My Veterinary Life

The holiday season is upon us! While this often brings celebrations, it can also bring some tensions and frustrations. Add in a pandemic and things are bound to look pretty different this year. Dr. Jen Brandt joins us to discuss strategies to prioritize your wellbeing, including setting boundaries this year so you feel safe and comfortable. We share practical tips that can be applied anytime and a...

“Also, disclaimer, I should have said this from the very beginning. My Appalachian twang knows no bounds, so whenever I say things, my pronunciations, if I sound like a little bit of a country bumpkin, if you saw where I was from you would know it’s just how people talk and I love it. Dolly Parton doesn’t apologize for it, so I won’t either.” Our guest today is Dr. Elizabeth Johnson Million. Dr. J...

“I had been talking to someone that made me aware of something called, I think it’s called the Passion Test. Where, it’s a book but you can kind of work through a process to identify what some of your greatest passions are, and the premise being that if you bring those passions into your life in small ways, just the smallest steps, they get bigger and they become a bigger component of your life.”...

“So what I know for sure is that people in certain circumstances, they do feel stuck sometimes. And I want to, you know, really remind everyone that there are always options. So, this might entail really taking a look at your life, reviewing what you value the most, it may mean accepting less pay and making lifestyle changes accordingly. However, I feel there are always options.” Our guest today i...

Our guest today is Donja Pettiford. Donja has dreamed of becoming a veterinarian for most of her life. However, sometimes life doesn’t always go as planned, and she has made the most of the opportunities she has been given all while continuing to work towards the goal of being accepted into veterinary school. Currently, Donja is working as a technical trainer with the USDA-FSIS and tells about the...

“The other practice part, I was able to assemble a team that complimented me, my style. My business partner definitely knew the business.” Our guest today is Dr. Kathy Jonokuchi. Dr. Jonokuchi has had an incredible career! She continues to find new ways to challenge herself and give back to this profession. While many of her classmates are working towards retirement, it seems like Dr. Jonokuchi’s...

“It’s fun because people think that you know what you are going to do, and you follow that path and it really wasn’t that direct of a path. I mean Veterinary Medicine, for sure. I knew that from the beginning but all through vet school I planned on being a dairy practitioner.” Our guest today is Dr. Cindy Otto. Dr. Otto is the executive Director of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center. We had the best...

Welcome to our final episode in a special My Veterinary Life Podcast miniseries in collaboration with our friends at National Veterinary Associates. Joining us for these conversations is Turpin Mott. Turpin is the Chief Community Officer for NVA. His focus is spreading positive wellbeing and culture initiatives throughout the veterinary profession. We are talking culture today! How do you identify...

“I feel that my success, a lot of my future success, is because I had such good mentoring at the beginning of my career.” Our guest today is Dr. Alicia Ruiz. Dr. Ruiz. Dr. Ruiz found her passion for veterinary medicine at an early age and never looked back. Through support of family, educators and great mentors, she is living her dream every day. Her story is so refreshing and full of joy that we...

Welcome to a special episode of My Veterinary Life Podcast. This is part three of a four-part miniseries with our friends at National Veterinary Associates. Joining us for these conversations will be Turpin Mott. Turpin is the Chief Community Officer for NVA. His focus is spreading positive wellbeing and culture initiatives throughout the veterinary profession. We are talking emotions today! What...

“I never really considered vet medicine because I never thought I could get in, because I knew how difficult vet school was. And then after doing some hard thinking, I think I decided that if I really wanted to do it, I can do it and I was very fortunate that Otterbein has an equine program geared toward, to get students into veterinary school. So, I had no equine experience prior, but I met with...

Welcome to a special episode of My Veterinary Life Podcast. This is part two of a four-part miniseries with our friends at National Veterinary Associates. Joining us for these conversations will be Turpin Mott. Turpin is the Chief Community Officer for NVA. His focus is spreading positive wellbeing and culture initiatives throughout the veterinary profession. Today’s topic is Life Filters. Have yo...

“It’s a great career, because I could just go forth and just dabble in some relief work from time to time and do some speaking and do this and do that and you can kind of make it whatever you want it to be. You could do full time relief, or you could speak sometimes. I think it is a cool career because you can tailor it to what you want it to be.” Our guest today is Dr. Addie Reinhard. We had a bl...

