OVC was well represented at the recent North American Veterinary Conference in Orlando. At our alumni reception, the room was full with people spilling out into the hallway. I had interesting conversations with many alumni, including one who graduated in 1961 and one from the early 1980’s. Although they are very happy to be veterinarians, they had mixed reviews of their experiences at OVC. The 1961 graduate said that their class heard the speech that starts with “look to the left, look to the right, only one of you will be here next year”. The 1980’s grad said that noone acknowledged how hard they had worked to get into OVC; instead the emphasis was on making them feel unworthy to be there.

I assured them both that over the past 20 years, OVC has made great efforts to provide a welcoming environment for students. In fact, for several years, OVC has had a fall professional welcoming ceremony, where leaders of the CVO, CVMA, OV MA, the OVC Alumni Association, as well as the OVC, congratulate each member of the entering class, present them with stethoscopes and lab coats, and wish them well. In addition to the proud family members and friends in the audience, the new students bring their pre-vet mentors, who are often OVC alumni themselves.

In preparation for our 150th anniversary in 2012, we are collecting stories from our alumni – the good, the bad, and the ugly. If you have a story, please share it!

Elizabeth Stone, Dean, OVC

Each semester I give an OVC ‘Community’ Update; for each entering class, we have the OVC ‘Community’ Readers. And one of the pillars of the University of Guelph’s Better Planet Project is ‘Community’ (along with Health, Food and the Environment). But what does ‘community’ mean? How would we know if/when we had one?

In the January 19, 2011 Globe and Mail, columnist Andre Picard uses the definition of Dr. John McKnight, author of The Careless Society: Community and Its Counterfeits - “Community is a place where people prevail.”

Picard reminds us that “many people today are essentially neighbourless. They are merely anonymous occupants of houses…. Paradoxically, in our wired world, where we are connected to gadgets such as BlackBerrys 24 hours a day, real relationships and real communities are increasingly more difficult to forge. The distance between us can be measured in terabytes.” Although Picard was focusing on the isolation of the frail elderly, those with dementia and their caregivers, the lack of community is a hardship for many in our society.

Within our new Primary Healthcare Centre we want to give people a sense community – a place where people feel appreciated and can share their love for animals with other like-minded people. We are still figuring out how to make this happen while maximizing learning by our students and managing an efficient business. Ironically we are relying on technology to help us build relationships and focus on people. The electronic medical record should allow our students and clinicians to know the families of the people they are meeting – the names of the children and the pets and to quickly establish rapport. It should also alert them to possible concerns – an immunocompromised grandparent, a turtle kept in the baby’s room, a dog allowed to roam.

To reach out to people in the Guelph community, students are giving free evening presentations at the PHC on interesting animal health topics. This month the topic was ‘Dental Health’ and on February 10, it will be ‘Obesity’. Puppy classes and doggie daycare are also planned. Pets are always good conversation starters; we’ll be looking at how a focus on animal health can create community – “a place where people prevail”.

posted by Elizabeth A. Stone.

In Saturday’s Globe and Mail, I enjoyed an essay written by Ian Brown on “sneaking poetry into the office”.

As a veterinary surgeon and an educator, I have had a long-standing interest in how poetry, fiction, and essays can help veterinary students and veterinarians do their job better and enjoy it more, particularly in their relationships with co-workers, clients and patients. And I have faced concerns similar to what he described– even to the point of some of my ‘serious minded’ colleagues considering poetry as so much fluff compared to the real work of science and medicine.

To help broaden people’s perspective, we are holding a symposium on veterinary medicine and literature, May 8-10, at the Ontario Veterinary College Several noted poets/authors will be participating, including Lorna Crozier, Mark Doty, Molly Peacock, and Erica Ritter.

As William Carlos Williams, physician and poet, wrote in the following lines:

It is difficult to get the news from poems

yet men die miserably every day

for lack

of what is found there.

(from Asphodel, That Greeny Flower)

. . Elizabeth Stone, Dean, OVC

Anyone, who has a dog that expects to be walked, knows that not wanting to disappoint their furry friend can be a powerful motivator to get out of the house and into the fresh air. But what about people who need to exercise but don’t have dogs?

A Wisconsin cardiac rehabilitation program has come up with an innovative solution by partnering with an animal shelter. As reported in HealthDay (http://www.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=636857), post-surgery cardiac patients get exercise by walking the shelter dogs for an hour or more, three times per week.

Interestingly, so far, the volunteer walkers are all men in their 70’s. The program may be giving the men a purpose for their walking compared to using a treadmill or striding by themselves along a sidewalk. In addition to improving their own health, they are providing important socialization and training for the dogs and helping the dogs become more adoptable.

