Graduates of the UWI School of Veterinary Medicine pose with the visiting Trinidad delegation.

'Real doctors treat more than one species!' This is the informal motto of the veterinary students of the University of the West Indies' St Augustine campus.

Although the 'human' medical students will counter saying "real doctors do not eat their patients", they will admit that much more labour and enjoyment goes into studying veterinary medicine. Here's a typical day for a first-year student.

The alarm clock rings, rudely awakening you at 6:30 a.m. to prepare for 8:00 a.m. classes. In the morning lectures, if you are still a bit drowsy, you will be stirred by the constant moos, baas and barks in the nearby clinic reminding you that there is much more living taking place than sitting in front of a whiteboard taking notes at lightning speed.

Missing lunch

Lunchtime comes and you exhale, relieved to be out of class for a while. On your way to the cafeteria, you get a call that the stray dog on campus, with the maggot wound the size of a golf ball, is by the library being a nuisance ... again. You quickly forget your daydreams about lunch and end up chasing the dog around the campus for one whole hour and at the end, you are sweaty, tired and frustrated ... and still hungry.

After inhaling lunch, you head for a clinical skills lab in which you don coveralls and practise skills in restraining, examining and treating animals. But being a vet requires so many other skills such as psychology, mind reading (animals cannot speak), sailor (tying all kinds of knots); farmer, wet nurse (bottle-feeding bawling orphaned lambs at 3:00 a.m.), midwife, statistician, bodybuilder and more!

Smelling funky

After a long day of classes, it's back on to the bus to return home, only to realise by the facial expressions of people around you with crinkled noses that you smell pretty much like a combination of all the animals you have been around today.

At the end of the day, the best thing about vet school is the fact that we operate as a family regardless of our differences. Vet school fun days, among the other 'lymes' we often have, are perfect opportunities to dunk a professor or beat them at tug-o'-war. Vet school is great and there is no greater satisfaction than knowing that you will be using the skills you learn to help make the life of animals and their owners more enjoyable.

"A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel." - Proverbs 12:10.