Animals' Doctor?

 Veterinary 

(veh·tr·uh·neh·ree)

Not many people are familiar with this, but some other people really know this terms well. Sometimes when I said that I want to be a veterinary (or when I say that I am a Vet, currently), they need to repeat asking or at least re-pronounce the words to make sure because sometimes it sounds strange for them. And yes, I ended up to have to explain it to them what a veterinary is.

So, what is a veterinary? 

According to Oxford Dictionary Languages, Veterinary is an adjective relating to the diseases, injuries, and treatment of animals.

Veterinary Nurse (Vet Nurse) means a nurse, relating to the diseases, injuries, and treatment of animals. So it goes the same for the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM). It's an adjective for a doctor related to the diseases, injuries, and treatment of animals. Thus, we, DVMs, are just simply the animals' doctors.

What's so special about us? I'd probably going straight to say : nothing. We DVMs may have nothing special about ourselves. Like every other human beings, we all having our own dis-and-advantages. But I can tell that our patient is what makes us special. 

Having no ability to speak and talk like human, animals still have sense and feeling. Most of them even actually have a high intelligent level like human beings. We often find stories about animal being ridiculous, being loyal, taking care of one another and in fact they also have some 'tactics' in surviving life. Afterall, animal is just another creature in this world with ability that are human-like.

Not only their behavior, animal do have similar physiological system to human (especially mammals since humans are actually belong in mammals group--even we are included in animal kingdom too!). They eat, they breathe, they live and they died too meaning that they can feel pain and suffered from diseases too. The only problem is, they can't tell you directly what's been bothering them. They can't tell you which part is hurting, all you can do is to take a good attention towards them. When they feel sick, they want to be cured too. Feeling sick and unhealthy is making them just as uncomfortable as us when we got sick.

Lacking in speaking ability, animals still having a way to communicate towards each other, and (believe me) towards us too! Having experience with animals almost my whole life, I believe that despite of the famous "tail wagging" language, animals have their own way to express their feelings. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. That's what makes our jobs special.

Being a Vet meaning we see what our patients needs through their each different way of communicate. Being a Vet not only about curing and treating diseases, but also about getting to know all of our patients character and language. You may not believe this, but sometimes, the animals coming to our practice with the complain of less appetite isn't caused by any diseases but just simply because they got bored and stressed, it's a way for them to communicate that they need something more, that they want something more.

But not like 'it is what it is', other than living animals, we also put our hands and check on died animals. Yep, still got to check on that. While you pick a fresh meat from the market this morning, we actually checked on that meat first before it goes to you. When a strange cause of death happen in animals, we actually check it to make sure that there's no dangerous agent that could spread to human beings. 

We are basically a doctor for both living and dead animals because that's how special animal is for human. When they live among us, we know that they have a direct impact onto our live but what we don't realize is even in their death, they could still have an impact to human's life. And when I'm talking about animal here, it's not bounded to cats and dogs only, but have you notice that even the life of the polar bears in the arctic is actually a sign for us regarding this earth condition?

In Sanskrit, there's a saying that becomes Veterinary Motto "Manusya Mriga Satwa Sewaka" meaning contribute to human wellbeing through animal welfare. Now that is 'it is what it is'. Despite of the definition of Veterinary explained before, we, the animals' doctor are also contributing in human wellbeing through our patient charm.