Actinopterygii

many of the people who I was working with were incompetent and extremely unempathetic towards animals.

Any idea why they worked at an animal shelter, let alone one with a policy against euthanasia?

No meat for carnivores?? Holy crap... I'm just in awe at this point. I don't know what to say anymore.

Didn't the vet(s) there know how important meat is to obligate carnivores? If those animals aren't even getting proper nutrition, healing is going to be even more difficult.

Also, out of curiosity, did they spay/neuter the animals to try to reduce the street animal population, since the ones that recovered were released back to live on the street?

EDIT: found your answer to spay/neuter question below. A spay only on ketamine? Wow.

Basically they do spay and neuter only when they have students there, so we did about three a day. (And only on ketamine, I might add) They told us that there are other clinics in the area that only do spay/neuter work, so they focus more on out patient/injury/sickness things. I saw about 500 animals on the street while I was there, and most of them did not have the little notch from their ears to indicate that they had been spayed or neutered. They do think population control is important, but not enough to do it regularly.

Hey there! My best friend is a recently certified paramedic, and has been trying her damnedest to become a full time firefighter (been volunteering for years at local fire depts. and doing wild fire work during the summer). Any advice you would have to someone just starting down this path?

Also, have you done many cricothyrotomies? Seems like it would be a rarely used skill, but an important one.

Current vet student here.. I can really empathize with how difficult this must have been. I am astounded after looking through your photos. Many of these animals have what must be incredibly painful conditions. Was adequate pain control used for animals that should have been euthanized? I'm curious because I'm having a hard time fathoming how they can believe suffering in these conditions is morally better than ending their lives. But I suppose that may come down to a cultural difference...

Was there one animal or experience that is the most memorable for you?

How do you think this will affect you once you become a practicing vet?

Vet student here :) I don't mean to be rude at all, but I feel like a lot of the answers so far in this AmA have been quite vague.

What information exactly would this device provide?

Do you think there could be issues with owners needlessly worrying about the health of their animal because of something this device told them? I can also see owners bringing their cats to the vets being quite confident about a problem their cat has because of this product (granted this is already a problem thanks to Dr. Google). Of course it would be a great idea to get more health info about cats - as you mentioned, they are notoriously good at hiding clinical signs of illness until it is quite advanced.