Sat in our equine lectures so far, I’ve found myself dozing off a little. Not because of the morning-after headache following one of Glasgow’s vet school socials, or from utter boredom, but because I already knew a lot of it.
The Manual of Horsemanship (14th Edition)
Yes, I’ve had my own horse and have been riding since I was 11, but I think the real culprit is The Pony Club. Years of Pony Club badges, efficiency tests and stable management sessions at camp had obviously made a lasting impression.
It’s only now, at university, that I’m beginning to appreciate just how much has sunk in over the years. From simple things like the difference between hay and haylage, to the less fundamental like laminitis and strangles – The Pony Club has taught me so much. The best part is that it rarely felt like an effort because of the friends I made and because I always had so much fun at the same time.
Not only did I pick up horsemanship knowledge, but also invaluable skills like being tested orally and having to think on your feet.
There are no written examinations in The Pony Club. The efficiency tests – which higher up can be regarded the same levels as the British Horse Society stages – require a riding and stable management element. In both, you are asked to demonstrate or explain things. Without realising it, by the time I got to the B Test, I was able to talk confidently to an examiner about all aspects of horse owning, riding or the industry in general.
Over the years, I’d also gotten roped into the team Stable Management competition, which took a similar format to the efficiency tests but required you to work as a team of three to carry out practical skills as well as discuss answers. Aside from teamwork, I’d picked up how to effectively bandage for different situations, comprehensive first aid and nutrition – all useful for a prospective vet.
I think The Pony Club has been invaluable and is a fantastic way for children of all ages to learn about the beautiful animals they ride, whether they end up having a career involving them or not. While sat in the vet school library the other day, I noticed a very old copy of The Pony Club’s Manual of Horsemanship on the shelves. I couldn’t help but smile to myself.
A week before the December exams, I found myself making the five-hour train journey south to not-so-sunny Leicestershire for the first time since I left for uni in September.
This wasn’t because I couldn’t stand being away from the horses for a minute longer (though it was starting to get that way), but because I wanted to go back for the funeral of a family friend. These things happen, and I continued to revise for the exams while back at home.
For most of us at vet school, everything we’d done beforehand was aimed at getting in. Studying, sports, work experience. Most of us were good at what we did, going above and beyond our past classmates. To get into vet school, we were pretty much top of the class. To us, anything lower than an A was catastrophic. We had to be the best to have the chance of even getting an interview.
Now, with our first exams looming, for the first time, the possibility of failure had become a very real thing. The sheer amount of information we’ve been cramming into our heads since the start of term couldn’t possibly be remembered, could it? We’d heard the scare stories from the second years:
“Nobody passes all of the December exams.”
“You’re lucky if you get 40%.”
Here, we were on the level playing field of a whole new ball game. I think we’d all tried to mentally prepare ourselves for the worst over the coming week.
Was this just the start of the possibility of failure though? In practice, it is by no means always possible to cure the animal put in front of you. Whether that’s because it’s not possible to provide a diagnosis or treatment because we don’t know enough about the condition, because the disease process is too far along, or because of economical limitation, the fact remains the same. We will have to accept that we cannot do everything for every animal we are presented with in the coming years.
However, just because we may not succeed, we have not necessarily failed.
“If a nerve is squashed, it’s not too serious, it goes back to normal. If the nerve is severed or torn, the cow will be lame for a long time – the prognosis is bad.”
That made me sit up a little straighter than normal for a Monday morning lecture.
During my riding accident, I squashed part of my sciatic nerve (it was “stuck” on something, my doctors told me). Of all the injuries I sustained, that was by far the most painful and most long-term. Within a couple of months, I regained most of the movement in my foot, but the pain didn’t stop then.
Nerve pain is unlike other pain; it’s a stinging, hot pins-and-needles, burning, tingling, throbbing and above all persistent pain. There’s no escaping it… except for the appropriate nerve painkillers. It’s difficult to describe, and incomparable.
Now, a year-and-a-half later, I’m still on the painkillers, which is not unusual – I’ve lost count of the number of times doctors have told me nerves take the longest to heal.
So, how can we possibly hope to understand what an animal is going through? Or even, for that matter, whether they are in pain at all? Perhaps slight nerve damage doesn’t seem so serious because the cow can still move almost normally. But how are we to know that the cow is not experiencing that excruciating, burning pins-and-needles sensation?
In farm practice, I suppose the general consensus would be that if the cow’s value decreases and it’s cheaper to euthanise it, then so be it. But what if it were a horse or dog with sciatic nerve damage? Would we go as far as to operate on the damaged nerve (as mine was) or are there nerve-painkillers currently available for animals?
