CREATIVE CORNER

Submitted by Savannah Schneider, Washington State University

Pandemic Perseverance

Category: Foot in Mouth Disease

Submission by: Priya Allen

This summer, I participated in research through the VSP program at NC State. I was super thankful for the opportunity to continue research despite COVID-19! We had to turn away from our original research project and instead do a totally virtual project- a prevalence study on lymphatic issues of horses. It was very fun! I learned a lot about study design, customer outreach/survey participant marketing, and data analysis. We made a video for horse owner education and as a shareable way to advertise the survey and solicit more participation. Making the video combined research skills of survey design with creativity of producing a video and veterinary skills of client education. It was a lot of fun! The other really awesome part about my experience is that it led to a business internship with a veterinary start up company called Vetletics. My classmate and fellow researcher started the company to produce a novel compression device that helps with lymphatic drainage issues in horses. I am getting invaluable experience in the ins and outs of start up company business skills, customer discovery, client education, and get to participant in leading edge, new veterinary medical technology! I'm extremely thankful that there are still valuable opportunities in the midst of COVID. I am also so impressed with the resiliency, versatility, and diverse career potential that is found in veterinary medicine. It makes me so excited to be studying veterinary medicine, whether I go into private practice, research, or business!

Creative Creatures

Congratulations to Daniela Hojda of Cornell University, one of our Creativity Corner winners, on her amazing artwork!  Realism is absolutely your strong suit!  We are sure that your future patients would love to be the subject of your next piece!

Icelandic Beauty

Thank you to Lisa Weikert, our first Volume 55, Issue 4 winner, for her photography submission!  We love that you were able to capture the bright colors and raw beauty of nature!

"If you hear hoofbeats, don’t immediately think zebras!"

Have a laugh with Lili Becktell from Cornell University… I think we all have been there!

I enthusiastically began the summer by diving headfirst into a series of equine externships all over the USA.  At my second externship of the summer, I was working with a clinic that serviced mainly upper-level hunter/jumper clientele. This particular day, we were performing our weekly visit to a large show barn in the area, where on any given day the veterinarians would evaluate and perform joint injections for up to 30 horses.  One of the clinic owners, the current intern, the barn owner, and I were watching horses go when the next patient arrived: an unassuming grey mare that was very visibly lame. I was very nervous and wanted to make a good impression, so I began to note in my head all of the things I was seeing (Namely: “OK—the horse is lame—check.”). The intern began her physical, at which point I was asked to retrieve the hoof testers from the truck. I ran quickly across the property and back only to arrive, winded, to the sight of the two veterinarians and the barn owner impassively standing in a line and observing me.

           “Lili, why don’t you take a look at that mare and tell me what’s causing her lameness?” encouraged the head veterinarian.

           I immediately wondered if the jog across the farm in the heat hadn’t caused me to black out somewhere, and when they inevitably found my body and revived me I’d be babbling something about being asked to evaluate a lameness with only two years of vet school under my belt. When the expectant silence didn’t go away (and no one came to splash water on me), I realized that this was reality. In front of everyone, I, Lili Becktell, was being asked to evaluate someone’s lame horse. Yikes.

           Swallowing my fear, I performed what may well have been the most beautiful, thorough, graceful musculoskeletal exam of my life. I imagined angels singing, birds chirping, my professors (dressed in togas) descending from Cornell-colored clouds, holding OSCE clipboards, praising me. Except—I couldn’t find a darn thing wrong with the horse. Not one. I prodded, poked, shifted her weight, palpated, checked all the feet, and finally looked up at the head vet, stumped.

           “I’m sorry, but I just don’t know what’s going on. She doesn’t seem sore anywhere,” I said, eyeing the horse. She eyed me back, annoyed to be out of her stall.

           The head veterinarian smiled kindly, put his hand on my shoulder, and pointed to the foot I’d just put down.

           “Ah, yes, well. She’s missing a shoe.”

           And that, everyone, is how I learned the old veterinary adage: “If you hear hoofbeats, don’t immediately think zebras.” Unless, of course, the zebras are missing a shoe.