International Veterinary Outreach

Winner, Experiences

Tracy Huang, UC Davis

A pause, as I turn to take it all in – the hustle and bustle of my colleagues getting more fluids, drawing up vaccines, adjusting the headlamp for intubation, and watching the autoclave on the stovetop. This is Cosiguina, a rural community in northwestern Nicaragua, and day 3 of the December 2013 clinic trip with International Veterinary Outreach (IVO).

IVO is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded and run by veterinary students. In the Fall of 2011, a group of visionary and dedicated veterinary students from UC Davis decided to found an organization to serve animals in rural communities that otherwise would not receive veterinary care. With the help and guidance of Dr. Eric Davis, founder of HSVMA-RAVS and RVETS, IVO became a source of veterinary care for rural communities in northwestern Nicaragua. Twice a year, a group of veterinary students, technicians, and veterinarians make the trek out to these communities to provide wellness exams, preventative care, treatments, and spay/neuter surgeries for both the large and small animal populations. Over the course of two years, IVO has been to Nicaragua five times, and the change and impact is apparent.

My first trip to Nicaragua with IVO was back in the summer of 2012 as a student volunteer. It was an experience that left me dazed and confused. I was supposed to feel good about giving back to the communities. Instead, I ended the trip skeptical about the effects of our work, saddened by the conditions of the animals, and deeply struck by the poverty of the communities. Working in a culture with different priorities, a different mentality, and different resources presented so many challenges. Yet, I was stimulated. So, I took on the role of co-president and purchased my second, third, and fourth plane ticket back to Nicaragua.

During our clinic trips, we set up field clinics in a different community every day. As we continue to return to Nicaragua, there are communities that we regularly return to every six months and communities that we have only begun to work in. Cosiguina is one such community, located close to the border of Honduras. The lack of veterinary services and outreach in Cosiguina is apparent. Dogs that have never before been on leash are understandably much more fearful and difficult to handle, and their poor body conditions are striking. Our surgery board is barely filled with spays and neuters, as there is a lack of understanding about what the surgeries are for and their health and welfare benefits. Cosiguina is what the other communities that we have first worked in started out as – with heavy skepticism from the community about the importance and benefits of sterilization, limited access to veterinary care for their animals, and rampant pet overpopulation.

While there are still these problems in the other communities that we have regularly returned to, we have slowly made progress – progress evident in the growing receptivity of the community to our veterinary recommendations and to pet sterilizations. As we gradually establish relationships with the communities, we see increasing numbers of patients with each trip. In addition, there are notable changes in individual lives, evident in the dogs that return to our clinic for preventative care with the same leashes we provided them in the past, in the owners who bring their dogs back to us every six months for another treatment for their dogs’ transmissible venereal tumor (TVT), and in the woman who walked four kilometers down a hot, dusty road to our next clinic site for her dog’s spay. All this is proof of progress and reason for me to continue to return.

With every trip, we learn more about the needs of the communities that we work in. We implement different educational initiatives to help address these needs, such as basic nutrition, reasons to spay/neuter, and the importance of flea/tick preventatives. In addition, we recruit local veterinary students and veterinarians to promote an exchange of ideas and to better understand the role of veterinary professionals in Nicaragua. It has been through these initiatives that we have been able to and hope to continue to make progress.

Back in Cosiguina, our surgery tables may not be busy, but this is a place we will have to revisit because our work here has only just begun. So, I pick up a chart, grab a leash, and walk out in search of my next patient. 

Dr. Eric Etheridge and UC Davis veterinary student, Jamie White, vaccinate a pig in a rural community in northwestern Nicaragua.

UC Davis veterinary student, Matt LeShaw, gain experience monitoring anesthesia, while Dr. Jean Goh, director of Spay & Neuter Clinic at the San Francisco SPCA, perform a canine spay in the field. 

