Michelle Moyal, DVM (Host): Welcome everyone to the Cornell Veterinary Podcast, where we do a deep dive into the discovery, care and learning that happens at Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine. I am Dr. Michelle Moyal, Assistant Clinical Professor and Chief of the Primary Care Surgery Service. And might I add Cornell's favorite extrovert?

In this episode, we are talking to large animal and dairy veterinarian, Dr. Jessica McArt. We will be discussing how she got into the profession and what life is like as an ambulatory veterinarian. Welcome Jessica.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Thank you for having me, Dr. Moyal.

Host: Yes. oh, feel free to call me Michelle. For everyone who's listening, actually, Dr. McArt and I have known each other for a very long time, so I am very excited to welcome her onto my inaugural episode here at the Cornell Vet Podcast. So, Dr. McArt, before we get started, could you tell me what your preferred pronouns are? Because I think that the crowd at home would love to know.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Thank you for asking. I go by she, her pronouns. How about yourself?

Host: Wonderful. The same she, her. So for everyone listening at home who will talk about this podcast afterwards, because I'm sure you will have lots to discuss, you now know, what pronouns to use. So I am super excited to be here with Dr. McArt, and to have the opportunity just to talk to really fascinating veterinarians and staff from Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine. So I'd like to jump right in if you're feeling ready for it?

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Let's do it.

Host: Let's do it. Okay. So, many veterinarians have planned on becoming a veterinarian since they were kids, right? I think that that's really common to hear. But I hear that wasn't the case with you. So tell me what you did before you decided to become a veterinarian.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Yeah, so it was a little bit of a path for me. I was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, so not a lot of cows, but I went to undergraduate in New Hampshire. Pretty much as far away from home as possible, and I really enjoyed science and chemistry, and so I started working in a bioengineering lab. And I really enjoyed the science, but I hated being inside.

So then you know when you're 20 and you think you should know what you're going to be when you grow up, I decided that I would maybe consider going to medical school cause a lot of my friends were going. So I took my MCATs and I volunteered in a large regional hospital and quickly realized that the hospital, fortunately, was very clean, but it was too clean and proper for what I liked to do every day.

Host: I love that.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: We had family friends in the area who owned horses and I was over there for dinner one night lamenting on the fact that I was about to graduate and didn't know what I wanted to be. And so they recommended I spend a day with their large animal veterinarian. So I called up Dr. Barbara Claire, who was a Cornell 79 grad, and she let me hop in her truck for a day.

And what I do remember is that first day we castrated six horses, and by lunchtime I was totally sold on being an ambulatory veterinarian. So she said at the end of that day that I was allowed to come back. But because I asked so many questions, I had to bring cookies, and that's how it started.

Host: First of all, she sounds like she would be a great friend of mine because I, in fact, love cookies. Two, I almost fell out of my chair. So you are telling me you hopped into the truck of a large animal veterinarian, not even thinking about veterinary medicine when you first entered the truck and were like, yeah, okay, let's go?

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Correct. So I think it really important for people to realize that this whole veterinary journey, you can have zero experience with a lot of species and you can decide as you go and what you like to do.

Host: I love that so much. So it's, it's never too late to find a passion and follow a passion. I love that journey. That's amazing.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Got to milk cows in college. I mean, who doesn't like to do that?

Host: For listeners who are interested, could you tell us what kind of cookies you brought next time? Do you recall?

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Yes, they were snicker doodles because my childhood cat name was Snicker Doodle because they're my favorite type of cookie.

Host: Yes, for those listening, Dr. McArt will be taking deliveries of snicker doodles whenever possible. That is amazing. And you know, human medicine's loss is for sure veterinary medicine's gain. So I'm super thrilled about this. I, may have mentioned before, I did mention before that we were in the same class at Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine.

So I was just curious, other than my entertaining you during school, what was vet school like for you? What were some of the good times? What were some of the bad times? To be quite honest, because there are listeners out there that have had their fair share of both or don't know what to expect entering vet school.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Yeah, those are great questions. I am an optimist and so when I look back on vet school, I, it's hard for me to think about things I didn't enjoy, and either that's because I forgot them or blocked them out, or I think that in those moments when it feels terrible, I learned a lot from many of those moments and I think going forward that's almost turned into a positive.

