I Was Born for Large Animal Veterinary Medicine

By Sarah Shade, CVT

Performing dental float and flushing out a horse’s mouth.

Veterinarian performs joint injection while Sarah restrains the equine patient. My name is Sarah Shade. I live in a small town in Pennsylvania called Montandon. I love being in the outdoors, hunting, fishing, and having a good time. I found the passion for working with animals when I was very young. I had a cat that ran away and came back pregnant. We kept her and allowed her to have her babies in our home. This was a great experience for me. As I got older, I started working on a dairy farm and discovered an even greater passion for large animals. The day I learned this was when I was able to save a calf’s life. The mother was having a hard time giving birth and I helped her by pulling the calf out. The calf was stuck for so long she was not breathing. My boss told me to go grab a bucket of hot water and put it on her. The theory behind this is to shock her body with the hot water. After about 3 buckets, she was breathing. She lived to be a great cow and have babies of her own. My dream was to become a veterinarian, but I took a different route. I decided to become a veterinary technician instead. This was a difficult decision, but I did not have the money to go to veterinary school. I started working at Sunbury Animal Hospital, which is a large and small animal practice, in September 2015. I started as a kennel attendant and worked my way up to Certified Veterinary Technician. I received my bovine artificial insemination certification in February 2018. I graduated from YTI Career Institute in October 2020, and then I passed my VTNE in March 2021.

A Typical Day in LA (and I Don’t Mean California)

My morning starts at Sunbury Animal Hospital by checking the voicemail and email to see if anyone is looking to schedule an appointment, has questions, or is calling with an update on a patient we have been monitoring. Sunbury is a large and small animal practice so there is a setting on our phone to speak with the Large Animal (LA) department specifically, but we recommend if they have an emergency to select the emergency option. This will get them help faster because there is not always someone in LA monitoring the phone. I then help the veterinarian get their truck ready for the day. This includes getting any equipment they may need (portable x-ray and/ or ultrasound), along with medications that are not typically kept in the truck (small animal medications) and vaccines. I also print out direction sheets for the doctors so they can write down everything they did at the farm call, which they bring back for us to enter into the computer. We currently don’t have a system to take payments in the field, so once an invoice is generated, we call the client for payment over the telephone or mail out the invoice as we work with many Amish clients. Usually one day a week, I am scheduled to go out on the road with the veterinarian, helping with anything from restraint to x-rays, blood draws, vaccinations, medication administration,

IV catheter placement, and more. If the veterinarian does not need help, I will stay on site to manage phone calls and charges, check inventory, take care of any patient that may be in hospital, and keep the area cleaned. If we do have a hospitalized patient, the veterinarian will do a full exam on the patient in the morning and let us know the treatment plan, and then we will administer the treatment throughout the day. We handle a lot of phone calls, both emergency and routine calls to be scheduled.

Our practice covers anything farm-related: cows, horses, goats, sheep, donkeys, and sometimes chickens and ducks. Part of LA veterinary medicine is monthly herd checks on dairy cows for pregnancy status. We use a rectal ultrasound that can determine if there is a calf, how far along, or if the cow is close to coming into heat. This is all important information for the farmer to know in case it is time for a specific shot or when to prepare to move the cow for birthing. Winter months can be pretty quiet except when farmers may be expecting babies. Farmers try to breed their animals to be due in the warmer months, but this cannot be controlled all the time. Babies born in the winter months can become hypothermic quickly. Spring, summer, and the beginning of fall can be very busy. This is typically the “start to show” season and everyone will need to get their animal health checks, vaccines, proper blood work/ testing, and certifications for the shows. There are rodeos that we complete certifications for as well, which is where we see a lot of our dental floats. We have to pull specific blood on some horses to make sure that they don’t have a contagious disease that could be passed on to other horses. We do specific ear tagging and ear notching on cows to prevent disease transfer. We also perform breeders’ puppy checks prior to them being purchased. This can be a steady process throughout the year, but we see an increase around the end of the year due to Christmas puppies.

Veterinary Medicine on the Farm Made Easier with a CVT Experienced in LA

There are many benefits of having a licensed CVT experienced in LA on field/farm calls. Restraints are something I pride myself in. If a 1500-pound animal is properly restrained, then the veterinarian is able to focus on the medical issue. Some clients do have a cattle shoot or head lock to keep that animal in, which makes it a little safer, but it can be pretty challenging without those tools, especially if you are tending a cow or horse in an open field. It is important to monitor your surroundings, the patient, the veterinarian, and the owners, and know when you make a move, how that will impact others. For example, if a horse is getting tense and is going to rear up on you, you want to get out of the way and make sure everyone around you gets out of the way. Or if you anticipate a cow is going to kick, you make sure everyone is aware.

Sometimes the veterinarian just needs an extra trained pair of hands. For example, if a cow has a twisted uterus, we will flip them, put them down on the ground, put a board on their back, and rotate them in the opposite direction of the rotation of the uterus. You need help with that maneuver. If we find ourselves in an emergency surgery situation, I can be prepping the animal, getting the IV catheter, and getting supplies ready for the surgery while the veterinarian is talking with the client (letting them know what the surgery entails, what they may observe next, and what the outcome of the surgery

Sarah is restraining horse during a dental float.

