Do you want to be a vet?

[wolfsoul]

Originally posted by luckies4me
There are similar classes you can take that last about 6 months but you are not a full fledged tech, more like a licensed assistant.

Ooh, do they do the same things a regular vet tech does?

[luckies4me]

Originally posted by wolfsoul
Ooh, do they do the same things a regular vet tech does?

They do but their schooling is all lab work, and they don't get hands on experience.

[CathyBogart]

I used to want to be a vet, but I couldn't deal with irresponsible owners. I already barely tolerate them at work. I'm going into herpetology and hopefully herp rescue!

I have a reptile sanctuary all thought out in my mind, now I have to make it work...

[tikeyas_mom]

I used to want to be a vet tech for over 4 years!! but recently I have desovered my love for dog training and now I am going to be attending college for it .. I cant wait..

[zanzanfergie]

Originally posted by cali
wolfsoul I live in a provence with one of the vet schools and you certainly dont need straight A's! the university with the vet school in it cam,e to my school for a presentation I have the requirments for the school on the table, just a sec..
ok you need at least a 70% in these subjects:
a grade 12:an english 30A, and englich 30B, and a math 30A all of which are requirments to graduate anyway, and you need a bio 30, and a chem 30. just maintain a 70% average in those subjects and you can get in. anyway thats off topic.

Oh I want to live in CANADA! Here the enter score is 99.4% into the selective veterinary science courses, and I'm working my derriere off to earn those sweet sweet As. Plus there are the subjects, that can sometimes get like wet sand to wade through (chemistry, physics and biology oh my! LOL Kate )

Yes I want to be a vet, and have all my life. In June I did my work experience at a vets, and despite a short (very embarrassing) fainting incident in the surgery theatre it was wonderful, and confirmed that this is my chosen career.

As for the discussion on putting animals to sleep...well, while I was doing work experience two dogs were put to sleep. Mostly, I was just surprised at how quietly they go, and how peaceful it. Yes, I cried a bit. But like Luckies said...if I knew it was for the good, and it was putting the animal to a more peaceful place, out of fear and pain...then I think I could do it.

[wolfsoul]

Originally posted by zanzanfergie

As for the discussion on putting animals to sleep...well, while I was doing work experience two dogs were put to sleep. Mostly, I was just surprised at how quietly they go, and how peaceful it. Yes, I cried a bit. But like Luckies said...if I knew it was for the good, and it was putting the animal to a more peaceful place, out of fear and pain...then I think I could do it.

I;d be able to do it if the animal was suffering. But otherwise...

I watched a movie that showed tons of animals being PTS. I never knew they shuddered before they collapsed. It was terrible.

[veegan]

"I never knew they shuddered before they collapsed. It was terrible."

hmm, well Ive never seen an animal be PTS, but I know at work when we sedate animals most of the time they shake because their muscles are getting weak and they are fighting off the sleep.

[CamCamPup33]

Yes, i do want to become a vet, have been ever since the early ages! Then i went through a phase where i wanted to ^rescue^ animals by being an animal precinct officer.. BUT now i think i want to help them get better instead of see them as worse.. I really am looking into junior vet tech programs they have here.. Unfortunately they dont have anything like julie has at her school in my school.. But yes i do plan on become a vet

[wolfsoul]

They have health science at my school. You need to hand in a resume and everything. I was thinking of going into it, but realized that I'd have to disect a rat at some point.

[GoldenRetrLuver]

Originally posted by CamCamPup33
really am looking into junior vet tech programs they have here.. Unfortunately they dont have anything like julie has at her school in my school.. But yes i do plan on become a vet

That's too bad. There's only a few in my area. My high school is about 45 minutes away, and I have to take the bus. I wouldn't have even thought of going there, it is wasn't for the "vet program".

[Kater]

Originally posted by wolfsoul
They have health science at my school. You need to hand in a resume and everything. I was thinking of going into it, but realized that I'd have to disect a rat at some point.

Just so you know for future classes and training, dissection is something you can opt out of if you go about it in the right way. I will include links to some helpful websites and any of you that think dissection is necessary for your career and education can look at them and realize that we have a choice.... conscientious objection! I for one will never dissect any creature needlessly. It is an outdated and CRUEL technique and I cannot see its place in classrooms in this day and age!

LINKS

Conscientious Objection Resources:
http://avar.org/avar_a_knight_book.html

Conscientious Objection to Using Animals: http://www.interniche.org/conshi.html

Humane Students: http://www.humanestudent.org/

Conscientious Objection in the Classroom - Colleges and Universities: http://www.pcrm.org/issues/Animal_Ex...ernatives.html

Conscientious Objection in the Classroom - Elementary and Secondary Schools: http://www.pcrm.org/issues/Animal_Ex...ernatives.html

And these are just the tip of the iceberg! There is more information about conscientious objectionon all over the web!

I also know someone personally who is very involved in conscientious objection and I think he would be happy to answer via e-mail any questions any of you might have.
Andrew Knight – [email protected]

Those who truly love animals should never be dissuaded from the careers that help them!!!

[veegan]

wow thats really awesome kate. im glad you posted all that info! i was wondering about it myself. Ive had to disect in several classes throughout middle & high school. I know I will never dissect ever again. not even a poor little wormy. :'( at my community college the biology class has to dissect cats!!!! *sob* it just breaks my heart to think they do that. ugh. its so disgusting.

[wolfsoul]

Thanks for yoru response Kate. I actually tried to make a petiton against dissecting on the internet but it didn't work. Maybe I'll start a new website and just get people to sign my guestbook.

