PLU S : M A K IN G HEADWAY AGA I NST D I SEASE ■ TUFTS V. E . T. S .
New Season,New LifeSaving foals is a labor of love for Cummings’ neonatal team
VETERINARY MEDICINE
M A G A Z I N E O F T H E C U M M I N G S S C H O O L O F V E T E R I N A R Y M E D I C I N E VOL. 8 NO. 1 SUMMER 2006
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D E P A R T M E N T S
2 Letter from the Dean3 In Brief
23 Advancement
On the cover: It’s a beautiful day for Third Time’s a Charm, owned by JenniferChurchill, thanks to the care this Welsh Cross received at Tufts’ neonatal unit.
Above: Grateful patient Lacey, owned by Sidney and Pat DeBello
C O N T E N T SS U M M E R 2 0 0 6 I V O L U M E 8 , N O . 1
F E A T U R E S
12 Making Headway Against DiseaseTufts’ work in the wild preserves animal andhuman health locally and nationally.
16 Tufts V.E.T.S. Transforms ItselfA comprehensive emergency and consultationservice benefits pets, owners and veterinarians.
18 The Class of 2006A new class of doctors goes forth to change the world. See what four graduates plan to accomplish.
18Samson arrived on March 18 at the Cummings Schoolof Veterinary Medicine’s Hospital for Large Animals. Hewas six days old, premature, and critically ill. His mum,Bess, had been weakened during birth and did not pro-duce enough of the antibody-rich colostrum, or “firstmilk,” that her newborn needed to ward off infections.“Our regular veterinarians tried to re-hydrate him with flu-ids, but it wasn’t enough,” says Jody Cothey, who withher husband Ed owns Tregellys’ Fiber Farm in westernMassachusetts. A second veterinarian checked Samsonand recommended they take both mother and calf toTufts—110 miles away.
The Hospital for Large Animals sees many horses and a fair num-ber of alpacas and llamas. They rarely see a camel—and neverunder these circumstances. So hospital staff, under the direction ofstaff veterinarian Dr. Rose Nolen-Walston, VR05, started out by doingwhat they do for other critically ill newborns: They gave him oxygen,intravenous fluids, and antibiotics. They also applied their skills inlarge animal medicine in some new ways. For example, newbornhorses and llamas that don’t receive their mother’s colostrum aregiven plasma to fortify them with the antibodies they lack. But whilethe hospital keeps plenty of horse and llama plasma in stock, it had
none for camels. So how to save young Samson? Withllama plasma. Llamas and camels are close cousins,and Nolen-Walston knew that other veterinary hospitalshad successfully used this technique in the past.
Another tricky part of Samson’s treatment was thatcamels can be highly unpredictable patients. Veterinarytechnician Maggie Underwood had had a prior encounterwith a disagreeable camel, so she wasn’t looking forwardto this experience. She was pleasantly surprised, howev-er, at the degree to which Bess entrusted her withSamson’s care, even resting her head upon Underwood’sshoulder to watch the technician tend to her baby.
By the time he left the Hospital for Large Animals, Samson wasa healthy, bouncy camel calf. And today he is “doing very well, full of high spirits,” reports Ed Cothey. The Cotheys, who have Tufts stu-dents visit their farm, have about 150 animals, including camels,yaks, llamas, alpacas, Angora goats, heritage breed sheep, don-keys, birds, and pigs.
CASE SOLVED
The Case of Samson and the LlamaC O V E R S T O R Y
6 New Season, New Lifeby Leslie Limon
When the miracle of birthbecomes a life-threateningcrisis, Cummings’ neonatalunit performs a fewmiracles of its own.
23Samson the camel (inset) was saved by milk from a new mother llama atthe Marilyn M. Simpson Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Tufts’ Hospital forLarge Animals, which treats a fair number of llamas and alpacas. Top, Dr.Mary Rose Paradis with some alpacas at the Tufts hospital.
PHOTOS: ABOVE: MELODY KO; INSET, ED COTHEY
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and teaching and is the perfect leader to takeour veterinary school into the future, build-ing on the successes of former Dean PhilKosch and Interim Dean Sawkat Anwer.”
Kochevar is president of the AmericanCollege of Veterinary Clinical Pharmacologyand is active in the American VeterinaryMedical Association (AVMA), havingchaired its Council on Education andthe Educational Commission for Foreign
Veterinary Graduates. As a member and vicechair of the AVMA Council on Research, shealso served on the editorial board of theAmerican Journal of Veterinary Research.
The committee charged with findingthe best candidate to lead New England’sonly veterinary school was composed offaculty, students and staff. The committeebegan its search in June 2005, after Koschannounced his decision to take a one-yearsabbatical before returning to Tufts toassist the Provost’s Office with specialresearch projects.
IN BR IEF
PHOTO: LARRY WADSWORTH
FROM THE DEAN
The highest privilege for an interim dean is the opportunity to preside
over Commencement. It is truly an inspirational event, reminding us
each time why we do what we do. ■ Cummings School of Veterinary
Medicine holds its Commencement exercises under a large tent that can
accommodate the 5 to 10 guests who travel to Grafton to celebrate with
each of our graduating students. On nice days, we leave the sides of the
tent rolled up and everyone can enjoy the rolling hills, flowering trees and
stately brick buildings of our campus. But on May 21, rain threatened,
Celebrating Aspiration and Achievement
2 t u f t s v e t e r i n a ry m e d i c i n e s u m m e r 2 0 0 6
T U F T S V E T E R I N A R Y
M E D I C I N E
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Executive Editor
M. Sawkat Anwer, Interim Dean
Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine
Editorial Advisor
Shelley Rodman, Director
Veterinary Development and Alumni Relations
Editor
Gail Bambrick, Director
Tufts University Publications
Writer
Leslie Limon
Art Director
Margot Grisar
Tufts University Publications
Graphic Designer
Kelly McMurray
2communiqué
Photographers
Andrew Cunningham
Melody Ko
Tufts Veterinary Medicine is funded in
part by the Edward Hyde Cox Fund for
Publications. It is published three times
a year and distributed to key university
personnel, veterinary students,
veterinarians, alumni, friends, and others.
We welcome your letters, story ideas, and
suggestions. Send correspondence to:
Editor, Tufts Veterinary Medicine
Tufts University
Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine
200 Westboro Road
North Grafton, MA 01536
Telephone: 508-839-7907
Website: www.tufts.edu/vet
Email: [email protected]
, .
Turner Kochevar as the fourth dean of the Cummings School ofVeterinary Medicine. She began her new job on August 1.
Board-certified by the American College of Veterinary ClinicalPharmacology, Kochevar is widely respected as a leader in veterinarymedicine, an inspirational teacher and a scientist.
“The students, faculty and staff at the Cummings School are amongthe best in the nation,” Kochevar said. “I am thrilled to serve as dean forsuch a dedicated and talented group. From its beginning in 1978, theschool has served as a model for progressive and innovative scholarlyactivity. I hope to nurture and expand those traditions to the benefit ofthe school and the veterinary profession.”
‘SUPERB TEACHER AND SCHOLAR’Kochevar was associate dean for professional programs and held theWiley Chair of Veterinary Medical Education at Texas A&M University’sCollege of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences before comingto Cummings. Also she was a professor of veterinary physiology andpharmacology at the College of Veterinary Medicine, with a jointappointment in medical physiology. She had been on the faculty atTexas A&M since 1987 and served two stints as acting veterinary deanin 2004 and 2005.
“I’m excited about having Dr. Kochevar join our senior academicleadership team,” Tufts President Lawrence S. Bacow said. “Not only willshe be an outstanding dean of the Cummings School, she also will havemuch to contribute to the entire university. She has enormous energyand is a superb teacher and scholar.”
Kochevar graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in English and biol-ogy from Rice University in 1978. She received a doctor of veterinarymedicine degree from Texas A&M University in 1981, and a postdoctor-al degree in cellular and molecular biology from the University of TexasSouthwestern Medical Center in 1987. In the mid-1990s, she spent a year in Washington, D.C., as aCongressional Science Fellow with the Senate Laborand Human Resources Committee.
Heralded as an inspiring mentor to her students,Kochevar has won many teaching awards, including the NordenDistinguished Teacher Award, the Student American Veterinary MedicalAssociation National Teaching Award in Basic Science and the FormerStudents Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching at Texas A&M.She has received numerous grants for education and curriculum devel-opment and participated in educational outreach projects funded by theNational Institute of Environmental Health Science.
Kochevar’s research focuses on pharmacology and cellular andmolecular biology. Her work has been funded by the American HeartAssociation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and corporate sponsors.
“After a comprehensive national search, I am delighted that we’ve hiredthe best candidate in the country,” said Tufts Provost and Senior VicePresident Jamshed Bharucha. “Dr. Kochevar is passionate about research
Cummings School dean known as an inspiring educator
New Leader Takes the Helm
Dr. DeborahTurner Kochevar
.