How do we know how long the animal is in pain or discomfort for? My foot doesn’t hurt anymore, but it’s still hypersensitive, so I don’t like people touching it, etc. I would assume nerve tissue in animals takes as long to heal as it does in us. Does that mean these injured animals are suffering, though perhaps on a slightly lower key basis than initially, for longer than we realise?
We can’t possibly experience every type of pain or ailment that an animal might have, so we may not always understand why something hurts or indeed where that pain is coming from (although the pain is in my foot – the damage is at the knee). But all we can do is try to use the resources available to us to do the best for the animals under our care.
As with any condition in veterinary medicine, it comes down to the fact animals can’t speak to us, and we must not forget that.
In anatomy, we have the ongoing debate about whether we need to use the anatomical names for bones or the “common” equivalent. Though we are examined only on the anatomical terms, how important is it to be aware of the others?
Credit: Owain Davies
“In the distal limb, we have the third metacarpal bone, proximal, middle and distal phalanges and the proximal and distal sesamoids.”
Imagine saying that to a horsey client. You’d probably receive a blank look.
Horsey translation: “Cannon bone, long pastern bone, short pastern bone, pedal bone, navicular bone and sesamoids.”
Now the client more than likely has a rough idea of what you’re going on about.
The importance of being able to relate the different terms is not only essential to the client-vet relationship, but also to your credibility. If someone were to ask about swelling around the cannon bone, and you only know it as the third metacarpal, things become somewhat awkward.
Perhaps it comes down to experience. Those of us from horsey backgrounds take things like that for granted. But it’s not just names of bones. I’m sure during our clinical years, we will learn about equine exertional rhabdomyolysis. Again, a horse owner probably won’t have a clue what that is. Mention azoturia, tying up or Monday morning disease, and you’re now on the same page.
Although anatomical names are “correct”, I feel that the importance of common names is paramount, and this should be emphasised more to us as students.
As vet students, welfare is always being rammed down our throats – and rightly so (even after only two weeks of first year). As future veterinary professionals it will be part of our job to ensure the welfare of the animals entrusted to our care.
Deciding what is “the right thing” to do can often be tricky, as there is never a straight black and white answer. Knowing whether an animal’s welfare is at risk is often down to individual opinion and, therefore, relies on experience.
There is a famous quotation: “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
I believe this applies to evaluating welfare. Often, from the outside, without understanding the reasons behind particular procedures or practices, it’s easy to think from a first impression that something is cruel or unnecessary. But, in reality, there is usually a good reason for these practices, particularly in the production industry.
In one welfare lecture, we were made to believe that keeping sows in farrowing crates was cruel. The sow has little room to lie down, she can’t turn round and may bite the bars of the crate in frustration, resulting in mouth sores. But what about the piglets she is about to farrow? It is their welfare that is protected by keeping her in the crate. The crate prevents her rolling on them, allowing them to suckle without the danger of getting squashed. What good is giving a sow more room if it results in half a litter of dead piglets?
A humane twitch: a useful aid for difficult horses, especially when clipping around horse’s head and performing other ‘frightening’ tasks.
On the same note, coming from a pig farming background, I have seen pigs kept in pens of about five, instead of staying in the open pen, opting themselves to lie in the feeding crates if they’ve been left open (not at feeding time). Confining a pig to a small space may seem cruel from the outside, but is it really, when the pigs will lie in feeding crates out of choice, probably to keep cool and avoid fighting with the others in the pen?
Another example of a misunderstood practice is twitching a horse. Twitches may be made of rope or metal, and can look horrific when being used, since they are twisted tightly around the horse’s muzzle.
An outsider would not understand that the twitch is designed to pinpoint a pressure point that induces release of endorphins. Consequently, this calms the horse and is a very useful technique when the horse is being difficult to handle during clipping or other veterinary procedures, and avoids the use of sedatives.
Assessment of welfare is very much based on individual opinion. Personally, I have had little experience with dairy farming so might at first think that some procedures are cruel when I set out on EMS in the summer. But it’s important to remember to stand back and understand the reasoning behind the actions of those who handle the animals every day before prejudging an establishment based on what you see or think you are seeing to begin with.
Is choosing a fully tracked degree like putting all your eggs in one basket?
Earlier this week, I was asked my opinion on the proposal of “tracked” veterinary degrees.
All the time, the bigwigs are trying to think of innovative ways to change veterinary education to produce the best prepared graduates they can for the big wide world. The new idea compromises the suggestion of either “partially tracked” or “fully tracked” degrees.
Partial tracking would involve allowing students to take an elective to allow them to focus on a particular species or discipline. A multi-species exam would be taken and graduates would still qualify to practise in all species.
Fully tracked degrees would mean not all areas of veterinary medicine were covered during the course; the students would choose to study a limited number of species and would take an exam specific to their choice. Therefore, graduates would only be able to practise in the area or species they qualified for.
