Here in Queensland, Australia, the University of Queensland St Lucia campus receives dogs from the local pound as part of a euthenasia service. These dogs are sedated, then anaethetised, and the vet and vet tech students learn procedures on them, including catheter insertion, taking blood, bone taps, anaesthesia monitoring, speys, all the things you need a live dog to learn how to do. The dogs are then euthenased. None of them are woken up after the initial sedation. We treat these dogs with so much respect, even after they are PTS.
Recently, the council has decided to suspend its support of the university and has stopped supplying dogs, rather they just euthenase them at their pound. The RSPCA has jumped on board and offered them their support saying what the uni is doing is inhumane, and needs to be stopped.
What did you guys learn on?
And what do you think about this?

what is more inhumane is having a new graduate vet operate on an animal in practice for the first time, not knowing what they are doing and without the proper guidance you get in vet school. Ridiculous.

That's a shame Becky - i trained at UQ and the dogs we had were invaluable. I routinely did CSF and lumbar taps on all my dogs as it was something that i wanted to know how to do and NOT screw up on an actual patient. I actually pithed a dog once and that was a tad scarey - but it let me know the landmarks and the boundaries and i walked out so much more confident of taps than a lot of other people.
Our speys were supervised and my first ever surgery was a gastrotomy where i think i cut too close to the greater curvature and it bled like a bitch and i almost cried i was so scared. Thinking back, maybe it didn't bleed that much but it was a great lesson. My 2nd sx was a cystotomy and i thought it was very useful to know just how quickly the bladder can get so angry and oedematous when being fooled around with.
Sometimes i truly think the RSPCA can't think outside the box - we always treated our animals with the utmost respect and i think they were a completely necessary and invaluable part of the practical side of the vet degree. We were never unsupervised with anaesthetised animals. What difference does it make if they are euthanased at the pound or under the care and supervision of vets and vet students??
What a shame

It always annoys me when people complain about vet students using pound animals. If these people truly want to make a difference, then why don't they work towards stopping people dumping animals at the pound in the first place? Or compulsory desexing of pets so no abandoned litters.
I'm sure none of them would want their pet to be your first operation, either!!

Part of the complaint is that the animals are treated inhumanely, but I remember on so many occassions I caught myself talking to and patting (presumably to comfort) a dog I had just euthenased. Most of my fellow students found themselves doing this at some time or another. And as Emma said, we are and were always supervised by qualified vets. No chance of a dog waking up mid way through.
Someone just needs to pull the RSPCA aside and ask what their alternative suggestions are?? Should we do what apprentice hairdressers do and offer a discount to practice castrations and speys on family pets? And hope that when they wake up they are ok? Absolutely ridiculous.

Some of the welfare issues are ridiculous that are brought up. I agree it's more important that students practice under qualified supervision than get 'let out' to make mistakes once graduated. We got to do one bitch spay each in college (Dublin, Ireland) -these were dogs booked in routinely. We also had a week-long session where we had a dead dog (usually euthanised greyhounds) and in small groups we did various procedures - chest drain, tracheostomy, neuter, splenectomy, gut resection & anastomosis, cruciate repair and several others.

We also did 1 cow section in groups of about 6. I think our year may have been the last year to be allowed to do this again because of ethics committees. But again is it not better for us to do this procedure supervised in perfect clean conditions with perfect lighting and restraint than have to do it under pressure on a farm for the first time a few weeks graduated? Which is better for the animal?!

Yes I get annoyed too about UQ being accused of inhumane practices on these pound dogs, they were never abused and always treated kindly. Sadly, these animals are all due to be euthanased anyway because no one wants to give them a home and subsequently spend months on end in a pound because of it. I also think it's invaluable because it's all so different from a cadaver, bleeding, moving tissue etc. It's like people think we're doing surgery or experiments on them, then waking them up afterwards just to see what happens. I've read some of what has been said about it and it's mostly ill informed and baseless acusations. I understand why people would object to these practices, but I feel they really haven't made an effort to understand the situation completely.

