Sept. 23, 2024 - Dr. Kristie Chavez

Today on the Vet Med Cast, Wade the Website Guy interviews Emergency Animal Specialist, Dr. Kristie Chavez.

Associate Producer: Caroline Griffith
vetmed.msstate.edu

Transcript

Wade Leonard  

Hi folks. It's me Wade the website guy. And welcome to this episode of the vet medcast for the week of September 23 2024 I hope you all have had a good week. And to those of you who are first years here at the vet school come from somewhere north of Mississippi, yes, this is actually what we call fall today on the episode interview assistant clinical professor and emergency medicine and critical care specialist, Dr Christy Chavez. Dr Chavez and I had a great talk about her career, what it's like being on the front lines of emergency animal medicine. But before we get to that, here are some announcements and reminders. Career Expo day is Friday, September 27 so far, we've got 60 employers registered. It's going to happen from 12pm to 3pm they want to remind you that parking might be a challenge on that day, so if you can manage to catch a ride with somebody else, try to do that. Boo grams are being sold for $2 a pop. These boograms are supporting the vmtp class of 2025, you can buy your own boogram and send to someone until October 18, and you should have an email with all the instructions on how to do so in your inbox. I'm assuming a boogram is a bit like a Valentine, only scarier. Also, I'm going to say boo Graham again. So boo Graham, Dr will Crosby has accepted the position of assistant clinical professor in the Department of pathobiology and population medicine. Dr Crosby is an MSU CVM alumnus. So well done. Dr Crosby the National Association for black veterinarians will be having a meeting on October 3 in Tate, Butler food will be provided, but they ask that attendee sign up by October 1, by 5pm if you are at CVM, should have got an email about that. Let's see. Oh, the 2024 CVM awards ceremony will be held November 13, at 9am These awards honor outstanding contributions made to the CVM by the organization's faculty and staff. If you're planning on nominating someone for that, make sure you get that done by October 16, and you can contact Caroline Griffith in the Dean's office for more details. Finally, don't forget that Alumni Weekend is october 25 and that's right around the corner. I know we have a few alumni who've been listening to this show. So if you haven't registered, you can visit vetmed.msstate.edu and find the registration link. With that said, And with no further ado, here is my conversation with Dr Christy Chavez. You Yes. Well, Dr Chavez, thanks for coming and doing this. That was kind of weird, but I appreciate it. It's new. It is, it is, we're trying to do something here, and I appreciate you reaching out saying you're interested in doing it and reading a little bit about you. I'm interested in that too. I think it's good to start at the top. Where are you from?

Well, I was born in Denver, Colorado, okay. And then when I was 10, we moved to Mississippi. So I guess, technically, probably more from Mississippi. What part of Mississippi? North Mississippi. So I graduated from South Haven High School, okay? And then I spent the first part of my career actually in north Mississippi at Horn Lake. So

Wade Leonard  

you're South Memphis all the way. No, I

try to avoid Memphis. Actually have to go there. I did

Wade Leonard  

notice that you done some work in in Horn Lake. So DeSoto County is the stomping grounds, more or less. All right, so, So what got you on the path to becoming Dr Chavez, um, I mean,

I'm kind of one of those kids that kind of had the, um, the corny story of, I've always wanted to be a vet since I was little, type thing. You know, my relatives be like, Oh, you always said you were going to do that. You always said you were going to do that. And so I kind of went that drought, and then I just kind of had to figure out what my route was to get to where I wanted to be, so I concentrated hard on making sure I got where I wanted to be, working my way through it, doing those kinds of things, and just really found my passion as I got through vet school. So,

Wade Leonard  

and that passion as it you know, from what I can tell, is critical care, emergency room, vet frontline kind of thing. I

don't I don't sit still well. It's kind of makes this a whole nother level of difficulty. And so I like the excitement of not knowing what's going to come through the door next, and having to think on your feet and use your instincts and do those kinds of things. I started out my vet career. I guess my veterinary career was as a technician for Dr Scott chi Davis, who owned Horn Lake Animal Hospital. He gave me my first shot at getting that experience I needed, because I reached out to him to get the experience. Were you like in high school at the time, or you were in first year in undergrad when I reached out to him? He was my vet when I was growing up, but I reached out to him, and I was like, hey, really needs some experience. Really need a job. He's like, Okay. You come down, you can have a job here. So in undergrad, I started out as a kennel tag, which is basically the person that does the laundry and sprays out the kennels. Sure. So I started out doing that, and he gave me the opportunity to start there and work my way up. I worked my way up to an actual hands on technician, helping him with cases and helping with rooms and things. And then he bought an emergency center, which was a separate clinic down the street, pretty good ways, all the way on the branch. He bought that. And because of my school schedule and because how things were working out, I could come back and work. I would drive from starbull and go back home for weekends and holidays. And so the emergency part of it just worked out better for what I needed. And then that's kind of how I just figured out that's what I wanted to do. And

Wade Leonard  

so what were you doing when you were in your undergrad working as I mean, I guess you weren't technically at kennel tech when you were working at the emergency room anymore. No,

I became a full fledged emergency technician. I worked my way up through Horn Lake Animal Hospital, and then he gave me my shot to do emergency tech work when he bought the emergency center about a year in.