“After a comprehensive national search, I am delighted that we’ve hired the bestcandidate in the country.”
and all sides of the tent were lowered
except for one panel at the back to allow
traffic in and out. Only the faculty and
speakers on the podium could see what
was happening outside as the ceremony
began and progressed.
Our campus community is tight-knit.
With only 80 students per class, faculty and
staff have the opportunity to know the spe-
cial qualities of each student and the per-
sonal story each brings to the classroom
and ultimately to the profession.
So as we mark the graduation of anoth-
er class, faculty and staff have mixed feel-
ings. We rejoice in the accomplishments of
our students; we recall the obstacles some
had to overcome; we admire the conviction
and aspirations many have shared; we
remember who challenged us to be better
teachers and administrators, and we know
that we will miss them all.
We always hope for blue skies that
match the sense of opportunity the day rep-
resents. This time, the sky clouded up as
our graduates assembled and began their
march into the tent, past their families and
friends and into their seats facing the dais.
As they sat down, they could hear, and I
could see, that the skies had opened up,
releasing a torrent of rain, spiked with
lightning and thunder. The storm contin-
ued throughout the ceremony. But, just as
the last student received her diploma, the
rain stopped. And when Dr. Henry Foster
led the new graduates in the recitation of
the Veterinarian’s Oath, the sun was back,
bright and warm, as if Mother Nature had
the same mixed feelings as the faculty and
staff. It was the perfect end to the perfect
beginning for each of our graduates.
My best wishes to our graduates and
my thanks to everyone for giving me the
opportunity to serve my term as interim
dean. I look forward to welcoming
Deborah Kochevar as she takes the reins.
CHARLES TUFTS SOCIETY CORRECTIONIn the last issue of Tufts’ Veterinary Medicine,the following people were inadvertently omittedfrom the listing of Charles Tufts Society mem-bers. Accept our apologies for this oversight. Weare pleased to acknowledge them now.
Susan Collingwood Kasper and Ronald Kasper
Barbara and Alan MaddausNina M. TilanderAnonymous AlumnaAnonymous Friends (2)
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A Pioneer Steps Down“Irwin Leav, DVM,” read Irv Leav’s office doorat Tufts when he joined the School ofMedicine faculty in 1969. “My colleaguesthought it was some foreign medical degree,”recalls Leav with a laugh. “I would tell themwhat it was, and they would say, ‘That’simpossible. How do you know so much abouthuman disease?’” He would then explainthat, for him, a veterinary degree was anavenue to biomedical research.
After earning his DVM, Leav joinedHarvard Medical School as a research fellowin an NIH-sponsored program in comparativepathology. Clinical rotations during this peri-od sparked an interest in hormonallyinduced prostate cancer that eventuallybecame a lifelong dedication. From there hejoined the medical faculty at Tufts, hired byprofessor emeritus Dr. Martin Flax, whochaired the Department of Pathology at TuftsUniversity School of Medicine. Flax sharedLeav’s belief that diseases affecting bothhumans and animals should be studied fromboth angles, so Leav split his time betweenanimal pathology at Angell MemorialHospital and human pathology at Tufts.During that time he became a board-certifieddiplomate in the American College ofVeterinary Pathologists, a tenured facultymember at the School of Medicine and co-principal investigator on what would be a 20-year grant from the National Cancer Instituteon hormonal triggers in the prostate.
In 1977 Dr. Jean Mayer, then TuftsUniversity president, announced a uniqueexperiment: a new veterinary school within a
private university that would share the basicsciences with an existing medical school. “Heasked if I would become involved—give adviceand help the school gain credibility—so I saidsure,” Leav recalls with a laugh. “I didn’t thinkit would be any big deal.” But the next severalyears would test his diplomatic skills as hecalmed the fears of veterinary colleagues anddealt with the typical fits and starts of anentrepreneurial venture within an establishedinstitution. In 1979 he became academicdean of the veterinary school, driving the cre-ation of the academic program while continu-ing his lecturing and research at the medicalschool. To build the curriculum, he says, “I
went to various veterinary schools, saw whatthey had and improved on it.”
Leav’s enormous contributions to thebirth—and health—of the veterinary schoolinclude serving as associate dean in theareas of academic affairs, research, andbasic science; chief of veterinary pathology;and professor of pathology. “He set thefoundation of general pathology,” notesDistinguished Professor of BiomedicalSciences Sawkat Anwer, Ph.D. “His insightin terms of how pathology should be taughtto veterinary students has been instrumen-tal.” His accomplishments include recruit-ment of faculty such as Dr. James Rossand Dr. Anthony Schwartz, whose combinedtalents were vital in building the clinical cur-riculum. Leav is also credited with recruit-ing Dr. Saul Tzipori, whose research ininfectious disease has attracted record-set-ting grants, but he says it was Drs. Andy
Onderdonk and Jerry Kirsch (then heads ofthe Clinical Lab and Infectious Disease,respectively) who urged him to do so.
Today he serves as adjunct professor incancer biology at the University of Massa-chusetts Medical School, where he contin-ues his research into hormonal carcinogene-sis—but now using genetic molecular biolo-gy. He feels he could have contributed moreto medical research had he not been calledupon to help build a school, but he is philo-sophical: “To some people, at least to me,if you’re given the opportunity to undertakea challenge, and you succeed, that’s prettymuch what you can hope for in life.”
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IN BR IEF
PHOTO: ANDY CUNNINGHAM
Dr. Harold E.Hammerquist, DVM,
assistant professor ofenvironmental andpopulation health,
heads home to Idaho.
,Ó . -
merquist during a mid-April conversation. A special event?“You bet!” he smiles. The man—known to all as “Dr.Hammer” or simply “Hammer”—is already looking forward
to sampling his usual maple walnut. The “place” is one of the dairy-owned ice cream stands he patronizes with students who accompany himon his rounds, visits known to all as “frozen dairy inspections.”
A member of the clinical faculty at the Tufts Ambulatory Service inWoodstock, Conn., since 1983—and before that a farm animal veteri-narian for 30 years in his native Idaho—Dr. Hammer has spent prettymuch his whole life around cows. Irked by the fact that most of his vet-erinary school professors had never practiced veterinary medicine, hedecided to pass along his practical experience by teaching. By allaccounts, he accomplished his stated aim as a teacher: to impart to hisstudents the love of the profession and their responsibility tohumankind. He received four teaching awards, and students chose himfour times to be their faculty speaker at graduation.
His sheer joy of being a farm animalpractitioner also spilled over into the rela-tionships he forged with AmbulatoryService clients. “Clients liked him becausehe showed an interest in them and followedup on cases,” says Dr. Howard Levine, sec-tion head of the Tufts Ambulatory Service.“He probably did the most drive-back re-checks to see how an animal was doing.”And on a farm visit he’d talk with the kidsand take the time to read someone’s palm.He insists he knows how to read lifelines,“but as far as I know,” chuckles Levine, “hetells everyone they’ll live to a ripe old age.”
As he worked with students, he empow-ered them to feel ownership of a case. Healso set high expectations for professional-ism, as Dr. Paul Biaggiotti, V88, now indairy practice in Idaho, learned early on:“You’re supposed to use a paddle to exam-ine a cow’s milk for mastitis, but many sea-soned vets simply squirt milk on one oftheir black rubber boots to examine it.When I did that, he didn’t say anything atthe time, but on our way back to the cliniche chewed me out—in a nice way—for notdoing it right.”
On farm rounds, Hammerquist woulduse drive time to present cases to his stu-dents for analysis. “A lot of my problemsthey probably won’t see in veterinaryschool, but could run into them in prac-tice,” he states. He also quizzed students onstate capitals “because I want them to knowwe think about other things besides veteri-nary medicine.” And he invariably remind-ed students to wave to his wife Bernice asthey drove by the couple’s condo on theirrounds. Even when they’re not with him,students often call out “Hi, Bernice!” asthey drive by.
Since Dr. Hammer’s retirement, thecouple has returned to Idaho to be nearerto four of their seven children who livethere. While he doesn’t rule out veterinarypractice, his retirement will undoubtedlygive him time to make popcorn for their 17grandchildren and three great-grandchil-dren and entertain them by reading theirpalms. One also suspects that a fairamount of time will be spent scoutingaround for a whole new route of frozendairy inspection stations.
Maple Walnut in Boise?
Dr. Irv Leav, a principal
architect of the Cummings
School of Veterinary Medicine,
retired this spring.