No one I knew ever took the situation lightly and were always respectful to these animals, and it's frustrating that general ignorance has resulted in this invaluable teaching experience being suspended. I do understand that some students were uncomfortable with these pracs and they were never chastised or outcast because of it, nor were they marked down as a result. And if they were chastised by their peers they certainly didn't deserve it. Most of us felt much more comfortable doing our first surgeries on these dogs knowing that there was some room for error. It's pretty terrifying going into your first client surgery, hoping it goes well and you did the procedure right. I suppose as things progress we'll be left with frozen cadavers and probably virtual computer simulations or something.

I agree with all said. When I went through Melbourne uni we performed cystotomies, speys, thoracotomies and intestinal anastomoses on terminal dogs. The experiences were all unforgettable and i will not forget the dogs that gave me those experiences. The pound dogs were cared for well at uni in the weeks leading up to their 'big day in the lime light' and i know that I would go out and spend time with them. They had a shot at being rehomed and failed to make the grade in time. They were taken by uni and were walked and petted by myself and other students until the day we lead them into the hospital - one dog enjoying the praise and encouragement of 4 students each. I remember that the dogs trusted us until the end and that just broke my heart - they keenly followed us into the surgery room. I know I would rather finish up as one of these dogs given the alternative - euthanased as another nameless stray at the end of the week by a vet they hardly knew. These dogs I feel were respected more than any stray in a shelter could be at the end.

It is vital that the dogs are respected, and even after they were euthanased - still under the supervision of the surgeons and nurses - the bodies were treated with respect. I remember that the surgeons and nurses would not tolerate any body being dropped into a bag - they were lowered in with the respect that any well loved pet deserved.

Thanks to my four prac dogs - the little terrier x, the black and white greyhound, the brown kelpie x and the black kelpie. See - I still remember those dogs! They will never convince me that the terminal surgery dogs are treated any less than a loved pet who has come to the end.

Unfortunately I think its the way all vet schools are going- Sydney has had a 'no kill' policy for several years now and its all just face value- its so they can say to the animal rights extremists 'no we dont kill animals for teaching purposes' so all surgery etc pracs are done on cadavers....and everyone is right...its so not the same thing, they dont bleed, the tissues look different, feel different etc. I dont know how they can justify it on welfare grounds actually, we are (going to in my case- im still a student) operating on live animals and I would have thought it was better to get practice on a live animal before we graduate and have to do it 'for real'..... but what would I know, I'm just a student/nurse...clearly the powers that be no better and aren't just playing politics with our education :S

I just got emailed this, this is the kind of misinformation that gets printed.

http://www.questnews.com.au/article/2008/04/29/26745_latest_news.html

They make it sound like any stray dogs found are not given a chance of rehoming, rather they're instantly taken to the uni the next day for these surgeries and experimented on like some kind of weird study, not used for actual surgical procedures under controlled, humane practices. As usual, only half the story, twice the ramifications.

Wow, I just want to make sure I'm reading this right.... Are you all saying that you take dogs from the shelters, do surgeries and procedures at school, and then euthanize them? And then go out to a veterinary practice and work on a live animal for the first time?? I'm from the U.S. and I've never heard of anything like that...I'm not in Vet School (I'm going to school to be a Vet Tech), but I'm pretty sure all of our Universities do not take part in a practice like that. What my school does is take animals from low income shelters that have health problems, are not altered, etc, and we treat them, alter them, etc and they stay in our program for about 8 months and then we adopt them out to students or the public. It is very rare that we euthanize an animal, and if it is done it is always for the benefit of the animal. I may just be misunderstanding what you guys are saying, just let me know.....