This year we are supposed to dissect a rat, a pig, a mussel, some starfish thing, and a grasshopper. The rat and the pig will be the difficult ones for me. What's really stupid and that sickens me, is that I'll fail the entire thing if I'm not in the room watching my partner dissect. So, what does she want me to do; stand there crying my eyes out, being forced to watch poor little babies being ripped open and having their insides played with for nothing but -- uhhh...there is no reason to do that! The rats they will be dissecting an entire week. I'm incredibly biased because I have rats...And it makes it even worse because they are my own. I HATE school.

[Kater]

I just read some *FABULOUS* news about UC Davis. Read on......

Vet classes at UC Davis no longer fatal for lab animals
By Cynthia Hubert -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 a.m. PST Monday, November 10, 2003

Veterinary students at the University of California, Davis, no longer will perform fatal operations on dogs and cats from the Sacramento County animal shelter, ending a controversial practice that has existed for decades.

The College of Veterinary Medicine is making significant changes in its surgical training program in response to concerns by students, advocates and members of the general public, officials said.

Dogs and cats from the shelter still will be used to teach students surgical techniques, including spay and neuter procedures, but healthy animals no longer will be purchased from the county, used as training tools and then killed, they said.

The change illustrates a shifting philosophy about the ways in which creatures are used in veterinary training around the country, and represents a major victory for local advocates who have pushed for an end to the use of pound animals in terminal procedures at UC Davis.

"This is a very important step in the right direction," said Teri Barnato of the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights in Davis. "We have been working on this for years. We think it's fantastic."

UC Davis, like most of the nation's 28 veterinary programs, has long looked to shelters to acquire animals used in surgical training, said John Pascoe, the school's executive associate dean and a professor of surgery. But over the years, the practice has become increasingly controversial, particularly when healthy dogs and cats, many of them former pets, are killed in the interest of education.

Currently, Sacramento County's shelter is the only one in the state that allows the practice known as pound seizure. In addition to selling hundreds of animals per year to UC Davis for about $75 each, the county also has provided a much-smaller number of creatures to Sutter Medical Center for training purposes.

"It's totally inappropriate," said Jennifer Fearing of United Animal Nations, based in Sacramento. "These are animals that once were pets. If we cannot find a good home for them, they deserve the quickest and most painless end to their lives. Picking them up, putting them on a truck and driving them across the causeway so that they can have procedures done on them and then be killed is not the answer. I honestly would much prefer that they have a humane death at the shelter."

Others have argued that the practice, backed by the Board of Supervisors, is acceptable given the fact that thousands of unwanted shelter animals must be killed every year anyway for lack of room.

Pat Claerbout, director of Sacramento County's Department of Animal Care and Regulation, which operates the shelter, was reluctant to address the issue.

"The fact is that we wouldn't even have to think about this if people would just spay and neuter their animals," she said. "We have a major overpopulation problem."

More than a decade ago, partially in response to student discomfort, the UC Davis veterinary school stopped requiring courses that involved "terminal surgeries" on animals, Pascoe said. Students who opted out of those courses performed only "survival" surgeries, in which animals were treated and returned to the shelter, and worked on cadaver animals.

But the school continued to offer an elective course in which ultimately fatal operations were performed on healthy animals that were considered "unadoptable" by the county shelter.

That practice has been halted, and the school has made other changes as well, Pascoe said.

In addition to spaying and neutering animals from shelters in Sacramento, Solano and Yolo counties, the school's new surgical training program will include providing broader treatments for the creatures, including treating wounds, repairing fractured bones and removing foreign objects. Animals will be returned to the shelter after they heal, Pascoe said.

UC Davis also hopes to forge alliances with area veterinarians for referrals of animals whose owners cannot afford costly private treatments, allowing students to operate on those animals at a discounted price, he said. The university is looking for funding to build an endowment for that program.

"I think we're gaining a whole lot," Pascoe said of the new teaching plan. "I think we'll get much better quality veterinarians in terms of surgical training, and it's good for the community as well. It's the right thing to do, and we think it will be a model for others around the country."

With the changes, UC Davis becomes one of only "four or five" veterinary schools in the nation that have stopped "detrimental use" of small animals, said Lara Rasmussen, a veterinarian and animal advocate who teaches at a new school in Pomona.

Rasmussen, who graduated from UC Davis in 1993, said the changes are overdue.

"Using live animals in training veterinarians is crucially important," Rasmussen said. "But it's not necessary to harm them or kill them in the process."

Rasmussen's school, Western University of Health Sciences, is an independent, nonprofit institution that has adopted a "reverence for life" philosophy emphasizing compassion toward animals used in veterinary education.

Western University's students train on live animals but never perform "terminal" procedures, she said. The school teaches students to perform surgeries as painlessly as possible. Students and staff members do outreach work, seeking sick and injured animals from area shelters as well as pets of impoverished people, seniors and housebound residents, to use in training
programs.

"It's a moral development issue," said Rasmussen, the school's director of surgery. "It's very difficult to create an empathetic, compassionate health-care provider when you are asking people to kill something and just forget about it."

In the early 1990s, Rasmussen was among a vocal group of UC Davis students who spoke out against the practice and refused to perform terminal surgeries.

"I found it shocking and bitterly ironic that you struggle to get into veterinary school to help animals, and on the very first day you walk into an anatomy cooler and there are hundreds of animals stacked like cordwood or hanging from the ceiling on hooks, all of which have been killed in the name of education," she said. "Those animals are pound animals. To treat them like that is just wrong."

The Bee's Cynthia Hubert can be reached at (916) 321-1082 or [email protected]

http://www.sacbee.com/content/lifest...-8700024c.html

[GoldenRetrLuver]

Thanks for pointing me to this.
That's GREAT news! But...I don't see how they could do something so horrible like that in the first place. I realize it's for training purposes, but it's not right at all. Don't veterinarians want to END suffering of animals in the painless way possible? Not cause it...
I'm relieved to hear they decided to stop.