But vet school was so great and I feel, so fortunate. I, took four years off between undergrad and vet school and I was a cross country ski racer because that's really good preparation for vet school, you know, long days. So, as you know, the group of people in our class that we started with was such a great group to go through these four years with, and we had a lot of fun. We learned together. We went through a hard days, good days together. And I think when I look back on it the most, I remember our classmates and our conversations, perhaps some stories and things along the way, but in general, it was a really great experience. I would not trade it for anything.

Host: I love to hear that. And for those listening, I'm sure she was more comfortable during some moments because during a Theriogenology lab when we had to quote, collect specimens from dogs, my large animal partners, including Dr. McArt, made the small animal person that would be me, lead the process, if you will. So,

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: We tapped out of that one.

Host: That was so great, also what I really appreciate you saying, and I hope the listeners are really in tune with is that you grew a lot out of discomfort.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Correct, and I think that's a really important part of veterinary school because when you get out into practice, pretty much day one, zero of it is comfortable. And I think people are lying if they say they ever get to a point where every day is comfortable. And so, you know, that goes from things from subject matter to testing to communications with your colleagues and clients, all of those things. And I think it's so important that we learn from that. And, I certainly had many mistakes in vet school that I have learned from.

Host: And I'll readily admit mistakes after I became a veterinarian. This is part of our process, so I'm thrilled to hear that. Now, we all heard that you were inspired to do large animal from that very first day, but why did you truly end up, like, what made you say when you were deciding on what to do in vet school? Like, this is it, this is what I'm going to do. Cows are my thing. Large animals, like what was it?

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: There's a, a lot of factors that go into that. I think back to middle school when we had to fill out one of those surveys on, you know, what you like to do to maybe think about a job or science, non-science. And I clicked the boxes of, well, they were not clicking, they were, Scantron sheets at the time, but you know, I liked being outside. I liked being physically active at my job. I liked differing days and you used to put these little Scantrons in and they'd come back with a list of 10 jobs that would be interesting for you. And my top job was as a garbage collector, which checks all those boxes, right? You get to be outside, you get to be active. And it's interesting because nowhere was veterinarian on that list, and I think that's one of the reasons, as in middle school in Alaska, I'd never thought about being a large animal veterinarian because I didn't know any.

There wasn't a job that I even knew was there. But when I look back on that, as an ambulatory veterinarian, I do all those things. I get to be outside every day. I am physically active. We talk about it with the students, it's ambulatory bootcamp. You don't have to go to the gym afterwards. You get it all done during the day. I get to communicate with clients, I get to teach students, and I get to do medicine and surgery on ruminents, which are the coolest.

Host: I love that and I love that variety that day-to-day change. And as someone who has been in your truck with you to ride, I will tell you all it is in fact bootcamp. You don't need to go to the gym. This is a tough job and so I am really glad that there are people like you who are passionate about it, especially when it is cold outside.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: That's actually been, uh, great about growing up in Alaska is that central New York is fairly mild in the winter comparatively. It's, not so bad.

Host: It's all relative, what I'd like to draw from, it's similar but so different. You being in Alaska, thinking about large animals and not having exposure. And I am from Queens in New York City and certainly did not have exposure to a lot of large animals. So it's really interesting to me that the two of us could be from such very different backgrounds. I was not cross country skiing everyone, and still finding this similar path, which is really neat. Similar in some ways.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: We've talked about the story about the beginning, the first month of vet school, when we sat down next to each other and the first week of vet school, there's a, there's a party called the Bender and our year, it was it was like 10 miles off campus in the woods behind somebody's apartment. And I drove and Michelle the whole time was saying, I don't understand how you can see the road. There are no lights anywhere. So I explained that's what car headlights were for. We're going to be fine. But fast forward a month later when we went to back to your home, and I remember we were in a car and I was like, I don't even understand which traffic light we're stopped at. There's so many right here. And how are you like focusing right now? Because there's so much going on. So yeah, very different.