The Pict

Winner, Creative Corner 

Mary Michele Pico, University of Minnesota

Stock image used for drawing can be found at: http://chirinstock.deviantart.com/ 

[in which I learn how to see]

Winner, Experiences

Gabrielle Woo, Cornell

One of the neat things about being a vet is that you are at once a general physician, pediatrician, dentist, radiologist and much more.  Lately we have been concentrating on the ophthalmological aspect of vet medicine by examining eyeballs belonging to all sorts of animals. This is what Saunders Veterinary Dictionary says under ”eye”. 

(noun): the organ of vision. In the embryo the eye develops as a direct extension of the brain, and thus is a very delicate organ.

This brief definition doesn’t do justice to one of the most complex organs in the body. Studying the eye in gross dissection entails a series of prosected dog heads with varying degrees of muscle and nervous tissue removed from the face. This is most useful for figuring out which muscle attaches where and does what, and which nerve runs through which hole in the skull and innervates which part of the eye.

But my favourite part comes when I look at a living animal armed with new information about how the eyes work. Why do horses blink when a fly buzzes near the skin around their eyes?

It’s an inborn reflex involving two cranial nerves, one sensory and another motor with a connection between them somewhere in your brain, and a ring of muscle around the eye. The teaching cats in the lab are forever rolling their eyes in frustration at my unsuccessful attempts to palpate their abdomens. This simple action requires a series of coordinated contractions and relaxations of over ten different muscles attached to and surrounding the eyeball.  The sense of vision is even more complex and includes both cornea and lens to refract light into the back of the eye, where a host of specialized receptors convey information to the brain and higher cognitive processing occurs to generate an appropriate motor response to what was seen.

Now think about photographing an animal who is looking at me. The amount of muscle and nerve and brain coordination involved in this feat for both the animal and myself just blows my mind.

Are you beginning to see, too? Isn’t it incredible?

Whiskers on Kittens, African Flower, Playtime with Mom

Winner, Creative Corner

Lindsey Mathews, Texas A&M

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Cold Calls

 Will Pass, Colorado State University

Winner - Foot In Mouth

For several months, I have been helping with an epidemiological research project that requires me to make hundreds of phone calls. I love speaking with new people, but I believe the telephone to be an imperfect tool, incomplete as a connection between two people, as it leaves us without the nonverbal elements of conversation, which I have read account for 55% of communication. And I’ve got to say, if this were a class, I would probably deserve a 45%.

Half of the calls are to veterinary clinics, which immediately put me in touch with two kinds of receptionists. The first are kind, sweet talking, and helpful. I can hear them smiling through the phone. Oh thank you, I say, when they look into a patient’s records. Thank you for helping, thank you for smiling, and thank you for not being the second kind of receptionist. You see, the second kind of receptionist hates me. I’m not a client, and I’m not a veterinarian. I’m a veterinary student calling from across the country in the middle of a busy workday. I’m asking for information that will in no way benefit the clinic being called. I’m annoying. I’m unsavory. Basically, I’m mange.

“You want me to do what?” she asks.

“Just, um, please look and see if Roscoe ever had a surgery at your clinic?”

Silence for a moment. Have I asked her to throw herself into traffic?

“Hang on,” she says flatly.

(Then comes the on hold music. This is a story unto itself, but if you’d like a taste, please find a Kenny G song and then play it loudly through a tin can down a string. Sit like this for 5 minutes and reflect on life choices.)

“What’s the owner’s name?” she comes back on, speaking quickly.

“Jeff Poblieniaski” I say, cursing him in my mind for not being a ‘Smith’.

“What?”

“P-O-B-L-I-E-N-I-A-S-K-I”

“No Poblionaffi.”

“Niaski.”

“What?”

“Poblieniaski.”
            We continue in this fashion for a few more revolutions. I can hear dogs barking in the background, and the receptionist’s sighs grow heavier as our conversation continues.

Several endpoints occur from this interaction. The first is that I get a definite answer about the dog’s history. The others are that the file once did exist but now does not, or never, ever, existed.

“No Poblieniaski. No Roscoe.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, OK. Well thank you for your time.”

Click.

