My Favorite Tuesday Afternoon

Anika Farina - Tufts

Experiences - Winner

I would like to share an experience of mine that has left me so passionate to become a vet. This is a story I wrote during my Junior year at my undergraduate institution (The University of Colorado at Boulder).

         Growing up I had that ‘childhood DREAM’ of becoming Mia Hamm. I was going to be the next famous goal scorer on the USA Women’s Soccer Olympic Gold Medal Team. But even if that did not work out, I knew I would work with athletes as a coach or physical therapist, or through a prestigious organization like the Olympics. However, as college academia began to take priority, I decided to stop playing competitive soccer and focus on my academic courses of study. 

         This semester I enrolled myself in a course entitled “Disabilities in Contemporary American Society.” I chose this course because it is worthwhile to me to understand the true issues people with disabilities face in society today. Throughout the semester I have realized this course has taught me so much more than I could have imagined. Most importantly, it encouraged me to reflect on my career choice of becoming a veterinarian.

         On a Tuesday evening, during the first guest lecture in the course, there was a moment where I realized I was so proud of myself for choosing the path of becoming a veterinarian. During this guest lecture, five members of the EXPAND program (for people with disabilities), came to speak to the class about the struggles they, as paraplegics and quadriplegics, face in abled-body society.

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Casper the Christmas Squirrel

Ava Kilburn - Ross

Life as a Vet Student - Winner

Casper was a very unexpected addition to the fur family.  When having lunch one day on an outdoor patio of a local Mexican restaurant I watched a tiny ball of fur approach my table.  There were crumbles from a tortilla chip on the ground that I watched her approach and thought “please eat it, I can’t take you home.”  She didn’t.  I then watched her approach a balled up napkin and as she began to nuzzle it I knew the inevitable - the squirrel was going home with me.  The restaurant was right off of a busy road and I could only imagine what would happen if I didn’t pick her up.

 So Casper went back to work with me in a take out drink cup and I presented her to our veterinarian with a “Guess what I found!” Luckily he was fond of her, told me to keep her, and we ravaged the cabinets for some puppy milk to feed her.  I spent the next week or two bringing her to and from the clinic with me and waking in the middle of the night so she could have a syringe feeding every 5 hours. 

Casper spent all of her time on my shoulder, or watching me from atop the doors.  She also enjoyed running up and down the banister of the stairs.  If new people came around she would always give them a good scare by jumping onto their shoulder from mine or climbing up their pant legs.  The cats learned early on she was part of the family - and that she wasn’t afraid to nip their tails…  Her favorite treats were pecans, chocolate chips, Dr. Pepper and sharing PB&J sandwiches - in moderation! 

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Heart Art

Laurel Eckstrand - Virginia-Maryland

Creative Corner - Winner

We thought this was so brilliant that we had to share how "Frailty" was made from the creator:

"... it's a photograph I took of a plastinated horse heart from anatomy lab. Then I used a cartoon representation of the electrical current's course through the heart... I used a combination of photoshop brushes and layering techniques to make the heart look as if it is formed of smoke." 

"Frailty"

Stabbed by an Acacia Tree

Mike McEntire - Texas A&M

Foot in Mouth Disease - Winner

Best Overall Submission - Winner

 

It’s not every day you fall victim to the excruciating schemes of a tree.  But then again, it isn’t every day that you are tasked with saving a Cape Buffalo from drowning.

Last summer I was fortunate enough to spend several weeks in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province on a study abroad working with some of the most amazing animals on the planet.  After days of lectures on capture techniques and immobilization pharmacology, our team of eager Texas A&M veterinary students were prepared for our first wildlife immobilization on four Cape Buffalo Bulls.

Because the Cape Buffalo of South Africa harbor many of the diseases that could decimate domestic cattle production such as Foot and Mouth Disease, Theileriosis,  Tuberculosis,  and Brucellosis all Cape Buffalo must test negative for these disease before being sold or shipped.  Our goal was to immobilize these four bulls so the State Veterinarians could carry out the testing.

The first two went down easy enough.  But the last two decided they’d go for a little swim before the drugs took their full effect.  That meant we had to run in and hold their heads above water to stop them from drowning. 

There really isn’t a lot of time for thinking in a situation like that.  You just run and that’s exactly what I did.  My extra-long coveralls hadn’t really proven to be too much of a problem until I got to the water’s edge.  That’s when they decided to act like little slip n’ slides.  They took me down – right into an acacia tree and then into the water hole. 

There it is. The tree on the left. Small, but deadly.Now just so you can fully understand what happened to me, acacia trees evolved thorns up to four inches long that cover their branches to protect them from all the browsers in Africa that think they are tasty - or in my case from blundering veterinary students moving too quickly for their own good.

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The Nacho Deer

Kate Connell - Penn

Foot in Mouth Disease - Winner

Best Overall Submission - Winner

         I’ve often found that the most interesting cases in the veterinary field appear on the necropsy table. Unlike human medicine, we can’t always afford to run all of the necessary diagnostics to find our disease. So the most baffling cases literally open up for exploration once the patient is deceased.

            The case that I’ll lay out for you today features a deer that was brought in to a wildlife clinic in Guatemala (yes, there are deer in in Central America). At first glance, he took your breath away. Magnificent twelve point buck, glistening coat, bright eyes, and…morbidly obese. We might be used to seeing overweight cats and dogs coming to our offices, but let me tell you, seeing a fat deer is something that makes you scratch your head. 

            The police confiscated the deer from a man keeping it in his backyard, where it had been raised on a diet of Frito Lays and Pringles (how the name “Nacho Deer” came about). Once he was with us, Nacho Deer acted like a typical only child that had been allowed to eat cookies for breakfast and stay up late watching TV in his room. When given his vegetables, he kicked them around his pen in a bitter rampage, and volunteers weren’t allowed in the enclosure with him after too many charging incidents. 

            Needless to say, no one shed a tear when Nacho Deer was found suddenly dead one evening. Because it was too late to investigate cause of death, we locked him in the office (no deer-sized refrigerator in the facility) so that scavengers wouldn’t pick at him overnight. We returned to do the necropsy the next morning, and I’ve never seen such a bizarre combination of pathologies.

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