Search Results for “”

The average veterinary student loan debt was $162,113 in 2013, a 6.9 percent increase from 2012, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. But the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is changing that for some veterinarians. On Nov. 4, the USDA awarded more than $4.5 million to 49 American veterinarians to help them repay a portion of their veterinary school loans. In exchange, award recipients must serve in 1 of 26 states that lack sufficient veterinary resources.

Conventional wisdom says male birds are more colorful because they are competing for female attention, and that female birds are less colorful because they need camouflage while guarding their nests. It's more complicated than that, a new study suggests. Researchers from New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and Germany looked at nearly 6,000 species of passerine, or perching songbirds, who make up 60 percent of the bird population, and concluded that female songbirds have evolved their own coloration to gain advantages in their particular climates and surroundings. The study was published in Nature on Nov. 4.

See Spot run. Spot runs fast. Why? Maybe because Spot has a long body, a recent study suggests. French physicists studied the relationship between speed and size, from bacteria to the largest mammals, and concluded that body length, not mass, determines an animal’s speed. Their findings were published in the American Journal of Physics on March 29. Paleontologists at Brown University are also looking at animals in motion, and have developed software to study them.Their study was published in Nature on Sept. 1.

The next time you treat a feline patient with upper respiratory disease (URD), you may want to prescribe cuddling. At least, that’s what a new study suggests. Researchers from the School of Veterinary Science at the University of Queensland in Australia found that petting, playing with, and grooming cats reduced the incidence of URD in those cats. Their findings were published in the October issue of Preventive Veterinary Medicine. (The study was available online Aug. 5).

If you’re looking for a change of pace, or need to jump-start your veterinary career once you graduate, you may want to head to Appalachia, according to a new report. On October 14-15, the Center for Animal Health (CAHA) and the Lincoln Memorial University College of Veterinary Medicine (LMU-CVM) issued a report that found that 75% of its rural counties had a shortage of approximately 1,907 veterinarians, translating to an estimated economic loss of $621 million and 15,256 jobs.

Muscular dystrophy (MD) affects approximately 250,000 people in the United States. It also affects pets. Lucky for both populations, there may be a way to curtail it, a new study suggests. Researchers from the University of Missouri (MU) have successfully treated dogs with the most common form of MD, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). Their findings were published in the National Institute of Health’s PubMed.gov on August 11.

A Persian cat who ate three feet of packaging tape. A miniature dachshund that fended off a rattlesnake. A skewer-swallowing boxer. It was a tough choice but the votes are in. On Oct. 7, Nationwide Pet Insurance awarded Curtis, a five year old boxer from Princeton, W. Va., the Hambone Award®, honoring the most unusual pet insurance claim of the year. Curtis will receive the award and a gift bag. The Virginia College of Veterinary Medicine, who treated Curtis, will receive $10,000 to treat pets whose owners could not otherwise afford treatment.

Are too many veterinarians crowding the marketplace? Not according the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA). The AVMA released its fifth economic report, 2015: AVMA Report on Veterinary Capacity (the Report), on Oct. 8. The Report offers a view of the veterinary marketplace through the lens of excess capacity, and concludes that the need for veterinary services continues to outpace the ability to supply those services, according to the Report’s Executive Summary.

Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is an inherited eye disease that damages light sensing cells in the retina, according to the National Eye Institute (NEI), and eventually leads to blindness in canines. However, scientists from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Florida, Gainesville determined for the first time that gene therapy may be of benefit. The study was published Sept. 10 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Stress, anxiety, and depression are often part of being a veterinary professional. But this fact is something many professionals learn about the hard way, and it's rarely discussed. However, an event in early Nov. may help change that. On Nov. 2-3, the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC) will host the Veterinary Wellness and Social Work Summit (VWSWS) at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.