Wade Leonard  

So would you call that like the make or break time in terms of figuring out a career, because I can imagine how working as an emergency tech might run some folks off from that. I

mean, it probably will. It, you got it. I always tell students that I think everyone should take the time to get some emergency experience and build that confidence and do those things. But I also tell them I know emergency is not for everyone, because it's truly not. It takes a completely different, great grade of people, and some, sometimes we might say we're all a little offset, but it takes a different grade of people to do, er, including the technicians that you have to work with, the ICU technicians that we have downstairs, that is a whole different breed of human to be able to handle the things that they handle and do the things that they do.

Wade Leonard  

So what's a day look like for you over there? Then, like, what are you, you know, what are you seeing? What's, what's, what's moving, shaking.

So we see, so we have different, I guess, scopes of er here, because we are a tertiary facility. So I'm used to going to er, small animal, GP, er, you just see basic emergencies most time, or some simple vomiting, diarrhea, things. It was quite the learning curve when I came here, because you're not only doing those things, but then you become the tertiary referral intake. And so I went from being the person who refers these complicated cases, where you've run every test that a GP knows to run, to being the person that had to take them in. So that was probably the biggest learning curve when I came here. So a day in life here on we have day swing and overnight, er, okay, and weekends, day, most of the time is going to be those tertiary cases where you're taking in what this general practitioner has started to work up on, and they've hit a roadblock. So someone

Wade Leonard  

freaks out about their animal, rightly, wrongly. They bring it to the vet, the you know, I guess regular vet, GP, and then that vet can't figure it out who they gonna call knock shot at?

Yeah, that person. And then, luckily for this hospital, you have so much support from like internal medicine, neurology surgery, so we have all these great minds to work with here, to take these things, to do these consults, because I've gotten to where I can pretty much figure out what's going on and what they're going to want next. Want next. But it took a hot minute to figure that out, of course, and to just navigate like the capabilities we have here. So we just work those up, get them to where they'd be. Sometimes we find the answer before we ever send it off to the other referrals. So the internal medicine, the neurology, the surgeries, and sometimes we just kind of, I tell the owners that er is going to take the ball, we're going to run with it to the far as we can get it, and then we're going to hand it off to that specialist, because that's truly where they came to see. It's just they have to, sometimes have see my ugly mug first.

Wade Leonard  

Well, so the, you know, having some experience in the in the private practice world versus, you know, you mentioned the capabilities that we have. What kind of capabilities do we have around here that maybe people don't know about, or maybe makes life easier for veterinarians? The biggest

capability we have here is diagnostically. We have a lot more toys, so we have CTS, we have MRIs, and we have in house pathologist and in house radiologists, where we can get all of these things so quickly, get all these answers so much more quickly. And we also have the ability of, like I said, I think our biggest attribute downstairs is going to be we have all these great minds to talk to, and they're all in the same building, and you can get them all in the same room, and we can all just work together, because everybody knows just a little bit more than somebody else about something. So if you're a neurologist, you know about brains and spines and things your internal medicine, you, I think you just know everything but surgery, but, um, and then you get those people, when you have these people, that you can bounce it off, where, if you're in general practice, where I came from, in general practice, you might have to call six people to get the same amount of in intake as we get here, and here they're just down the hall, yeah, like, I just go through a door and internal medicine's right there, right, right, right. We have these great minds that we can work with every day.

Wade Leonard  

So you know, and I know you, you said you do a lot of accepting referrals and all that jazz, but surely people are still coming in here occasionally. Really as the first stop. Oh, yeah,

we still do see emergencies. So we still do see the poly traumas, the hit by cars. Sometimes it's a vomiting, diarrhea, stuff like that. We still do see those emergencies. We still do some of the ER stuff that you would see normally, the street in streets, as we call them, where they come in through er, and they leave through er. Like last night, we saw a little puppy that probably got into something he shouldn't have had, and he spent a night on fluids, and he feels just fine this morning. And then we saw a snake bite last night, and we gave it some antivenin and treated it and did those things, and it's going to discharge the emergency. So we still do see those emergency cases. We still do provide that service for this area.

