Can you tell us about your background and what inspired you to get involved in veterinary medicine?
So I've loved working with animals since I was little. I've always had horses and dogs and been involved with their care. Because of all the times that we've had with the animals, we've always had something that's going on with them and I've just been so inspired by every veterinarian that I've worked with and how much they have done for my animals particularly and I knew that I always wanted to be involved in that.
How did you get started with volunteering?
I was volunteering when I was really little because I had a teacher that was in the fourth grade that took us down to the local nursing home every Wednesday and we would go in and we would sit and we would read to people and we would sing and we would play games. She instilled in us that it was so important to give back no matter where you were in life, no matter what your characteristics were or what kind of knowledge base you had, there was always something that you could do.
What impact does volunteering have on your work in veterinary medicine?
Veterinary medicine is really hard and it's really challenging and really painful sometimes and some days it's just very hard to do. Then when you go and you volunteer, you get this sense of joy, sense of passion and it really just makes everything you do, all those hard days, just so much more incredible because you go, okay this is a chance for me to be able to do something, for something positive to come from this and it makes, it kind of refills my cup as well.
Why did you choose Columbia Pike Animal Hospital?
So when I was looking at a place to work, the reason, one of the main reasons that I picked Columbia Pike to come here was that Dr. Hall was really supportive in anything with volunteer medicine.
How does Columbia Pike support volunteer work?
One of the things he does is he gives three volunteer days which is basically a week worth of time that you can go and do anything and then he will support you in that. They actually paid for my flights to Ukraine, paid for a lot of the medications and things that I took. Locally, he sends us to the rescue centers and helps us there. In the clinic, they're providing a lot of low-cost spays and neuters for different places like ASPCA to come in and do things here so that the company itself can be involved in that as well. So it's pretty amazing getting to have that support, yeah.
Tell us about your experience at Wolf Trap.
Each of the veterinarians that are interested get to go to Wolf Trap for a month and that's paid for by Columbia Pike in the halls. They send us there to be able to learn about high volume spays and neuters, to be able to learn about shelter medicine and to learn a lot more about it but also at the same time get to volunteer there as well so we get to do a lot of work ourselves. It has helped us to be able to form a partnership with them so a lot of us that went and did our month there still go back and we go in and we do a lot to help support them just because we love the idea of giving back to the community and it's an amazing group to work with.
What has been the role of veterinarians in your journey?
Veterinarians have always been there to support me, to care about me and to say okay, we care about your animal but we care about you as well. I think that that's really important is to understand that this is a whole picture and it's important to come through and say okay, now I'm a veterinarian, what can I do to support that whole picture.
Why do you continue to volunteer and give back?
That's the why, it's just to be there and to say okay, what can I do because people have done so much for me and given back to me throughout my life, what can I do now to kind of push that forward. I would say that's probably the why.
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