Sarah, what happens is not quite as you have interpretted it. The local pound has a rehoming program, and for certain reasons, some dogs, and cats cannot be rehomed. Often they are biters etc, so they are going to be euthenased anyway. What happens, it the university offers a euthenasia service, where these dogs are taken back to the uni, and vet and vet tech students, under the strictest of supervision, are taught to sedate, anaethetise, and euthenase the animals. Before they are euthenased, other techniques are taught and practiced. The animals are never woken after they have been sedated, and remember, they are going to be PTS anyway. The students, as I was one so I know, treat these dogs and cats with the respect they deserve right up to and beyond when they are euthenased. They were unlucky enough not to be suitable to rehome, so it is the least we can do.
What is happening now is that the council views this as inhumane, but the whole story is not being published. And the RSPCA, in all their infinate wisdom, are backing the council. And again, they are not getting all the facts.

I think sarahs obviously shocked response to this thread shows the very different opinions on this issue are probably influenced a lot by the part of the world people come from. From the sounds of it this sort of thing would never happen in the states, with them being such a PC society they would be too afraid of the unis being attacked by animal rights activists to do things the same way that aussie does (or did). Im from NZ and we did the same thing for our first surgeries but on sheep (definitely no shortage of them here), then did desexing on the uni hospitals clients with their permission and with vets scrubbed in with us. We never got to do more complex surgeries like cystotomies, gut resection, thoracotomies etc, most of us do our first of these in practice on clients animals, often with no supervision. I wish we had a system more like aussie did. Its a real shame that they are doing away with it. We had euthanased pound animals as cadavers for the early anatomy practicals, I dont see how using these is any different to anaesthetising them and learning from them before they are euthanased. The people dissing it need to look at the big picture.

The RSPCA needs to worry more about what goes on inside their own doors. We have had several referals to fix the stuff ups the poor new grads make working with little supervision......

I'll never forget how valuable our CPR pracs were at uni. Yes, we anaesthetised pound dogs and gave them an overdose of inhalant and revived, starved them of oxygen and revived them. we filled their chest with air and performed emergency chest drain placement and eventually moved on to full thoracotomy and intrathoracic cardiac massage. It was invaluable experience for me, and it sure came in handy in my first week at work with the boss away and a stake wound with collapsed lung came in. My mind flew back to this prac and i knew exactly how to place a drain and as a result i was not hysterical with panic in this emergency.
I have since had a dog arrest under anaesthetic with me and again my mind went back to this prac and i was able to revive the animal with cardiac massage, ventilation and, of course, a little handy intracardiac adrenalin (thanks to the pracs i instantly knew the landmarks for intracardiac injection for adrenalin and lethabarb). For the record this dog had absolutely no heartbeat - i had to produce negative pressure in the syringe to check i was in the heart!! A little hairy for a couple of minutes there!
Without those pracs i would have been much more stressed, and sometimes there just isn't the time to consult a book - and so few books actually demonstrate simple procedures - they just say to place a chest drain. I thank my little dog for dying for my group over and over to teach us how to save others. Little champion!

That's the trouble isn't it Georgie. Sadly not all new grads get the support they need and can often be left on their own to perform surgeries with minimal experience and reduced confidence. It certainly could be an increasing problem without the proper consideration of alternative teaching strategies. The other trouble is that often people will be reluctant to have their animals desexed or what not knowing that students may be doing it.

I totally agree. For all those people who are of the opinion that students shouldn't practice on live animals and should be supervised on graduation.....
that isn't always possible, especially in small practices and mixed practices. It would be interesting to pose the scenario to these people who believe that 'practicing' on live animals is inhumane that would you have the confidence/be happy with your 'new vet' desexing your animal knowing that he/she has never done it before? Would you have confidence in your 'new vet' performing a 2am GDV on your animal knowing he/she has never cut tissue and seen it bleed? I doubt it. I wouldn't either.
I was rarely allowed to scrub in on surgeries on rotations in private practice and i can fully understand why the vets are reluctant to let students loose on their clients' animals.... what if something goes wrong? What if they drop a pedicle? What if they cut the spleen? You just don't need it, and all those things can happen even under the most avid supervision.

I'm from UQ also
According to someone at UQ (one of the lecturers - I can't remember who), there are only 3-4 Vet schools in the world that offer the live surgery pracs on dogs.