Wade Leonard  

How many patients, clients, I guess, however you want to put it, do you think you're seeing a week

a week? So if you count weekends, where sometimes we can see upwards of 12 to 13 cases just on day, er, we're probably seeing, I would say an average with weekends of maybe 20 to 30 cases a week.

Wade Leonard  

In terms of species, which ones do you like to work with best? Or does it not even exist in the

small animal person? So I'm more of a dog and cat person. Now, I have seen my share of, like, pocket pets. Like I tell the students, I've done a C section on a guinea pig, because I was the only option in town that night. You know, really, yeah. And, you know, you they're not that much different, I guess. I mean, it kind of went the same, sure, but like, they came and I was like, we don't really see exotics here, but then their car broke down in the parking lot. The fan belt broke. And I'm like, we're just gonna have to figure this out. Sure. So we did the C section on guinea pigs. See, you know, guinea pigs survived and did just fine. When we've seen, we see small amounts of exotics downstairs, like I've seen a Barrett with a hypoxic injury, Dr moda, just toxic injury. So he got, he was an escape artist, and his owner thought, I'm gonna put an extra clip on there. The problem was, is it was just big enough for him to get the old clip open and get his head stuck. So when they found him, he was basically choking himself. So he came in and, you know, we treated him. I treat him kind of like a small cat, because, honestly, that's what I know about ferrets. So got an IV catheter in him, got him something for brain swelling, got him something for nausea, and by the end of the day, he was acting like a normal Ferret, but he was touch and go there for a minute. Yeah? And we see some things. Dr Mona, just this weekend, she worked on a budgie that got attacked by a cat, so she fixed that. A budgie is a parrot, right? It's like a tiny bird, yeah. Okay. She does more exotics. She has exotic experience. She's a tourist. I

Wade Leonard  

find it, and I've said this a few times, absolutely baffling, that everything is separated by small animal and large animal in the veterinary world.

Yeah, but also the students. All day, I saw just enough horse and cows to get myself through vet school, yeah, no intention of touching another one when I got done. No, I say that. And then I'd been out of vet school maybe six months, and some man pulled up in the back parking lot with his trailer, and he had horse had a big old laceration on it, and he's like, Look, I can't find anybody. And I remember just enough to get that horse sedated, enough to clean it, clip it up. So I mean, some nights you just do a little more than you thought you were going to

Wade Leonard  

do, I guess. And I imagine with you folks, and you got to forgive me, because I'm super new to the whole veterinary game, but, but there's, there's got to be, like, the equivalent of the Hippocratic oath for veterinarians. I

mean, we do. We take, they take an oath at graduation, you know, this whole first, do no harm, and, you know, and I use that oath in my every day. When I talk to owners, I'm like, Look, I'm sometimes I'm not going to tell you what I want to hear, because I'm advocating for your pet. Like, that's my job is to advocate for your pet, give you the information you need. And sometimes it's not necessarily what you want me to say, right? My duty as the veterinarian, sure. So we do have the same oath to, you know, we're advocating for those pets. We're, I mean, a little on a little bigger scope. Part of that oath is, you know, being responsible for, like, public health, because zoonotic disease and all those things that we have to know as veterinarians, bleeds out into much bigger spaces,

Wade Leonard  

right? And that's something else that I'm coming to terms with working here, is how much of the veterinary work affects general public health during

covid. They asked if we wanted to give vaccines. So I guess we need a little more trust than that. Yeah, I got an email that said, hey, we need extra help getting out vaccines. I wasn't I'm not confident enough in my human medicine to take on that role. And I tell people all the time, I don't do people. But, I mean, we're one of those where, you know, that apocalyptic show the veterinarian was the doctors, right? You gotta be careful. Well, I

Wade Leonard  

mean, you know, I'm pretty sure that when me and my wife got the vaccine. We did it at the Horse Park in October. I got

my vaccine the Horse Park from a, I think it was a army guy, too

Wade Leonard  

weird. But yeah, and being an ER doc, you know, I know some human ER docs, and it's essentially a roller coaster of amazing successes. And, yeah, you know, bad stuff,

I would say, yeah, it's, it's a it's, it's a lot of peaks and troughs depending on your shift. And some shifts, you know, you get those really high highs and those really low lows. Some shifts, you get a lot more lows than you get highs. And I tell students all the time, like. Like, you've just got to give it your best shot, because sometimes they're going to get better to spite you, and sometimes it's not going to go your way. And at the end of the day, as long as, and I tell students this all the time, it's probably the things they probably get tired of me saying, like, as long as you're doing the best you can, you just go to sleep knowing you did the best you can, because you're not always going to succeed. Some of those cases, we see some of those cases where by the time they get to us. There's not a whole lot we can do. And sometimes part of our job as veterinarians is to for comfort and ending of suffering and doing those things. And sometimes that's just the best, of

