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‘Flying’ Through the First Semester

Hayley MorganWe are entering the seventh week of veterinary school, and I cannot believe how much time has flown by and that I am almost halfway done with my first semester!

Vet school has been a whirlwind, but I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Yes, I’ve had to study more than I ever have before, but seeing it pay off in the end and knowing that it’s helping prepare me for my dream career makes it worth it. Learning and practicing how to perform a proper physical exam on all kinds of animals has been my favorite, so far, because it ties in the information we have learned in lecture and allows us to apply those concepts to a living animal—plus, we get to be around the animals.

Another thing that I have really enjoyed is how willing all of our teachers are to help us learn and grasp concepts and to help prepare us for the future; they keep telling us that we’d be amazed at how much we know already, even in the first semester in vet school. As we progress through the semester, I’m starting to see how true that is. Family and friends who know that I’m in vet school will contact me with questions and concerns about their pets and I feel so elated when I’m able to give them an educated answer. It really makes me feel like I’m on my way to becoming a doctor!

Adventures in Puppy Sitting

Cora and Daisy
Extroverted Daisy, posing for a picture like a good girl

Anyone with a busy internship schedule understands the time and hard work put into these opportunities. Even during the summer, these internships—combined with classes, extracurricular activities, and other obligations—leave very little time remaining in BIMS students’ schedules, to look for a job that fits around your availability.

However, my luck came in the form of a Facebook post and pushed me into some form of an entrepreneurial venture I had never imagined—pet sitting!

My neighborhood’s community Facebook page has proved to be an efficient source for advertising yourself and your experiences. One day, a neighbor posted to our page asking for someone to care for their two dogs while they were away on vacation. Immediately, I was intrigued. Taking care of cute dogs and getting paid to do so? It can’t get much better than that!

Throughout the summer, I was able to fit in multiple families at a time. I quickly formed a routine of waking up early before my internship to attend to the various dogs. In the evening, I would return to the route of dogs I cared for. The days were long and often tiring, but the dogs made it all worth it.

I pet sat for more than 20 families during a few months. Typically, the dogs were friendly and energetic; they would welcome treats as warmly as they welcomed me. That is, until I met a black and white whippet named Gracie. She has a Border Collie-mix sister named Daisy, who was Gracie’s polar opposite, personality wise. Daisy was the first to greet me at the door and the first to beg for love and attention. Gracie was naturally scared of everything, particularly strangers. I knew I would have a hard time getting through to her, but I never realized how it would affect me.

Cora with Daisy playing
Gracie finally emerges to play with Cora!

The first few days I cared for Gracie, I spent hours sitting outside of her hiding place (her kennel) and slowly feeding her small pieces of treats. I thought I could lure her out of her kennel with food and show her I wouldn’t hurt her once she emerged. Every time I thought she trusted me, I would reach out to her, but she would quickly dart back inside. After days of doing this, I was at a loss of what to do. I could see deep inside her was a happy, playful dog; yet, I just wasn’t sure how to let her know she could show that side to me.

Finally, the treats and my patience won her over. It started with a few pats on the head, until eventually Gracie was jumping up and down on me, wanting me to play with her. Gracie’s trust in me meant so much more than I had anticipated that it would. In fact, Gracie reminded me of why I love animals so much. Once you prove they can trust you, they’ll love you forever.

Last summer, I gained great experience in animal handling and care. I had expected to learn about animals during my internship at a small animal hospital. Yet, I never knew I could learn so much about animals by simply caring for them.

More importantly, I didn’t know how much I could learn about myself.

Taking on Phoenix

Rebecca at Quizbowl
Third-year veterinary students Ryan De Vuyst, Reagan McAda, Rebecca Gooder, and Kale Johnson prepare for the Quiz Bowl Competition.

Recently, 10 Texas A&M veterinary students, including myself, traveled to Phoenix, Arizona, for the 51st annual American Association of Bovine Practitioners (AABP) Conference. As if simply attending my very first AABP conference wasn’t exciting enough, three fellow third-year veterinary students and I had the opportunity to compete in the Quiz Bowl competition!

