Offsite Electives

We are a small animal, general practice veterinary clinic providing comprehensive medical and surgical care. Our practice regularly performs orthopedic procedures several days each week and offers daily soft tissue surgeries and dental services. We actively collaborate with our local Humane Society and regional rescue organizations, providing medical and surgical support for special and situational cases.

Veterinary Student Rotation Experience at Our Urgent Care Hospital

During your rotation at our busy small-animal urgent care hospital, you will be immersed in a fast-paced clinical environment that treats a wide spectrum of canine and feline medical needs. Our goal is to provide you with hands-on learning, direct mentorship, and exposure to real-world cases that will strengthen your diagnostic, technical, and clinical decision-making skills.

General Wellness & Preventive Care

Although we are primarily an urgent care facility, you will also encounter routine but essential aspects of small-animal practice, including:

• Core and lifestyle-based vaccinations
• Heartworm, flea, and tick prevention counseling
• Routine wellness exams
• Basic dermatology and allergy management
• Ear infections and simple wound management
  These cases offer an excellent foundation for physical exam skills, client communication, and preventive medicine.

Common Urgent Care Cases

Our caseload is varied and unpredictable, giving you exposure to a wide range of non-critical but time-sensitive presentations such as:

• Vomiting and diarrhea workups
• Dehydration and electrolyte abnormalities
• Acute lameness or soft-tissue injuries
• Ear hematomas, and otitis externa
• Urinary tract infections and urinary obstruction evaluations (particularly in male cats)
• Tick borne diseases
• Canine/Feline Parvo
• Minor lacerations, bite wounds, and abscesses
  You’ll help formulate differential lists, develop diagnostic plans, interpret in-house lab work, and observe or assist with treatments such as fluid therapy, antiemetics, pain management, and minor procedures.

Emergency Medicine Exposure

Students will also encounter true emergencies—cases that require rapid triage, stabilization, and often advanced intervention. These may include:

• Hit-by-car/trauma patients (shock management, wound care, radiographic assessment)
• Respiratory distress cases (oxygen therapy, thoracocentesis exposure, stabilization techniques)
• Acute hemorrhage or anemia requiring blood transfusions
• Toxin exposures (induction of emesis, decontamination protocols, antidote administration)
• Acute abdominal crises
  You will observe and sometimes assist with emergency triage, critical monitoring, fluid resuscitation, and rapid diagnostics such as point-of-care ultrasound.

Surgical Experience
Our hospital performs a variety of urgent and emergency surgical procedures. Depending on case flow, you may observe or assist with:

• Foreign-body removals
• Emergency C-sections
• Pyometra surgery
• Splenectomy or mass removals
• Limb amputations for severe trauma or cancer
• Wound repairs, abscess drains, and laceration closures
  Students will see pre-operative stabilization, anesthesia protocols, surgical decision-making, postoperative care, and pain management.

Hands-On Opportunities
Based on comfort level and supervision, students may practice:

• Physical exams and history taking
• Venipuncture and catheter placement
• Basic suturing on noncritical cases
• Running in-house diagnostics (CBC, chemistry, urinalysis, cytology)
• Client communication during discharge or treatment discussions
  We emphasize confidence building, safe handling, and developing good clinical habits.

We schedule 1 student per service at a time so they can maximize the interaction with the clinician(s) they are assigned to.  Students should go into exam rooms with our clinicians to observe and are welcome to interact with clients as appropriate.  They are encouraged to listen to communications that are live and via phone for learning opportunities.  Students should practice physical examinations on patients. They should be prepared to generate problem lists for patients, recommend and analyze diagnostic tests and/ or procedures, and generate treatment plans.  Procedures will be observational or interactive for students, depending on what is being done, patient status, and student preparedness.  We encourage students to interact with and learn from all of our health care team.

Chippawa Animal Hospital is a companion animal hospital that is nestled in a small community of Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. We welcome students to immerse in a 1-week long rotation to learn all about general practice. We pride ourselves on high quality medicine, and compassionate patient care in a very friendly and supportive clinic environment. 

Our four-doctor small animal practice treats dogs, cats, and the occasional guinea pig or chicken. The student will shadow our veterinarians, engage in case discussions, and assist with treatments. With doctors from diverse schools and generations, the student will have the opportunity to experience a variety of techniques and approaches to veterinary care.

Experience with small animal, dog and cat, routine appointments, spay/neuters, imagine, dentistry with digital radiographs, emergency as they come in, blood collections, lab equipment tests, client communications and anything else that comes in that week. 

The student will spend one week immersed in a busy small-animal general practice, gaining exposure to the full spectrum of primary care medicine. As a non-specialty hospital, our caseload provides a strong foundation in practical, real-world veterinary practice. The extern will have the opportunity to observe and participate in:

Clinical Experience

• Outpatient appointments: Wellness care, vaccinations, preventive medicine, client education, dermatology, otitis, gastrointestinal and urinary concerns, senior pet care, and common acute presentations.
• Medical workups: Exposure to diagnostic reasoning, development of problem lists and differentials, interpretation of laboratory data, radiographs, cytology, and other in-house diagnostics.
• Surgical and dental procedures: Observation of routine surgeries (spay/neuter, mass removals, etc.), dental cleanings, extractions, anesthesia protocols, and perioperative patient management.