OTRACKING PATHOGENS
SAUL TZIPORI, professor of biomedical sciences at the Cummings School, and
DAVID WALT, the Robinson Professor of Chemistry at Tufts, have been awarded a
$600,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop
methods for rapid detection of water-borne pathogens in large volumes of source
and drinking water. Once the work is completed, they anticipate that they will be
able to detect small numbers of water-borne pathogens in large volumes of water
in less than four hours.Saul Tzipori
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I
. . ,
who directs the equine neonatal program in the Hospital
for Large Animals, receives a call from a referring veteri-
narian: Newborn foal MilkyWay and her mom are on their
way to the hospital. The foal’s birth, while slightly prema-
ture, was uncomplicated. But now, several hours later, the
foal is hypothermic and still too weak to stand. She also
has a very weak suckle reflex. Because she’s unable to
nurse, she hasn’t received any antibody-rich colostrum,
present only in the first liter or so of the mare’s milk.
When this happens, a foal is vulnerable to bacteria in the
stall that is usually harmless to a foal with a healthy
immune system. Many of the foals arriving at the neona-
tal unit haven’t gotten colostrum for one reason or anoth-
er. This places them at high risk for an overwhelming and
life-threatening infection called septicemia.
They are brand new, beautiful—and vulnerable.
The magic of foaling season can also be
marred by illness. Saving these innocents is
the 24-hour calling of Tufts’ neonatal program.
MilkyWay is a fic-tional foal createdto tell the story ofthe neonatal unitat the CummingsSchool’s Hospital
for Large Animals.She is a composite
of real patients,representing com-
mon conditionsand scenarios
seen within theneonatal unit.
inew season,new l fe
student. “Volunteers are veterinary students,faculty and staff from other areas of theschool, members of the community—evenundergraduate students from Tufts andWorcester Polytechnic Institute,” she says.“It’sa pretty outstanding learning experience foranybody who’s been involved.”
The foal volunteer team is “invaluable,”says Mazan. “These are people who dedicatetheir time out of the sheer goodness of theirhearts. They sit with the foals, make surethey don’t get tangled in their lines, obtainthe foal’s vital signs, milk the mares—andgenerally make round-the-clock care possi-ble.” Volunteers call the hospital before their
scheduled shift to confirm whether or notthey’re needed. But even if the answer is no,they need to be on call. A typical overnightmight need only one or two volunteer “sit-ters,” but during a particularly heavy weeklast April, more needed to come in to sitwith the nine sick foals in the hospital.
Round-the-clock care has worked won-ders for MilkyWay; by day three it is nolonger necessary. By day four she is standingand alert and has gained weight. But hersuckle reflex still isn’t quite strong enough forher to nurse, despite regular stimulation byneonatal technicians. As each day goes by,there is some concern that the mare’s milksupply may start to dwindle, even with fre-quent milking, and special feed or drugs maybe necessary to support lactation. ThoughMilkyWay is still too weak to nurse, the marenuzzles and smells her, maintaining thatfragile bond. Finally—on day five—the vet-erinary technicians’ persistence pays off:MilkyWay begins to seek out her mom’s
udder and make attempts to nurse. Soon itwill be time to take out the feeding tube, andanother day or so after that, she and hermom will be ready to go home.
TEACHING MOMENTSThe length of time it takes a foal to recoverhas much to do with how quickly an ownerand the referring veterinarian realize thatcritical care is necessary. Paradis drives thispoint home to her students when she tellsthem,“You cannot wait on sick babies—youcan never say to a client that you’ll be therein two hours.” Delaying a call to the neona-tal unit carries financial consequences aswell: “I tell my students that if clients callwithin six hours of birth, a problem willcost a fraction of what it will cost if theywait 24 hours.” This is not the first time dur-ing our tour that Paradis’ teacher sideemerges. As we pass a stall holding a brownfoal and a gray mare, she explains that thefoal’s “raccoon eyes” are because he’s shed-ding his brown baby coat, revealing the graycoat beneath. When she cracks open thedoor to get a better look at him, he bucksand rears up, then after satisfying his curios-ity about the visitors, starts to nurse strenu-ously from his mom, who bellows in annoy-ance. Paradis admonishes the youngster:“C’mon, kid, be careful. Don’t be so rough!”But she remarks that the foal’s behavior is agood sign. “I always tell my students that a‘bad baby,’ one you can’t catch, is a healthybaby. A ‘good baby’ is a very sick baby.”
Moments like these are indicative of theconstant intersection between clinical workand education in the neonatal unit. In fact,Paradis based the content of her recently pub-
s u m m e r 2 0 0 6 t u f t s v e t e r i n a ry m e d i c i n e 9
SAVING THE NEWBORNThe neonatal team is ready and waitingwhen the owner pulls up an hour later.MilkyWay is in the back seat of the carbecause it is too cold to transport her in thetrailer with her mom. (Unless a foal isorphaned—or there is no plan to bring foaland mother back together again—the mareaccompanies the foal to supply milk and toensure bonding with her baby.) The teamlifts the foal out of the car and onto a gur-ney and begins lifesaving measures asthey’re bringing her into the hospital.
“Sometimes we’ll even intubate a foal lit-erally as it’s going onto the gurney,” statesDr. Melissa Mazan, V93, VR98, who bringsexpertise in equine respiratory medicine tothe neonatal unit. “Usually between two andfour veterinarians and multiple technicianswork on a critically ill foal—we need ‘allhands on board’ if we’re going to save it,” sheadds. Dr. Daniela Bedenice, a boarded spe-cialist in both emergency and critical careand large animal internal medicine, is a vitalpart of this team, providing critical caremonitoring and pulmonary support.
One person examines MilkyWay.Someone else takes a blood sample andhands it off to a third, who runs it down tothe laboratory. In the meantime, someone isinserting a catheter to begin intravenous flu-ids. The mare waits in a stall in the hospital asher foal is taken to the Marilyn M. SimpsonNeonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), a sin-gle tiny room with a small foam mattress.There she receives round-the-clock treat-ment, supported by a pile of pillows to keepher resting on her chest to facilitate breath-ing. A warm air blanket keeps her warm asintravenous lines give her food—typically amix of glucose, amino acids and fat—as well
as plasma, fluids and antibiotics. The plasmamakes up in part for the antibodies she lacks;the antibiotics fight infections resulting fromher compromised immune system. Althoughmany foals can receive intensive care in a stallwith their mothers, those being fed intra-venously must stay in the NICU, explainsParadis, because “food is very easy to con-taminate. You need to administer it in a cleanarea to keep dust from entering the dedicat-ed catheter. You also have to mix it carefullyunder a sterile hood.”
REVOLUTIONIZING NEONATAL CAREAs Paradis describes these protocols during arecent tour of the facility, her calm, matter-of-fact manner belies their significance. Thefact is that by instituting measures like these,she “revolutionized the care of foals,” statesDr. Joseph Merriam Jr. of the MassachusettsEquine Clinic in Uxbridge, Mass., a referringveterinarian. “Dr. Paradis was on the fore-front of inserting a feeding line to giveneonates a steady drip of nutrition in caseswhen they can’t eat or won’t suckle,” he says.He adds that Paradis, Mazan and Bedenicewere instrumental in instituting the practiceof watching critical-care foals literally 24hours a day.
This is precisely the level of attentionMilkyWay receives even after she is movedinto the stall with her mom. Thankfully,their separation from each other has onlybeen a few days. “If they’re so sick that we
have to take them away from the moms,”explains Paradis, “then after about two orthree days the moms don’t recognize themany more and will reject them.” The foal stillcan’t suckle but is ready to be fed her moth-er’s milk, so intravenous feeding is replacedwith an indwelling nasogastric tube, a tubeinserted through the nose, down the esoph-agus and into her stomach. This allowssomeone to feed her with a funnel or a bagof milk as often as once every hour.
“Most mares will let us milk them,” saysneonatal veterinary technician MaggieUnderwood, “though if you have peopledoing it who are a little new at it, the horsesmay be resistant at first.” Among those whoare “new at it” are the cadre of volunteerswho sign up each February for training, thenjoin the neonatal foal volunteer team to takea four- to six-hour shift to sit with a sick foal.Veterinary students coordinate and schedulethe volunteers.
