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Morgan
Student
Mansfield, Texas
1
Question
Asked
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How do you think veterinary medicine in the U.S. could be improved?
I am a senior in high school that will graduate next month. I will go to college and plan to major in Animal Science for Pre-Vet Medicine. I love animals and want to help them. I’m always curious to know the major challenges in veterinary medicine and overall care in different areas of the U.S. and not just locally in my community in TX. In TX I know we suffer with the lack of Veterinarians and education costs in TX along with the demand for services with more pet ownership.
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1 answer
Karin P.
Lecturer, Academic Advisor, Career Coach
640
Answers
Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany
Updated
Karin’s Answer
Hi Morgan,
One pressing issue for me is the pet overpopulation. Responsible pet owners of course have their pets sterilized early on. Still, even mid size cities euthanize 1000s or 10000s of pets every year. Many of them are perfectly healthy young animals. Sterilizing feral pets could reduce the suffering. I know, there are TNR programs, but is there no way to sterilize feral cats and dogs chemically using a dart gun? There is research needed.
The other issue I have is that vets are trained to treat all kinds of animals. Of course they would not know every kind of animal equally well. Just recently, I read that specializing on cats is considered "niche". Everything is based on dog medicine. I think it would be important to improve training and research and have specialized vet clinics.
I hope this helps! All the best!
KP
One pressing issue for me is the pet overpopulation. Responsible pet owners of course have their pets sterilized early on. Still, even mid size cities euthanize 1000s or 10000s of pets every year. Many of them are perfectly healthy young animals. Sterilizing feral pets could reduce the suffering. I know, there are TNR programs, but is there no way to sterilize feral cats and dogs chemically using a dart gun? There is research needed.
The other issue I have is that vets are trained to treat all kinds of animals. Of course they would not know every kind of animal equally well. Just recently, I read that specializing on cats is considered "niche". Everything is based on dog medicine. I think it would be important to improve training and research and have specialized vet clinics.
I hope this helps! All the best!
KP