The formal title of this celebration is “International Day of Veterinary Medicine,” celebrated yearly on December 9. The Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care site says this:
International Day of Veterinary Medicine celebrates those intrepid souls who work hard to keep our animals safe, and are constantly going through ongoing education to stay at the very front of the medicine that will keep our pets alive and healthy for years to come. A special shout-out goes to those who practice exotic animal medicine, learning about critters that are rarely kept as pets.
So here’s a special shout out: I know of only one reader who practices veterinary medicine, and it’s only on exotic animals. She’s Divy Figueroa of Florida (highlighted before in a “photos of readers” feature), who is practice manager and vet tech for a practice that includes her husband, Ivan Alfonso, as the doctor. I asked her for some photos of veterinary medicine in action, and she sent some photos from a recent visit. I also got some earlier photos of Divy with some cool animals. Her narration is indented:
We really don’t have many good photos of us working together, because I’m usually the photographer, and when I’m working hands-on, nobody takes pictures of us.This was a call we had last week in south Florida of an Aldabra tortoise feeling under the weather, so the clients wanted bloodwork. This tortoise weighed between 350-400 lbs, and was not allowing us to grab his tail to draw blood. Though most giant tortoises are turned sideways to draw blood, due to the animal’s history we didn’t do it in this case to avoid stressing him. We had the owner use his forklift to lift the tortoise. My tech steadied the tortoise in the front to prevent him from falling forward, while my husband drew blood and I passed him the necessary blood tubes and collected the blood samples. The tortoise excreted and urinated on him, while flashing his penis to the both of us. It was a tense few minutes, but we got the job done. The screenshot in the second picture is very blurry, but I wanted you to see how we had to elevate the tortoise, and to see that it was no easy feat.
Here are a couple of different pics of me with a cute Geoffrey’s cat [JAC: a kitten getting its checkup] and with a Patagonian Cavy. We had already finished the cavy’s physical (again, we have no pics), but the cavy approached me to tell me all was good. (That client just got some cool, new animals, so we should be visiting them within the next month for an inspection. I’ll take good pics. )
More photos of the kitty are here.
Thanks for the shout out, Jerry! 😊
Keep up the good work, and don’t forget to send us photos!
Lovely little cat. But what do you feed a small wild felid like that?
He feeds her high quality cat food with occasional whole rodents and chicks.
Ah, OK. Thanks!
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in re … … ” are constantly going through ongoing education
to stay at the very front of the medicine, ” these
continuing education credit units in order to renew
a practitioner’s state(s) licenses is not only massively expensive
but also massively time – consuming. Iowa, for decades and decades,
has had t h e most stringent and mandatory ceu requirements:
60 units per q three years’ time.
The state(s)’ license renewal fees are on top of the cost of the units.
One laboratory, say, to learn a new surgery technique can, itself,
cost upwards of $5,000.00 to $10,000.00. Just the learning fee
for the laboratory which many only yield the practitioner five to ten credits.
Then, as well for those few units, there are the lost work days’ $,
the substitute per diem / locum tenems practitioner’s salary,
the childcare $ amounts for several days’ time away, the flight,
the hotel, one’s noms. All of those $ amounts are over and above
malpractice insurance amounts, of course. Cuz, say, suits in re … …
racehorses’ / herds’ alleged unwarranted losses.
What I find soooo, so few folks seem to know: men in droves /
by the thousands never, now, apply to colleges of veterinary medicine.
Class after class after the four years’ of classes are, for decades now,
for at least 30 years’ time now, have overwhelmingly been nearly full up
of students who are women. Large, small, companion, exotic,
any type of animals’ practice. ~85% is the usually quoted percentage
of women who are each class’s applicants to USA’s 27 colleges
of veterinary medicine. Because of its cost. Because of its time commitment. Because of the cost afterwards: all of that time gone from work and / for those ceus.
Correct: veterinarian has to its term … … six. and NOT five, syllables.
IF you apply, you will want to know this fact in re its pronunciation.
You will be asked.
Blue, BSN, DVM, PhD
I remember Divy’s reader photo. Keep up the great work. Hopefully the tortoise ended up being OK. Who doesn’t love giant tortoises?
Thank you Mark! His bloodwork came back unremarkable, so that’s good. I love tortoises, especially the huge ones, but I don’t have the space to keep one.
Thanks for pulling this up. My daughter is a vet. She loves the pets but struggles with many of the owners who think of their pets as cheap toys (Many vets struggle with depression and often leave the profession) . She’s a very highly educated and dedicated doc, and I’m very proud of her. Let’s hear it for all the vets out their who treat pets as well as large animals. 🐈