ANIMAL INSTINCTS
By Andrea Louise Thomas Photos Yanni
F
rom the time she was a toddler, Mt. Eliza veterinarian, Sue Van Valkenburg knew what she wanted to be. She was naturally drawn to animals. When other girls had Barbies, she had stuffed animals. Her family always had pets. They even had a Macaw for a while when it escaped from a local theme park. It spent so much time at their house; it learned to mimic her mother’s voice. Rescue animals practically had a homing beacon to the Van Valkenburg residence until young Sue was banned from bringing any more home. When her family moved from Southern California to Auckland, New Zealand, the path towards her dream began. At 17 she went away to Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand to start in their very competitive pre-veterinary program. In the first year, students had to take eight courses and needed to achieve a high grade point average in all. There were only 55 places for 300 applicants, but Van Valkenburg was one of the 55. It took five years to complete all the coursework for her degree, but she felt it gave her a really strong foundation from which to build a career.
E ssence
16 | PENINSULA
April 2018
At university she worked predominantly with large animals such as horses, cattle and deer and smaller animals such as sheep and goats with the occasional chicken popping up. Knowledge of comparative anatomy was imperative when working with such a diverse range of animals. Companion animals were not the focus of her studies, but those were the animals she wanted to work with so when she ventured out she chose to work with them. A day in the life of a veterinarian is varied. Van Valkenburg has chosen to work as a consulting vet, which means managing a whole range of issues from vaccinations and examinations to assessing emergency patients, which then reschedules the rest of the day. These kind of emergent problems are pretty common. An animal often comes in for one problem, but the consultation proves more complicated. The animal may need blood tests and an x-ray. Fortunately many practices now have bench side labs and x-ray machines so results can come back quickly. continued next page...