Wade Leonard  

course, and it's, you know, it's one thing to say that, and you're absolutely right, you know, you got to do the best you can. But how, how long did it take you to actually believe that here, um,

I would say that when I got out I had, like, I had Dr Davis, who was this amazing mentor to me, to get me to where I wanted to be in emergency medicine. And then I worked with some amazing technicians at hornley Animal Hospital, which you wouldn't say for such a small clinic. They weren't CVTs, but I had people in my corner that were like, what you think, and then you think it, because a lot of times, what vets really need when they get out is someone to say, Yeah, that's what I do. It's not necessarily that you don't know what to do. It's that you lack that confidence in your own ability, sure, be certain. And I would say it probably took me, I got six months where Dr Davis just let me kind of see day cases, and then, kind of, they would call me if they had something like a gdv or something for me to be able to experience it. And then you, when you're that first night, when you're the doctor, is probably one of those, like, I'm not gonna lie, I have my first C section, two o'clock in the morning, and I got sick. And the technician was like, It's okay, take a deep breath, go drink some water. We got this, and it's just the weight of being like, Okay, I've seen this. I've helped with one. Now you got to do one. And I'd say it took me a minute to get to the place where I was like, Okay, now I can do this. And

Wade Leonard  

not, yeah, no, that totally makes sense. Because it's one thing to understand academically or theoretically, it's another thing to get over that imposter syndrome. Because, like, you know, like you said, when all of a sudden, you know, you're the doctor, yeah, you're like, why is everybody looking

at me? Right? Yeah, everybody's looking at you, and you're going, Okay, this is the time. And I mean, I had a whole nother level that when I started here, because I went from being kind of a big fish in a small pond at Horn Lake, because I was the senior doctor. I was the mentoring doctor. By that point, I was the doctor running the externship program and doing all the teaching and doing those things. And then I got here, and you kind of go back to being a small fish where you're trying to just figure out your just really your section of the pond before you start mentoring out. Sure. So I think I kind of had, I had like two I had, like a rebirth into my imposter syndrome when I started here, just to kind of figure out what I was doing and what is being asked of me, and what are the expectations here, and those kinds of things, I might

Wade Leonard  

be knee deep in impostor syndrome myself, right? So let's talk about some of those. You know, success stories is there, is there a case or an incident that pops in your mind that

I would say those cases where you spent a lot of time with them. So I tell students this story all the time, like one of my biggest goals downstairs is for students to understand, yes, this is academia, yes, this is Ivory Tower, yes, this is gold standard. But also you got to be able to work with what you got, because that's one of the things that you learn in private practice, is money can be an issue, or what capabilities do you have where you're at money? You mean the client having money. You got to work with what they're able to do because they love their pet and they want to do the best buy them. And you just got to figure out what's the best buy them with, what you can do with what you have. So I talk about, we talk about wounds downstairs, because we do see some pretty gnarly wounds here. And I tell students a story about a dog named moose, which is a weird name for a black German Shepherd, but he got caught in a beaver trap and literally had taken the whole top side of his foot off. Oh, man. And we spent in a literal, literal weeks doing bandage changes on him with sugar and betadyne, just more of a large animal thing. So they like to pop some water hose on there and do some sugar beta nine, but that's what we had. It took a while, but that that whole foot healed up three weeks, and he was good to go. So those cases where you you have to do something new or come up with something, I mean, I've had countless cases that traumatized me. I had a C section one night where the uterus had already ruptured and all the puppies were kind of floating around. Floating around, but the dog did great. We saved her life, and she didn't end up with a septic abdomen. And, you know, lived on to, do, you know, whatever great things cardiac could do, sure. Um, which is also one of those weird names. The dog's name is cardiac, yeah, okay, um, but stuff like that. I mean, I would say the most reward of the C section on the guinea pig was, that's pretty cool. It's memorable, just because, who does those I mean,

Wade Leonard  

I've never even occurred to me that was an option.

Well, I've learned in school that they can't give birth if they don't get pregnant after a certain time frame in their life because their pubic symphysis seals over and too small. And this girl had rescued this guinea pig didn't know it was pregnant. It couldn't give birth. And, you know, that becomes an emergency because they'll literally die, sure. Um, so the thing of the horse, the horse, the horse is probably one that I tell students story about, just because I had no intention of ever touching a large animal, right this building. And then there you are in another situation. You're like, Okay, well, you're

Wade Leonard  

the one person somebody's looking at, right? Yeah, right. So, I

mean, I would say those are the, probably the most memorable cases, just the ones that are kind of out there. You

Wade Leonard  

know, it seems like what would happen is you see so many things you've been doing this for a long time that you kind of be ignored to it. But you just mentioned two animals names that you completely from however long ago that is. I mean, that's probably

been moose has been that's got to be over 10 years ago. Probably

Wade Leonard  

that's entirely my point. So has the I mean, how do you keep caring?