Welcome to a special episode of My Veterinary Life Podcast. We are embarking on a four-part miniseries with our friends at National Veterinary Associates. Joining us for these conversations will be Turpin Mott. Turpin is the Chief Community Officer for NVA. His focus is spreading positive wellbeing and culture initiatives throughout the veterinary profession. Today’s topic is Whole Person. We have...

“It’s never too late to take a pivot. It’s never too late to take a career change. You don’t ever have to be stuck. Anytime you find yourself saying the shoulds- well I should like this I should be successful I should be doing this- you need to reevaluate and step back.’” Our guest today is Dr Hayley Adams. Dr. Adams has had an amazing career which has encompassed so much of veterinary medicine. H...

“You can kind of tailor your experiences and that’s what I would encourage anybody interested in veterinary medicine to do, is to really…don’t just go in and kind of get it all knocked out, really try to gain a wide breadth of experiences so you really know what you want to do.’” Our guest today is Dr. Simuel Hampton. Since graduation in 2012 Dr. Hampton has worked as a shelter veterinarian, first...

“If you have this problem that you are trying to solve, just keep trying to remove roadblocks until you get there because It’s really shown me that if you put your mind to it, you really can figure anything out.’” Our guest today is Kate Parker. Kate is a hospital manager and partial owner at Animal Urgent Care in Arvada, Colorado. She joins us to talk about a counseling program she worked hard to...

“I mean they had already had things like Anatomy. I think there is just certain bonding that comes from being in the anatomy lab in the wee hours of the night and smelling like formaldehyde that I didn’t get to have with that class. And I was really afraid of also being an older person with already a doctoral degree.’” Our guests today are Dr. Valerie Marcano and Dr. Seth Andrews. Our focus in thi...

“The veterinary degree is so flexible and so useful, and it gives such a broad exposure to all these different topics. I wish I had known what opportunities were available to me when I left school. And to be fair, people told me, I just didn’t believe them, I just thought, I had this idea in my head ‘You know what, I’m going to be a clinician and that is it.’” Our guest today is Dr. Will McCauley....

“I feel like the MPH is a degree that anyone needs if you are going to try to understand people and how they work.” Our guest today is Dr. Tierra Price. Dr. Price is a 2020 graduate from the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. Not only does she have her DVM, but she also completed her MPH while in school. As we recorded this episode, she was 1 day into her big move out to California...

“How did I end up as president? I think it’s one of those things where, you’re in a Zoom call, you make eye contact for too long. And then there is that long pause…’ok…so…. who wants to do this next’” Our guest today is Dr. Tina Tran. Dr. Tran is an Associate Professor and Clinical Relations Lead Veterinarian for the University of Arizona. Her career has taken her from small animal practice to aca...

Today we are joined by two very special guests. Dr. Carlos Risco is currently a Professor and Dean at Oklahoma State University, Center for Veterinary Health Sciences. Dr. Kemba Marshall is a previous guest of My Veterinary Life Podcast (see her episode from March 2019) and is a Director of Veterinary Services for Land ‘O Lakes Purina. Our focus in this episode is around participating in tough con...

“We all love to talk about our jobs. That’s what My Veterinary Life is about, really, is talking about the stories of these different veterinarians.” Our guest today is Dr. Will Sander. Dr. Sander is an Assistant Professor for Preventative Medicine and Public Health as well as the Director of the DVM/MPH program at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine. His career has taken him...

We are thrilled to bring you this episode with 2020 AVMA Convention Keynote Patrice Washington! We were first introduced to Patrice as a featured presenter at the 2019 Podcast Movement Conference, where we were blown away by her message and stage presence. Patrice has had an amazing career full of ups and downs and we only scratch the surface of everything she has going on. Not only does she have...

“Be nice, and you never know who you are going to meet, and your connections, and follow your passions. Never turn down something you’re really passionate about. Go and seek out certain opportunities because I think you’ll learn that you’ll meet some pretty great people along the way!” Our guest today is Kelly Hewitt. Kelly is a rising third year at Iowa State College of Veterinary Medicine. Her i...