The Quiz Bowl is bracket-style competition, during which students must not only be well-versed in a variety of bovine veterinary medicine related topics, but also have lightning-fast fingers in order hit the buzzer before another team does! While our team, unfortunately, did not advance out of the first round (congratulations to University of Georgia for winning our round and the entire competition!), it was still a very fun, worthwhile experience and I am proud of our team!

The AABP Conference also offered a trade show with more than 100 exhibitors ranging from pharmaceutical and ultrasound companies to our very own Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory! The most beneficial part of the trade show, for me, was learning about a student loaner ultrasound program, through which students can request to borrow an ultrasound for use during a two-week externship. As someone who plans to practice dairy medicine, the opportunity to have substantial reproductive ultrasound experience prior to graduating from vet school is HUGE and I am so excited about taking advantage of this opportunity.

When not wandering around at the trade show, talking to company reps and snagging some cool freebies, you could likely have found me sitting in on the dairy sessions. What was neat about the AABP conference is that they offered concurrent dairy, beef, practice-management and student sessions—something to pique everyone’s interest! Talks on the use of thoracic ultrasound to monitor lung health in dairy calves, antimicrobial stewardship (presented by Texas A&M’s own Dr. Virginia Fajt), and field necropsy were just some of the many diverse topics aimed at equipping us to embody this year’s conference theme to “Become Indispensable.”

Another highlight of the conference was the opportunity to reconnect with friends made at past externships, as well as meet other students and veterinarians. We came to Phoenix from all over the country, but we all have one thing in common—we are proud to be future and current bovine practitioners and will continue to strive to do the best job we can protecting the beef and dairy industries.

The countdown is on for next year’s AABP conference in St Louis, Missouri! 🙂

A ‘Test’-y Situation

carter mcadooAs I’m writing this, I am finishing up my fifth week of classes in my first year of veterinary school.

At this point I have had an anatomy exam, a physiology exam, and my first immunology exam.  I am a little worn out, but the one thing that never fades is how much I am loving vet school. I have been working toward this goal my whole life and because of that I am truly enjoying my time.

The things we are learning have a new level of pertinence to them and I am trying to soak up as much as I can. We have had multiple opportunities to get hands-on experience with animals, which makes the whole process so much fun.

It is a lot of hard work being in vet school, but my experiences during my undergraduate career are helping me to be successful. Being a biomedical sciences student as an undergraduate, I learned how to effectively manage my time and focus on my studies. Taking classes like anatomy and physiology in my undergraduate days also set me up for success in my first graduate years. I am very happy that I made the choice, four years ago, to pursue a degree in biomedical sciences.

What’s in an Externship?

Mary Horse Externship
Mary Margaret takes a look into the eye of a horse that was being examined for a complicated ocular disease during her second summer externship.

What does a veterinary student do during their limited summer breaks? Anything that looks a lot like school without actually being more school, of course.

I chose to work in a few hospitals and also extern in a few hospitals. What’s an externship? Well, it’s two or more weeks of total immersion into a practice, which allows students to try and figure out if that practice or career path will be a good option for them. All fourth-year students at A&M complete somewhere between two and 12 weeks of externships at clinics all over the state and, sometimes, the world. I picked three different equine hospitals across the state and spent a few weeks this summer trying to figure out if being a horse vet is a good idea.

The first externship was still technically during breeding season and, as with most things involving babies, very little sleep was had. Every mare that came into the hospital was outfitted with an alert system so that the doctors and interns would know when she was starting to give birth. The process is pretty quick in normal horses, so when that alarm went off, it was “throw your boots on and run to the barn” and “hope you make it in time in case anything goes wrong.” The first foal delivery I was involved in decided to arrive at 4:00 in the morning. It was adorable and everything went perfectly, but it was a good reminder that horse vets (and horse vet interns, in particular) don’t really know the meaning of the word sleep between February and April. Having said that, it felt like I learned more in those few weeks than the entire previous semester.