THE GOODNESS OF THEIR HEARTSOne of those coordinators was Dr. PeggyBrosnahan, V02, now an internal medicineresident at the veterinary school at OklahomaState University. Brosnahan, a neonatal tech-nician in the Hospital for Large Animalsbefore coming to the veterinary school,became a neonatal foal team coordinator as a
8 t u f t s v e t e r i n a ry m e d i c i n e s u m m e r 2 0 0 6
TUFTS’ NEONATAL CARE AT A GLANCE
FOALING SEASON: In New England, normally from March or April until about mid-July. Themost active months in the neonatal unit are April and May.PATIENT DEMOGRAPHICS: From all over Massachusetts, as well as Connecticut and RhodeIsland. Many will go on to be sport horses, trained for jumping, cross country and dressageevents. A few are bred as racehorses. Most of the rest are companion animals enjoyed fortrail riding. PATIENT CARE STATISTICS: Most arrive within the first 24 hours of life. About 75 percent ofthem will need a neonatal technician to sit with them around the clock for at least the firstone or two nights. The average stay is approximately one week. NEONATAL FOAL TEAM VOLUNTEERING: E-mail Maggie Underwood [email protected]
Previous page: Lacey, owned by Sid and PatDeBello, stands with her mother, Chantilly Lace.Above: Lacey follows her mother closely. At right:Dr. Mary Rose Paradis, Theresa Pancotto, V07, Dr.Melissa Haskell and Dr. Kara Lascola, VO3, treat’06 Fleur, who came to the clinic dehydrated, inshock and with severe diarrhea at just 3 days old.
lished textbook, Equine Neonatal Medicine: ACase-Based Approach (see related article), onthe most common conditions and diseasesseen in the unit. And this past foaling seasonproved that she had made the right choices.“Iwas on duty during six weeks of really intensework,” she says. “In that period, we had anexample of every single case in the book.”With a laugh, she adds, “I was copying chap-ters for the students left and right—I think Imust have copied the whole book for them!”
Brosnahan, who is also a Ph.D. candidatewith plans to teach veterinary medicine,attests to Paradis’ dedication as an educatorand mentor, calling her “an outstandingteacher—one of the best I’ve ever workedwith. Things I learned from her I’m stillusing on my own foal patients on a day-to-day basis. And from the perspective of some-one who plans to stay in academia, she’s anoutstanding role model.”
The unit’s small size contributes to thequality of the education students receivethere. “We may get only about 50 babies ayear, as opposed to an equine hospital downin Kentucky where they might get 450 babiesa year,” states Paradis, “but it’s the rightnumber for teaching the variety of thingsthat can affect the animals.” She also suggeststhat due to the unit’s manageable size, “ourbabies may get more attention than in a larg-er hospital, so we actually do pretty well.”
SUCCESS AS A STATE OF MIND“Pretty well” translates into an 85 percentsuccess rate among patients, virtually none ofwhich would survive without treatment.Paradis maintains that this is consistent with
other first-rate neonatal units around thecountry, attributing the overall success in thefield to a collegial exchange of knowledgeamong clinicians and researchers. Merriam,however, believes Tufts’ success rate may besomewhat higher than most, and that havingthe odds strongly in their favor at Tufts makesan enormous impact on his clients’ decisionsto treat sick foals. One of those clients, eques-trian and author Elizabeth Benney, was firstreferred to Tufts 13 years ago when her maredelivered twins. Paradis worked tirelessly for amonth on the surviving foal, named Sooner,ultimately saving her in spite of multiplecomplications. She became a healthy filly whowent on to have a foal of her own. Benney’sstory of Sooner’s miraculous recovery waspublished in Horseman’s Yankee Pedlar.
Certainly much of the unit’s success isattributable to such highly skilled cliniciansas Paradis, Bedenice and Mazan, who drawon their expertise as well the sophisticatedtools that allow them to characterize, diag-nose and treat disease: endoscopy (includ-ing gastroscopy), ultrasonography andnuclear imaging all boost the hospital’scapabilities. But successful treatment of acritically ill foal goes beyond fixing theimmediate problems, says Mazan, andtherein lies another key to the strength ofthe neonatal unit. “With anything we do,we have to take into account that this babyneeds to grow into a sound and healthyanimal of 1,000 or 1,200 pounds,” she says.“A horse with poor joints or feet, for exam-ple, will break down. So we have to care
about the whole animal.”The truly differentiating strength of the
neonatal unit, however, might just be its stateof mind. “What makes any neonatal clinicgood,” says Paradis, “is the enthusiasm of thepeople running it and a true love of the foal.You really have to love it to do it well. A clin-ic that really prefers other types of casesmight not be as aggressive as we are.”
At the very heart of that aggressiveness—coupling skill with dedication and opti-mism—is Paradis. “Even in cases that otherpeople might consider hopeless, more oftenthan not she’ll say, ‘we’ll fix this one,’ ” statesUnderwood. “And more often than not, she’sright. And even with the ones we don’t save,we always learn something for the next time.She’s the best.” TVM
“What makes any neonatalclinic good is the enthusiasmof the people running it and a true love of the foal.”
“Learning a litany of facts about a certaindisease without having a particular patient orstory to tie those facts to is inefficient andunproductive. Telling stories or presentingexamples allows the reader to use imagina-tion to conjure up the patient and questionwhat might be happening. The readerbecomes an active participant in the case.”
This statement, from the preface to EquineNeonatal Medicine: A Case-Based Approach,summarizes the goal of this textbook by Dr.Mary Rose Paradis, associate professor of
clinical sciences at the Cummings School. The first time she taught, more than 25
years ago, Paradis used the same lectureapproach that most of her own professorshad used—and found it boring. She realizedthat if she was bored, then so were her stu-dents. She remembered that one of herfavorite courses in veterinary school at theUniversity of Georgia was taught using acase-based approach, so she switched—andnever looked back. “Even with a class of 76students,” she says, “I present a case, and I
ask, ‘What do you think is happening here?’” Paradis designed this book using the
same model, presenting 30 cases in 14 chap-ters covering the spectrum of neonatal dis-eases and disorders—complete with compli-cations—that veterinarians are most likely toencounter. “There are probably twice as manyother things that can happen to foals, butthose are the essential ones,” she states.“Anyone who reads this book and digests itwill have a solid handle on neonatal equinemedicine.” To collect the cases, Paradis con-
EQUINE NEONATAL MEDICINE: A CASE-BASED APPROACH tacted colleagues—including several atTufts—before the 2004 foaling seasonbegan. She asked them to choose a casefrom that season as it unfolded and to takepictures. “I wanted the book to have photosbecause I wanted readers to be able to seeeach animal and connect with it,” she com-ments. The authors wrote their cases accord-ing to a strict formula: to tell the story of thefoal, one installment at a time, and after eachone, to discuss anatomy and physiology inthe context of diagnosis and treatment. Theresulting approach, in her words, “encouragespeople to read for a bigger picture.”
Once she completed the final selection ofcases, Paradis did a remarkable thing: Withthe support of the Dorothy RussellHavemeyer Foundation, she invited all theauthors to come together at Tufts’ EuropeanCenter in Talloires, France, and present theircases to each other. About half of themattended. As one of the foundation’s primaryinvestigators, Paradis is expected to hold aconference or workshop every three yearsand was permitted to use one of her work-shops for this purpose. “It’s not usual thatan author of one chapter gets to talk to theauthor of another chapter,” she says.
“People actually got to respond to eachother’s cases, ask questions and bring upideas that the author could respond to.” Theresulting discussions built rapport amongthe authors and contributed to the book’sunified voice.
Since the book was released in May2006, Paradis has turned her attention toher next project: to create a different book,drawing from the same collection of cases,that would be more accessible to a lay per-son such as a horse owner or a breeder.
—LESLIE LIMON
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At right: ’06 Fleur on the road to recovery whileLacey moves outdoors to kick up her heels.
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MAKINGHEADWAY AGAINSTDISEASE
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ronmental and Population Health at the Cummings School
continue their work on many fronts to contain or prevent
the spread of disease from wildlife to domestic animals and
humans. The focus of Dr. Mark Pokras, V84, director of the
Cummings School’s Wildlife Medicine Program, and assis-
tant research professors Dr. Alison Robbins, V92, and Dr.
Janet C. Martin, V90, is as circumscribed as the narrow
stretch of Cape Cod. It’s also as broad as the Common-
wealth, its neighbors and the rest of the nation.
RDid they take the bait? Testing here will tell if they ingested a vaccine that could save their lives
RABIES VACCINATION PROJECTTen Cape Cod towns from Provincetown toYarmouth participated in the distributionof oral rabies vaccines last May in the state’songoing raccoon rabies eradication pro-gram on Cape Cod (“In Brief,” Tufts Veteri-nary Medicine, winter 2005). Over a five-dayperiod, local public health, naturalresources, conservation departments andcommunity volunteers joined Tufts veteri-narians and USDA biologists to distributejust over 60,000 vaccine-embedded baits.“This spring we saw an unprecedented levelof cooperation from the towns—it wasreally fantastic,” says Robbins, who jointlymanages the program with Martin, in part-nership with USDA-Wildlife Services.
Until the spring of 2004, the Cape hadbeen kept rabies-free for more than adecade by the distribution of oral vaccine-containing baits. This was done in a zonealong both sides of the Cape Cod Canal,creating a wide area of protected wildlife.The barrier was breached in the spring of2004, when the first rabies case was detectedon the Cape. By the end of 2004, the diseasehad spread about halfway along the Cape. Itreached Provincetown a year later. Today,every town has reported cases of rabies.