I agree with Emma - the CPR prac was completely fantastic, absolutely essential. Because, honestly, you don't won't the first time you are doing CPR on a dog to be on a crashing patient.

I have to admit that the surgery pracs made me a little depressed - all those dogs we PTS. My week to be anaesthetist, our dog was an absolutely gorgeous 8 month old Weimaraner bitch. I don't know why she hadn't been re-homed. I cried when I euthed her.
BUT, the pracs were really important for our eduction and I'm grateful we had them.

My first year, some animal rights people let all the prac dogs out of the vet clinic. We got most back, but a number of them were hit by cars. Tell me the better way to die - hit by a car or sedated & then humanely euthanased. I know which I'd chose.
These are stray dogs are going to be PTS by the city council anyway. Most council policy is that any dogs at the pound are PTS after 3-4 days.
The dogs had a better chance of being re-homed by coming to the Uni because the Vet school kept the dogs for 1 week on top of the 3 days they were in the pound.
Any dogs with good temperaments become research dogs for the Uni & got re-homed afterwards.

What we did was not in-humane. It was sad that these dogs were available to us, but that's a result of an over abundant stray dog population.
All the dogs were treated as if they were a "real" patient. They received extra doses of morphine if they seemed to be responding to pain stimuli during surgery, their anaesthesia was monitored extremely closely, sterile technique was used, etc, etc.

These dogs could have been woken up after surgery and been absolutely fine. But the deal with the council was they had to be PTS afterwards as part of the councils' controlling stray dog policy

I think this entire topic is interesting - I am currently a vet student at Murdoch, and I am unsure if we get to perform surgery on live animals. However, before coming to vet school, I worked part-time as a vet nurse for a vet who did his DVM in America about 25 years ago - and he said that they used live animals under the same sort of system that UQ does. Interesting that it seems to have changed.

Murdoch definitely used to have live animal pracs, I'm pretty sure they still do, not certain however.

And another thing, the invaluble lessons these dogs provide doesnt end once they are PTS. They were then moved to the pathology Prac rooms and kept for the pathology classes. I remember doing mine, I had a little maltese mix puppy, a stray, and I found ever type of parasite you can imagine, Heart worm, hook worm, whip worm, tape worm and round worm. Never before have I seen all these worms inside a dog, let alone ONE dog, and the lesson will not be forgotten. I saw first hand the damage these parasites do to a puppy and it equipped me even more to explain and convince clients that they should properly prevent and treat their pets.

And I too cried numerous times in the 'pound room' pracs, but Libby (who co-ordinated them) was so understanding of us all that got a little emotional. I PTS a little bitch that had just had her puppies taken from her, she was so upset, but unfortunately couldnt be rehomed. She was PTS with 3 girls providing her with comfort, love and affection that she would never have gotten at the pound.

Ah, Libby is still there! She was always one of the nicest and most understanding people in the whole clinic.

She was in 2004. I went back the other week to lecture the new Vet Techs and I saw her unloading the trailer. She sure is an asset to the pound room.

I just recently graduated as a VT and we used live animals to learn most of our techniques anything really invasive we did on a cadaver (fracture repair). We had our own colony of dogs and cats at the school. They were all spayed and neutered while they were there during our lab times so we what it is like to spay/neuter live animals also clamping, sutures, sedation, intubation, monitoring Sx, etc. All of the students were responsible for the animals care and enrichment while they lived at the school and ALL of the animals were placed in homes at the end of the year. The animals were protected by strict rules as to how many times they can be sedated, have a general, and how many times they can be poked with a needle for blood draws, SQ, IM in a week. It made for a schedualing night mare but it worked and the animals found homes and we got to learn on live animals.

This is such an interesting topic!

What amazing practicals they must have been! Learning enterotomies, cystotomy, CPR, CSF taps...as students!!!

