Book Review: Chomping at the Bit Is the Vet Memoir You Actually Want to Read

Book Review: Chomping at the Bit Is the Vet Memoir You Actually Want to Read

Dr. Matt Evans' new book is proof that the funniest writers in vet med are the ones who survived it

Dr. Matt Evans had a dream, and it was a fairly specific one: become a veterinarian, the way James Herriot made it look in every worn paperback he read as a kid. Somewhere along the way, that dream narrowed even further, into becoming an equine vet specifically. There was just one small problem. Matt Evans had never been around horses in his life.

That single detail is doing a lot of work, and it's why Chomping at the Bit: How I Became a Horse Vet (Against All Common Sense) works as well as it does. This isn't another polished, inspirational veterinary memoir written by someone who grew up in the barn and always knew. It's the opposite. It's 270 pages of watching someone catch up in real time, badly at first, occasionally on fire, and eventually, against genuinely long odds, competently.

Evans, DVM, now practices equine medicine outside Austin, Texas, and also performs stand-up comedy, and both of those facts are obvious on nearly every page. The writing has the timing of someone who has actually stood in front of a room and learned exactly where a joke needs to land. But underneath the jokes is something a lot of vet med writing skips entirely: an honest account of what it actually feels like to be bad at your dream job for longer than anyone tells you it's normal to be.

With the amusing acuity of David Sedaris, he faces every new challenge with humility and humor, memorable horses, clients he loves, clients he wishes he could forget, and colleagues both supportive and, shall we say, less so.

What makes this book genuinely worth your time, and not just funny, is that Evans doesn't let the humor do all the work. He's disarmingly candid about imposter syndrome that never fully resolves, about pretending to get paged so he could call his boss and admit he had no idea what to do with a prolapsed pig rectum, about the debt that kept him showing up to work some mornings more reliably than passion did. If you've ever finished a shift feeling like a fraud who somehow also saved a horse's life in the same twelve hours, this book will feel less like reading and more like being understood.

It also does something a lot of veterinary content doesn't bother trying: it's genuinely funny to people outside the profession too. You don't need to know what a thoracic inlet is to laugh at this book, though it helps land a few extra jokes if you do. Evans has said he's hoping for a Kitchen Confidential effect, pulling back the curtain for readers who have no connection to veterinary medicine and just want to know what it's actually like. Based on the excerpts we've read, he's going to get it.

For our audience specifically, students staring down clinical year, new grads white-knuckling their first solo emergency, anyone who has quietly wondered if the imposter syndrome ever actually goes away, this book earns its recommendation. It doesn't offer easy reassurance. It offers something better: proof that someone else felt exactly this unqualified, kept showing up anyway, and eventually wrote a very funny book about it.

Chomping at the Bit publishes September 8 from Permuted Press. Pre-order it, put it on your clinic's break room shelf, or, per the author's own suggestion, buy five copies since they also double as excellent furniture levelers.

Title: Chomping at the Bit: How I Became a Horse Vet (Against All Common Sense)

Author: Matt Evans, DVM

Publisher: Permuted Press

Publication Date: September 8, 2026

Format: Paperback, 270 pages

Price: $19.99

ISBN: 9798895655955

Vet Candy Rating: 5 out of 5 hoof picks