The immediate goal is to reduce thenumber of cases of rabid wildlife. Thelonger-term strategy: to slowly push thedisease back off the Cape. The oral vaccinefor wildlife has now been distributed in allthe towns on the Cape. The final two, Truroand Provincetown, joined this spring’s bait-ing effort.
The bait is gobbled up not just by rac-coons but other carnivores as well, includingcoyotes and skunks. One question iswhether the vaccine’s current formula hasany effect on skunks. “Just before the barrierwas crossed, and about two years precedingthat, we were seeing rabid skunks in the vac-cinated area,” says Robbins. “That was onepossible reason the barrier was breached.”
Two different types of bait formats arenow being used to compare their effective-ness. Some areas are baited with pouches of
liquid vaccine sealed within a block of fish-meal. Others are baited with pouches sim-ply coated with an attractant. The newpackaging could result in a higher vaccina-tion rate among raccoons, and is hoped tobe more effective with skunks than the orig-inal. And the vaccine manufacturer is work-ing to develop a new formula.
After their bait distribution in theProvincetown-to-Yarmouth area, Robbinsand Martin began evaluating its success bymeasuring vaccination rates. They—together with three Tufts veterinary stu-dents—have spent the summer testingwildlife, focusing primarily on raccoons andskunks. They trap the animals in box traps,tranquilize them, take blood samples, andthen release them once they awaken. Theyanalyze blood samples for the presence ofantibodies to determine whether the animalhas been immunized. Immunization ratesthroughout each area will help them under-stand if—and how—they need to changetheir strategy for future baiting seasons.“Then there’s the added factor of assessingthe two different types of bait formats to seewhich one is more effective,” notes Robbins.“We compare them by collecting blood sam-ples on different parts of the Cape where dif-ferent types of baits have been used.”
DOCILE SKUNKSOf all the animals that wind up in the cagetraps—including feral cats and an occasion-al coyote—skunks are actually the mostdocile. “They’re not as ‘trigger happy’ as youmight think,” says Martin, as both burst intolaughter at the visual image. “I’ve evenpicked up a trap with a skunk in it, andwalked with it, and it didn’t spray.” Someskunks remain curled up in the cornersleeping and don’t even wake up with thesedative injection.
The program’s very public presence onthe Cape keeps residents aware of the dan-gers of rabies and the need to keep their petsvaccinated. Despite all the hard work, how-ever, eradication is not imminent. Robbinsand Martin hope the vaccination programwill eliminate rabies, town by town, fromProvincetown back across the canal—butknow it’s going to be a matter of years.
An added benefit of their program is thatit allows them to examine raccoon popula-tion densities. The data they collect will helptheir own eradication program as well as
others throughout the country. This is allpart of a national effort to prevent thespread of raccoon rabies—a disease cur-rently confined to areas east of theAppalachian Mountains. This is important,explains Robbins,“because endemic rabies isa public health risk and is very expensive forstates to manage. The investment made inpreventing its spread will result in a hugesavings on public health costs to the nation.”
WILDLIFE SURVEILLANCESpotting the first signs of emerging infec-tious diseases in domestic animals andhumans—avian influenza being just onepossibility—requires monitoring wildlifehealth. And that means creating a unifiedinter-agency wildlife disease surveillancestrategy. The first step: Make sure everyoneknows everyone else. Toward this endPokras, Robbins and Martin have beendeveloping collaborative relationships withthe Massachusetts Departments of PublicHealth (DPH), Fish and Wildlife and Agri-cultural Resources; other state and federalagencies; private concerns, such as Zoo NewEngland; and other interest groups.
This project is funded by the Massachu-setts DPH, whose foresight in identifyingthe need for inter-agency communicationwith respect to bioterrorism led to federalfunding from the Centers for Disease Con-trol. Dr. Fredric Cantor, V84, then publichealth veterinarian with the DPH, voicedthe need for wildlife surveillance: Diseasesoccurring naturally in Massachusettswildlife, such as tularemia, may be used asbioterrorism agents.
Over time, the focus of the project hasevolved, with growing concerns about avianinfluenza and other zoonotic diseases(those that can spread from animals tohumans) that could reach epidemic or pan-demic proportions.
“I’m a facilitator in that I put people intouch with each other,” says Pokras. “I’vebeen here so long that I know a lot of peo-ple—and know who’s doing what.” But it’sRobbins and Martin, he says, who havedone “the yeomen’s share of the work” sincethe fall of 2004. Among other things, theyhave been building an archive of wildlifeblood and tissue, a vital resource for stateand other wildlife researchers as they studydiseases of public health concern.
Through their monthly meetings at the
veterinary school, attended by representa-tives of all concerned agencies and organi-zations, the trio has brought together abody of colleagues who now know eachother. Over time, they have become a team:people who understand the vital need tocommunicate with each other, as well as theneed for vigilance against outbreaks ofwildlife disease that could cross over todomestic animals and humans.
They also recognize the need for a uni-fied message to address the public’s con-cerns; together, they created a common factsheet on avian influenza. Each agency andorganization now uses it, ensuring a consis-tent response to people’s questions.
Next on the agenda is to create a seam-less inter-agency mechanism for informa-tion intake, sharing and evaluation. Thechallenge is how to connect the dots whendifferent people call different agencies toreport separate yet possibly linked incidentsof wildlife illness or death—whether or notbioterrorism is suspected. As a first step,Robbins and Martin organized a large-scaleinteractive drill for members of theirmonthly group at the Massachusetts Emer-gency Management Agency (MEMA) inearly June.
Cantor, now with the U.S. Department ofAgriculture, facilitated the discussion. He pre-sented “what-if” scenarios designed to revealgaps in communication in situations thatcould signal an outbreak of avian influenza.
What does agency X do when a person calls toreport two dead Canada geese at a localpond? Will it make a difference if it’s threegeese? Four? What if, on that same day, a dif-ferent person calls agency Y to report twodead geese at the other end of that samepond? Three geese? At what point—if any—will agency X and agency Y communicatewith each other, leading them to discover thatthere are, say, five dead geese and not two?
Scenarios like these not only pinpointedthe gaps that need to be closed, but alsostimulated an exchange of ideas about howto close them. And Cummings School is in aposition to be a major part of that solution.
The Department of Environmental andPopulation Health would act as a clearing-house for gathering data, assessing it anddisseminating it to other agencies. Drawingon the round-the-clock availability of stu-dents on duty, the school could also serve asa 24-hour hotline for agencies lacking thebudget to staff their own. And the school isequally in a position to be the nexus for col-laborative decision-making about collectingand testing samples, analyzing them anddetermining the appropriate response.
One of the most serious challenges will befor Tufts, as a private university, to secure thefunding needed to maintain this clearing-house for the Commonwealth. The Cum-mings School is prepared to step up to thetask, but funding for salaries must be found.And the need is critical: “No other agency inMassachusetts has the mandate to collect andexamine dead wildlife to look for diseasesthat may affect people,” states Robbins. “Sur-veillance for new and emerging diseases is ahuge hole in bioterrorism preparedness.”
It will be complicated enough to coordi-nate efforts among agencies, all with theirown boundaries defined by statute. Coordi-nating multi-state efforts when agencies areempowered to work only within their ownstate boundaries adds further complication.Yet being able to function across state linesis vital, says Pokras, because “animals anddisease don’t stop at political boundaries.Our task is to work with state legislators tomake sure they understand this.”
As he, Robbins and Martin—together withCantor and the rest of their working group—face what is clearly a huge task,Pokras nonethe-less maintains his optimism.“Even though thisis hard—and might even seem impossible tosome—I say we can do this.” TVM
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“EVEN THOUGHSOME SAY THIS ISHARD, I SAY WECAN DO THIS.”
Previous spread: Jessamyn (Jess) Kennedy, V08,carefully retrieves a skunk from its trap so it canbe tested. Anna Ludi, V08, above, prepares sam-ples for study.
Left: Jess Kennedy prepares a blood sample, andthen gives a raccoon a quick check up.
The answer, again, is Tufts V.E.T.S. Theclinic has spent the last two years gettingready to transform itself from an emergencyclinic into a full-scale referral specialty prac-tice. Tufts purchased the V.E.T.S. clinic in1998 to expand the Cummings School’seducational mission by allowing “selected”residents (licensed DVMs pursuingadvanced training) in emergency and criti-cal care (E.C.C.) to split their time betweenTufts’ flagship Foster Hospital in Graftonand the community setting in Walpole. TuftsV.E.T.S. pays the residents’ salaries and inreturn benefits from the work of superiortalent. The emergency room at the FosterHospital benefits from the use of paid resi-dents for half of their time. And the resi-dents benefit from the chance to practiceemergency and critical care medicine in twovery different settings—as do fourth-yearDVM students on elective rotations in
Walpole. “The experience offers studentsand residents a taste of what it’s like in thereal world,” explains Tufts V.E.T.S. directorDr. Armelle de Laforcade, V97, VR01.
