To tufts applicants

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The faculty here is wonderful. Every year, they take all of our suggestions and comments and change things in the curriculum to make it a better learning environment. This person clearly has some deeper seeded personal issues. Tufts is amazing and 99.9% of us love it here. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about our school - I promise to reply with full honesty, not blatant bias like this particular person..

Sincerely,
Maureen McDermott, V15 (Tufts)
Thank you so much, Maureen! I really appreciate everyone's input. I am also glad to hear that Tufts IS as wonderful as I originally thought 🙂 I will definitely contact you if/when I come up with any questions.
 
During third year surgery weeks we had groups of 3 each assigned to a dog. The surgery dogs needed: an intake PE, bloodwork, and fecal test done during lunch on Monday, a PE, SOAP, and treatments every morning before class, and a PE and treatments after class. We usually checked them at lunch, we were there until 10-11PM recovering them from surgery on the surgery day, and we took the extra time to find homes for almost every dog that found its way into our program. It was super stressful at the time but I will never forget those three dogs my group had, we made sure they all had happy endings and they all taught me something that will help every single animal I ever do surgery on in the future. Try and focus on that for your beagle... get a clicker and teach it something and you will learn something too. Presumably the people that have dogs at home now, will still have those dogs during clinics and I would say <5% of days on clinics would be conducive to going home at "lunch."
 
I am also a Tufts student (V'15) and have had many interactions with our administration; first as a student having academic difficulties, and now as a student on one of the numerous committees of which both students and faculty are members. I have been treated with nothing but respect, and my feelings and opinions have always - ALWAYS - been appreciated and taken into account. Just because the opinion of this student did not override all other factors in the decision-making process does not mean that it was not considered.

These administrators are passionate about our education and work very, very hard to consistently improve our collective experience. This rant is very disappointing and not representative of the overall TCSVM student body.

I also have to say that Dean Kochevar is a remarkably accomplished and committed educator. It seems to me that whatever problems Chimera1 has with her must be personal, because Dr. Kochevar conducts herself with the utmost professionalism.

Finally, a significant number of veterinary students (including myself) have dogs, and I can't think of a single person who would let this one lunchtime commitment stop them from caring for their dog. I'm not saying it couldn't be one of many elements of a decision not to keep a dog while at school, but to say that HAR is the reason that students cannot have their dogs is ridiculous.
 
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FYI - I have place chimera1 on post-hold for multiple false spam email reports, a violation of our TOS. It is not related to the thread content.
 
During third year surgery weeks we had groups of 3 each assigned to a dog. The surgery dogs needed: an intake PE, bloodwork, and fecal test done during lunch on Monday, a PE, SOAP, and treatments every morning before class, and a PE and treatments after class. We usually checked them at lunch, we were there until 10-11PM recovering them from surgery on the surgery day, and we took the extra time to find homes for almost every dog that found its way into our program. It was super stressful at the time but I will never forget those three dogs my group had, we made sure they all had happy endings and they all taught me something that will help every single animal I ever do surgery on in the future. Try and focus on that for your beagle... get a clicker and teach it something and you will learn something too. Presumably the people that have dogs at home now, will still have those dogs during clinics and I would say <5% of days on clinics would be conducive to going home at "lunch."

Oh jeez, absolutely - I didn't even get into junior surgery requirements! They make a dog walking commitment look like kindergarten..
 
After reading what other schools have their students do for the research dogs, I kinda want to implement this for our school!

We currently have no responsibilities for the research dogs, and I would love for them to get more human exposure and positive interactions.

Now I must go talk to the Dean...
 
I've on,y ever heard great things about tufts and I'm happy to see its students support it wholeheartedly.
 
For those of you who go to a school with a research animal enrichment program, please message me! I'm currently trying to charter a program like this for my school and would love to hear about specifics of your program.

Thank you!
 
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