Student again!!!

I have always been fascinated by animal behaviour. It is my true passion in veterinary medicine. This spring I found a board certified veterinary behaviourist, Dr. Diane Frank, who is going to mentor me through my non-conforming residency. Yup, I am going to be a student again!!!!

For those of you who don't know what a non-conforming residency is, I will try to give you the short form of how I plan on accomplishing this. (The proposed program I sent to the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists was 26 pages long!) I will still be practicing general practice veterinary medicine at my hospital; however, Dr. Frank will be coming out once a month for three or four days at a time to oversee my initial cases.

Here's how my caseload works. She will be present for the first 25 cases and then she will be present for 25 of the next 50 cases. There will be varying amounts of supervision as we progress through my minimum of 400 cases. Not only will I be seeing dogs and cats, but horses, birds and zoo animals. This is going to take me about five years. If I were to go to a university with a behaviour residency program it would take about 2 to 3 years. The thought of leaving my patients, clients, work family and, of course, my patient husband, just doesn't work. As well, I will be writing a paper based on research I will be doing that will be published in a peer reviewed journal. I also will find the time to write three peer-reviewed case reports. Once I have completed my program, I will be apply to sit for the boards. This is a two day test (not stressful at all!). Upon passing, I will be board certified in animal behaviour.

Now, during this process, I will still be practicing veterinary medicine as usual. I would likely go absolutely mad if I couldn't. I will also continue to do general medicine once I am a specialist. Being able to help my patients to have a great experience at the hospital is so fulfilling as is helping my scaredy cats and dogs learn to relax.