Teamwork

 

I have been teaching a class called Teamwork since the fall of 2021. I designed the class to be a bridge between beginner obedience classes and more advanced classes focused on dog sports such as rally, scentwork, and agility.

The curriculum of beginner obedience as it is taught at the club is heavily focused on heeling, which is taught by having dogs and handlers practice heeling over and over and over. Not very exciting.

When handlers moved into one of the sports tracks after beginner obedience, they didn’t have any idea how to train their dogs. They didn’t know anything about learning theory, positive reinforcement, operant conditioning, shaping, how to use a clicker…really, they only thing they had been taught up to that point was to put a pinch collar on their dogs and pop the leash hard when the dog didn’t do what they wanted.

For the most part, the sports dog training world has moved on from such antiquated, punishment-based training. There are holdouts—many field dogs (retrievers, spaniels, and the like) and personal protection dogs are trained with pinch collars, shock collars, and hard leash corrections. A lot of formal obedience trainers still use punishment, unfortunately including most of the instructors of the club’s beginner obedience classes. The rest of the dog training world moved on decades ago.

Although there are rumblings for change amongst younger club members, we aren’t going to change those old school obedience trainers for a while yet. They are dying off though, so time is on our side.

I firmly believe that you can’t build a relationship with your dog through punishment. Rewarding the dog’s good choices and restricting their options to make bad choices by managing the training environment is a lot of work. But I don’t think you can be successful in any dog sport if the primary method of communication with your dog is through punishment and pain.

I designed the Teamwork class to fill that gap. In 8 short weeks, handlers learn how to communicate consistently and clearly with their dogs, and the dogs learn that their handlers are now reliable sources of information and rewards.

I teach Teamwork four times a year. The class always fills. Most of the students are not members of the club, although club members who do agility always take my class when they get a new puppy. These folks generally already know how to train dogs, so I’m flattered that they trust me to help them. The intense focus on training the handlers in Teamwork requires close observation and one-on-one work so I always have an assistant instructor.

The class moves at a fast pace. We push the handlers pretty hard. The dogs come along for the treats and praise so they don’t feel the same pressure. For most of the teams, the switch flips around week 4 (if they are doing their homework) and the growing partnership is obvious in class. The dogs are no longer looking around the room. Their focus is on their handler as they wait for the next fun game to be revealed. The handlers are praising and rewarding their dogs regularly, sometimes for just sitting quietly by their side. It’s really fun to see the relationship develop.

But some dogs come into Teamwork with significant deficits: anxiety, no relationship with the owners, no tolerance for commotion, fear of other people and dogs. Those dogs can’t even approach a cone, much less walk around it. They won’t take treats from me (and I always have better treats than their owners). They may be stuck to the ground, unable to even move.

These dogs deserve the same opportunities to learn how to work with their owners as their more resilient classmates. As long as they keep coming to class, I’m happy to meet them where they are. I put them in a quieter corner. I ask the owner to bring better food rewards. Dog is scared of the tippy board? The handler can still learn to shape if the dog works on a platform. Dog is scared of the platform? Don’t be afraid to lure the dog with a treat. Reward the dog for taking even a tiny step forward. Heck, reward the dog for simply looking at the platform.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Don’t force the dog. Find the place where the dog will work and start there.

And these handlers and dogs also find success by the end of the class. Seeing the faces of the handlers light up when their dog finally puts both front paws on the perch bowl or goes around the cone without a lure is worth the extra effort it took to get them there. Being kind is rarely the wrong choice. 

 

They Can't Make A Living: Sources

 

Here's a short article about AVMA's economic analysis. You can get access to the full report if you are an AVMA member, or pay money for it if you aren't a member. 

This is the link to the USDA Economic Research Service report entitled "Food Animal Veterinarians and the Persistence of Rural Shortage Areas."

Finally, here is the link to an AAVMC report on veterinary school demographics. This link takes you to a PDF of the report.

They Can't Make A Living

 Here is a link to a short news item from a South Dakota media group about a retiring veterinarian who can’t find another veterinarian to purchase his practice. Take a minute to read it. I’ll wait.

https://www.keloland.com/keloland-com-original/parker-veterinarian-to-retire-seeks-successor/

This tale of woe is being told over and over across the U.S. Maybe you haven’t heard this exact tale, but you probably have heard that there is a “shortage” of veterinarians. This is only partially true. There is a dramatic shortage of large animal (livestock and food animal) veterinarians.

According to AVMA, for data collected in 2024, about 73% of new DVM graduates accepted positions in companion animal practices. Around 3% of new graduates accepted jobs working with food animals. New DVMs working in private practice for livestock reported starting salaries that were around $30,000 less per year than new DVMs in private practice for companion animals. Now add in the fact that the average DVM graduated in 2024 with more than $200,000 of debt.

