Progression of the profession...

One of the many reasons I chose to work exclusively on cats concerned the wealth of new information we are now getting regarding feline medicine. For a long time, cats were viewed as small dogs, and treatment protocols were extrapolated from our studies with what turns out to be a significantly different species. If you browse through the veterinary journals from ten years ago, you cannot find near as much feline specific information as you do today. In fact, today's feline content takes up more than half of some of my favorite sources. It's very exciting and rewarding to be involved in an areas of the profession where such dramatic improvements in quality of care is being attained.

As another example of veterinary medicine progressing in the right direction, veterinary dentistry seems to really be coming into full form with increasing numbers of general practitioners purchasing and utilizing advanced dental equipment. Now, while I only recently graduated in 2003, the small animal dentistry curriculum was very limited where I trained. I would dare say that out of four years of school, I attended perhaps only eight hours of lecture on the subject and had only one dental case which I had to share with four other students. Truth be told, I found dentistry to be very uninteresting.

A harsh reality hit me in the face when I started working here. Trained on how to pay attention to my patients during physical examination, one of the most common problems I was recognizing was painful dental diseases such as periodontitis in the cat. That summer of 2003, the excitement of being a new veterinarian quickly turned to terror as I madly scrambled to figure out how to overcome my inadequate knowledge of dentistry.

Up next: Going from "plucking wigglers" to discovering the true meaning of dental prophylaxis. Also, the benefits of having a supportive employer.