Excerpt – Lessons Learned Studying to Become a Vet
After school I went to university and pursued my childhood dream to become a vet. I was incredibly fortunate to study veterinary science at Ondestepoort, the University of Pretoria. My university years were some of the best of my life and I look back on those years with immense appreciation for the magnificent campus, exceptionally fabulous camaraderie of our classmates and the wonderful teachers from whom I had the privilege of learning. I’ll never forget our dean, Professor Coubrough speaking about the new facilities at Ondestepoort: “My heart pumps chocolate when I look at these buildings and what they hold”. Well, being an enormous fan of chocolate, over the years I came to understand exactly what he meant.
Being a vet student was challenging, there was so much to learn from basic physiology and anatomy, which reminds me of a great joke that I heard reflecting what we learn as vets and what we consider humorous…
It’s the first day of veterinary anatomy 101 and the class is anxiously sitting around the auditorium looking at the professor who has a dead cow lying before him. He says to the class “Class, there are two very important lessons that we’ll begin with today. Firstly, to be a good vet, you must never be afraid to examine every orifice of an animal closely…” and he promptly inserts his finger into the back end of the cow. Removing it and holding his finger up he follows with, “The second important lesson is that you should attempt to use all of your senses to collect as much information as possible from your patients” and then puts his finger into his mouth.
He then invites the reluctant class down to practice these important lessons. The students eventually complete their task and return to their seats. The professor continues “Another very important attribute that you must develop in order to be a successful veterinarian is to have excellent powers of observation. For those of you who have already mastered this, you will have noticed that I put this finger into the cow” and holding up a different finger explains “and this finger, I put into my mouth”!!!
Anyway, in addition to these important lessons we learned about toxic plants, parasites, infectious diseases, animal nutrition, pharmacology, medicine, surgery, pathology, anaesthesiology, theriogenology (animal reproduction) and much, much more!
Theriogenology was an intense study of the reproductive cycles and activities of a number of different species and with the aforementioned insight into vet humour, you may well be able to imagine the kind of wit that flew around during lectures and practical sessions….
Our professor asked us with a twinkle in his eye, “Why is it that the mating of production animals is so quick?” – Allowing time for us to answer and with no answers forthcoming from the budding young vet students before him he answered, “Because they don’t have hands for foreplay” to which our always outspoken and entertaining American classmate replied, “Yeah but they sure have mean tongues.”
I remember another one of our theriogenology professors was a lecturing to us in his rich Afrikaans accent about the moral issue of aiding the reproduction of animals who cannot breed alone for example some bulldogs. He shared his pearls of wisdom; “The world is none the richer nor poorer if we are to breed animals who cannot breed by themselves!” This professor was always a character and gave the impression of being a truly “nutty professor”, so devoted to his work that it was difficult for him to focus on anything else.
I remember another one of his favourite phrases when he would change his train of thought half way through a sentence he would say “allow me to interrupt myself for a moment…”. He was also most entertaining when in our final year he was in charge of taking our group out to do an emergency caesarean on a cow. We were all packed into the minivan awaiting his attendance when he climbed in at the last minute announcing “I apologise for my delay, I have lost my watch. Oh there it is on my wrist where I left it this morning!” I couldn’t help but love the kindness and devotion of these wonderful people who taught us so much.
Also part of our animal reproductive studies we had to learn to collect semen and perform artificial insemination. This took some practice and the university kept a pack of delightful beagle dogs for us to practice on with most of them being only too happy to comply. David was our main lecturer taking us through the techniques and protocols needed for success and we loved his down to earth and friendly manner.
Years later, David attended a conference in New Zealand and stayed in my home. Upon his arrival he told me how the beagles at the airport had paid much attention to his luggage sniffing for ages, even though he was not carrying anything illegal. We joked that perhaps the beagle community had learned of his reputation from their beagle buddies across the world and were fascinated to have a man of such great skill in New Zealand!
To read more about my adventures, read Vet Tales available as a book or e-book from https://www.drliza.co.nz/shop/