Bacon

 Winner, Creative Corner
Brendan Batt, Louisiana State University 

There are times in life when it is best to fight your tears, and times when you must let them flow. We carried him in an ice chest from my truck through the house into the back yard, just as we had carried him from the mudboat to the truck, burning with remorse laden with pain; our minds still scorched by the horrible images to which we had paid witness. We sunk shovels into the hard earthen clay. Despite our efforts the digging was slow. It was important to go deep, at least four feet. My throat swelled and took off my shirt striking violently at the walls of the hole beneath me. Tears welled again in my eyes and streamed down my face. My brother’s face was stoic and unchanging, but equally hurt. He seemed to be reflecting on thoughts I was incapable of conjuring in my current state of emotion. I stared up at the sun squinting, clenching my jaws in despair.

 

“Is it our fault?” My brother questioned as he rested his weight upon the handle of the shovel, his head facing down into the grave. His eyes wandered to the ice chest.

 

“No. But there will never be another one like him.”

 

“Best dog ever.”

 

We continued in silence. Sweat mixed with tears and dirt, and in our heads the pain fused with remorse and heartache. When the grave was deep enough we both stared at each other and at the hole. My mother watched from the back porch. Tears had muddled her face.

 

“It’s deep enough.”

 

I walked over to the ice chest and motioned my mom to go inside. My tormented face was enough for her to know she would not want to see this. I flipped the lid back and gently grabbed him under the rib cage, wrapped in my bloody hunting jacket, his cold entrails stuck to my arm. Blood and water dripped from the towel down my chest, collecting in a brown stain on my pants. My brother rushed to help me. We laid him in the hole, his dry tongue hanging out of his mouth, eyes closed. His rich, black fur was caked with blood and dirt. There was nothing of my friend left in the corpse we now laid into the ground. His hind leg distorted, hanging on by tendons, showed bone at the corner of his resting place. I placed a clean towel over his body. My brother began to lay his favorite things beside the body. A training dummy from when he was a puppy, a few of his favorite objects to chew on, some duck wings from the freezer for training, and a Canvasback drake, the king of all waterfowl; we had frozen the bird with the intention of mounting it in the living room, its plumage was immaculate. The beautiful specimen would have looked gorgeous on the wall, but it served its purpose far greater in the tomb of our great friend. A final parting gift. 

 

At this point tears flowed freely from both our faces. We sobbed like children and embraced each other.

 

“ It’s just too goddamn much, I don’t get it….We should have known better.”

 

“Maybe.”

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A Growing Problem: Too Many Veterinarians

Winner, Forum
Shira Rubin, Cornell University 

Forum: "There are proposals/plans for new veterinary education programs in several places including Utah, Arizona, and New York.  There is still controversy over whether there is a shortage or excess of veterinarians to fill the workplace demands.  Weigh in with your opinions, comments, or suggested solutions."

There is ample evidence that there are going to be more veterinarians than jobs for veterinarians in the U.S. in the near future.  With plans for four new veterinary schools in the United States underway or in existence and class sizes increasing at many exisiting US veterinary schools, the number of graduating veterinarians is set to rise, perhaps dramatically.  Combined with the recent American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) accreditation of several overseas veterinary schools and expanding class sizes at Caribbean veterinary schools, this could quickly become a crisis for the American veterinary profession.

 

Although the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC) contends that there will be a shortage of 15,000 veterinarians by 2025, there is little evidence to support such a claim.  In fact, there may be too many veterinarians already, especially in small animal practice.  One indication that the supply for veterinarians has outpaced demand are the results of  the annual survey of employment, starting salaries and educational indebtedness of new graduates from U.S. veterinary medical colleges published by the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA).  Their reports show that since 2010 new graduates have been receiving significantly fewer job offers and the starting salaries of new graduates have gone down.  Even the oft-touted claim that there is a shortage of large animal veterinarians has recently been challenged.  The Association of American Bovine Practitioners (AABP) released a statement in 2011 that, "Continuing to increase the number of veterinarians interested in serving rural areas will not solve this problem. In fact, creating an ‘over supply’ of food-supply veterinarians will lead to widespread unemployment or underemployment of food-supply private practitioners and will have a significant detrimental effect on salaries for all veterinarians."

 

So what are the motivations behind the founding of these new veterinary schools?  And who stands to profit from them?  