Elizabeth A. Stone, Dean, OVC

We cut the ribbon on the new Hill’s Pet Nutrition Primary Healthcare Centre this week. The weather was beautiful and people enjoyed the event and the tours of the new facility. We are very appreciative of our donors and supporters, who provided encouragement, ideas and funding.

In a few weeks, the first 4th year students will begin their 3 week clerkships in the primary healthcare centre. They will be members of a healthcare team with other students, clinicians, animal health technicians, and client services personnel. The PHC staff will focus on facilitating learning experiences rather than on ‘teaching’ per se, emphasizing ‘learning by doing’ rather than lectures and rounds. The students will have an opportunity to synthesize and integrate all that they have been taught in the classroom and laboratory.

We want to create a learning environment that is organic and continuously improving - where the learning objectives shape the activities and assessment, which in turn shape the learning objectives.

Elizabeth Stone, Dean, OVC

“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.” Rachel Carson in The Sense of Wonder

My resolution for the new year is to nurture this sense of wonder. After all, we do work in a profession where animals can inspire wonder in even the most jaded curmudgeon. And our animals get us outside to experience the world of nature. Nevertheless, we are so preoccupied in our day-to-day activities and rituals that it is easy to lose sight of that which is beautiful and awe-inspiring. Frequently, I trudge through the snow across Johnston Green to get to meetings in the University Centre, my mind filled with problems to be solved and problems to be acquired. Today with my day-old resolution firmly in place, I saw the ice on the branches, the sun breaking through the clouds – and felt the sense of wonder.

posted by Elizabeth A. Stone.

A recent op-ed piece in the New York Times questioned the health benefits of living with pets. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/opinion/04herzog.html) The writer begins with the statement that “A dog or cat owner spends roughly $10,000 on the care and feeding of his pet over its lifetime…..What does he get for this investment?” He goes on to suggest that a number of books and articles have made the claim that pets are beneficial to one’s health, but the limited number of scientific studies have shown mixed results.

Within 24 hours of the op-ed piece, 143 readers commented on the article with the vast majority giving testimonials to the joy and pleasure that dogs and cats bring to their lives. Comments such as -

“If Fido was my doctor he’d be even more expensive and I’d only see him for five minutes every six months. He’s better than a doctor; he’s a dog.”

“I’ve lived with pets and without pets. Trust me, life is better with pets.”

“While there may be no good evidence that a pet will actually cure any mental or physical illness, there is much recent evidence regarding the power of the placebo effect. Isn’t a dog or a cat just a furry placebo? If a person feels better when they own a pet, isn’t that a good thing?”

Does it really matter whether or not pets provide conventional health benefits to people? If pets bring us happiness and make us feel better about life, shouldn’t that be enough?

It may not be reasonable to expect medicare or health insurance to cover some of the expenses of pet care even if it is conclusively shown that interacting with dogs and cats decreases the severity and cost of chronic diseases. More to the point, the intangible benefits, as with friendship, literature, and music, will never be quantified. And I doubt we will ever be told by a physician to ‘get 2 cats and call me in the morning’!

posted by Elizabeth A. Stone.

Would you recommend a career as a veterinarian? The US News and World Report says ‘yes’ in a report on the best 50 careers for 2011. (http://money.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2010/12/06/best-careers-2011-veterinarian). Other careers listed under the category of ‘healthcare jobs’ include optometrist, physician assistant, registered nurse, physical therapist, lab technician, school psychologist and athletic trainer.

Some of the advantages listed for veterinarian include growth in employment (expected to grow by 19,700 jobs in the US according to the Labor Department); not a lot of veterinarians and strong demand for their services. They describe the work as demanding, ranging from long hours to all-season on farms and other outdoor settings – and consider the stress level high because of grueling and unpredictable workloads –but they also highlight that many vets would not want to do anything else.

Posted by Elizabeth A. Stone.

This week we learned that Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine (on St. Kitts in the Caribbean) and Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City have received provisional accreditation. Accreditation is the responsibility of the Council on Education of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA-COE) in collaboration with the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association. Students studying in an accredited veterinary school can take the national licensing exam for the US and Canada during their 4th year. Once they have passed this exam, they can apply for licensing in any US state or Canadian province - which greatly increases their employment opportunities.

Veterinary students at Ross University spend their first 3 years at Ross and then move to other accredited schools for their final year of clinical training. UNAM will be the first veterinary school with Spanish as the primary language used for teaching. (Of course, the veterinary school at University of Montreal, with French as the primary language, has been accredited for many years.)