Technical Skills

Under appropriate supervision and as comfort level allows, the student may practice:

• History-taking and physical examinations
• Venipuncture and sample collection
• Basic cytology preparation and interpretation
• Catheter placement
• Anesthetic monitoring
• Client communication

Practice Operations

The extern will also gain insight into:

• Daily hospital workflow and case management
• Electronic medical record keeping
• Communication within the veterinary team
• Time management in general practice
• The role of technicians, assistants, and support staff in patient care

Learning Approach

The experience will be observational with hands-on participation encouraged based on the student’s skill level, interest, and school requirements. The student is welcome to ask questions, discuss cases, and participate in medical decision-making conversations throughout the week.

We are an exotic and small mammal hospital for general practice. We offer routine surgeries and can also perform certain emergency surgeries if needed. We do see same day urgency appointments but we don't hospitalize any patients overnight as we don't have any staff here to check on patients overnight.

Dairy Production Medicine Rotation

Objectives of Rotation
a.  Enhance knowledge of population medicine and dairy cattle management
b.  Develop epidemiologic skills to monitor herd performance and investigate outbreaks c.   Enhance understanding of reproductive programs and performance in dairy cattle
d.  Enhance understanding of milk quality and mastitis monitoring and control
e.  Enhance physical exam, diagnostic and therapeutic skills with dairy cattle f.    Enhance knowledge of dairy nutrition
g.  Develop skills for critically reviewing veterinary literature h.  Enhance professional communication skills
i.    Develop pregnancy diagnosis skills involving palpation and ultrasound

2.  The UC Davis Veterinary Medicine Teaching and Research Center (VMTRC) provides clinical services to 9 dairies and one calf ranch in areas related to reproduction, udder health, milk quality, food safety, calf and young stock health, nutrition and epidemiology.  In addition to the clinical program, the VMTRC also contains the Milk Quality Laboratory which performs microbiological testing of over 50,000 milk samples per year from local dairies and creameries, as well as from out-of-state dairies. The Tulare branch of the California Animal Health and Food Safety System (CAHFS) laboratory is also located on-site at the VMTRC. The CAHFS laboratories provide diagnostic services for livestock, horses and poultry and are responsible for surveillance and control of livestock and poultry diseases throughout California.

3.  Organization of Rotation
a.  Routine herd checks
• Students will perform palpation and pregnancy diagnosis as a part of the routine herd reproductive monitoring.  During herd checks, students will participate in evaluation of dairies, including milking management, cow comfort, lameness, body condition scoring, etc.
b. Milk Quality Laboratory (Every other Wednesday/Thursday)
• Students will perform a whole herd milk culture, including aseptic milk sample collection, teat end scoring, sample culture and organism identification.
c.  Epidemiology Series and Herd Monitoring (As schedule permits)
• Students will participate in discussions of basic epidemiologic principles, including study design, descriptive statistics, diagnostic test evaluation, etc. Students are expected to read assigned articles and complete epidemiologic exercises.  Students will participate in collection of data on herds as part of routine monitoring of dairy systems, including transition cows, colostrum management, pre-weaning calf health, heifer growth, etc.
d.  Dairy Nutrition (As schedule permits)
• Students will participate in an on-farm evaluation of dairy feedstuffs, feeding equipment and fecal screening.
e.    Pathology Rounds (Every other Thursday 2-3pm, before Clinical Review Series)
• Students will participate in a discussion of recent cases presented to the CAHFS
laboratory.
f.  Journal Club (Every other Thursday 3-5pm)
• Students will read and critically evaluate a peer-reviewed journal article related to dairy cattle and participate in a discussion of the article, using the “Criteria to assess when reading the paper” as a guide. This guide can be found in the learn drive ("Learn drive:\Journal Club Articles\Guides to Reading Papers\Criteria to assess when reading the paper.docx")
g.  Clinical Review Series (Every other Thursday 3-5pm, opposite Journal Club)
• Students will participate in a discussion of current topics related to dairy medicine.  Students will be expected to read any assigned articles.  Students are encouraged to suggest topics of interest to be covered during the clinical review series.
h.    Herd Health Topics and Review (Every Friday afternoon, approx. 2-3pm)
• Students will participate in a discussion of topics related to dairy production medicine with specific focus on current issues or problems associated with our core herds.
i.    Emergency Services
• Students will participate in any emergencies (dystocias, prolapses, etc.) that occur during normal hours and are invited to participate after hours.
k.   Miscellaneous
• Students will participate in physical examination and record write-up of any sick animals that are presented to the service.  Students will also participate in investigations of outbreaks that may occur during their rotations.

CVCA is a veterinary cardiology specialty practice that preforms cardiac workups on small animals including echocardiograms, ECGs, blood pressures and certain procedures.