and friends and so forth with animal stories and the joy that they got from the acknowledgement, you know, I'm getting pretty used to signing my name, but seeing it again for the first time with people who haven't been asked, Hey, would you put your name on something that I helped do? And you know, it was, I love that.
And they have been, the title don't look in the freezer. Isn't about me, actually. It's about one of our staff members.
Who's been with us since she was a teenager. Her mother was our second staff member and she came to work as a kennel kid. And they sent her to the freezer one day and she didn't know, and there was a scream.
And, but that's where it was like, and Jim, my husband said, Jody, don't look in the freezer. And so that always stuck with me. And she's still with us.
She's our office manager today. And her daughter, we have a three generation. Her, her mother worked for us.
Jody works for us and her daughter Laney works for us occasionally too. Oh my gosh. And we sent Laney to the freezer.
I think she heard her mother's story enough. And I think she, I didn't know if this was like a fraternity, sorority thing where a little hazing going on. I think that's the only time they did it and they pulled pranks on each other sometimes.
But that's the only time I heard of that happening. Oh my gosh. That's fantastic.
Well, I know you mentioned a few highlights as far as what you were hoping to gain from it, from writing the book, don't look in the freezer. What have you found so far? We'll just phrase it that way. Is it exactly what you expected the responses to be or people pull in certain stories or certain responses that you really didn't know that that would have that kind of impact on them? I think that's a really good question.
Interesting question. I have been incredibly heartened with the response. It's been overwhelmingly positive.
The professional reviews have been amazing. It was a, um, a book life, which is the Indy arm of publishers, weekly editors pick and Kirkus loved it and Story Circle loved it. And so it's been just so wonderful to get that, but the reader response has been great too.
So I'm really heartened by that. I think people just love animals and they're, we're going to pick it up and they're looking for the good parts of, they want to read a good book about animals. And so I think that's it, you know, so many times when you read a book that has animals in it or watch a movie or something, it can be, um, sad.
And I had one of my first chapters is I don't want to see the dog die either. I can't do it. If I know something, I've never seen old yellow or anything like that.
If I know something's coming, I won't do it. I run from the room when the commercials come on, I la la la la. And then I give a lot of money, but, and that's been another nice thing I've been able to do.
I'm doing a lot of fundraisers for organizations and this, but yes. Um, the other question you ask about the stories that keep coming up, they're all different. I am so surprised that they're all, everyone has asked me or commented on a different story.
Uh, one that seems to hit a nerve is, um, the chapter called Fenster, the world's most ornithophobia and Fenster the world's most beautiful duckling. And it's about Jim's, we'll just say, not fondness for birds and why that came about and all the bad things that have happened to him with birds and about a lovely little duckling called Fenster. And that does come up quite a bit, but really they're all over the map.
People have mentioned almost every chapter to me. There's a chapter called in the event of a zombie apocalypse. And it's actually about, um, a hard time Jim and I went through in our marriage.
And it was based partly on the fact that when you're married to a veterinarian, especially then when we didn't, um, have as many Jim, now there's so many emergency clinics and so forth. We don't have quite as many people showing up at our door, calling them in the middle of the night or whatever. But, um, there are going to be hard times and I didn't want to, I didn't want to not address that.
And I've had a couple of people talk about that and how it was affirming to know that they weren't the only ones who had, you know, especially veterinarians have mentioned that to me and said, yeah, thanks because it's a, it's a hard job. It's a demanding job. It's a wonderful job, but you have to face the realities as well.
So yeah, they've, people have been all over the map on what they've mentioned. I love that. I love that.
And I love the, how you, you intertwined, uh, real events, real stories with wit and humor, tagged us with a nice little headline. Like what, what does that mean? And then of course you read the chapter and it comes very self-explanatory after that. And like you said, I, I, uh, I applaud you for giving the big credits and the big kudos to not only Jim, your husband, but you know, all the veterinarians out there, all the staff, all the technicians that they have to go through, uh, um, I know firsthand losing an animal is challenging and difficult and sad and all the things that go along with it.