AVMA-COE has previously accredited schools in Great Britain, The Netherlands, and Australia. Notably, Ross and UNAM are the first North American schools outside of the US and Canada to be accredited.

Posted by Elizabeth A. Stone

Our students were out in full force for this year’s College Royal. A line of children snaked through the OVC cafeteria as they got ready for the ever popular teddy bear surgery. The student veterinarians were very kind as the children handed over their beloved stuffed animals for suturing and bandaging.

In the large animal area, visitors could try out a milking machine (on a ‘model’ cow), learn about food animal medicine, watch videos of surgeries and even pet a pig – and of course, carefully wash their hands afterwards! The newly renovated Barn 37 complete with horses was on the tour as well as the new large animal clinical skills building, where some of the livestock show was held. In addition, a temporary tent was set up next to the barn to hold other parts of the livestock show. In the past, these events would have been in the Dome, which wasn’t available because of safety concerns. Our associate dean Kerry Lissemore worked closely with the student organizers to make sure the competitions in these new locations ran smoothly.

Many medical mysteries were presented throughout the OVC exhibits and displays - Does chocolate milk come from a brown cow? Do guinea pigs need vitamin C? What plants are toxic to your pets? How did swine farmers keep their pigs from getting the flu from humans?

On the main campus, keynote talks were given by Drs. Paul Woods and Brenda Coomber on their favorite subject - Cancer in Pets and People: How can comparative research unlock the secrets of cancer diagnosis and treatment?

We are very grateful to the many students who worked countless hours planning and putting on such a successful College Royal for 30,000 visitors - the largest university open house in North America.

posted by Elizabeth A. Stone, Dean

Yesterday I was interviewed for a newspaper article about what we call animals – and whether or not it matters.

http://www.thestar.com/living/article/985249—pet-or-animal-companion-how-to-respectfully-refer-to-the-family-dog?bn=1

The journalist was interested in my take on a recent editorial published in the Journal of Animal Ethics that advocated changing the way we speak about animals. According to the guidelines for this new journal, we must “discipline ourselves to use more impartial nouns and adjectives in our exploration of animals and our moral relations with them”. The editors are asking authors who submit papers to avoid use of the words ‘pet’ because it is “surely derogatory” and ‘owner’ because it implies animals are merely property and ‘wild’ because it is synonymous with an ‘uncivilized, unrestrained, barbarous existence’.

Ironically, a conspicuous example of potential misuse of words comes from the editorial itself, where the authors state “Let us call a spade a spade…..”. I would not use this idiom because the word ‘spade’ can be an ethnic slur against African-Americans. And even though the original idiom dates from the 1500’s and refers to a digging tool, if the current use is disrespectful to someone, then why not find another way to express my meaning?

In contrast, animals probably don’t care what they are called – they are much more attuned to how something is said. I do agree with the authors that when a name changes the way a person regards or treats an animal, the name does become important. However, in my experience, calling a dog a ‘pet’ in no way endangers my relationship with the dog.

Words, words, everywhere words – and yes, they do matter.

Posted by Elizabeth A. Stone, OVC Dean.

Lyme disease, raccoon roundworm, H1N1, rabies – the list of zoonotic diseases goes on and on. We know the statistics - 60% of emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic; 70% of zoonotic infectious diseases originate in wildlife. Yet veterinarians and physicians don’t routinely share their knowledge much less information about what they are seeing in their patients.

To encourage this conversation in Canada, veterinary medical deans and medical deans met yesterday at a workshop at the Canadian Conference on Medical Education. We also had expert participation from the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion. The focus of the discussion was “People and Animals Sharing Disease – Medicine and Veterinary Medicine Perspectives”. Dr. Jan Sargeant, Director of the UofG Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses and Dr. David Fisman from the U of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health addressed the challenges in prioritization of zoonotic diseases – should it be based on percentage of case fatalities? In humans and/or animals? the number of cases in Canada? The likelihood of introduction from another country? This, of course, is not just an academic exercise because decisions on distribution of resources are based on prioritizations and competing risks – health, economic, human, animal. Decisions can also be influenced by public perceptions of risk. Thus, they are surveying the general public in addition to health professionals to find out what zoonotic diseases are considered most important and why.

Dr. Kate Hodgson, who is a veterinarian and a certified continuing medical education professional with the U of Toronto Faculty of Medicine, readily explained how animals are a health determinant, with both positive and negative influences on the health of a family. Using her experience with family medicine residents, nurse practitioners and primary care veterinarians, she gave concrete examples of how these professionals can protect and improve their patients’ health through better communication and sharing of expertise.