Um, I think my passion being in emergency medicine, I see a lot of things, and you don't ever see them again, like you take care of them. You said, Man, I tell clients all the time. It was lovely to meet you, but I hope you don't eat me, because the day, I don't want them to have to come in emergency and those emotional, emotional situations, I just find the care in being there for people at some of the most difficult moments in their life. Because if your dog gets hit by a car, or your dog is, you know, becomes acutely debilitated, something like that, I have to be the reasonable, the reasonable one in that room at that point. And so I just want to be able to be for that, be there for them in those really difficult times, help them make maybe some really difficult decisions, depending on the situation. And I enjoy that aspect of it. I'm not, I wasn't as big like, you know, like internal medicine, they have these patients where they're just waxing and waning forever. I wasn't real big on that aspect of it. I want to be in the thick of it there when people need me, able to do the things they need, but still get to have my you know, my high, my adrenaline high, never knowing what's walking through the door, never knowing what you have, what decisions have to be made, and making decisions on your feet,

Wade Leonard  

so you're constantly seeing things you've never seen before. Yeah, I would

say dogs. Dogs and cats have an amazing way of doing things that you never thought they would do. I mean, I've had dogs come in with I had a dog come in once, was really crazy case. So the dogs were playing, and the other dog had a collar on and it had one of those S hooks in its rabies tag on its collar, and somehow this S hook literally pierced this other dog's lower lid, and the owner came in and they were just and the dogs didn't know what to do, and like, they just find their ways to get in these really weird situations. And then you got to figure out what? Okay, well, I've never seen that before, but we're going to figure out what we do about this. And they eat the most ridiculous things. Yes, they will do that. Chew up anything they will. They're like toddlers. They will put anything in their mouth. A

Wade Leonard  

cocker spaniel once years ago, and we had this, it was like this bag of, like Halloween candy or something for my kids, and we, my wife and I were looking at it. It it was just gone, and we couldn't find it. Couldn't find like, not just like, No rappers. It was just gone. And then we took him to the bathroom, and we figured out where it had all gone.

Yeah, my sisters, my sister's dog, ate my nieces Halloween candy, and they watched it for days. Yeah, days that the the wrappers and everything. I was like, it can't taste good. I

don't understand it either, but, yeah, but some of the things don't chew up and eat. There's no way they taste but the

Wade Leonard  

resilience, you're absolutely right. We've got way too many cats in my house, but my main cat is this orange. I don't know. I guess mutt cat named Long John Silver. And he's called Long John Silver because when he was little, a dog ate his his leg off, but you would not he doesn't seem to be aware that he has any sort of issue. I've never seen a cat climb a tree faster. I've never seen a cat terrorize things smaller than it.

Yeah, I had a three legged dog for nine years, and he lost his leg when he was when I rest. He came in through a rescue. He'd been found in a trailer in Tunica. Yeah, all my cats were born in dumpsters and things. Foot had been strangulated by the mesh stuff that's under, like house trailers or whatever. Yeah. And we tried, you know, we did laser therapy and warm water therapy and trials, things. But ultimately, his foot died and he had to lose his leg. But I adopted him after I did his amputation, and he went at nine years now, he did about six years in tear his cruciate in his one back leg that he had, and we had to get pretty significant surgery. Got him a T PLO. What's a T PLO? So it's a surgery that, you know, way more sophisticated people than myself do, where you basically take the because they tear their cruciate, so CCL rupture, just like in people. So they can't, they don't have any stability in their knee. And what they do is they literally rotate the angle of the joint itself and put a plate in there so that you no longer necessarily need the ligament. So they know they used to replace the ligament with suture, and now they do these almost like moving the knee down. Yeah. They rotate it, yeah, the angle of the bones together no longer need. The stability of that ligament, and so he had to have that done. I actually Dr Edwards did that for me as a traveling surgeon at the time came and fixed his knee. But Trey would rip and roar, just like any other dog swim in the pond and do all the other things that our other dogs did, because he didn't know any different. He's like, Well, it's not there, but it's all good. What's something that

Wade Leonard  

you wish pet owners were more aware of?