 

1.  The developers for the proposed veterinary school in Buffalo, NY won a contest to renovate an abandoned human hospital.   If all goes according to plan, as many as 600 students may be enrolled at the campus within 3-5 years.

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Support for Discrimination and Marginalization? Not Surprising

Op Ed

Sonia Fang, Western University

 

On March 14, dvm360.com posted an article entitled “Minority students report strong support from veterinary schools, but racism and sexism remain, study says”.  The article provided preliminary results from the Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC) climate study conducted by Lisa Greenhill (Associate Executive Director for Institutional Research and Diversity at the AAVMC).  Some of the results included that one in five female veterinary students reported hearing sexist language at their school, and LGBT students reported they did not have a faculty or staff member to confide in at higher rates than those students who did not identify as LGBT.  In response to the article, DVM NewsMagazine published a letter from Dr. Larry Fisher of Topeka, Kansas.

 

I was disappointed and disturbed by the letter printed in DVM NewsMagazine.  On a purely factual level, the statements leveled against LGBT students are not founded in current historical analysis, and the myth that homosexuality has lead to society’s decline has been debunked repeatedly.[1]  Not to mention, even if there were civilizations for which an increase in homosexual activity coincided with a society’s purported decline, there would still be the classic issue of confusing correlation with causation, a definite and basic no-no in evidence-based research.  There isn’t evidence for homosexuality correlating with the destruction of civilizations, much less any research performed demonstrating its causation. 

 

Regardless of the factual inaccuracies, I was taken aback because the printing of this letter was, in itself, telling of the problems that we as LGBT veterinary students face on a systemic level.

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Case Report: Adult Female Bald Eagle

Winner, Abstracts and Cases
Chelsea Anderson, Cornell University

Signalment: Adult Bald Eagle, Female

 

Common problems: Bald eagles do not commonly present to the Wildlife Health Center but most cases have been fractures secondary to trauma or lead toxicity.

 

History and clinical presentation:

This Bald Eagle presented to the Wildlife Health Center on 02/05/2011 after being brought in by a rehabilitator. The eagle was seen walking sternally with its wings folded, down an embankment and across a two-lane road into a bush. Upon presentation the eagle was quiet, alert and responsive and sternally recumbent. On initial evaluation of the legs, the bird was not moving and seemed to have no deep pain when stimulated by hemostats. The cloaca did not have any tone when palpated with forceps. When pressure was applied to the right metatarsal region, the bird reacted appropriately by flapping her wings and moving away from the stimulus. A small wound was seen near the uropygial gland but otherwise the integument was normal. The left leg was slightly abducted away from the body. A small amount of blood was seen in her mouth and on inspection was coagulated in the oral cavity, with a few drops in her glottis. She was weighed at 5.55 kg.

 

Presenting problems:

• Pelvic fracture (left most significant)

• Paraparesis

• Inability to urinate/defecate voluntarily (spinal trauma)

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Breed Specific Legislation

 Winner, Life as a Vet Student Category
Julia Drury, Cornell University

With the arrival of October, a month in which many celebrate Pit bull awareness, it is fitting to discuss Breed Specific Legislation and its affect on the veterinary profession. On March 22, 2012 Massachusetts passed the Bill S.2192 outlining that “no dog shall be deemed dangerous: . . . based solely upon the breed of such dog”. Massachusetts is one of a hand-full of states that has banned breed specific legislation (BSL). The drive behind BSL is that by banning or regulating ownership of certain “dangerous” breeds the number of dog bites and fatalities will decrease. Breeds that are frequently targeted with BSL are Pit Bulls, Rottweiler’s, Chow Chows, and Presa Canarios. The extremes of BSL legislation can be seen in Bermuda and Australia which include banning breeds, force muzzling in public, posting “beware dangerous dog” signs on the property, and banning importation of specified restricted breeds.

There is no scientific evidence that breed specific legislation is effective in reducing the number of dog bites or fatalities in communities. Rather, it places the blame of aggressive behavior on the dog breed instead of on the owner and does not address the fact that a dog of any breed can become dangerous when improperly trained or trained to be aggressive. We have all met, owned, or treated wonderful canine citizens that are pit bulls, chows, and Rottweiler’s. 

So how do we as veterinary professionals promote safety in our communities and decrease dog bites without demonizing certain breeds?

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