According to AAVMC, around 3,300 DVMs graduated from vet school in the U.S. in 2025. Around 100 of them took private practice jobs working with food animals. One hundred people. Dr. Parker has a lot of competition.

Let’s take another look at Dr. Parker’s situation. He says that his practice has been listed for sale for over a year. He says that he has hosted vet students trying to find one to take over his practice but hasn’t been successful.

Maybe the overall state of the economy is making it harder for new DVMs to finance the purchase of a clinic. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed a lot of small businesses in my area that survived COVID have been closing down in the past month or so.

Maybe his 48-year-old practice doesn’t have modern equipment. New DVMs know that the gold standard medicine that is taught in many large veterinary teaching hospitals is not always easy to reproduce in the real world, but they expect basics like in-house radiography and ultrasound, not to mention a full suite of bench diagnostics to evaluate things like fecal parasites, serology, and blood chemistry and a decently stocked in-house pharmacy.

Maybe he doesn’t have enough support staff. The article doesn’t even include the word “technician.” New DVMs know that providing good veterinary medicine requires a team of trained professionals. In high-volume companion animal practices, you might see two technicians per DVM, plus other technicians assigned to cleaning, stocking, kennel management, and so forth. Plus you will have a front office staff who handles appointments and payments.

Maybe his service radius of 20 miles is too small. Maybe there aren’t enough clients. More likely, there aren’t enough clients who can afford to pay realistic fees required by a modern veterinary practice.

Maybe his willingness to be “on call 24/7 since I’ve been open” is in direct conflict with the demand of new DVMs to have a healthier work-life balance. This is a big generational shift with no easy fix.

By far, the biggest factor preventing Dr. Parker from selling his practice is money. It always comes down to money. His mixed animal practice can’t generate enough revenue for a new graduate to pay student loans, pay support staff, purchase equipment and supplies, and support a family. Few rural practices, even if they include some companion animal clients like Dr. Parker's clinic, can.

These nuances are rarely discussed. They are barely acknowledged by veterinary schools themselves. Better to claim, there’s a shortage of veterinarians so let’s pump out more! Let’s increase class size (diluting the critical hands-on aspect of learning how to practice medicine)! Let’s increase tuition (increasing the already crushing levels of debt that most DVMs have at the end of four years)!

Those aren’t solutions because they don’t address the real problems.

 

Dante

 I've written here and there about how much time and energy (mental and physical) that we spend on incineration. It is an unlovely but super important part of running a veterinary pathology unit. Once we are finished with our tests, we of course allow for remains of smaller animals to be handed over to a private cremation company so the ashes can be returned to their owners. But there is still a lot of material that has to be handled here on site. Last year we incinerated 66,500 pounds, going through more than 6,000 gallons of propane in the process. 

Because the diagnostic laboratory is part of the state Department of Agriculture, we are regularly asked by colleagues and other state agencies to incinerate things for them. Don't get wound up here, those requests involve contraband food and plants for the most part. But we also incinerate flocks of backyard poultry that are depopulated because they are infected with HPAI (the depopulations are handled by another agency in the department). Last year we also incinerated a few dozen pigs that were euthanized because they were infected with brucellosis. 

We got a new incinerator in the fall of 2024. The old unit was woefully underpowered for even our small lab, and we managed to literally burn it up. Not like flames shooting out the top but we ran it way outside its designed parameters until everything failed. The new unit is magnificent. The loading door opens with hydraulics. There is a scoop bucket (like on a front loader), also on hydraulics, that drops the load into the lower chamber. We had a few hiccups in the first few months of operation, like discovering that the lower chamber ran so hot that it expanded the fluid in the hydraulic arms, pushing the loading lid open a centimeter or so during burns. This let in too much oxygen and really messed with efficiency. The manufacturer came out and installed two custom-welded clamps on the lid. Problem solved!

Of course I keep insanely detailed records of usage and performance. I shared that with the manufacturer and they were over the moon--they build and test their units, and of course they visit their clients for repairs and annual preventative maintenance, but they rarely get such a detailed look at performance over such a long period of time. 

I named the new incinerator Dante. Here he is in operation. The small door covers a portal into which we insert long tools that we use to stoke the load during a burn (basically, move the material around). At the time this picture was taken, the lower chamber was around 1680F. 

Being a veterinary pathologist in a small state diagnostic lab involves a lot more than just doing necropsies. I also have to be an engineer/electrician/physicist to stay on top of how Dante works and how to troubleshoot problems.

Countdown

 

I put a countdown timer app on my phone to track how far out I am from retirement. It has a cute little widget that I check every day. Sometimes more than once. Fewer than 600 days to go. That’s not even 2 years.

The grant that pays towards my student loans runs to the end of 2027. It would be incredibly dumb to leave guaranteed money on the table. I will still have a bit of loan debt after the grant ends but I should be able to wrap that up in two or three years. The Odyssey will be paid off by then so I can divert that money to the student loan. Easy peasy.

