Vet Students Abroad: Dominican Republic

Congratulations to Kassandra Schneider on her 2020 International Veterinary Experience Committee (IVEC) Individual Scholarship!  We love to see students thriving in the field and we are so glad to see that those funds helped you to have a successful experience.  

In winter 2019, I participated in a student-run team bringing veterinary care to underserved areas of the Dominican Republic. We cared for dogs, cats, horses, pigs, chickens, and goats in five different communities in a developing nation. This trip (my first trip abroad!) taught me so many unforgettable lessons and brought deep meaning both to my career and my life as a whole.

During this trip, I developed a rhythm for physical exams, savored my first successes with jugular blood draws, and learned how to give subcutaneous injections to pigs (and how to deal with semi-feral pigs in general!). Each vaccine felt significant, helping prevent Rabies in a country plagued with the disease and preventing many other significant diseases, too. I even performed my first “half” neuter surgery! Then there were other less tangible lessons - seeing dozens of positive 4Dx SNAP tests, the image of a dog with lymphadenopathy (the “Elephant Leg” dog) burned into my brain of what these diseases mean for animal welfare. And I saw first-hand the tight connection between livestock and man, the families’ very livelihood. For the dogs and cats, I saw that the human-animal bond remains strong even if these animals have no designated home - often belonging to the community, there is a strong desire to care for their animal friends.

Most of all, this trip was significant to me because of the people I bonded with. In one village I made fast friends with the children, bonding while we took selfies on my phone (something they insisted on!), talked about our families (they have strong family ties and were appalled that I had no pictures of my mother on my phone while having many pictures of my dog!), they braided my hair, and I gave them piggyback rides. They generously shared with me some sugar cane that their fathers had just harvested from the field and begged me not to go and to come back to visit when the time came to leave. Among the Dominican professionals that I collaborated with, I learned so much through our exchange of ideas, from how to work with the somewhat wild large animals to how client communication should be done in these rural villages. I have fond memories of our final night we spent together on the beach, swimming in the warm ocean and taking turns playing childhood games from our countries. I look forward to building more relationships with global colleagues in my future career. Additionally, I improved my Spanish speaking skills and have remained inspired to continue improving it as well as other foreign languages because of the unique ability that language has to unite people. Yet at the same time, while communicating with the warm-hearted Dominicans, I realized how much can be said without saying anything at all and how friendships can be formed in spite of the differences we may label.

This trip was essential for me: able to help both people and animals, I came back to school motivated and refreshed to learn as much as I can so that I can help others through my career. Ultimately no matter where I go in the veterinary profession it boils down to just that - taking care of each other, humans and animals alike. Distanced from the world I was familiar with, surrounded by the beauty of la naturaleza and the love of the people, I experienced veterinary medicine in its simplest, purest form - and it is an experience which I revisit regularly in my mind and dream of having again, encountering friends both new and old.