The second externship was a whirlwind of surgery, lameness exams, and pregnancy checks. It was at an enormous hospital where each doctor is given their niche, and the sheer volume of patients they see meant that there were too many things going on for me to see them all. I generally tried to live in the operating room, as equine surgery was something I’d never really gotten a chance to see before. I saw surgeons work on colic cases, angular limb deformities, cryptorchid castrations, kissing spines, subchondral bone cysts, laryngeal hemiplegia, and on and on. In the short time I was there I was able to witness and assist with more and more diverse surgeries than I’ve ever seen in small animal practice or at school.

One day, a boarded veterinary ophthalmologist came by to take a look at a few patients with more complicated ocular disease. On a patient with unilateral glaucoma, he was able to take a good chunk of time and show the other extern and me how to do a thorough eye exam and the signs of disease in that particular horse. It was really nice to have that detailed explanation and hands-on experience before coming back to school to study equine ophthalmic diseases in the fall.

The third externship taught me more about herd health than I expected equine practitioners needed to know. Several clients owned dozens, if not hundreds, of horses, and managing them from a veterinary perspective became less about the needs of the individual horse and more about how to keep then entire group healthy. We spent an entire day driving around one property checking on different age groups of horses. Each little herd got a thorough distance exam, and those that stood out as being abnormal were inspected more closely and scheduled for diagnostics or treatments, as needed. This way problems needing medical attention were taken care of, but every individual horse did not have to have a full workup.

Every externship is different, and each of these taught me something new about being an equine practitioner. I’m still not sure if I want to be an equine vet, but now I feel like I have a good idea of what the day-to-day life involves.

An Unexpected Education

Laine with her dogThe more time I spend in vet school, the more I’m in awe of the passage of time. Perhaps it’s just growing older or the realization that I’ve just experienced my last “summer break,” but it has become more striking than ever that time simply flies by.

Recently, as I stood in my coveralls, watching the farrier demonstrate how to maintain a horse’s hoof, I reflected on the many years of my childhood dreaming of being a veterinarian and working tirelessly toward that goal. All the skills I was once so terrified to do for fear of messing up—injections in large animals, reading blood smears, conducting a physical exam—seem so simple and natural now.

It has only just now truly hit me—I’m over halfway done with vet school! More than that, clinics are right around the corner, and in a matter of weeks I’ll be donning my “big doctor coat,” all white and freshly ironed. It really sends my head spinning to think about, but that isn’t to say I’m not ready.

Summer was an educational adventure in its own way.

As luck would have it, my dog started coughing before I could even return to work at my home clinic. I was only a handful of days into summer and I was already back at the vet school. Thankfully, it turned out to be nothing more than a case of kennel cough and the Texas A&M Small Animal Hospital had her already improving within the day.

paisleyIt was exciting, though, to speak with a fourth-year student (4VM) who had only just begun her clinical rotations. Knowing I am a vet student, the 4VM even brought me into the discussion when it came time to decide how we wanted to proceed with my dog’s case. Though I didn’t realize it at it the time, it was the first instance of many that summer during which I would realize just how much I’d learned the past two years.

Back in San Antonio, working at my home clinic, I found myself understanding more and more. The veterinarians there showed me radiographs and discussed cases with me, helping me practice my new skills and get into the habit of trying to make educated clinical decisions.

Then, lo and behold, my family cat, Antonio, became a little “quiz” of his own within the month; Antonio began refusing food, and I knew something wasn’t right. I took him to work with me and he had a 106F fever!! Instantly, we went about trying to fix the issue.

The next two weeks were an absolute roller coaster! He got better briefly…and then worse. Having turned down every avenue, we, again, turned to the Small Animal Hospital, this time to consult with an internal medicine specialist. And, yet again, I was invited to listen in on the conversation as we discussed potential diagnostics and treatments. Once more I found myself able to keep up with the conversation and even made the final decision on how to treat my cat. Finally, the fever cleared Antonio the Catand Antonio’s appetite returned. As stressful as the situation had been, it was so rewarding to reach that happy ending. Through Antonio’s illness, I learned that even if I didn’t know all the answers, I was developing valuable skills as a veterinarian and could even think through difficult cases I never would have imagined being able to before.