And then if you have to face that every single day, that gets a little bit hard. So you have to, uh, give these people a big hug, uh, more than often and, uh, know that it's all, it's all okay. And we appreciate what they do.
Absolutely. Well, we're going to take a quick commercial break. Uh, we'll continue our conversation with award-winning author and journalist Patty Eddington.
And, uh, we'll talk to Patty a little bit more about this whole thing about writing and journalism and, and which is the easiest of the two. So everybody hang tight. We'll come back right after this commercial break.
Uh, you're listening to Animal Writes on pet life radio. Welcome back to Animal Writes on pet life radio. Continue our conversation with award-winning author and journalist, Patty Eddington.
Her book, don't look in the freezer. The very strange life of a veterinarian's wife. I have to preface this right now is the fact that, uh, I mentioned at the first half that you were, you're in journalism.
You always made sure you were first in line to interview the authors that came to town and talk to them. I won't dig into the dirty of which was the worst that you've ever dealt with. Cause this is my show in my life and I've been doing it a long time.
So it would never divulge that for sure. But maybe give us a little bit of a tease on, on some of the folks that maybe people know the names they know that you had the pleasure of, of working with her talking to. Yeah, it goes back a number of years now.
I haven't been doing that since 2014, maybe around in there, but yeah, I had a lot of wonderful, wonderful interviews. One of my first, it's a woman who is very famous. Her name is Jacqueline Michard and she wrote the deep end of the ocean, which was Oprah's first ever book club and she's gone on to have a wonderful career.
I had the opportunity to interview her in a high school band room. She was going out to speak to three or 400 people. We had a wonderful conversation.
It was dramatic. It was in this huge band room with just the two of us sitting in these chairs and she admired a pin I was wearing and we had a great talk and when I left, the went to leave, I went to say something to her, you know, goodbye again. And she was just sitting kind of like this and I'm like, Oh, you're so far away from home and your family, and you have to go out and talk to all these people.
And it just gave me a little hint to what that life of a very, very successful author might be like. And at the end of the, when I left that night, I took off my pin and gave it to a usher and asked her to give it to Jacqueline Michard and she wrote a blog about that, about how someone had showed her a little bit of kindness at a time when she was, you know, so I always remember that and I did actually stay in touch with her and she was actually a writing coach of mine. A couple of years ago, I went to a workshop.
Wade Rouse is a huge supporter of mine and he, I know Wade and his husband, Gary, very well. In fact, we're going to be doing a program together at a beautiful independent bookstore called Schuler's in Grand Rapids, Michigan this month. And it's going to be a conversation between the two of us because he would do writing workshops and I was one of his proteges, I guess.
He's had several people go on to publish from with help from him. So he's a friend, but I'll mention him anyway. And, you know, some of the ones that snuck up on me and shoot, I knew her name a minute ago, the woman who played Lisa Simpson, Yardley Smith, I think, and the Simpson, she's an actor and she's wonderful.
And she was one of the most cool, engaging interviews I ever had. I loved, she had written a book and I love talking to her. And another one that comes to mind that was unexpected was the woman who did the comic strip for Better or Worse.
I don't remember her name right now. She had done a memoir about what it was like to be. And these little ones just kind of snuck in there and they're like, this is amazing.
And then I had one that was, is a very famous artist. And that's the one we're not going to talk about. A very famous author.
She was okay. She wasn't terrible by any means, but it was the one I'm like, yeah, we don't need to do that interview again, but they've all been incredible. Yeah.
It's amazing. Through doing this show for coming up on 20 years now and, you know, the whole idea of animal rights, you know, a little bit of a wordplay tongue and tongue and cheek type thing, I've interviewed a lot of, a lot of folks, you know, they all have animals or animals in their books or animals as a character. And, you know, some of the novelists are very, you know, crime, mystery, heavy laden books, but there's always an animal.