There are obviously advantages and disadvantages for both ideas. Partial tracking would allow students to take an interest in one area more than others, but still keep their options open on graduation. A possible downside would depend on the proportion of the course that is elective. If choosing to study to a greater depth in one species or discipline would become detrimental to the rest of their studies, then would it just result in the production of students who are slightly stronger in one area but considerably weaker in the other aspects of the profession?
At first, fully tracking seems like a fantastic idea – graduates would be very knowledgeable in their field of qualification. They would be highly specialised and so extremely valuable to the field into which they wish to proceed.
But what if they changed their minds? Currently, it doesn’t matter if you start your veterinary degree thinking you’d like to be a farm vet but finish it thinking you never want to see a cow again. Taking a fully tracked degree would mean you’d be stuck with the path you chose – and how would a vet ever go into mixed practice if this were the case?
I think there is a lot of debate yet to be had on this subject. Personally, as a student, I wouldn’t choose to fully track because I wouldn’t want to have to put all my eggs in one basket just yet. Partially tracking at the later stages of the course could be beneficial though, when we all have a better idea of where we’d like to end up.
I think it’s fair to say I have a less than conventional pre-veterinary school story. In early 2011, after years of working hard at school, gathering experience at different animal establishments and doing regular work experience at a nearby practice, I finally received an offer for veterinary school.
Student blogger Jordan Sinclair.
All I had to do was get the right grades in my final A-Level exams that summer. Or so I thought. In March, a horse I’d been exercising had other ideas.
One moment I was mounting in a car park at a showjumping competition; the next thing I knew, I was waking up in hospital 10 days later.
Involuntary gap year
Despite 12 broken ribs, a punctured lung, a collapsed lung, a broken clavicle and nerve damage, I was still determined to go to the University of Glasgow that year. After a month, I came out of hospital and soon realised I couldn’t fight the sleepy side effects of the morphine long enough to pick up a book, let alone try to catch up with the schoolwork I’d missed.
Glasgow were fantastic – I remember mum being on the phone trying to explain the situation, while I tried to gauge the response from half the conversation. They would not only allow me to defer, but told her I needed to, in order to guarantee full physical fitness for the start of the course.
So what did I do with my involuntary gap year? I spent quite a lot of it recovering. The Air Ambulance Service saved my life by operating at the scene of the accident, and since it is a charity, I started volunteering and fund-raising for it.
When I was well enough, I rode again. Over Christmas, I visited family in Australia and, while I wasn’t allowed to scuba dive due to the previously collapsed lung, nothing was stopping me snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef. I then returned to school to finish my A-Levels.
The long journey begins
Finally, after seeing my friends go through it the previous year, results day came. And so began the mad rush to kit up for veterinary school; books, wellies, overalls and goodness knows what else were gathered up and rammed into the car. Unfortunately, my horse wouldn’t fit in the boot, and I heard cats weren’t permitted in halls. So, petless and not knowing what to expect, I started the long journey north.
I thought A-levels were hard; veterinary school is a whole new ball game. You know it’s not going to be easy when even working out your timetable is almost impossible. It was equally daunting to see the proportions of internationals and postgraduates who all seemed to know everything compared to us Brits, who were fresh(ish) out of school.
One moment I was at a showjumping competition, the next I was waking up in hospital.
Anatomy was like learning a new language, with hundreds of obscure words being thrown at you in one lecture; in a whole sentence, the only recognisable words could be “the” or “and”.
Dissections took some getting used to, when you’ve only ever observed surgery and never actually made contact with a cadaver before. However, after a couple of weeks you can actually visualise where everything is and things start to slot into place.
A whole new world
For those not from farming backgrounds (I’m not sure what I consider myself – my horses were kept on a pig farm), husbandry was a whole new world. We all have varying degrees of experience in some area of farming or animal care, otherwise we wouldn’t be here, but trying to learn a lifetimes worth of experience in keeping sheep from someone in six hours seemed crazy. Now, it’s easy to see the importance of preclinical EMS – you can’t learn everything from a book. Though it is good to take a break from bookwork and head out to the uni farm for handling sessions every so often.
After my riding accident, I was given a CD with all of my radiographs and CT scan pictures on. Although the idea of having my own x-rays was novel, aside from seeing the obvious snap in the collar bone, they meant very little. After being shown an example of a radiograph showing the collapsed lung in a dog in the first couple of weeks at Glasgow, I went back to my stashed away x-rays. To my delight, I could see things more clearly, although did find it odd being able to understand how smashed up my insides had been. So far, the CT pictures still remain a mystery though.
I’m not sure if the beginning of vet school is what I expected or not. In some respects, it seems very real now, with professionalism being drummed into us from the outset. And in others, it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel from here.