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may be) and getting scrubbed up themselves to perform the surgery. When we travel to an equine farm with multiple horses scheduled for routine exams, the veterinarian could conduct the full exam on the horse and give the rabies vaccine, then I could perform blood draws, give any vaccines I am licensed to administer, and all the extra steps a CVT is qualified to perform while the veterinarian moves on to the next animal. Other emergency calls are colic in horses, trouble birthing with cows, and multiple births in goats, all situations where a trained CVT can be a critical asset. If it is possible to transport the patient, we perform the surgery in the hospital suite, which is sterile and where we have a hydraulic lift.

With the puppy checks for breeders, the veterinarian gives physical exams to the puppies prior to them being sold and we provide a certificate of veterinary health, which is something we make at our hospital for the owner to give to the new family purchasing the puppy. It proves that the breeder had a veterinarian check the puppy before selling it, makes them a better breeder, and results in them getting more clients coming to them because they have that medical check that ultimately improves their reputation. Having a CVT there to hold the patient for the physical exam and/or complete the certificates while the veterinarian moves to the next patient keeps the process moving, instead of the veterinarian stopping after each patient to fill out the records or waiting to the end to fill out all the certificates and possibly not remembering something from the exam or for which puppy. This is especially efficient and effective when a breeder has multiple litters at one time that they want us to look at, and that can get busy quickly.

Challenges and Rewards

Working with animals that most people are intiminated by is a challenge AND a reward. There are not many CVTs in the LA veterinary field because it is physically demanding, especially the restraints. I’ve been stepped on. I get very dirty. I treat patients in all kinds of weather. But I am working with amazing creatures every day. I am following my passion. I also get to know our clients. If a client talks about a sick relative, I ask about them the next time I visit. That personal relationship builds trust, and they become more comfortable with me. That opens the door for educating them on their animals, how to execute a restraint safely, and how to desensitize the animal to needles like pinching them in the neck regularly so they don’t react negatively for the examination.

Communication is Key

Having good communication within the team results in our success. Each veterinarian has their own way to progress through the exam, work the room, what they like to have on hand, and what they want on the truck for every farm call day. Once the staff learns these different preferences, everyone works more efficiently. Our veterinarians are good about teaching on the job. They don’t want you to get hurt, so they explain those life lessons that further the education received in the classroom. The flip side to that is once the veterinarians understand how to utilize an experienced, trained CVT, the hospital will benefit financially: They can treat more patients, have more income, increase the facility, and improve equipment. Communication with our clients is equally important. We work with a lot of Amish, which creates a challenge in basic communication when they rely on racing to a neighbor to make a telephone call and we often play phone tag.

Advice for Prospective Large Animal CVTs

Learn as much as you can about LA—you may be working on a camel some day, you just don’t know! When I was in school, we were taken to different farms to learn restraint techniques, but these animals were used to being handled. It is different treating injured or working animals that are not pets. Know your restraints because that is how you are most effective on farm calls. I can’t stress this enough because it is very difficult to restrain a 1500-pound Friesian horse that is scared and hurt. Invest in quality coveralls and boots—steel toed are really good EXCEPT when an animal steps directly on the steel toe and bends it down into your own foot. I have been stepped on multiple times; thankfully, I have not broken anything, but it is very painful for a long time. Always have extra clothes on hand—YOU WILL GET DIRTY. Put your hair up and out of the way because it can get pulled, or when working with the dental speculum, it can get caught in that; this also helps to just keep it clean. I am improving every single day medically and physically. If this is a field you want to get in to, don’t back down. If you work in small animal veterinary medicine, you may be told that you will never find somewhere that you will be able to work with large animals because most of the veterinarians like to work alone. So, it is more difficult to find a job as a technician. But fight for it. Work as hard as you can to get that position. You will find it.

Goals

My dream is to become a veterinarian, but I don’t know if that is something I will be able to do just because of the cost. I am getting married this year and saving to buy a house, so maybe it is a dream for the future. A smaller goal that I have set for myself at this time is to work more with large animals than what I do now. I currently only work one day a week with the LA department and I would love to broaden that. LA is one of my main passions. I was specifically told by one technician that there is no job out there for an LA veterinary technician and that I would never get a job in that profession.

I would like this article to stimulate more CVTs to work in this field and to encourage the veterinarians that we are here to help them. We are trained for it.

About the Author: Sarah Shade, CVT, currently lives in Montandon, PA, and is saving money to buy her own home. She has 2 dogs that were rescued, their names are Oakley and Shale. She also has 2 cats, one she rescued and one is from the litter of kittens that were born in her home. Their names are Rocky and Paisley. She is engaged to be married this year in September to her fiancé Karsch. They have been together for 9 years. In her free time, Sarah loves hunting, fishing, going to tractor pulls and farm auctions, and just being outside in general. She is currently caring for 5 horses for one of her clients. Misty is the oldest and she is a Friesian crossed with a draft horse of some sort, Gracy is a miniature horse, and Gypsy, Rhianna, and Willow are all purebred Friesians. She has been caring for them for a year now and loves it. She has found a new passion for horseback riding.