At first the emergency clinic operatedonly during overnight and weekend/holidayhours, then added daytime dermatology(2001), ophthalmology (2005), internalmedicine (2006) and 24-hour critical care(2006). As services expanded, so did the oldstorefront facility—but there came a pointwhen growth reached a crossroads. Thequality and size of the physical plant did notmeet the needs of a model specialty practice.
So Tufts V.E.T.S. began constructing a15,000-square-foot full-scale referral hospi-tal at 525 South Street that opened inAugust. “This is not a general practice,” deLaforcade stresses. “Our goal is to continueto be a resource to primary care veterinari-ans in New England, whether it’s to provide
surgery for a dog hit by a car, treat a catexperiencing complications from diabetesor perform an abdominal ultrasound on ananimal that is vomiting.” When critical carepatients require continued specialized careand follow-up, veterinarians from the regionare now able to refer them to specialistsunder the same roof.
The new hospital complements andextends the clinical services offered at theFoster Hospital for Small Animals on Tufts’ Grafton campus. For example, theCummings School’s clinical and teaching der-matology service is located at Tufts V.E.T.S.Other specialties not available in Grafton mayfollow. Tufts V.E.T.S., in turn, refers patientsneeding neurological care, radiation therapy,MRI and CT scanning to the Foster Hospital.And because some services at the FosterHospital are reaching a saturation point, TuftsV.E.T.S. offers local veterinarians a choice,explains Tufts V.E.T.S. E.C.C. clinician Dr.Tom Walker, VR05. “There is definitely highdemand for specialty services in this area, andwe want to meet that demand with a highlevel of service to referring veterinarians andtheir clients.” From a learning perspective, thenew clinic provides supplemental trainingoptions to residents and students; somefourth-year students are already opting tospend a week in Tufts V.E.T.S.’ dermatologyand E.C.C. units for elective clinical rotations.This new hospital is pioneering a clinical
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service/teaching model, focused on client careand service to the referring veterinarian com-munity.
Walker, a board-certified E.C.C. specialist,and Dr. April Paul, VR06, who will take herE.C.C. boards in September, joined the TuftsV.E.T.S. staff this past year. Both completedtheir residencies at Tufts. De Laforcade seesboth clinicians as critical to the teaching mis-sion of the veterinary school. “Many alter-nate track residencies exist throughout thecountry,” she states, “and what often happensis that half the time residents are workingunder a specialist, and the other half they’reon their own.” She knows that both Paul andWalker, by virtue of their expertise and theirclose relationship with the CummingsSchool, are in a position to give Tufts V.E.T.S.residents first-rate mentoring to comple-ment the training they receive in Grafton. Ashospital director, she aims to make sure theyhave the equipment and the support theyneed to provide the best possible patient careand training.
Veterinary clinicians with specialty train-ing in anesthesia, diagnostic imaging andsurgery have also joined the clinical staff, aswell as internal medicine clinicians, includ-ing Dr. Kimberly Barcus-Winters, V02,
VR06, who worked part-time at the clinicduring her residency. She’s looking forwardto joining a group of professionals sheknows she enjoys working with. DeLaforcade shares her enthusiasm for thecamaraderie of the staff. “It’s nice to see howexcited they all are to be working together.Everybody knows each other well; there’s afamily feeling about this group that we hopeto maintain and extend to our clients.”
Walker adds that it’s rewarding to be anactive contributor to a new venture. Whilehe acknowledges the growing pains, heappreciates the chance to “be activelyinvolved when things need to be fixed, ratherthan being in a place where they say ‘this isthe way we’ve always done it.’ ” His visionaims high: “I’d like to see us become a facili-ty equal to [the Foster Hospital] in its abili-ty to treat animals, where a radiologist, asurgeon, an internist and an emergency andcritical care specialist all work together on apatient and see it through to restoredhealth.” TVM
A new resource for primary care veterinarians
AT A GLANCESPECIALTY SERVICES
• anesthesia/pain management
• critical care
• dermatology
• diagnostic imaging
• emergency medicine
• internal medicine
• ophthalmology
• surgery
CONTACT INFORMATION525 South StreetWalpole, Massachusetts 02081508-668-5454
Transforms ItselfV.E.T.S.
Momo, your cat, wheezing and struggling to breathe. What do you do? If
you’re southwest of Boston, you’ll want to head to Tufts Veterinary
Emergency Treatment and Specialties (Tufts V.E.T.S.) in Walpole, long
known by veterinarians and owners alike for overnight, weekend and hol-
iday emergency services. But what if, instead, Momo is suffering from a
chronic rash or eye disease that your own veterinarian knows would ben-
efit from a team approach?
Tufts
V.E.T.S.Dr. Armelle de LaForcade,
V97, VR01, will head up the new hospital.
FRED NOSTRANT vividly recalls the very first case handed to him on his first day in clinicsas a fourth-year student. It was, he describes, his “holy-crap” moment: a show horsewith pleuropneumonia with so many lines coming out of it that it broke all records. Itwas not expected to pull through. Miraculously, it did—but Nostrant takes no credit. Hebelieves it was the devotion of the owners, Manhattanites who visited three times aweek, bearing pallets of expensive wheat grass. “A tiny tub sells for about $4 in super-markets,” he says with the awe of a student on a frugal mac-and-cheese diet, “but itwas all he would eat.”
Nostrant, who spent summers during college at the Tufts animal hospitals, hadequine medicine in mind as he thought about veterinary school. His college sweet-heart, Erin (now his wife and a horse trainer), shared his love of horses and was, hesays, “a huge influence during my vet school career.” He didn’t enter veterinary schoolimmediately after college, but worked at a contract research firm to gain researchexperience. There he met a veterinarian who turned him on to a second interest: labo-ratory animal medicine.
As a veterinary student, Nostrant was trying to decide between the two when helearned that Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Angeline E. Warner was planning adual-degree D.V.M. plus M.S. in laboratory animal medicine. He and other classmatesurged her to make the program available to their class instead of waiting a year. “It felltogether so perfectly with my interests,” he says. “I couldn’t have asked for anythingbetter.” The programs ran concurrently, making it possible for him to graduate ontime—and in the first class of students receiving this dual degree. For now, he plans tostay in equine medicine, with a one-year internship at Fairfield Equine Associates inConnecticut where he’ll be “very busy training under experts in the field of equine lame-ness and surgery.” He expects eventually to end up in laboratory animal medicine.
And what about his last day in clinics? “It was the first day I felt I finally understoodeverything,” he laughs. “You go through clinics and always feel a step behind—that it’snot quite clicking. On that last afternoon I thought, ‘I’m not ready to leave now that Itotally get it.’ Then I realized that it was perfect timing—and that it’s a testament tothe school that I felt ready to do everything on my last day.”
J. Fred Nostrant was awarded the A. Martin Simensen, D.V.M., Endowed Prize forExcellence in Equine Medicine, the Veterinary Specialty Team Award in PainManagement, sponsored by Pfizer Animal Health, and the American Society ofLaboratory Animal Practitioners Award.
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nary medicine were advised to pick their bat-tles, be sparing in how much money they puton their credit cards and say ‘yes’ every timethey could at the 24th commencement cere-mony for the Cummings School of VeterinaryMedicine of Tufts University on May 21.
“You can lay on the couch another day,”said Dr. Elizabeth Rozanski, assistant profes-sor of clinical sciences, who was chosen bystudents to be the faculty speaker at the cer-
emony. “Go out and fix the world.”Of the 77 graduates who received doctor
of veterinary medicine degrees, three alsoreceived master of science degrees, whilethree others also received master of publichealth degrees. An additional seven gradu-ates received a master of science degree inanimals and public policy at an earlier cere-mony, bringing the total number of 2006Cummings graduates to 84.
“The future of veterinary medicine is
Tufts Grads Told to Go Out and Fix the World
bright,” said Tufts University ProvostJamshed Bharucha, as a pounding rain buf-feted the large white tent erected behind theFranklin M. Loew Center. “I don’t think thisis an omen of any kind,” he joked.
Bharucha said he had become newlyimpressed by the reputation of the school,during his recent search for a new dean.(The appointment of Deborah TurnerKochevar was announced a few weeks beforethe ceremony.) “It is unique,” he said ofCummings. “People are in awe of thisschool, and my guess is that as you go outinto practice, they will be in awe of you.”
After she took the podium, Rozanski askedthe new doctors of veterinary medicine if theyhad added up all of the hours that they hadspent in the classroom over the past fouryears. “I got about 10,000,” said Rozanski, anIndiana University graduate, with a teasingMidwestern twang.“Now look around at yourclassmates—do you like them? These aresome of the best friends you will ever have.”