Why not retire on December 31, 2027? I turn 65 the following spring. Waiting until just after that makes retiring from the state government job a bit easier since it is a “standard” retirement target.

Making this decision has already affected my mindset at work. When I get dragged into administrative situations that are dumb or annoying or make my job harder, which is pretty much all of them, I remind myself that in fewer than 600 days, those things won’t be my problem anymore.

Of course, I feel a bit guilty because my departure will be extremely inconvenient for my team and for the lab. There is a significant programmatic change coming to the lab in the fall of 2029 or thereabouts. I am deeply involved in planning and preparing for this change. It relies quite a bit on me and my expertise. Only I know that I won’t be here to see it happen.

I keep reminding myself, I cannot have more loyalty to my employer than it has for me. And believe me, as an employee of a deep red state government agency, my employer has no loyalty to me whatsoever.

Just checked the widget. Yep, fewer than 600 days.

T3i Meets Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

 

This abomination is supposed to be a giraffe. Really, it looked a lot more like a giraffe when I bought it (Costco special). Before I gave it to Frankie, I cut the ears off since she would have chewed on those until she chewed them off. Potential foreign body, no thanks.

The thick seams are nicely sewn and the toy stood up to some heavy tugging. But eventually the nose came unstitched.

I pulled some stuffing out, made a patch from the nose, and fixed this one right up!

Nightmare fuel! You are welcome. 

Saturday at the Vet Clinic

 

When I started picking up the occasional Saturday shift at a local clinic, I insisted that I only wanted to see wellness clients. But not every pet that comes in just needs an exam and vaccines. Ears, skin, vomiting, and diarrhea cases began showing up on my schedule, although I am still able to duck lacerations and other cases that required suturing. (This clinic only does dentals and surgeries during the week, so that was never going to be a problem.) The reason is that I simply don’t trust my skills with cutting and suturing living animals. I’ve developed habits that help me do necropsies efficiently but these absolutely do not translate back into the GP world.

On a recent Saturday, things shifted quite a bit, taking me pretty far outside that wellness bubble. A regular client came in with their 14-year-old Chihuahua laterally recumbent and unresponsive. The dog was being treated for congestive heart failure, a chronic, progressive disease. The other vet working that day and the entire team of techs jumped into action, setting up for intubation, oxygen, placing an IV catheter, giving drugs, and performing chest compressions. It was impressively smooth and professional teamwork. Realizing that I could contribute nothing to that effort, and at best would only be in the way, I focused on the owner, collecting more history, giving her information, and helping her work through the many decisions that she needed to make quickly. I work with grieving owners all the time in my job at the lab and am comfortable communicating in that setting. Sadly, they couldn’t restart the dog’s heart.

Of course, I received training in how to treat these kinds of emergencies. But I haven't applied that  training in over 7 years. Like any specialized knowledge, if you don't use it regularly, it atrophies. 

But that wasn’t the only curve ball thrown on this day. The last appointment of the day, assigned to me, arrived around 5pm. The owner had taken the dog, a 2-year-old female pitbull mix, to a low-cost spay and neuter clinic two days earlier. The dog had developed severe bruising on her abdomen and was “dumpy” and lethargic at home, although she still had an appetite. The dog wasn’t messing with the spay incision site, which was a bit scabby but healing. However, there were massive, dark purple bruises on her abdomen and large pockets of fluid under the skin. Alone, these weren’t an emergency even though they looked scary. Large, deep-chested dogs can sometimes be difficult to spay and there can be trauma to the body wall, leaving bruises and subcutaneous edema. But it was the reported lethargy that set my spidey senses tingling.

I’ve seen the absolute worse cases of post-spay deaths presented for necropsy, including ligatures coming off, cutting but not ligating ovarian arteries, accidental avulsion of renal vessels, complete transection of the intestine (we still don’t know how this happened as one does not insert scalpels into the abdomen for a spay), and contamination of the abdomen or the incision site. There are lots of ways for spays to go wrong.

The dog’s physical exam was normal. The owner reported that the dog had pooped since the surgery. Still, the case just didn’t feel right to me. I said, I want to run full bloodwork. And it turned out that the dog had a severe, active infection. If the dog didn’t receive immediate treatment, it would probably have died. We sent the owner home with 14 days of a broad-spectrum antibiotic plus a steroid for inflammation and another drug to address pain.

Regular GPs see these kinds of cases every day. This was a normal Tuesday, or rather Saturday, for that clinic. 

I’m a decent diagnostician, and as I learn more about the pharmacy available at this clinic, I get more confident in selecting tests and treatments. But I still have a lot to learn. I am lucky that my forays into GP veterinary medicine are being supported by such a well-trained and compassionate team.