It's a sidekick things of this work. But the interesting thing I found is just like you have, you know, these folks, you know, they'd come friends over time. People get to know, you know, people that will, when you send your book out to say, Hey, can you write a little ditty on it? Like Wade did for your book.
They're more than glad to do that. And that's always amazing to me. And, uh, of course they want to come back on the show.
Everybody wants on the show. That's not why they do it. Just kidding.
But yeah, it's always a, it's really formed a little, uh, you know, friend more than a fraternity, but a friendship type of thing. And, um, you know, I love the ones that share their stories and their situations and how they came from, you know, writing their first book to becoming, you know, part of Oprah's book club or becoming a New York Times bestseller or whatever it may be award-winning, uh, writer. So I find it fascinating and, uh, always enjoy it as well.
It's a strange life. You know, it's, um, I've only had a tiny bit of time in it and I'm sure it's, I'm certainly not a celebrity, but I see it a little bit with Wade and other people because you write it, especially if you're writing memoir, people believe they know you and, and that's nice, you know, but it can be a little daunting as well. And I, I went to the Kaua'i Writers Conference.
So if for any budding authors, um, Kaua'i is an amazing writing conference. And I met a lot of very well-known authors and I see it in them too. There's a little bit of reserve because people think they know you a little better than, than they do maybe, but it's while, you know, and to make, I think to be able to, I've been most heartened by people who say the book makes them laugh.
And that's what I was hoping for. If there was one thing it would be to make people smile because animals are funny. Absolutely.
Absolutely. And we love them to death. They are our, our common denominators, our family, our, uh, Intel Jim, even the ones with feathers.
Yeah. You know, oh, and I should say that too. I mean, you know, Jim just doesn't get along well with birds and that comes from something that happened early on in his career and his life, but everything in the book, everyone that is in the book, I sent out their piece to them for approval.
I didn't need anyone coming back to me and saying, oh, that's not how, and you know, there were a couple of things. My sister-in-law found a couple of things. She goes, no, that's not exactly how it happened or whatever.
So I felt really good about that. And everyone is named with their real name, except maybe four or five people that, and a couple of institutions that I didn't think might appreciate that. But I also tried to be fair about that.
Even, even the clinics where Jim didn't really love working, he learned something at every one. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Well, Patty, where can people find out more about you and pick up a copy of the book, Don't Look in the Freezer or The Very Strange Life of a Veterinarian's Wife? Yeah, the book is distributed nationally. It is published by a wonderful indie publishing group called She Writes Press, all women at the time. Yeah, we love them.
And they just are remarkable. It's run by a woman named Brooke Warner. It's part of the Stable Book Group.
Very, very, very wonderful organization. And we are distributed by Simon & Schuster. So that means it's a national distribution and it is, you can get it anywhere.
I always urge people if they can to please shop at your local boutique, indie bookstore, give them the business if you can. And some of them are struggling. We need to keep them.
And you can find out more about me. The best, easiest place is probably my name, pattyeddington.com. And it's got all of the media. We'll have our interview up that you and I are doing up there and all of my events that are coming up and going traveling quite a bit, promoting the book, especially around Michigan, where I live.
Nice, nice. Well, definitely everybody pick up a copy of the book, go to your favorite location to pick it up, those indie bookstores in particular. The name of the book is Don't Look in the Freezer, The Very Strange Life of a Veterinarian's Wife by Patty Eddington.
And make sure you go to her website, find out where she's going to be and tell her which story you liked the best and make her tell you who that artist was that she interviewed, who was that character. But everybody pick up a copy of the book. You're going to love it.
It's a great, great, great read. So Patty, yeah, Patty, thanks for coming on the show. We really do appreciate it.
Great success in the book. And we'll look forward to chatting with you again, somewhere down the road. I'd love that.
Thank you very much. Absolutely. Well, we're coming to the end of the show today.
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