Dr. Cathleen Hanlon, Director of the Rabies Laboratory at Kansas State University, used her lifetime of work with rabies as a model for best practices for zoonotic disease prevention. She emphasized that wildlife, such as bats, can easily cross borders and that people are constantly moving animals both legally and illegally from one spot to another. Thus, no country should be complacent about being ‘rabies free’ and even the meaning of the term, ‘rabies free’, varies from country to country because of different policies and procedures for surveillance, diagnosis and management of rabies by both the veterinary and the medical communities.

Going forward, we want to find ways for medical and veterinary students to work together on real life problems affecting people and animals, and of course, the environment must be included as a critical determinant of health. This is not a new idea - Drs. David Waltner-Toews, Bruce Hunter and others have advocated an ecosystem approach to health for many years both within Canada and globally. Using the perspective of medical and veterinary schools, we need to review what has worked and not worked and to determine how to overcome the usual limitations of time in the curriculum, funding and personnel.

We all realize that getting people in the same room is only a start - but we are committed to developing a sustainable model for the practice of One Health.

On Saturday, we welcomed the Class of OVC 2015.  Proud families, friends and mentors saw them be transformed into student veterinarians, complete with lab coats and stethoscopes.  There are 177 students in the class and they come from hometowns are as far away as Hong Kong, Hawaii and Vancouver and as close as Toronto and Guelph.  77% are women and 23% are men.  When did they decide to become a veterinarian?  Interestingly, 68% of the men and 38% of the women made the decision after the age of 20. For some, it is a second career; for others it is the only thing they have wanted to do since they were very young.  14% of the class is older than 25; 71% have a BSc - and not surprisingly, 98% have their own laptop computers.

One of the best reasons for being in academic veterinary medicine is the opportunity each fall to meet such talented, enthusiastic and dedicated individuals.  We look forward to helping them reach their goal of becoming a veterinarian 4 short years from now!

Elizabeth Stone, Dean, OVC

Educators from veterinary colleges across Canada and the United States are at OVC today and this weekend for the Primary Care Educators’ Symposium. 

The Symposium focuses on the theme, “Teaching Communication and Assessing Students in the Clinical Setting,” and is designed for primary care educators to network, generate ideas and develop new skills.

We recognize that veterinary primary healthcare is essential for the health and wellness of our animals.  In veterinary colleges across North America, there is renewed interest in providing our students with the skills and aptitudes they need to be effective practitioners.  The relationship between veterinarians, clients and their animals is complex and significantly influences our ability to prevent disease and maintain health.  Bringing experts together will help us all learn how to do this better.

We are grateful to Jason Coe for bringing this annual Symposium to OVC this year and giving us a chance to highlight our own primary healthcare program during a dinner and tour of the Hill’s Pet Nutrition Primary Healthcare Centre at OVC.

Elizabeth Stone, Dean, OVC

Judging by the level of enthusiasm and the sharing of ideas and methods, this weekend’s Primary Care Educators Symposium was a huge success.  Educators from at least 25 schools participated, each bringing their challenges and solutions to the table. 

I think some members of the general public would be surprised that veterinary medicine is anything beyond primary care!  Even with the current level of sophistication and specialization in veterinary medicine, we constantly struggle to let people know that ‘yes, we do blood transfusions’ – and have been for 40 years or more.  And yes, cats are treated for diabetes and we consider cataract surgery in dogs as fairly routine.  In reality, our specialist training  programs within the profession are thriving, but primary care education may be somewhat marginalized. 

Veterinary medical academic leaders all recognize the need for primary care education – the majority of our students do become private practitioners.  In addition, the skills, knowledge and aptitudes that students gain through experiential learning in the primary care programs serve them well no matter what area of veterinary medicine they go into.

But there are legitimate concerns that if we as a profession are defined only as ‘pet doctors’, we will not be taken seriously by public funders, biomedical institutions and agri-food industries.  Thus, we need to ensure that our graduates going into private practices are recognized as healthcare professionals for their communities – and that our primary healthcare programs are acknowledged as a ‘public good’ by governments and health agencies.  Given the number of people who own pets, the magnitude of interactions between veterinarians and community members is enormous.   To maximize our ability as a veterinary profession to integrate the health of humans, animals and the environment, we need to find more ways to incorporate the concept and practice of One Health into the primary healthcare learning process.  Whether it is zoonotic diseases, obesity, cancer or nutrition, many of the topics that a veterinarian discusses with a client could influence the health of people and the community.  Experienced veterinarians understand this concept instinctively.  Now we are helping our student veterinarians comprehend its importance as they prepare for their careers.

