Thursday, August 27, 2015 at 10:03AM Now for our FAVORITE category... MEMES!!! Here are 3 of the 6 award winning submissions for Volume 51, Issue 1!
Rachel McPhail - Texas A&M
Steffi Muller - Virginia-Maryland
Ellie Engelen - Minnesota
Share this Post | Comments Off Memes Wednesday, August 26, 2015 at 01:00PM This piece received the 2nd Best Overall Aubmission Award for Volume 51, Issue 1, as well as 1st place for Foot in Mouth Disease.
Two years ago, I hopped on a plane to Thailand to scratch a major item off of my bucket list: I wanted to work with elephants. The timing was right. I had eight months until I started vet school and enough money to buy the round-trip ticket.
Some thirty hours after my departure, I waited outside the bus station in Kanchanaburi, sleep-deprived but excited for my upcoming adventure. A battered pickup truck beeped and slowed to a stop in front of me. The hefty Dutch woman inside told me to hurry up and get in. This was Agnes, the volunteer coordinator for ElephantsWorld. As soon as I had both feet inside of the cab, she was rolling. Agnes spoke quickly and with a thick accent, and I had trouble focusing on what she was saying as she wove in and out of the lane and nearly ran a pedestrian down.
“What do you do for a living?” Agnes asked in a tone that suggested that she was repeating the question.
I told her that I would be starting vet school the following fall. This seemed to satisfy her, and she changed topics again as we drove further from the city.
When we arrived at ElephantsWorld, Agnes introduced me as “Kate the vet student.” I thought about qualifying that with “future vet student,” but it seemed like a harmless mistake.
It wasn’t until the next day that I realized Agnes was rapidly advancing my career—whether she was doing this on purpose or not, I could never be sure. “Kate is almost finished with veterinary school,” she told a few of the staff members. I did my best to correct her, but the workers seemed to find this funny and started calling me Soon-Doc.
At the end of the first week, Agnes introduced me to the veterinarian who sporadically stopped by to check on the elephants. “This is Kate, a vet from America,” she said. He smiled and gave me a nod. He had a slightly puzzled look as I tried to explain that I was not, in fact, a vet. Turns out he only knew very basic English, and Agnes wasn’t interested in translating for me with her poor knowledge of Thai.
The veterinarian seemed to remember something, and looked to me. He spoke in Thai and pointed to one of the elephants standing in the shade.
I caught penicillin and iodine, but whatever his request was, I had to wait for Agnes’ translation.
“What did he say?” I asked. He was already walking away.
“Oh, he just wants you to keep an eye on Aum Pan while he’s gone. She has an abscess under her chin.”
“What am I supposed to do about it?” I asked in a slight panic. “And how long will he be gone?”
“He’s just going for two weeks. He said that you need to give her a hundred milliliters of penicillin every two days. And if it bursts, just clean it up a little. No problem, right?”
Share this Post | Comments Off Tuesday, August 25, 2015 at 01:35PM Snihgdha Paul - Western
Volume 51, Issue 1
"The Late Jett Harbody"
"Pugnatius MMXV" - Creative Corner Award
"Corgiachi"
Share this Post | Comments Off Tuesday, August 25, 2015 at 12:06PM Congratulations to the following individuals! We had a record number of submissions for Volume 51, Issue 1 of The Vet Gazette. Thank you so much to everyone who participated--it was extremely difficult to judge. We'll be updating our website and Facebook pages over the next few weeks with all of these great submissions. Stay tuned!!!
Share this Post | Comments Off Wednesday, August 19, 2015 at 01:51PM An op-ed piece submitted to TVG Volume 51, Issue 1 by John Francis
One topic that doesn’t get discussed enough: suicide and veterinary medicine. It has come a long way. We still don’t talk about this issue enough publicly; hopefully you will take the time to read this article. Compare notes with your colleagues about my opinions and start more discussions. You can never really know who among us is struggling with depression (1 in 6 vets have contemplated suicide) and sometimes just starting a conversation with someone can help. It has been well published that talking about suicide does not increase the risk of someone attempting suicide. Most of that research is from the military; I have a lot of experience with military suicide. Throughout this article I will draw comparisons, but I am not an expert, I have no formal training, these are solely the opinions in my head. I would love someone to respond with theirs or in corroboration of mine. This is an attempt to get the ball rolling.
My own personal experience with suicide came in 2005 when my uncle, a Marine, struggling with PTS died by suicide before his second tour to Iraq. Re-read that sentence. There are a few key points that I bet you missed. I used the term “PTS” to mean Post Traumatic Stress, I left out “disorder” intentionally. It has negative connotations and is being phased out. The next aspect of that sentence is “died by suicide.” I could have just as easily typed “committed suicide,” but that would be wrong. There is too much deliberation in the word committed when we know suicide is often not a conscious act. Again, I am not an expert, but my family members are and even run some of the largest non-profit organizations to help veterans and their families affected by PTS and suicide.
So now what about Veterinary Medicine and suicide. What about our profession has led to our current state of affairs. Money is an obvious starting point, but maybe not completely the way a lay person would think. I don’t mean entirely the debt side or the running a successful business part. Both can cause extreme stress situations and lead to depression. But that’s not exclusive to vet medicine, it shouldn’t be ignored, but I don’t know enough about those yet to say any more. I would love a reader with more experience to elaborate those two points and their own stress relieving techniques. I want to touch upon a different monetary concern among vets. Client satisfaction.
I have worked as a small and large animal technician at hospitals and for doctors that have served the poorest pets in trailer parks to the most expensive sport horse ever purchased (I kid you not, but don’t ask for names). What is one thing all people will
Share this Post | Comments Off compassion fatigue, depression, suicide, veterans, veterinary medicine in Op-Ed