I think the biggest thing that we've nothing veterinary medicine journalist is but people don't truly understand what they're getting when they get it. So English bulldogs, for example, okay, yes, they're great. We have this amazing mascot, but they're a huge responsibility, and they're kind of mutants, right? Yeah, they can't breathe, they can't do a whole lot. They're really not meant to exist. They can't even give birth on their own, for crying out loud, I didn't know that. No, they have to be artificial inseminated, and have to have C sections and all these things, because we've designed them to where their pelvis is so small, because it looks so great. But I think the biggest thing is, like, know what you're getting into, you know, like, I have all mixed breed dogs and all, you know, stray cats, and they have hybrid vigor and all these things, but, and these, these, we have amazing owners with these purebred animals. Know what you're getting into before you do it. I think, I think, is the biggest thing for owners, because I don't want you to run into an emergency with your Bulldog where it gets overheated, because you didn't know that was a thing. You didn't know that was a thing? Yeah, so I think that's the main thing, is just knowing what they're getting into with whatever breed they decide to get. I think you should get whatever your dream animal is, of course, just be educated about what you're getting into. And

Wade Leonard  

some animals require a lot more attention. They

require a lot more retention. They require a lot more care. Their needs are different, different medical issues that are, yeah, just different things you need to watch for. Because I have male cats. I have neutered male cats, and that as an emergency vet, I'm not sure why I chose that, because all they do is stare at them all day and hope they don't get urinary obstruction. I don't like you better be peeing because I got an orange cat named Manchego and then Thomas the troublemaker, so, but they're both neutered males, so I got to worry about those things and be aware of the fact that one of the things that happens to neutered male cats is they can get a urinary obstruction that becomes a complete significant emergency. You got to catch it when it's happening, right? It can lead to detrimental consequences. So you just got to know, actually, I

Wade Leonard  

had no idea. Yeah, that was the thing. And

and they will, they'll block and then, then they got to come see me. So well, I know who to bring them to when that happens. I actually have to do a lecture on that tomorrow for the scaba Club, okay, during urinary emergencies tomorrow. So

Wade Leonard  

that's sounds exciting.

It's one of those things that happens in Batman that you got to know about. You got to know about it. Yeah, yeah. So

Wade Leonard  

you know you teach classes and you went to vet school here at Mississippi State. What advice do you have for people who are dreaming of becoming veterinarians one day?

I mean, I think you just got to stick to it and know what you want and then figure out what your path is. Everybody has a different path to what they want to do in vet med and everybody. And also keep your mind open. Because a lot of people get to vets going like, I want to do this. And then you go through some things and realize, you know, my talent might be here, or my true interest might be here. So I think just keep an open mind in vet med in general, there are so many options to what you can do. Some of them don't even have to do with necessarily seeing animals every day. So I think the biggest thing is put your head down, do the work and believe that you can do it. Because, I mean, as a kid that came from small town Mississippi, and worked my way with two jobs through undergrad and did all those things, you just have to set your mind to doing it.

Wade Leonard  

What did you major in? When you were in when you were in school, I

majored in animal Dairy Science, because I had no experience with food, animal or equine and those kinds of things, and I kind of wanted to get some kind of a background in that before I got to that school. Okay, so I did that because that was going to help me get the horses and the cows and pigs and things just to even know their anatomy or their basic structures, or what you worry about with them, because I had never been exposed to those things. To those things. I had always had dogs. I never had a cat. My sister and brother are both allergic. I get cats. So I was an adult and had my own house, but I had nothing as far as large animal goes, so I wanted to get something before I got here.

Wade Leonard  

It's something that is continuing to fascinate me about being around here is, and I've said this so many times, I'm gonna say it again, human medicine, you got the one species, and there's all kinds of differences and variables and things that go within that one species. You guys have the rest of them, right? And so, you know, I imagine that you could, like, get a real good handle on, like, dog physiology and anatomy. But cats have to be completely different in many ways. They are. And you just mentioned horses. And horses are

kind of, like, giant cats, really. Yeah, they have, it's really weird. Is the parallels you get between horses and cats. Talk more about that, well, horses and cats, they just tend to have the same they don't have the same anatomy and physiology, but they run the same weird risks. And then goats, goats get urinary obstructions too. Like, that's one of those big

