As is typical of when first meeting someone, the question of ‘what do you do’ often comes up.  While I would love to enthusiastically answer that question with pride for my profession and simply state, “I’m a veterinarian” inevidbly the follow-on question is “where do you practice.”  That then leads into ‘the explanation’ of how I’m in the Army serving on Active Duty as a veterinarian.  Most responses to that are along the lines of how people don’t know we have vets in the Army (I didn’t either until I was looking to match up my career with my husband’s.)  While there’s then an opportunity to explain about the military’s medical research programs and the support that I, as a lab animal vet, give to those programs, I usually choose to mention the need for vets based on military working dogs.  Military working dogs generously serve our country with a passion most of us humans will never know.  But that’s not why I deflect the conversation to the dogs.  I deflect the conversation to the dogs because of the discomfort surrounding the use of animals in research programs.  Given the negative light that casts shadows on this field–pictures of skinny baby monkeys taken from their mommas, dogs in cages looking as if they’ve never experienced love or compassion–and the fact that those of us in research regularly choose silence over explanation, it’s easy to understand why myself and others find the use of animals in research an uncomfortable conversation. So let me explain what I’ve experienced and why the specialty of laboratory animal medicine provides me the best opportunity to serve animals and humans.

My first introduction to laboratory animal medicine was during veterinary school.  There was a short course on lab animal medicine covering the laws and regulations that protect animals used in research.  That there were actual regulations and policies written by our Federal government to care for animals fascinated me.  At the same time, I was puzzled that there were definitions for what an animal was and that this definition excluded most rats and mice.  It seemed illogical that what was clearly an animal was excluded from legal protections.  I had to know more.  I took an elective course in lab animal at a nearby graduate program, participated in the lab animal club at our school, and chose to do an externship at a pharmaceutical company in my 4th year of veterinary school. These experiences opened up an entirely new world.  There were rats, mice, guinea pigs, monkeys, dogs, cats–it was a veritable cornucopia of animals all needing veterinary care, all contributing to science.  I would be able to care for them all, the monkeys, the rats, and the dogs in the same day and with the most state-of-the art technologies and with the help of well-educated animal care teams.  As a rule-follower by nature, the fact that there were documents written to guide how these animals came to be in research programs, how they were housed and fed, who could work with them, even the temperatures of their living quarters all pulled me in closer to my desire to work in this field.  Luckily, the Army has a lab animal residency program so as soon as I put on the uniform, I made it clear to everyone who would listen that my goal was to be accepted into said residency program to become a lab animal vet.

Flash forward and it’s now been about 20 years since I sat in that lab animal introduction course in vet school.  Laws, regulations, and policies continue to excite me when they lull others into a deep sleep.  There’s great reward when someone asks me why something surrounding animal use must be a certain way and I can point to the words in a Federal regulation or Department of Defense policy to prove it so.  There’s also great reward in the flexibility this field provides our veterinarians to do their personal best by each and every animal.  For the most part, if veterinary technicians and caretakers suggest a better way to care for animals, we can make that happen.  We can do this because our research institutions are staffed with people who really care about animal welfare and want these animals to have good lives.  Lab animal medicine is a field where creativity, compassion, knowledge of laws and regulations, and hope for a better future through science all come together.  For a long time, how my lab animal patients contributed to the ‘hope for a better future’ didn’t really sink in.  At first the goal of finding new medications, learning new procedures, understanding complex biological processes–that’s what these animals contributed to.  And they do.  Absolutely.  Now, however, their contributions have a more personal meaning.  Since entering this field, I’ve lost a grandmother whom I loved dearly to a stroke.  My father now lives with a pacemaker and lung cancer and though he tried to die twice, he is still very much alive.  My littlest daughter suffered a rare consequence of a fever and her kidneys were at risk of failing.  My beloved labrador died from bone cancer.  My sweet Cavalier King Charles spaniel lives with heart disease and a cyst in his spinal cord and the medications we give him every day noticeably change how spunky he is.  While facing each of these difficulties, laboratory animal medicine filled me with hope. In laboratories around our country and around the world, animals help scientists understand the complex mysteries of our bodies and are delivering on this hope for a better future for all of us–animals and people alike. I suppose I should find a way to help others understand that the compassion I’ve felt towards my lab animal patients is no different, no less than what I’ve felt for the many pets and working dogs who sat on the exam table in my early days as a veterinarian.  I should help break the silence and proudly explain how lab animal vets, veterinary technicians and caretakers, scientists, and especially the lab animals themselves fill me with hope.  Hope that my own future won’t involve a stroke, that my dad will share many more years with us, that my dog’s diseases will no longer progress, and that everyone fighting medical battles has a chance to overcome.  So while it’s difficult to share this in a short conversation with someone, I must work to find the right words to honor the animals who’ve contributed to the advancement of medicine and science for the benefit of us all.