Elizabeth A. Stone, Dean, OVC

While in Seoul, Korea last week, I participated in a memorial ceremony for Dr. Frank Schofield, OVC alumnus class of 1910 and faculty member from 1912-1916 and 1920-1955.    As a teacher and missionary in Korea from 1916 to 1920, Dr. Schofield supported Korean independence, documenting in photographs and words the March First Movement and the brutal repression that followed.   Because of his courage and dedication to the Korean people, Dr. Schofield was buried in the Patriot Section of the Korean National Cemetery – the only non-Korean to receive that tribute. 

For the memorial ceremony, former Prime Minister Dr. Chun Un-Chan authorized a military honour guard at Dr. Schofield’s gravesite.  Dr. Chun was an adopted grandson of Dr. Schofield and has great respect for and gratitude to Dr. Schofield.  After donning white gloves, we each laid a long-stemmed rose on Dr. Schofield’s grave as attributes were read.  The picture depicts Dr. Chun paying his respects (middle of photo).

That evening, I gave a presentation, “Dr. Schofield: A Man of Dedication and Distinction” to the Tiger Schofield Memorial Foundation at the Canadian Embassy.  Several of the people in the audience had been in Dr. Schofield’s Bible study classes in Seoul after he retired from OVC.  They had fond memories of Dr. Schofield and what he had done for them.  The Korean students learned English and life lessons during their time with Dr. Schofield.  One of his former students mentioned that Dr. Schofield had never said anything to them about his previous work as a pathologist or veterinarian at OVC.  (Likewise some of his former OVC students have told us that he never said anything to them about his work in Korea.)  One of his students is now a mechanical engineer at Seoul National University; he commented that Dr. Schofield’s training as a scientist and pathologist probably enabled him to be an acute observer and transcriber of what was happening to the Koreans during the Japanese occupation.

After several years of planning, OVC is now officially in its 150th year.  Over the year we will be looking back and forward.  Check it out - http://ovc150.ca/en/

So what does the future hold?  Any prediction we make is rooted in today’s realities.   Thus, we are more likely to predict modifications and advances in what we are currently doing rather than dramatic changes in direction.  Looking back to 1862, who could have predicted that motorized carriages would replace the horse-based economy that justified the founding of OVC.  In 1920, the decision was made for OVC to move from Toronto to far away Guelph to provide for the health of farm animals and the safety of food.  No one could have dreamed that the dogs and cats of Toronto would become a major patient base for veterinarians.  Likewise, classrooms built in the 1980’s made no allowance for computer technology  –   why spend money on a technology that couldn’t be made available to the ordinary student?

A prediction made in 1949 clearly demonstrates the difficulty of seeing into the future.  A McGill University scientist writing in the Canadian Journal of Comparative Medicine, stated “I doubt very much if any domestic animal is subjected to the multiplicity and intensity of tests and examinations that is common practice in a well found hospital, except as a research programme. I also doubt very much if such elaboration will ever come to veterinary medicine, because the cost would often be more than the individual animal is worth, even though the disease processes in man and other animals do not differ.”  (Professor E.D.G. Murray, Canadian Journal of Comparative Medicine, October, 1949)

As we all know in today’s North American society, people often pay more ‘out of pocket’ for animal healthcare than for their own healthcare, which is largely paid from government collected taxes and/or insurance. 

But of course we can’t help ourselves - we all need to speculate on what the future may bring!

Sadly, our friend Dr. Blake Graham died on March 6, 2012.  Blake was committed to supporting graduate students and research in diseases transmitted between people and animals.  He was proud of his alma mater and his profession.  I will miss his wise counsel as will many others.

We are half-way through the celebrations of our 150th year anniversary.  Convocation week and alumni weekend were great fun, with more than 170 people attending the Friday evening dinner in Creelman.  I’ve thought about what the future may hold and have come up with 10 predictions - this is number 1 - let me know what you think!

Prediction 1. Fierce disagreements about the use and value of animals will continue unabated and will cause further divisions within the veterinary medical profession. Whether it be feral cats vs. wildlife, indoor vs. outdoor cats, declaw vs. no declaw, raw food vs. processed food – and this is only a partial list for cats – the controversies and issues around animals will continue to be discussed and disputed in the courts, on the streets, at the ballot box, and in the media.

Elizabeth A. Stone, OVC Dean