animal protection: Fw: [petlaw] Re[2]: AVMA House Rejects Policy Change on Ear Cropping and Tail Docking

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: "kbaxcanismajor@aol.com" <kbaxcanismajor@aol.com>
To: pet-law@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 7:05:06 PM
Subject: Re: [petlaw] Re[2]: AVMA House Rejects Policy Change on Ear Cropping and Tail Docking

When I went to vet school, we had to have more than just a passing
fantasy or interest in animals. We were expected and required to have
a strong interest, ability, and aptitude for all animals. Livestock,
farm, and dairy animals especially. Companion animals were and still
are important, but growing up around large animals and having them for
most of my life, I can't imagine going to vet school and NOT having
those standards and requirements nowadays. We spent summers in the
slaughter houses, in the fields/pastures, at dairy farms, horse
breeding facilities. How do these modern day students go through
school and not have the exposure or academic background in animal
husbandry, feeds and rations, animal care and use, facililty
management.. .. I could go on, but will hush for now.

I wanted to do much more than hang out in the clilnic and pet "cute
little kitties and puppies" or deal with neurotic animal owners. These
bleeding heart little city girls who want to go out and save the world
just really annoy me. They need a dose of reality. They need to pull
calves, camp out in the barn with the mares, and get a real feel for
animal medicine. Once they have done that, then I will have a
different attitude toward them.

Veterinary medicine is not 9 to 5, emergencies are 24 hours and they
are not planned either. The large animal vet and the vets with
backbone are a dying breed. Our vet schools are becoming infiltrated
with young, idealistic, bleeding heart, do gooders... put down the
James Herriott books and get your hands dirty.

kb

-----Original Message-----
From: Walt Hutchens <waltah@earthlink. net>
To: pet-law@yahoogroups .com
Sent: Tue, Jul 14, 2009 8:18 am
Subject: [petlaw] Re[2]: AVMA House Rejects Policy Change on Ear
Cropping and Tail Docking

Pat said:
> ... this information needs to be sent to the Vet schools who have
> produced the veterinarians that rejected the policy change. Today's
> Vet Schools, especially in the small animal field, have so removed
> themselves from reality and animal husbandry. Pathetic and
> dangerous.

Small animal vets have the same problem as the rest of the American
population: they used to draw from candidates with an animal
background who knew the husbandry score. Now what they get is mostly
girls who 'just love animals' and may never have seen dogs mate, let
alone whelped a litter, milked a cow, hunted, or helped slaughter an
animal.

The vet schools are having trouble coming to grips with this: Some are
trying to adapt, some are not, but the average young vet today is (in
my opinion) AR-lite, and most younger vets in practice really don't
get it.

Look at the trouble we have here on pet-law, understanding that a
practice that I DON'T LIKE or one that IS RARELY NECESSARY or IS ONLY
NEEDED FOR A FEW DOGS or GENERALLY SHOULD NOT BE DONE should still be
100% LEGAL. And most of us are used to having our hands dirty in
husbandry ... we are NOT mostly "I just love animals ..." people.

The need is NOT for us to 'tell our story' (as the animal ag people
are now discussing); it is to bring the rest of the U.S. population
BACK INTO a story that was everyone's daily experience, just 100 years
ago. Because vets the key link between the general population and
animal husbandry, if we don't educate them this is going to be nearly
impossible.

It might be possible for active kennel clubs and federations to
sponsor 'hands on' partnerships between an active (skilled) breeder
and a vet school, in which one or two students from the school follow
the process of breeding a litter from earliest planning through
selection of a stud, pre-breeding tests, the breeding itself,
gestation, attends the whelping, visits the litter at least weekly as
it grows, and participates in selecting/approving homes. At each stage
the economic, health, and other issues would be fully discussed. The
project would be supervised by a vet school faculty member; the
student(s) would write reports at each stage of the process and
receive credit for the project.

Walt Hutchens
Timbreblue Whippets