In the UK , I don't think any Vet School gets to do this any more. The RVC certainly doesn't (where I graduated 2 years ago). And yes, its as many of you say, the first time you do something is on a live animal, that a client is paying for you do to operate on in complete good faith that you 110% know what you're doing and have done it a million times before. We have spaying and neutering under very close vet supervision n charity dogs/cats for rehoming. But never in 1 million years did we get to do anything like that in uni. We may, if we have a brilliant supervising vet when you were seeing practice have got to watch/scrub in to some of those provcedures you guys mentioned. If you were lucky.
I can only imagine how much better prepared you guys that are lucky enough to get those practicals are than I was on graduating! Esp. that cpr prac.
RSPCA haven't got a clue.
As usual. And in pathology we had pickled formalin animals. It is NOT the same as a fresh one.

now im a nurse, not a vet, but i've heard some scary stories from my student coworkers... like breaking a chicken's neck so you know how to break a chickens neck? that i dont understand.. and a fellow nurse said at her tafe they had rats which they were going to euth - just so they could demonstrate euthanasia! they didnt perfom anything else on those rats, so the entire demonstration was the rat dying (i think she actually took the rat and refused to let them euth it - :) yay!)

i mean, i'm all for pracs on homeless animals that will be euthd anyway, as long as they are treated with respect.

but breaking a chickens neck just seems so inhumane, and euthing something that is perfectly healthy, just to demonstrate euthanasia? that is something easily observed in the workplace with the abundance of dying wildlife we have brought in...


what are your thoughts?

all very odd! we in the UK just have cadavers for anatomy in the first year, and then pound dogs to do routine neutering on in final year, and any experience you get seeing practice, but i wouldn't dream of expecting any new grad of mine to get on and do any such surgery without me or one of the other vets there to supervise, and they always know to phone someone out of hours if they are worried. we are not a particularly big practice, only five vets, but have had three new grads in the last five years and no surgical mistakes that i am aware of, and all three have built their confidence happily with as much or as little supervision as they are comfortable with. And as for CPR etc, that is why we have qualified nurses, their job is to tell the petrified new grad to stop screaming and get on with it!

I think it can be different here in Australia, i would consider a 5 vet practice to be fairly large. Most practices in country towns are one or two vets, and sometimes the nearest other vet is some 3 or 4 hrs away. And because you are posted rurally, it usually means you have a fairly high proportion of large animal work. In my case i was thrown in the deep end purely because i started at the beginning of preg testing season and so the boss was out most of the day each day testing and i was left with a nurse in the clinic to work it out for myself. It means that new grads are not always supervised and i would always try to contact him if i needed to but often he was out of range. I would then fall back on uni or nearby practices for advice.
In my case the pracs were invaluable to me in the hairy scarey moments when i'm sure i would have otherwise panicked!!

I can't say we ever did any 'euthanasia' pracs - killing chooks and rats etc just to kill them - that seems a bit odd...

As for nurses assisting in CPR - we don't have qualified nurses at our clinic and many of the practices I did work exp for only had one qualified nurse out of the entire team. Nursing is becoming a very popular course here in Aus, but it seems that the girls that do it will be a vet nurse only for 2-5yrs then go off, get married, have kids and work as a real estate agent or pharmacy assistant, music tutor etc (personal experience) - vet nursing just doesn't pay enough for a new family and the hours suck.
And the girls that I have worked with who have done the nursing course are certainly not equipped to instruct a vet on CPR techniques in the heat of the moment - or in any other moment either. UK is known for its great nurses - maybe the Aussie courses have some catching up to do (?correct me if I'm wrong guys!). The first qualified nurse I met was trained in the UK. Can someone comment on our nursing courses in Australia? Are they comparable to the UK courses?

my coworker is studying the new 3yr tafe course and my god it looks difficult... alot of the questions are very in depth, stuff the vets couldnt remember... it is very different to the cert IV i completed 2yrs ago. they have written exams (i had multiple choice) and it seems very stressful. not sure about in comparison to UK courses, but they do seem to be wondernurses...