She concluded by telling the graduatesthey were now joining an exclusive club.“Wedon’t always dress the best, sometimes wedon’t have the best hairstyles, but vets areamong the best people on earth,” she said.
That theme was taken up by studentspeaker Alisha Weissman, who enthusiasti-cally called her fellow graduates “an awe-some group of doctors.” Taking Rozanski’stally one step further, Weissman calculated ifthe doctors had been paid minimum wagefor the hours spent in class, each graduatewould have made $152,000.
“I have no financial model for our fourthyear,” she added to laughter from the gradu-ates. “There just doesn’t seem to be an appro-priate hourly rate for clinics—the lack of sleep,the constant stress, minimal social life….”
Despite the sacrifices, Weissman suggestedher fellow classmates just ask themselves one
Fred Nostrant perform-ing volunteer veterinary
work in a rural area ofthe Samana peninsula ofthe Dominican Republic
(see COMMENCEMENT, page 22)
CLASS OF 2006
FOUR OF MANY STANDOUTS
TheThe CLASS OF 2006
B I
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SALLY UMLAUF originally thought she wanted a career in human medicine, but was discour-aged after hearing cautionary tales about practicing within the managed care system.After graduating from college with a degree in art history, she became interested in pub-lic health issues while spending a summer in South Africa researching the economicimpact of malaria. Then, while in Thailand the following year, her experience with having asick cat treated by an able and compassionate local veterinarian restored her interest inclinical medicine—this time with a veterinary angle. She also saw the public health pos-sibilities in veterinary medicine, began researching combined programs and found Tufts.
Umlauf was one of three students in this year’s class earning both D.V.M. and M.P.H.degrees. The other two, whom she describes as “incredibly impressive women,” are MollySeavey and Alison Turnbull. Seavey, who will embark on a three-year sponsored residencyin anatomic pathology at Michigan State, took up running in the midst of her studies andcompleted the New York City Marathon. Turnbull worked in Nepal with local cattle popula-tions, and will be spending next year on a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organiza-tion (UNFAO) grant for avian flu in Indonesia. “I could not have gotten through this programwithout them—it was a ‘Three Musketeers’ kind of thing,” declares Umlauf. She also
praises the medical students with whomshe regularly engaged in stimulating dis-cussions in her public health courses. “I’mthrilled to go into practice knowing thesepeople are my colleagues,” she says.
Her NIH-sponsored fieldwork inCameroon, surveying the prevalence ofexposure to certain zoonotic diseases insmall ruminant populations, was anotherof her favorite experiences because itbrought so many skills together beyondepidemiology. She explains, “It’s verychallenging to interact across languageand cultural differences and earn some-one’s trust in a short time—and thenmanage to conduct meaningful research.”She encountered similar issues during
Hurricane Katrina animal rescue efforts and a CDC-Epidemic Intelligence Service inves-tigation of a food-borne disease outbreak in the Midwest this spring.
Umlauf will spend the next year honing her clinical skills at an internship in a smallanimal referral practice before going into public health. She believes her public health-related communication skills will help her be a better clinician. She also recognizesthat every time she treats a dog with parasites or a cat that may have rabies, she willbe doing public health work. “As one of my professors observed, outbreaks are oftenidentified by astute clinicians who bring unusual clusters of disease to the attention ofpublic health authorities.”
Sally Umlauf earned the Client Communications Award, sponsored by Nestlé Purina,and the Sylvia Mainzer Public Health Achievement Award, recognizing achievement andcommitment to public health.
JENNIFER WEH and her brother, Michael Weh, V03, always thought it was perfectly natu-ral that their family should care for orphaned wild creatures in their backyard—in thesuburbs of Detroit, Michigan. It was an experience, she says, that “sparked a lifelongcuriosity and inspired our professional choices.”
The family began to foster wildlife when, on one of their many camping trips, theywere approached by a park ranger with a newly orphaned baby raccoon. The Wehs tookthe animal in and, with the aid of local experts, the operation grew from there. “We didthis from the time I was about six until I left for college,” says Weh. She and her broth-er actively participated in caring for the injured and orphaned raccoons, opossums,
Sally Umlauf inher laboratoryin Cameroon.
question: “‘Would I trade this seat at gradua-tion for anything in the world?’ Because it ispriceless.”
Following Weissman, graduate JoshuaKramer traded seats of another kind as heannounced the class gift—new couches andentertainment equipment for the seniorlounge in Varis. “Apologies to ProfessorRozanski,” he joked, “but sometimes youneed to lay on the couch. Our class gift willallow future classes a place where they can sitdown and relax and feel at home.”
In addition to the featured speakers, therewas an award ceremony for several longtimeveterinarians. Framingham Animal HospitalPresident Susan Rabaut was presented withthe Henry E. Childers Award for her workmentoring students and supervising extern-ships at the hospital. Professor James Ross Jr.,who retired this year after 25 years of teach-ing, was named Distinguished Professor ofClinical Science, Emeritus. In presenting theaward, interim dean Sawkat Anwer said theformer chair of the Department of Medicinewas the only veterinarian at Tufts board-cer-tified in three areas of medicine and “one ofour school’s best ambassadors regionally.”
Assistant Professor Jean Mukherjee, whoteaches classes in microbiology, was given theNorden-Pfizer Distinguished Teacher Award.According to her student evaluations, saidAnwer, she is “demanding, fair and totallycommitted to the teaching effort,” adding,“she clearly loves the bacteria and parasitesshe’s talking about.” Lastly, clinical sciencesProfessor John Rush was awarded the PfizerAward for Research Excellence for his workin studying the nutritional basis of cardiacdiseases in dogs and cats.
Just as the sun began to break through theclouds outside the tent, the 77 graduates tookthe stage to receive their diplomas and don theblue-and-brown hoods signifying their newdegrees. After the sustained applause from acrowd of more than 1,000 family membersand friends, chair of the board of overseers Dr.Henry L. Foster led the new doctors in theadministration of the Veterinarian’s Oath.
Interim Dean Anwer closed the ceremo-ny by exhorting the graduates to “show yourpride as a member of the noble professionyou are about to enter. It is a profession tocare for a patient who cannot tell you whereit hurts. What is more noble than that?” TVM
22 t u f t s v e t e r i n a ry m e d i c i n e s u m m e r 2 0 0 6 s u m m e r 2 0 0 6 t u f t s v e t e r i n a ry m e d i c i n e 23PHOTO: ANDY CUNNINGHAM
graduates of the cummings school of veterinary medicine arecreating the school’s first alumni-endowed scholarship in memory of aclassmate.
Several members of the Class of 1985 recently initiated a scholarshipfund in memory of the late Dr. Kenneth Morris, V85, of Fall River,Mass., who passed away in 2004 at age 45, leaving his wife, Michelle, andthree daughters.
Dr. Morris had made house calls in his Fall River hometown for 16years as owner of the Morris Mobile Animal Clinic.
The scholarship fund honors his veterinary career while reflectingthe affection his classmates had for him and the role he played in build-ing class spirit and friendships.
Alumni Create ScholarshipThis is the first time that veterinary alum-
ni, alone or as a group, have established anendowed scholarship, according to BarbaraBerman, assistant dean of student affairs.
Classmates described Dr. Morris’ spiritedand sometimes madcap humor as the gluethat held their small class of 60 together.
He would make pets of “geriatric ani-mals,” be they stray dogs or lab rats, andwhile setting up slide shows as a work-studyAV assistant, was apt to break into a songand dance on stage, recalled Dr. MegConnolly, V85, now a small animal vet atWillard Veterinary Clinic in Quincy, Mass.
“Any time we had livestock, he wouldjump on and ride them around the yard,”Connolly said. “He had tons of personality,and a lot of energy. He wasn’t like those guyson ‘All Creatures Great and Small.’ He wasmuch more ‘out there’ than that.”
Dr. Morris came from a family of fire-fighters in Fall River and was “immenselyproud of his roots and heritage,” said Dr.David Garlick, V85, a veterinary patholo-gist at Charles River Laboratories inWorcester, Mass.
“Ken Morris was truly a good soul with abig heart,” Garlick said. “He kept our classon an even keel and kept us loose andlaughing during the rigors of our veterinarymedical education. He was devoted to hiswife, Michelle, and his daughters with animmeasurable passion. His oldest child,Katherine, was born while we were in vet-erinary school.”
At their 20th reunion last fall, membersof the Class of ’85 decided to endow a schol-arship in Dr. Morris’ memory. Friends saidthe purpose of the Morris Scholarship istwofold.
“His classmates would like to keep hismemory alive by supporting a veterinarystudent who grew up in Ken’s part of thestate with some of the traits that made Kensuch a special person and who would bene-fit from financial support,” Garlick said.
