http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate.html AAEP, Inc. Online Blog en-us Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:34:58 -0500 Copyright: (C) 2008 AAEP, Inc. This year, the Claiming Crown, an annual thoroughbred racing event held for the “blue collar” racehorses across the country, was again held at Canterbury Park. But before I get into how my Claiming Crown experience went, let me explain to the non-racetrack people out there why it’s called the Claiming Crown and what it means to run in claiming races. In horseracing, there are several “classes” of races offered at most of the tracks in the country. The type of race any particular horse is ... Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:34:58 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/claimingcrownweekendexperiencedoesntmeanthesamethi.html Happy middle-of-summer already! My widely spaced blog entries as of late are a testament to the general craziness of life for me right now. Having a seven-day-a-week job for almost five months of the year can prove tiring, especially when combined with major life events such as getting married and buying a house. My track practice is clicking along. The busy days seem to come in bursts, where I will get six requests for digital radiographs on the same day five people want joints injected,... Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:41:05 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/arealbalancingact.html The Kentucky Derby was held four weeks ago. Big Brown, a colt with only four starts under his belt, romped to an easy victory, and followed it two weeks later when he neatly demolished his competition in the Preakness Stakes. But his wins were grossly overshadowed by the big-hearted filly who ran second behind him in the Derby, taking the world by surprise as she became the highest-placed filly to finish the Derby since Winning Colors won the race in 1989. Galloping out into the backstretch, ... Mon, 02 Jun 2008 01:25:47 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/withatriplecrownwinnerpossibleevenprobableremember.html At the track, that is. And so am I. After a very busy beginning to the spring (resulting in a sadly long absence from this blog), I am finally back in “my” element – the racetrack. And it comes complete with jockeying for position (pun intended) amongst all the backside veterinarians, a touch of drama every other day or so, and getting to see friends and clients who belong to a community all its own. I am looking forward to writing about the racetrack because it truly is where I headed im... Fri, 02 May 2008 15:39:51 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/theyrebaa-aack.html It started with a very confusing phone call to my cell phone from my office. The first confusing part was that I was actually in the clinic at the time, observing a nuchal ligament biopsy being done one of my boss’s horses. That part aside, the phone call went something like this: “Dr. Selvig? Are you in the building?” “Yes, I’m in the surgery area. (pause) What’s up?” “(Insert client here)’s horse isn’t getting any better. Can you go see it again at 4:15 today?” I was instantly confused. “Um... Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:17:12 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/nomatterhowbaditseemskeepsmiling.html And … it’s still winter in Minnesota. I think I’m over this weather. I just have a month and a half left before I head back to the racetrack, which is incredibly hard to believe as we still have a couple of feet of snow covering the ground here! But I’ll be glad to get back into my niche. In fact, just today I got to see two of “my” track babies here at the clinic – one was brought in for a set of radiographs to compare to a set taken last August. Then a promising 2-year-old filly who had... Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:43:01 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/familiarfaces.html Greetings from a still-chilly Minnesota (a whole 0 degrees this morning)! I haven’t done much blogging on the racetrack scene since I first started, so I’m going to go back in time a bit and go through a day at the racetrack – actually, a pretty hectic one: Festival of Champions day, where the races are all stakes written for Minnesota-bred horses. As it turned out, I worked for some trainers with a LOT of Minnesota-bred horses. And the day ended up being pretty successful! On any race day, ... Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:14:17 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/festivalofchampions.html My Saturday mornings at work have typically been fairly slow. But this weekend ended up being a bit hectic … but at least with fairly decent results. I started with an appointment with a racetrack client. Although somewhat high-maintenance, I really appreciate doing work for him and his wife because they always request me specifically. Because the track is “my turf” at the clinic, some of the clients have been really good about supporting me and trusting me with their horses. Th... Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:12:32 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/willworkforeggs.html One of my favorite things about veterinary medicine is fixing things. I particularly like fixing things that have a discrete beginning and end. For example, I really don’t like treating colics, because in many cases, you never quite know when you are done. Certain situations are easy: If the horse is extremely painful and sedatives don’t keep it off the ground, and the owner is willing to pay for surgery, off to the University it goes. But it’s those colics where the owner can’t afford ... Mon, 14 Jan 2008 01:28:21 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/asewingsuccess.html Despite this section’s bleak title, I wish everyone happy holidays from very snowy Minnesota! We had a truly white Christmas up here this year – we already had a healthy cover of snow but we got several more inches of the fluffy stuff all day Christmas day. I think I mentioned in one of my previous posts that I was stuck with both Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve on call. Well, someone has to do it, right? And it might as well be the new guy, and for my trouble I don’t have to be “it” over ... Wed, 26 Dec 2007 16:28:18 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/theangelofdeathonchristmaseve.html This year’s AAEP convention in Orlando made me grateful for sunshine, palm trees and Mustang Convertibles. My boss Kathy and I were the only doctors from our clinic to fly to Orlando for this year’s convention. And we made the most of it! Instead of staying at one of the convention hotels, we stayed at a smaller, more private place with an adorable palm-tree filled courtyard and pool area. We rented a red Mustang Convertible, which we insisted on driving with the top down every ... Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:15:37 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/aaepconvention2007.html Sometimes you just have to accept being on the bottom of the totem pole. This year, I got Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Eve as my holidays on call. Thankfully, my family and my fiancé’s family are all fairly close to the Twin Cities, so I could count on at least having a few bites of drive-by turkey and cranberry sauce (the kind that looks like dark red Jell-O, NOT the kind with actual whole cranberries in it). On Thanksgiving Day I learned a new meaning of the phrase “farm calls,” a... Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:47:41 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/happythanksgivingoncall.html Again, apologies for not being so timely with my latest post, but I wanted to make sure I was able to write about my first official post-graduation continuing education event: the Basic and Advanced Arthroscopy courses held at Colorado State University last week.I am mainly interested in arthroscopic surgery because it is probably the most relevant to my interest – sports medicine, and racehorses in particular. Our clinic does not employ a full-time boarded surgeon, but we do occasional... Tue, 20 Nov 2007 16:46:29 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/surroundedbysurgeons.html It was supposed to be a quiet Saturday with one appointment, but only two veterinarians were on the schedule, and one of us couldn’t come in. Add to that an emergency call and some unscheduled teeth floating, and it suddenly became a very busy Saturday! There were two appointments for routine vaccines, and one of our technicians brought in two of her minis for teeth floating if we had time. No sweat, it was a simple day. I was on call for the afternoon (we only schedule appointme... Mon, 05 Nov 2007 17:43:40 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/drjenniferandlisadcvtdonkeyrescuesquad.html So, I apologize for the large gap between this entry and my last. I began writing this about a week ago, and in the middle got sent out on a call, and … well, you know how it goes. But in any case, I have a couple of interesting stories to relate from the last couple of weeks. My summer at the racetrack did not leave much time for surgery, and I was not part of the regular on-call rotation the other doctors at our clinic follow. But now that the season is over, I have been able to take on... Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:44:43 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/solosurgeryandlate-nightcolics.html Now that I’ve spent two posts covering how my racetrack work got going, I am going to digress to tell you about Haybags. Haybags was a 21+-year-old quarter horse gelding. His owner is a lovely gentleman who I liked from the first time I met him: He seemed reasonable and soft-spoken, even if he was not the most knowledgeable horse owner I’d ever worked with. I first saw Haybags about two weeks ago for a complaint of “left hind lameness.” I learned before I left the clinic that Haybags had ... Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:16:07 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/goodbyetoafaithfulfriend.html For the three weeks Canterbury Park was open to incoming horses before I could officially practice (as in, I was still finishing school!), I got a Veterinary Assistant license so I could go there in the mornings with one of my bosses, Dr. Kathy Ott. Our goal was to introduce ourselves and our clinic, drum up business and generally get a feel for the place. To get licensed as a veterinarian at Canterbury Park, you need three things: your Minnesota state license to practice veterinary medic... Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:40:22 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/andwereoff.html Hi to all you future equine veterinarians! I’m Dr. Jennifer Selvig, and I’m a 2007 graduate of the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine. I’ll be posting on this blog a couple of times per week throughout the year. The idea is to give anyone considering a career in equine medicine an idea of how your first year in practice might go – and hopefully be somewhat entertaining!I’ll give you a quick background on me to let you know where I’m coming from. I decided I wanted to be a ... Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:10:43 -0500 http://www.aaep.org/blogs/outofthestartinggate/introducingmyself.html