Wade Leonard  

things that goats get. And I guess goat counts as large animal. Yeah,

it's a food animal. Even

Wade Leonard  

though sometimes goats are smaller than dogs,

they're tiny. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what I remember from like, so like, drug reactions and those kinds of things, horses and cats have this weird parallel, right? When they compare the two, which is, was really awkward to me in school, because a horse is huge, but they're also very sensitive creatures. Like horses are very sensitive. Like, one of the things i You mean emotionally or physically, physical, physically. So for example, like when I was in school, our rotations were kind of blocked, so you had all your large animal stuff at the same time. So I started out in equine, and then I went to food animal, and then I went to ambulatory type situation. So in equine, you had to be so, so careful with like infection and making sure everything was clean, and doing all these things, and these horses would just find a reason or find a way to get themselves in trouble. And then I got the food animal, and we had this, this cow that de hissed its C section incision, and we just walked out every morning, splash some beta, dine and squirted with a hose. And I remember saying to my friend, I was like, if you did this, the horse would just fall over, on on touch. And it was just amazing to me how resilient these cows were in comparison to how sensitive these large, beautiful horse beasts were sure on equine. It was just crazy to me. Then, like I said, I didn't have any experience with the two species hands on, other than what I got in animal Dairy Science. And then when I got downstairs, but it was just so eye opening to me how careful you had to be with these beautiful, majestic creatures we call horses, and how a cow you're just like, lay it on its side, open it up. Let's do it. And then the horse, you're like, the stress alone would take this horse out. It was just, I remember, just remember thinking that next day, and we're up here just squirting this cow with a hose like, this is crazy, right? And that's it. I mean, that's a lot of the things they do, like the resiliency of some of these animals and then the sensitivities of some of the other ones. And you just got to know what you're doing. And,

Wade Leonard  

you know, even all the critters we're talking about, at least they're all mammals. But then, you know, like aquaculture and fish in here too.

Fish medicine, that's all that was amazing. We took a little trip. We did this one day trip to, like the when I was in bed, school and I students, they said they do, still do go to the catfish thing when it's possible, just because then you have to treat the whole pond. When you're treating something right, it's like, herd medicine, yeah, but it's fish, yeah, like, all those things. And we have that. We have a diagnostic lab down in Pearl, and when we were there, some local fish farmers were bringing little, tiny baby fish for the lab to look at and be like, Why are my fish dying? So they could, like, figure these things out. So, I mean, all of that stuff is just crazy.

Wade Leonard  

Has anybody brought, like, brought, like, a goldfish to the ER, I've

never had anybody bring a goldfish. I mean, we've seen things like hedgehogs, guinea pigs, ferrets. We have that bird come in, and sometimes we get some wildlife here and there. And I like, we had a baby possum. I had to find one local wildlife rehabbers to take those kinds of things? But no, I've and, you know, we do have the occasional like snakes, snakes and turtles and things every now and then. And those are totally sure different. Now we're into reptiles. Well, they don't metabolize drugs. Is they all differently because their metabolism is so slow because they're cold blooded. There's like all kinds of different hang ups you have to and most problems with those are husbandry. So most it's the same thing as when I say you need to know the breed of dog you get, right? If you get something like a gecko or a turtle or a snake. Yes, they're really cool. They really are, but know what you're doing. Because a lot of the problems people have is they don't know what they get and what they're getting into. Sure they have to have lighting and heat and calcium supplementation and all these things. And they just got to know. You got to know what you're you're doing. Get that education, buy the book, or Google the subject, or whatever you need to know, just so you're doing the best by your pet. It's like

Wade Leonard  

when you hear about somebody in, you know, some trailer park in Alabama who bought themselves a tiger, right, right? That's probably not the best idea, probably

not where you should keep that, no. But, well, they're real cute when they're little, yeah, and, you know, and regardless of

Wade Leonard  

I've got two kids, and they were super cute when they were little. Mine's so much

like me. He's 11, but they look real cute, but then you but then you don't realize what you're getting into. They are still a large predator. Sure, they still have those tendencies, no matter how young you got them to start with. I mean, just take what happened to Vegas, what five, six, few

Wade Leonard  

years ago, talking about the magicians? Yeah, yeah, Siegfried Roy, and they've

been doing that since the beginning of time. Practically, it's just you've got to have. Have that respect for something horses. You have to have respect for something that large, that could take you out, which is why I don't do large. Yeah, you

Wade Leonard  

know, being a being a cat owner myself, and, you know, mostly loving the guys I've got. I mean, my arms torn up right now, just because one just decided they just today was the day that dad knew back back to, you know, your experience at at vet school, I would imagine that when you first get here and you're getting inundated and trying to figure out what it means to be a first year or second year. You know, what all these terms people throw around mean, it could be really easy to get real intimidated and really disheartened when you when you're talking to students who are maybe struggling with some advice that you give

