Serving A Country’s Military DogsMarch 22, 2012 Sara Rose Knox, DVM, says she has the best of both worlds being a captain in the Army Veterinary Corps. She has always enjoyed working with animals and she knew early on she wanted to combine that with the military. “There is no Ground Hog Day being a veterinarian in the Army, especially in a deployed environment,” she says. “Every day is different. You never know what’s going to walk through the door.” SaraRose Knox, DVM, is a captain in the Army Veterinary Corps. Dr. Knox is deployed in Afghanistan, where she cares for military working dogs. Tours are generally about a year and there is typically one veterinarian at each base, she says. Knox’s responsibilities include preventive, medical and emergency care as well as processing dogs entering or leaving the country. She also works with health care providers and emergency medical personnel in teaching emergency canine trauma care classes. This includes teaching military handlers basic canine first aid, such as bandaging and stabilizing fractures. In addition, Knox deals with public health issues, such as rabies prevention, and helps with food inspection. Knox, along with a team, helps make …
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Having The Heart For Veterinary CardiologyNovember 30, 2011 Michele—pronounce that Ma-KAY-lee—Borgarelli, DVM, Ph.D., Dipl. ECVIM (cardiology), has been studying cardiovascular disease in dogs for more than 15 years. Most of his studies and research have been in Italy, his home country, but he now resides in the U.S. and is an associate professor of cardiology at Kansas State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “People should know that cardiovascular disease in small animals is very common but they are not terminal diseases,” Dr. Borgarelli said. “With the available treatment today we are able to manage patients and we can provide them a good quality of life for a long time.” Borgarelli has a string of research studies under his belt. For instance, during a period of five years, Borgarelli and his research team conducted two population studies involving more than 300 dogs. One, published in 2008, involved dogs that had mitral valve disease at different stages. Another study involved dogs with the mild form of the disease. Borgarelli expects this study to be published shortly. “Dr. Borgarelli has contributed substantially in the field of veterinary cardiology in many ways,” said Jens Haggstrom, DVM, Ph.D., Dipl. ECVIM (cardiology), professor of internal medicine at the Department of …
The Road To IndiaNovember 3, 2011 When British veterinarian Jack Reece, B.V.Sc., M.R.C.V.S., first arrived in Jaipur, India, in the late 1990s for what was to be a brief volunteer stay, he couldn’t help but notice the dogs. They were everywhere—sleeping on piles of building materials or sand, rooting through rubbish, lying by the side of the road or in the medians of city streets. “It’s not something that we are used to seeing in the West,” Dr. Reece says. “But these are not abandoned pets; they are not dumped animals. These are dogs that are born, live, mate and die, all on the streets.” Jaipur still has street dogs today, but their population is smaller, healthier and more stable—thanks in large part to Reece and the Indian charity he has worked for during most of the past 12 years, Help in Suffering. The HIS spaying and vaccination program has shrunk the number of street dogs, improved their quality of life and sharply reduced the number of dog bites and rabies cases in humans. And as the program’s manager, Reece, 49, has established himself and HIS as authorities on the humane management of street animal populations in developing countries, despite limited resources …
Practicing HolisticOctober 27, 2011 In the early ’90s, Judy Morgan, DVM, walked into a continuing education course about veterinary orthopedic manipulation and immediately thought she’d made a mistake. Many attendees were not veterinarians, but chiropractors. The opening lecture was about chiropractic adjustments. Dr. Morgan had signed up for the course because she had a colleague who did a lot of orthopedic surgery and she wanted to help with post-surgical rehabilitation. But as a traditional veterinarian, in conventional practice since 1984, she scoffed. This had to be quackery. She would have left, without even hearing him out, but another side of her practical nature won out. “I’d already paid for the course,” says Morgan, who owns Clayton Veterinary Associates in Clayton, N.J. “So I stayed.” What she thought was a mistake turned out to be career-changing. When Morgan got home, she decided to try out the technique. Her mother’s standard schnauzer had so much pain, she could no longer climb into the car. With her mother’s blessing, she tried an adjustment and then led the dog into the garage. “Not only did the dog jump into the car, but then she started jumping from the front to the back, …
Fighting The Battle Of The BulgeAugust 8, 2011 Around 2004, every time Ernie Ward, DVM, found himself among a group of fellow lecturers at a veterinary conference, he’d bring up the same topic: Had anybody noticed how many overweight animals they were seeing in their practices? The question always drew a few jokes. “Oh, look, the skinny vegetarian wants to talk about fat cats,” Dr. Ward recalls—but nobody ever seemed to take the question seriously, despite Ward’s persistence. It might have gone nowhere, except that one day a friend issued a challenge: Quit talking about obese pets and do something about it. So he did. In 2005, Ward, now 44, founded the nonprofit Association for Pet Obesity Prevention. Among other things, the organization helped launch an annual pet-obesity awareness day, and an annual survey that this year suggested that more than half of American dogs and cats were overweight or obese. This data has helped focus national attention on the problem, including high-profile coverage in such media outlets as The Wall Street Journal. “There are just a handful of people who have no additional training beyond veterinary school, who don’t pursue specialized clinical research, who still become hugely impactful in veterinary medicine,” says Steve …
