After being an intern in the rehab department for a few months, I found that poodles are the most easily excited breed. Almost all the patients who are poodles need to be sedated in order to receive acupuncture, for the relatively calmer ones the owners still needed to stay out of their sightlines so that the dogs wouldn’t try to seek help from them and became excited. On the other hand, Japanese breeds such as Shiba Inu are more common to have cognitive dysfunction syndrome. Also, most small breed dogs suffer from neck pain and larger breeds usually suffer from hip joint problems. 

－Ernest Yu

Veterinary Theriogenology is one of the compulsory courses this semester. There is only one laboratory lesson which takes 2 hours in the course and consists of 3 parts. The final goal of each part is the same: to evaluate the reproductive performance of the male animal.  All in all, it was an interesting and special lesson for me!

The first part of the lab is about the collection of sperms from a mouse. In rodent species, the amount of semen ejaculated each time is extremely limited, hence the collection of semen directly from dissecting the epididymis after sacrificing the animal is the only way to collect a sufficient amount of semen for evaluation. In this stage, we would be able to learn the anatomy of male reproductive organs as well as their morphology under a microscope. In the next part, we would be evaluating the semen from pigs collected previously by means of software named “iSperm”, which is software used by vets widely in farm animals to help analyze the activity, morphology as well as quantity of sperms. The last part of the lab is the evaluation of the reproductive performance of our fellow classmates! The professor distributed the semen collected from classmates to all of us, then we had to evaluate the morphology, activity, etc of the sperms by a microscope.

－Linda Lau

In the section on economic animals, we visited the shrimp farm last semester and the pig farm this semester. In the process, we learned about the management of piglets after birth, vaccination, castration of piglets, sperm collection of boars, and precautions for pig anatomy.

This internship allowed me to learn how to manage pigs in a pig farm, from how to ensure the growth of piglets, manage the health of the pigs, breed, and so on. In addition, what makes me most unforgettable was to personally vaccinate and castrate the piglets. In fact, I was very nervous when I was doing so, but it was a rare opportunity to try it by myself.

－Yoki Chau