4 best practices on handling exotic pets

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Madonna Livingston, BVMS, MRCVS, and our host Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, sat down to chat about all things exotic on this week's episode of The Vet Blast Podcast presented by dvm360 to talk about ways veterinary professionals can better handle exotic pets in their clinic, her new textbook, and how she self taught herself to be an exotics veterinarian when resources were limited.

Below is a partial transcript:

Madonna Livingstone, BVMS, MRCVS: When I went to vet school, there was virtually nothing on exotics. I think I got 2 hours in 5 years. When I first qualified from Glasgow vet school, there was no certificate, there was no pathway for specialization. So I'm self-taught. I bought all the species-specific textbooks. I sat in on a Friday night quite happily reading my Douglas Mader, medicine, surgery, Vet textbook, and did as much extra courses, extra studying that I could do.

Once I'd been qualified, a few years [later] a certificate became available, but it was in England, and I am a homebody. I, by that point, developed clients, a client base, because the clients would come to me and I would say, ‘Look, I've maybe never seen this species before. This condition, you've got 2 options: I can try to refer you somewhere, or I can do research into it.' And where I worked wasn't initially, wasn't a particularly affluent area. So for a lot of owners, referral was out [of] the realms of their reach financially. So they would say to me, ‘Madonna, could you try.' So I did, and then I built up the reputation doing that way and but I didn't. So I didn't want to move to England. I was settled in my homebody. I had my support network. I asked if I could sit [in] the exams. They told me no, because…understandably, they wanted the money from the tuition. I get it. Then, [by] the time a certificate became available in Scotland, I was already lecturing.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Do you think that in your years of experience, has the interest of exotics for the vet students, has it gone up? Stayed the same, decreased like, what does that look like in your area?

Livingstone: It's definitely gone up. Definitely gone up.

Christman: I think so too, why do you think that is?