Looking back on how quickly the first half of vet school has flown by, I can confidently say I’ve loved every second of it—at least, almost every second. That’s including the nights poring over textbooks and the minutes before a big test, fidgeting anxiously as I mentally reviewed every little detail that could possibly be on it.

Has it been worth it? Absolutely. Not once have I doubted the path I’m on, and every day I only become more certain of it. I know just on the horizon awaits uncertainty and new challenges, but I’m excited. I’m ready for it.

Clinics, here I come!

What it Means to be an Aggie

Priya at an Aggie Football GameIt’s that time of year again!

Texas A&M’s football season has kicked off and Saturdays are now reserved for watching the Aggies play their hearts out at Kyle Field or on TV if it’s an away game. The university has many traditions that have been organized and carried out throughout the years and one of the most treasured traditions that comes from football is the legacy of “The 12th Man.”

The 12th Man—what the student fan base is collectively known as—is a tradition and that came to be almost 100 years ago. On Jan. 2, 1922, Texas A&M was playing highly ranked Centre College at the Dixie Classic in Dallas. Not only were we losing, but our team was also plagued by multiple injuries that caused head coach Dana X. Bible to remove numerous players and their substitutes from the game. After halftime, Coach Bible noticed that the entire team was down to just 11 players and if just one more player had to be removed from the game, Texas A&M would have to forfeit to Centre College due to the lack of a full team.

It was at this moment that Coach Bible realized he needed a 12th man, someone who could step in and play when needed if another player were to be removed from the game. But Coach Bible was also aware that not every man knows how to play football so he couldn’t just pick a student at random and get ready and put on the uniform. Then, a light bulb flashed over his head and he remembered a current student and former football player who was sitting up in the press box. That student, E. King Gill. Gill, used to play for Coach Bible at Texas A&M but decided to take a break from the sport that season to focus more on basketball and baseball. Coach Bible quickly called Gill from the press box and asked him to suit up and be ready to enter the game. So, Gill wore previously injured Heine Weir’s uniform and stood on the sidelines as the 12th man of the football team.

At the end of the game, Texas A&M miraculously came out victorious against Centre College with a score of 22-14, and Gill never even had to run in to play in the game. However, we still honor him today because he was ready, waiting, and willing to play for his team if they needed him. Gill’s willingness to carry out the Aggie core value of selfless service in the football game, when his team needed him the most, has come to represent Texas A&M’s student section over the years and defines what it means to be a 12th Man.

kyle field gamedayAs a result, whether we win a game or simply run out of time (because Aggies never lose), you can always find the entire student section, rain or shine, standing throughout the game and yelling along with the Yell Leaders in support of our team and our university.

Said best by Texas A&M University itself, “The power of the 12th Man is echoed in the unity, the loyalty, and the willingness of Aggies to serve when called to so. And it is the reason that Texas A&M has earned a name that embraces Gill’s simple gesture of service: Home of the 12th Man.”

It’s hard to believe that I only have two more football seasons as current student before I start attending games as a former student! The legacy of The 12th Man is one of my favorite traditions at Texas A&M and a key factor that drew me to pursue an undergraduate career here all the way from Georgia. The traditions are what makes Texas A&M so unique from other schools, and I always feel so blessed to be a part of the Aggie family and to be able to call College Station home.

Puppy Love

Caitlin with her dogWhen I was 8 years old, my mom promised me that she would get me a puppy when I turned 12. Now, when you are 8 years old, this is a pretty big promise and something that you look forward to every day for the next few years. It was also a big deal because she didn’t just say she would get me a puppy—she promised, something that neither of us ever forgot.

If you can’t tell where the story is headed, let me just fill you in.

I didn’t get the puppy when I was 12. My mom decided that she couldn’t handle having a puppy in the house, and she didn’t trust a 12 year old to take full responsibility of a puppy (looking back, I don’t blame her). I was definitely disappointed, but I was a pretty understanding 12 year old, and I quickly let it go…kind of. From then on, I just reminded her of her promise to get me a puppy and told her that she owed me a puppy.