I’ve got a say that most receptionists are extremely helpful and good-natured. But the unfortunate reality is that we often remember the most difficult interactions with people the most vividly.

I also make calls to owners about their pets, which, unfortunately, are typically deceased.

“I was hoping I could ask you a quick question about Sophie?”

“Sophie’s dead.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“Well it was four years ago.”

“Oh, well, OK.”

Awkward moments like this are common, and I do my best to express sympathies, as sometimes emotions are still high. Other times, people just seem to pick up the phone looking for a fight.

“Listen,” one owner said, “You called last week and left a message, and I didn’t call you back. Take me off your damn list! We don’t want any!”

This is before I can explain that I am not actually selling anything at all, and I wonder if my message was that unclear. I suppose my intentions are usually a bit lost on most people, and for them, it’s easy to dismiss someone like myself over the phone.

Negative interactions like these are the minority, but they stand out in my mind. How is it that people can be so rude and confrontational over the phone? Perhaps their mindset stems from interactions with pushy telemarketers, or simply that it is easy to blow off some steam when you don’t have to look another person in the eye to do it.

Of the hundreds of calls I have made, however, one in particular stands alone.

It was around 6:30pm on a Monday – a time I felt appropriate to call someone at home.

I looked up the number in the hospital records for an owner named Natasha and dialed. No answer, so I left a quick message explaining who I was and how I had a quick question about her dog, if she would be so kind as to call me back. I always attempt to be as polite as possible over the phone, as I do understand that my phone call is something of an inconvenience.

I awoke the next morning to a missed call and a voicemail. The call was from around 2:30am. Certainly this wasn’t somebody about research. Maybe a friend out at the bars? I put the phone to my ear.

What I heard was a heavy Texan accent, speaking slowly and gravely.

“Whoever called for Natasha last night dialed the wrong number and woke me up. I don’t appreciate it. If you’re a veterinary student, I hope you can read prescriptions, and write out prescriptions better than you can dial a phone. You got any questions you can call me back. Time of this message is zero-two-three-two hours. Thank you.”

2:32am? He had called me at 2:32am to tell me that I had woken him up? Apparently, calling someone at the late hour of 6:30pm is serious business, and also dialing a wrong number requires severe reprimand. I couldn’t help but feel like this guy really wanted to wake me up and give me a piece of his mind.

I felt an anger rising up and hopped out of bed. I was about to dial him right back and give him a piece of my mind, but then caught myself and took a deep breath. Did I dial the wrong number? I checked on my computer and the number was as listed for Natasha. I had called the correct number as the records showed.

So what to do? Just let it go? I decided to call him back, not out of spite, but simply to speak with such a soul who would go out of his way to punish someone he didn’t know for something rather innocent.

I decided to call him back, while hoping to still take the higher ground.

“Yes,” he answered curtly.

“Hi there, my name is Will. I’m a veterinary student at CSU. I called yesterday, but I think I may have had the wrong number.”
            “Yeah you did,” said the raspy Texan drawl. “And I don’t appreciate being woken up.”

“Well I apologize for waking you up, but it seemed like it was early, and this is the number I have listed for Natasha. Do you know anyone named Natasha?”

“I do not know Natasha. I have no idea who Natasha is. I do have two things to tell you though. No, three things. I have three things to tell you,” he paused.
            “And they are?”

“One. I appreciate you calling me back and apologizing. You are an upstanding young man for doing so. Two. I do not know anyone by the name of Natasha. And three. There’s a little girl out there with a dog that still needs contacting.”

I almost laughed out loud at this last one. I pictured in my mind an old settler holding a whiskey jug, sitting on the porch complaining about all the little whippersnappers out there these days. Anyone under the age of thirty would by all means be a little boy or a little girl.

“Well thank you, sir,” I replied. “I’m going to do my very best to track her down.”

I felt like I was being sent on mission to find a little girl who ran away from home.

I hung up the phone and had a good laugh, made a few notes in Excel, and then dialed the next number.

“C’mon sweet old lady,” I said aloud, listening to the phone ring.