Caring For CatsJune 22, 2011 Right after graduating from Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine in 1990, Elizabeth J. Colleran, DVM, MS, set out on the typical small-animal career path. She did an internal medicine internship, then went to work for a mixed practice, caring for dogs, cats and the occasional bird. Right away, she saw some problems—or rather, some opportunities. “I came to see that cats were really underserved, and, in many respects, misunderstood,” says Dr. Colleran, 59. “I worked where there were barking dogs everywhere, and where there wasn’t great ventilation, and when cats came in, they freaked out.” That made Colleran think that the way to structure her own practice would be to create a separate specialized facility where cats could receive care in a less stressful setting. Cat Advocate Colleran joined the American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP) and began meeting other veterinarians who specialized in caring for cats. Finally, in 1998, she opened the Chico (Calif.) Hospital for Cats. She now also owns the Cat Hospital of Portland (Ore.). Elizabeth J. Colleran, DVM, MS Along the way, she became not only a passionate advocate for better veterinary care …
Changing The Face Of Veterinary OncologyJune 3, 2011 In late 2007, just as the Great Recession began to roll across the country, Mona Rosenberg, DVM, Dipl. ACVIM (Oncology), started seeing a difference in business at her Veterinary Cancer Group in Southern California, which comprises four clinics. Fewer people were coming through the door. And of those who did, fewer were opting to follow standard of care. Instead, more were choosing minimalist, less-expensive treatments. To Dr. Rosenberg, who founded her clinic as a one-person shop in 1992 and grew it into what may be the largest veterinary oncology practice in the U.S., this posed two major challenges: how to keep the business healthy and how to keep giving cancer-stricken animals and their owners the care they sought and deserved. A New Approach The answer, she soon realized, was to operate the clinics as she always had—just a little more creatively. For clients limited by money but wanting the best care for their pets, she and her staff suggested new ideas. Was there a clinical trial where they could get treatment essentially for free? Was there an outside financing plan to explore? Could they devise a less-expensive treatment plan that could deliver results similar to …
Doing The Right Thing For AnimalsApril 21, 2011 The little red heeler had a bowel obstruction and had crawled off into a ditch to die. By the time her owners found her and took her to Robin Downing, DVM, they feared that the veterinarian could do little but put her down. This was in the late ’80s, in rural Wyoming, a time and place where neither surgical specialists nor pain medication were much in vogue in veterinary medicine. At the time, “Anesthesia was considered mostly for the purpose of restraining animals, and pain management was not emphasized,” says Dr. Downing, CVA, CCRP, CPE, Dipl. AAPM. “In fact, in veterinary school, we were taught to fear morphine, because we were taught that it could cause respiratory depression and death. We weren’t taught the nuances of using (morphine).” But Downing knew she could save the dog, if she could control her pain. Even as a young vet, she says, she had observed a hard truth: “Unmedicated pain kills.” She consulted a client who was a medical doctor and general surgeon. He coached her through performing anesthesia and bowel surgery, and then how to manage pain through recovery. Two weeks later, the heeler was back to …
A Career Devoted To PestsApril 18, 2011As a young, perhaps slightly naïve graduate student, Michael Dryden, DVM, MS, PhD, began his work in parasitology at Purdue University in 1986 expecting that he would immediately be plugged into an existing structure of sophisticated research. Instead, his professor, S. Gaafar, DVM, PhD, gave him a simple assignment: Go into the library and absorb all the existing literature on fleas. At the end of three months, they would talk. “Within three days, I knew we were in trouble,” says Dryden, now 51. “I realized we knew nothing. We just knew nothing about the biology of fleas in dogs and cats.” But what he did next would change all that. Dryden designed what he calls a very simple master’s program focused on fleas. He decided he had to start by understanding the basics—where they mated, where they laid eggs, how many eggs they laid at a time, and how much time they spent on host animals. That research, and the years of study that followed, have earned him a catchy nickname—Dr. Flea—and a string of honors, including being named by Ceva Animal Health this past February as the 2010 Veterinarian of the Year. But it has also provided the very …
‘Dr. Flea’ Named Veterinarian Of YearMarch 31, 2011 Michael Dryden, DVM, Ph.D., also known as “Dr. Flea,” was named the 2010 Veterinarian of the Year at the Purina Pro Plan 56th annual Show Dogs of the Year Awards dinner. The black-tie event, presented by Dogs in Review magazine, a sister publication of Veterinary Practice News, was held in mid-February in New York City. The event honors the top show dogs of 2010. More than 300 people attended, including dog owners, breeders, handlers, judges and representatives of the American Kennel Club. Dryden is a professor of veterinary parasitology in the Department of Diagnostic Medicine and Pathobiology at Kansas State University. His research is in flea and tick biology and control, investigating urban wildlife as vectors of parasitic diseases and diagnosis and control of gastrointestinal parasites. He is active in the American Association of Veterinary Parasitologists and the American Veterinary Medical Association and was a founding member of the Companion Animal Parasite Council. Other industry winners included: Groomer of the Year (sponsored by Laube): Penny Dugan of Boffell, Wash. Dugan has groomed for professional handler Timothy Brazier for many years. The duo has racked up numerous accomplishments in the show ring. Trainer …