”Secondly, this memorial will serve as afocal point for those in V85, as well as otherswho knew Ken, to come together for a wor-
Classmates honor a friend and his spirit
ADVANCEMENT
squirrels, rabbits, birds and an occasional woodchuck. The animals, housed in thebackyard of their Farmington Hills, Michigan, home, were released back into the wildwhen they were old enough and healthy enough to care for themselves.
While Weh always dreamt of being a veterinarian, an early experience working for anarea clinic actually dissuaded her. “I started to worry that it was all about giving vac-cines,” she recalls. She majored in English and creative writing in college, and went towork for a book publisher after she graduated. She enjoyed her job, so it took her awhile to recognize that book publishing was not for her. She wanted a higher-energycareer with more human interaction, and sought the opportunity to help the people andanimals around her. At about the same time, her older brother was applying to veteri-nary school (he’s now doing his residency in small animal surgery in the FosterHospital at Cummings), she began taking the necessary prerequisite coursework andworking as a veterinary technician. Weh adds, “As soon as I made the decision toswitch careers, I knew I’d found my calling.”
Weh will do her internship at the University of Pennsylvania as she contemplatesresidencies in ophthalmology, surgery or emergency and critical care. She is leaningtoward the third, which she says has become somewhat of a passion for her. It’s part-ly “because of the energy of the room,” she says, but it’s also for the satisfaction oftreating the systemic, multifaceted diseases often present in the ICU. She also enjoysbeing part of the human-animal bond. “You feel like you’re helping someone getthrough a very hard time while you are hopefully helping a very sick animal.”
Jennifer Weh was awarded the Jeff Proulx V93, VR98, Memorial Award for dedica-tion and strong aptitude in emergency and critical care; the Anesthesia Award, spon-sored by SurgiVet, Inc.; the Radiology Award for aptitude and effort; and an AcademicAchievement Award, given to 11 students who maintained a 3.8 or better average.
DEBBIE YOON didn’t know when she entered the Cummings School that she wouldbecome so involved in the business aspect of being a veterinarian. In fact, she wasone of those who took it as a matter of course that veterinarians entered the profes-sion for rewards that were largely non-monetary. As the co-founder of the school’sbrand-new chapter of the Veterinary Business Management Association (VBMA), shedoesn’t discount the altruistic aspects of veterinary medicine, but she does under-stand that doing good and doing well are not mutually exclusive.
A member of the Tufts chapter of SAVMA, the Student American Veterinary MedicalAssociation, Yoon was asked by chapter president Matt Steinberg, V05, if she wantedto attend the SAVMA Economic Symposium at the University of Illinois. Not knowingwhat to expect, she agreed—and ended up having an experience that, she says,“changed everything for me.” She became more aware of the extent to which veterinar-ians lag economically behind all other medical professions. And she learned ofSAVMA’s mission to help veterinarians understand that profitability not only leads tobetter patient care, but also raises the profession.
Energized, Yoon returned to Grafton with classmate Krishna Thankey determined tostart a VBMA chapter at Tufts. Drawing on ideas, guidelines, support and energy fromthe University of Illinois veterinary school, and teaming up with the people who startedthe University of Pennsylvania chapter, Yoon and Thankey launched the Tufts VBMA.“The national organization has been incredibly supportive,” says Yoon. “They helped usget sponsorship and bring nationally renowned speakers to campus.” The club workswith students to develop their business management skills.
While Yoon remains undecided about whether to enter private practice, specialtypractice or academia, she can’t really remember a time when she didn’t want to be aveterinarian. As an adult she finds the profession “intellectually very stimulating andchallenging. It can also be really rewarding to see patients and their interaction withowners, or just to talk to people and see their concerns for their animals. That makesit so much more powerful and motivating for me.”
Deborah J. Yoon won the 2006 Veterinary Specialty Team Award for InternalMedicine, sponsored by Pfizer Animal Health.
Many students will benefit from
an alumni-endowed scholarship fund.
(COMMENCEMENT, continued from page 19)
24 t u f t s v e t e r i n a ry m e d i c i n e s u m m e r 2 0 0 6
thy cause, which is exactly what Ken did:During his life and during our times at Tufts,he had a knack for bringing people together.”
A golf tournament this fall will benefitthe scholarship. Proceeds from the sixthannual Tufts Veterinary School StudentScholarship Golf Tournament on Sunday,Sept. 17, at Blackstone National Golf Clubin Sutton, Mass., will support the MorrisMemorial Scholarship as well as other stu-dent scholarships at the Cummings School.
For information on the tournament oron making a contribution to the KennethC. Morris, V85, Memorial ScholarshipFund, please contact the Office of Develop-ment and Alumni Relations, CummingsSchool of Veterinary Medicine, 200 West-boro Road, North Grafton, MA, 01536;508-839-7976.
—mark sullivan
ADVANCEMENT
PHOTO: ANDY CUNNINGHAM
from Worcester, Grafton, Shrewsbury andSutton, Mass., are learning hands-on sci-ence through a unique educational out-reach program developed by students atthe Cummings School of VeterinaryMedicine at Tufts University.
Coined “Gap Junction” after a biologyterm for how cells communicate with eachother, the program this year wonWorcester’s UniverCity Partnership Award,which honors the impact of college stu-dents in the community, for its work at theBurncoat Middle School in Worcester.
“These students are incredibly creativein developing new ideas for lesson plans,”said Dr. Mary Rose Paradis, Tufts’ GapJunction faculty advisor. “These young pro-fessionals who are learning to become doc-tors are excellent and enthusiastic rolemodels.”
The program enables children fromcentral Massachusetts public schools to goto Cummings School to work with first-and second-year veterinary students, whoshare their knowledge of anatomy and cel-
lular biology. The veterinary students usecase exercises and hands-on labs involvingradiographs, X-rays, sonograms, micro-scopes and other scientific equipment toteach children about the musculoskeletal,digestive, respiratory, and cardiovascular
systems of animals.The team that won this year’s award,
Samuel Jennings, Trish Oura, Mark Murrayand Thea Doidge, are all in the Class of 2008and actively participated in the Gap Junctionprogram during their first two years.
Student Community Outreach Program Wins Award
HELPING THEM HELP OTHERSContributing to student financial aid is one of the most helpful things you can do tosupport the next generation of veterinarians, says Barbara Berman, assistant deanof student affairs at the Cummings School.
“Veterinary education is expensive,” she said. “The average graduate leaveswith a debt in the neighborhood of $100,000.”
“Our students know they’re not going to make a lot. They’re not here for acareer that will make them a lot of money. They’re dedicated to protecting thehealth of animals and society.
“So we try to keep their debts low. Scholarship support is one of the best waysto keep their borrowing to a minimum. And our students are so extraordinarilygrateful for the scholarship support they receive.
“Creating a scholarship is doing something for the next generation. The rest ofus are lucky there are good people like this dedicating their lives to somethingimportant and necessary. Our students are here because they want to do good.”
Learn more about supporting the Cummings School online at:http://www.tufts.edu/vet/gift.
Main hospital switchboard and after-hours emergencies 508-839-5395
Henry and Lois Foster Hospital for Small Animals, appointment desk 508-839-5395
Hospital for Large Animals, appointment desk 508-839-5395
Wildlife Clinic 508-839-7918
Directions to Tufts 508-839-5395 (ext. 84650)
Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine administration 508-839-5302
Veterinary Student Admissions Office 508-839-7920
Veterinary Alumni Relations 508-839-7976
Cummings Veterinary Fund 508-839-7909
Tufts Pet Loss Support Hotline 508-839-7966
Continuing Education 508-887-4723
Web site: www.tufts.edu/vet
If you are interested in learning more about how you can support the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, pleasecontact: Shelley Rodman, director of veterinary development and alumni relations,at 508-839-7907, or e-mail: [email protected].
How to Reach Us
The winning teamexemplifies
community spirit.
OPEN HOUSE
Join thousands from around New England atthe Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine’sannual Open House on Saturday, Sept. 9,from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.— rain or shine.Located at 200 Westboro Road (Rte. 30) inNorth Grafton, Mass., the school is offering avariety of canine agility and obedience demon-strations, animal health-care exhibits, toursand presentations in Tufts’ animal hospitalsand fun activities for the kids. Aspiring veteri-narians can speak to representatives aboutadmissions; children can have their favoritestuffed animals “treated” at the Teddy BearClinic; and everyone can enjoy learning aboutanimals and veterinary medicine.
A popular birds of prey demonstration willbe repeated several times throughout the day.
The event is free, and all are welcome. For safety reasons, please leave your pets at home.
For more information, call 508-839-5395,ext. 84899.
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THE SENTINELSFrom stemming the spread of raccoon rabies onCape Cod to developing a collaborative approachto detect signs of emerging infectious diseases indomestic animals and humans, Tufts’ veterinaryscientists adopt a can-do approach to some daunt-ing public health challenges. For more on thestory, turn to page 12.P
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