Vet Gazette

Dr. Claudia Hase, associate professor at the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine, has clarified the identity of a bacteria that hurt commercial oyster hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest.

Oyster Larval Death was previously thought to be caused by Vibrio tubiashii, but Hase has published a new study showing it was actually caused by a different pathogen:Vibrio coralliilyticus. In addition, the study shows that the bacteria are even more widespread and deadly than previously thought, and that they can infect a variety of fish and shellfish.

Hase’s research team has developed a rapid diagnostic assay for this bacteria that is nearing commercialization, and it may help shellfish farmers, as well as provide a tool in the fight to save coral reefs.

“Although we’ve largely addressed the problems the hatcheries face, these bacteria continue to pose threats to wild oysters,” Häse said. “And corals are still declining in many places, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is dying at an alarming rate. Better diagnostics might help in all of these situations.”

Two OSU students took top prizes at the annual conference of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists. Isaac Barber-Axthelm (Class of 2016) won first place for Best Student Poster in a field of 40 international competitors. Laura Tensa (Class of 2016) won second place. They both competed in the Natural Disease category. Barber-Axthelm’s topic was ‘Use of Polycolnal Rabbit Antibody Against Synthetically Derived Peptide Antigen to Detect Odocoileus Adenovirus’ and Tensa’s topic was ‘Genotype diversity of Infectious Bronchitis Virus in Broiler Chickens in Morocco’.

Congratulations to Isaac and Laura!

Dr. Barbara Hunter received the outstanding surgical resident award at this year’s surgical summit of the American College of Veterinary Surgeons for her presentation on Equine Synovial Fluid Tiludronate Concentrations Following Intravenous Regional Limb Perfusion with Low or High Dose Tiludronate.

In the last seven years, a resident from the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine has won this award four times!

Drs. Anne Lichtenwalner, Laura Richards-Simmons, and Susie Omstead on a wine tour at the Class of 1989 Reunion.

In September, OSU Vet Med alums from Washington, Montana, California, Virginia, Maine, Oregon, and Minnesota gathered in Corvallis to rejuvenate the life-long bonds they formed as veterinary students twenty five years ago.

The Class of 1989 had thirty-five graduates. Due to the enthusiastic lobbying of classmate Yvonne Wikaner, twenty-one of those graduates recently travelled to Corvallis for a three-day class reunion. “It was an amazing experience for me,” says Wikander. “It’s been twenty-five years since most of us have seen each other, but our interactions were as if almost no time had passed at all. We were a small class and a close one; that certainly hasn’t changed. ”

All the reunion attendees are still veterinarians. “Once a vet, always a vet,” says Wikander. “Some have boarded, some went into governmental agencies, but most of us are GPs.”

Wikander organized a full slate of activities for the group including tours of the hospital by Drs. Reibold, Blythe, and Huber, a barbecue, and a behind-the-scenes tour of the Oregon Aquarium with Dr. Tim Miller-Morgan (the Wet Vet). “It was fascinating and an excellent end to a rockin’ reunion,” says Wikander.

One of the objectives of this reunion was to honor a classmate who died several years ago, by endowing a student scholarship. All twenty-one alums attending the reunion donated to the fund. “A reunion seemed like the perfect time to honor her life. What better way than a scholarship?” says Wikander. “My goal was to raise $1000. We raised $3600! Now we can offer 3 scholarships in her name. Amazing! I think that says a lot about how close our class is and the value of the reunion to everyone; but mostly it speaks mountains about the generosity of my classmates. Really, they are truly an outstanding group of people.”

The reunion inspired the Class of 1989 to set up their own Facebook page, and they are already exploring ideas for their next reunion. “Life gets so busy, we tend to lose touch,” says Wikander. “The reunion brought us back together again.”

Shelby Zehnder, Student Animal Attendant in the large animal hospital, completed her first marathon.

Shelby Zehnder has been working at the OSU large animal hospital for four years as a Student Animal Attendant. She helps Farm Manager Lionel Snyder take care of the teaching herds. “I truly enjoy spending time with the fourth year students, learning from the doctors, and taking care of the patients,” says Zehnder. “The technicians, animal attendants, and my boss, Lionel, are some of the kindest, hard working, and dedicated people I have ever had the pleasure to be around.”

In addition to work and school, Zehnder spent most of this year training to run her first marathon. “Training for the marathon was probably harder than the marathon itself,” she says. “It is a lot of mental preparation, as well as physical determination of crossing the finish line. My training program was an intermediate 18 week program that trained up the 20 mile mark and then tapered back down. I was lucky enough to meet a friend that was also running the marathon, so the training was much more rewarding being able to conquer the pain and distance with someone.”

All that hard work paid off on the last Sunday in September when Zehnder ran 26.2 miles through the streets of Portland and crossed the finish line in 4 hours and 30 minutes. “I will do more marathons in the future,” she says, “and hopefully one day be as good a runner as Liz Harbert!”

Sarah Harmon, after completing a neuter surgery
at the free clinic in Ometepe, Nicaragua.

The IVSA’s annual service trip to Nicaragua kicked Sarah Harmon’s butt. Her initial blog post about the trip reads, “First day of clinics was hard, hot, rewarding and sad.” But she still wants to go back.

Although Ometepe is a tropical jewel in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, it is largely undeveloped and very poor. The people there rely on their animals for food, work and transportation, yet there is no veterinary hospital on the island and many of the domestic animals suffer from disease and malnutrition.

That’s why, every fall for eight years in a row, a dedicated group of volunteers from the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine, with assistance from the International Veterinary Student Association, have set up a free clinic on Ometepe.

With no major town on the island, people live in small, scattered villages. In one of those villages, down a cratered, dirt road, the OSU team set up a makeshift clinic on the cracked concrete floor of an old industrial building. “We called it the barn,” says Harmon, “but it really wasn’t a barn. It looked like they built boats there. It had a lot of cranes and lifts.”

The hard, physical labor of setting up a clinic began with unloading surgery tables stored by the IVSA from previous visits. The team repurposed old, rickety picnic tables left in the barn as intake desks and microscope stations. Then equipment and supplies were unloaded, and they started getting organized. “We set up stations based on how the animals would move through the clinic: diagnostics was followed by induction, and then by surgery and recovery so they moved in a circle,” says Harmon. Almost immediately, the patients start arriving. “The clinic is advertised through word of mouth. The people were so happy we were there.”

Because there were fewer volunteers this year than in the past, many clients had a long wait for treatment. “The majority of the people were poor farmers working their land, and they sat there for hours, from morning until night,” says Harmon. “It was amazing.”

This year the clinic treated a lot of horses and pigs. One of Harmon’s biggest challenges was understanding and accepting the local attitude toward these animals. “We had this young pig that had a broken leg. The cost of that pig to the family was huge, it’s their food. We had to stabilize him, give him meds, and send him home. That was hard for me; here in America we would have euthanized him. But you have to accept that they need these animals to survive.”

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