them. So I do the mentee program, okay? And so when I talk to my mentees, the biggest thing is one test, one doesn't define you. Because I failed my first radiology test simply because I didn't really know what the we had no idea what the expectations, sure, and you know, not that that didn't wasn't a hard blow, because then you got to come back from it. But one test doesn't define you, and it's just like, I tell this to clinics, clinical students, like, do your best, and then at the end of the day, know that you did your best. And everybody's got a different system. Like, nobody's the same as to how they retain information, how they study, how they do those things. So the biggest thing is know yourself well enough to know what works for you, right? Because some people can do group study, and some people, they do better by themselves. So I talk to students about doing that, and I think the biggest thing is to not get bogged down and overwhelmed, like, take your time. I tell students all the time, my biggest, I guess, tip on studying was I went home every night and spent just a little bit reviewing what we did that day, so that when you get to the end and have to do that test, that's not the only the second time you've seen it. And so I talked to my mentees, when they're struggling with stuff about, you know, take a little time every day review what you already learned and also figure out what works for you and take the time to yourself to, like, relax, do those things. Friends of mine, we used to go study. We would just close all the gates to one of those baseball fields. It used to be what McKee Park was. And we all got our dogs out, and we'd sit in the sun and we would study, and the dogs would all run around, and took that time to take that deep breath, because you're also no good to yourself if you're burning yourself, that's right. So you've got to be able to get that balance where you're studying like you need to, but you're taking care of yourself, because you won't do as well if you're not taking care of yourself as well. And like I said with students, one of the biggest things, and I say this all the time to them too, is like, give yourself grace, and then give each other grace, because we're all struggling through the same thing, and they're not in competition with one another. No, you're only in competition with yourself, right? The best you can do for you, right? And, you know, there's a joke about C useful. DVM, I don't necessarily want you to make the C, but at the end of the day, do your best, and if that was the best you could do, learn from it. Take from it. Figure out what you can do better next time. But don't define yourself based on that.

Wade Leonard  

You know, someone has some experience in the private sector as well. Another thing that struck me about, you know, what you guys do, is because so many vets go on to essentially founding private practices, which means that beyond having to know about, you know, infectious disease and pathology and surgical procedures and all these different species of critters we mentioned, you also have to have some kind of business acumen to do that. Was that a thing that surprised you when you got into it? Or do you felt like you were prepared for

Well, I felt like like so dr Davis owned that practice, opened that practice from scratch. So I felt like he knew he taught me a lot of things about, like, when we talked about ownership, and if that was something I wanted to pursue one day. You know, he talked to me a lot about, like, revenue and like, keeping your shelves full but not stocking to the point where you have all this money just sitting there, and all of those things you have to understand. But I think one of the good things that have come from since I graduated is they have a business course here. So you have a business elective where you can learn some of those things. Now we had this like, I think was like a two or three day, all day thing from a guy that was a lawyer and a vet, and he taught us a lot of those things in two or three days. But it was a lot to take in, sure, but now they have the business course here, and that business course will give some of them that step up to know some of the things that we didn't used to know. Right, left, vet school, the business aspect things, it is a business. Medicine as a business. And we talk about those things, about, yes, you want to help everybody. Well, we can help them within the budget that they have, and not necessarily give things away because you're not helping them or yourself at that point. I

Wade Leonard  

mean, that makes total sense. So, yeah, I

mean, it is a business, and I would say I probably didn't get as much business as I would have liked, but I had a great mentor in that aspect, if I want to do that. And then when we ultimately got bought. Out by some of the veterinary partners where I was, I learned a lot more about exactly what the numbers were and how the numbers work, and those kinds of things. So we did do those?

Wade Leonard  

Well, Dr Chavez, I've really enjoyed talking to you, but is there anything we talked we didn't talk about that you wanted to talk about?

I mean, I don't think so, but I will say that, like one of the things I've seen since I started here is emergency medicine is so overwhelming, people assume it's overwhelming. They just look at it and they're like, I don't know about all that sure, but I say that now that we've established this emergency service that we started five years ago to have a fully function emergency service, a lot of students are realizing that it's it's not as overwhelming as you think it is, and it actually can be a lot of fun. So I tell students all the time, I can teach you a whole lot of things about efficiency and working as a team and doing those things when you come downstairs, even if emergency is not for you. So I think you're going to get out of it. What you get out of it? But it seems so immediate

Wade Leonard  

in a good way. I mean, you were immediately having an effect on

these families. You're meeting these people, some of these people at one of the hardest points of their life and making some of the hardest decision that they've probably had to make, because this is their family member. But I think the biggest thing is just, you know, I know people think that er is overwhelming and that it's a lot, but I think there are people out there where you'd be a great fit for and it's one of those niches that we still have an emergency in veterinary medicine that I think would be a good time for some folks. Well, it's

Wade Leonard  

clear you're super passionate about it, and I appreciate you sharing some of that with me today. Thanks so much. Yeah, no problem. Hey, folks, I hope you enjoyed that talk as much as I did with Dr Chavez. Please keep coming at me with your suggestions for guests and topics, and if there's something you want me to include in the show, make sure I know about it, and of course, like rate, subscribe all that good stuff until next week. Everybody. Thanks for listening to the vet podcast. You.