I didn’t really think that she cared until this summer.

Somehow, this summer I convinced my mom to get me a puppy. I have no idea how I did it. Maybe it was that I played the “you promised me a puppy” card, but she gave in much more easily than I anticipated. My only thought is that she secretly wanted a puppy in the house, too, so who better to get it for than the veterinary student.

So, on June 2, we drove about an hour and a half from our house, and we picked up Piper, the Golden Retriever puppy. She is the cutest little lady that I have seen, and I love her a lot. This summer, a lot of time was spent watching her sleep and playing with her. It was so fun to have her in the house, and my mom really enjoyed having her, too. She even told me that if my roommates didn’t like Piper that she would take Piper for me for the semester (which is never going to happen).

Piper SnoozesI am now starting my second year of vet school, and getting a puppy this summer was one of the best decisions that I have ever made. She gives me a lot of joy when I get to go home and see her and pet her soft head, and she helps me remember that I can take a break every once in a while. She has also given me a lot of empathy for puppy owners because having and training a puppy is not a walk in the park.

Seeing the joy that Piper gives me reminds me every day of my reason for entering this profession. When I graduate, I will get to spend my days with people who care a lot about their animals, and that is a special bond to experience. I can only hope to serve them well.

Eating the Elephant

Katelyn K.The moment I have been working toward for, seemingly, forever has finally arrived—I started vet school!

At first, the thought of everything required of you is completely overwhelming, and all at once the analogy that is often associated with vet school (“drinking water out of a fire hose”) is all too accurate, but the thing that has been said to me many times and has helped me ease into it is,  “The only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.” That’s exactly what vet school is—an elephant of an education.

The first two weeks have consisted of getting into a routine and figuring out what is the best way to study for each course, since there is no universal method for every single one, and above all else, figuring out what actually works for me. Eating the elephant one bite at a time was the best advice because, for me, writing down my daily tasks and achieving the majority of those small pieces of the puzzle is much less intimidating and much more doable than striving for the biggest goal or goals all at once—like studying material every day, rather than studying only when the exams come up.

Things that I’ve never had to navigate before, like spending a considerable amount of time studying in groups and going into the anatomy lab almost every day to prepare for an upcoming exam, are now part of my daily routine.

Another thing that I’ve found extremely helpful during these first weeks is whenever our professors say everything is taught for a reason, they truly mean it! This makes the daily ins and outs much more exciting, since I know that I’ll be using my newly learned communication and catheter placement skills throughout my entire professional life!

In going forward for the next few years, I know there will be ups and downs and a huge variety of experiences on this marathon of an education, but I can’t wait to encounter them, one step at a time.

Looking Forward to an Exciting Semester

Angelica F.Howdy! The school year has just begun for undergraduates as of Aug. 27, and, yet, I feel as though I am still in “summer mode.” This year will be my junior (third) year of college, and it will be the toughest one yet. I’ve faced many challenges these past two years at Texas A&M; however, my struggles freshman year with general chemistry and sophomore year in organic chemistry have all led up to preparing me for veterinary school and vet school applications. As a student geared toward a pre-vet track, I am always looking for opportunities to work with animals and get those last few hours of animal and veterinary experience under my belt.

This semester, I signed up for a class interning and working at the Winnie Carter Wildlife Center with Dr. Alice Blue-McLendon, and I am very excited to start working! Most of my life, I grew up working around dogs and cats; however, this will be my first opportunity to be around and learn about the behavior and nature of wildlife. I’m assigned to the pen of an ostrich named Sammy. Although he is quite large compared to me, he is very friendly and relaxed. In the mornings and evenings, we, as students, are also given a chance to work with and feed the other wildlife, such as whitetail deer, emus, llamas, and so much more!

I am excited to see the new challenges this semester will present, and, above all else, I look forward to working with such amazing veterinarians, technicians, and students! Best of luck this school year, and no matter what, stay positive and stay healthy!