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(music)
My name is Tanya Burkholder. I'm a veterinarian with the
Division of Vet Resources at the National Institutes of Health.
A typical day for me? I come in and evaluate the
patients. These are research animals that are housed at NIH
in support of medical research for humans. Our role as a
veterinarian is to make sure that the animals stay healthy.
We treat them when they get sick, and we make sure they have
clean housing, excellent quality food. I get a lot of
pleasure out of both being an advocate for the animals and
working on therapies that are helping people.
(pig grunting)
This is Salty. She's a Yucatan pig. She's helping us
discover new therapies for heart disease. Some of the
biggest rewards of working here at NIH are getting to work
with some really incredible scientists doing cutting edge
research. Dr. Hickstein has a colony of immunodeficient
dogs. They have a disease called Leukocyte Adhesion
Deficiency. Chico is one of the puppies that we're doing
gene therapy on. Chico was a pretty sick little puppy a
couple weeks ago, and this week he's doing much better and
it looks like his graft is working and he's gonna go on and
be a healthy dog.
One of the most rewarding things that I've gotten to do here
at NIH is meeting one of the children who was treated using
the same therapy that we've developed in the puppies.
I think veterinary medicine is an extremely rewarding career.
There are a lot of opportunities and I really enjoy what I do.
I think the most important quality for a veterinarian, a
successful veterinarian, is compassion -- compassion for the
animal patients and compassion for the client or the
customer. A young person considering a career in veterinary
medicine should obviously take biology courses in high
school and college, as well as get experience working with
veterinarians in their area. The best part of my job is
actually getting to collaborate with investigators and make
discoveries that are helping both animals and people.