Externship At Loomis Basin Equine Medical Center

After finishing my last final, I packed my bags and headed to my boyfriend's house for winter break. He lives close by my family, which is great, cause I haven't seen them much since I've been in vet school. Three weeks of freedom from Vet School, but not at all a break from veterinary medicine. My boyfriend lives close to Loomis Basin Equine Medical Center (LBEMC) serving Placer county, surrounding communities, and the foothills. I spent the first week of my winter break as an extern at Loomis Basin Equine. Externships are experiential learning opportunities, similar to internships, designed to give students short-term practical experiences in the field. They are typically one to two weeks in duration and are designed to give the student a chance to "job-shadow" and apply what they are learning in classes. After just finishing my first quarter of vet school, I feel like I have just learned a drop in the bucket, but I figured some hands on experience would be well worth while.

Informational Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP9RQdaBrOU

At LBEMC, December is Dental Special month where clients can get two Dentals for the price of one. This was a very popular special among LBEMC clients, giving me the chance to see lots of dentals the week I was there. It is important to have your horse's teeth at least checked once a year to make sure they don't have any loose or rotten teeth and that their occluding surfaces are smooth and the mouth and tongue are not ulcerated from rough edges. One may wonder how horse dentals are performed? Well, for sure, they are first sedated, then a speculum is inserted into their mouth to hold it open. First they use a probe and a mirror to examine each tooth for decay. Then they use the "power float" to smooth the edges of the teeth. I got to see a few tooth extractions, two where the tooth broke on it's way out and they had to punch a hole through the horse's sinus to push the tooth root out. It looked painful, but is fairly routine in equine dentistry because it can sometimes be difficult to pull rotten teeth that crumble.

Informational Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utcFpfxno5w

On one day during my externship, we had a gelding come in for emergency colic surgery, the grooms had found him down in his stall that morning and he was showing typical sings of colic and discomfort. Any delay in the treatment of a surgical colic can reduce the chances of success. Colic surgery can be very expensive, roughly $6,000-$8,000 without additional complications. There are also many forms of colic, generically it is abdominal pain, but it can have a number of causes. The incidence of colic in the general horse population has been estimated between 10 and 11 percent on an annual basis. The horse that was on the table that day turned out to have Epiploic Foramen Entrapment, which is where a piece of small intestine can become trapped through the epiploic foramen, immediately occluding the blood supply to that piece of intestine. The intestine becomes trapped and surgery is the only available treatment.

I really enjoyed my time at LBEMC, working with their skilled veterinarians. I learned a lot and got a lot of hands on experience. If my summer plans allow it, I will return to LBEMC over summer break. Now I have about two weeks left of my winter break and I have to write my Veterinary Ethics and Law paper and finish my scholarship applications. Can't wait for Christmas! 

http://lbemc.com/