Host: Oh. I love veterinary medicine so much for this very reason. We all come from such different backgrounds, and I just really love exposing each other to what we do, not only in the profession, but where we're from. And so I hope everyone listening understands that you don't have to have a set background to be a veterinarian, and that's why I'm just thrilled to interview you today.

So before we kind of jump into what your day looks like, because I am really interested, I would love you to tell our audience one thing, or you could pick two, one thing you would love for them to know about ruminants. Like is there one thing that you're like, like on trivia night you are an all star because you come out with this fact and they're like, I didn't know. And then they're like, this is why I know Dr. McArt. Is there something you want to share with everyone?

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: I don't know how long this podcast is, but we could go for a while about the amazingness of ruminants. Two things. One, I don't like teeth and so I've chosen the domestic species with the fewest number of teeth, so they don't have any incisors or canines on their top. They have a dental pad. Yeah, so open 'em up sometime. They can still bite you, just fyi. But no teeth on the top in the front.

Host: As someone who sees cats and dogs, I'm like, Hmm, that sounds appealing. That's awesome. Okay, next thing.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: The second one is, it is amazing to me that there are species that can eat grass and other twigs if we're talking about goats or leaves, dried leaves and can gain weight on that, it's amazing. So they take the plant matter and turn it into milk and meat products that as people we can safely consume.

Host: Right? So, uh, source that may not take a lot to create. Maybe not, you know, I don't know much about farming, but farmers are amazing and thank goodness for them, but that they take this seemingly like innocent amount of plant debris and turn it into these amazing products.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Yep.

Host: Incredible. And it does not involve snicker doodles like my diet does. And your diets do? Yes. Okay. I, I'm following. So as an ambulatory service veterinarian, can you share with us what your day-to-day looks like? Talk to me about the life of a farm veterinarian. Like what does your day look like on average?

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: You know, when people ask that, I think about back to our lectures on rabies, where they taught us that only thing we needed to know about rabies was that it was predictably unpredictable on clinical presentation, and that basically sums up the day of an ambulatory veterinarian. So you think you know what is going on during the day, you may have four or five calls scheduled, and some days you do those four or five calls and other fun emergency things come in. Some days you get to those calls. I had one once where somebody called me for a cow that had retained her placenta. So she had calved two days prior and her placenta was still not detached. And actually it was a retained placenta, but that is because there was still another calf inside that cow two days later.

So as you can imagine, that call for a physical exam and treatment turned into multi-hour work of muscle and lube, to, get that calf out. So it's just amazing what you are presented with, what you have in your box of tools you have, what's with you, you have what's on your truck, and that's it.

And then whatever you may have, you know, in the area. So we often get calls to look at perhaps a lame bull and you get there and he is in the middle of a paddock and there's a tree, and that is all you have for facilities. So it's, you know, it's a puzzle.

Host: Wow. It sounds a little like for young people listening, I'm going to refer to a 1980s TV show called MacGyver, and he was just this awesome guy that was able to finagle some really grandiose escapes from places by using things like paperclips and sticks of gum. But that Dr. McArt, you are superwoman.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: We use paperclips and tape sometimes.

Host: That's amazing.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: You never know.

Host: Oh my gosh, that's fantastic. Wow. That's really awesome. So really, again, even the call could be, misleading to a degree. Right. It's similar for us in small animal too, right? You know, we think an animal maybe is coming in for vomiting a little bit and it could be a heart problem. So really, veterinary medicine just as a whole keeps you on your toes. And so, in talking about your days, cause we've been veterinarians for a while now can you tell me some of your most memorable moments from doing what you do, or is there one day that's just like so shiny, you're like, yes. This day, veterinary medicine.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: I feel like we have those days sprinkled in where you have to mentally remember it because then you have those days where things go totally horribly. And so I think it's really important to remember those shiny days, because some days when you're down, you got to pull those back out. But when I think of my favorite days, they're usually calls that were incredibly crazy, in which there was a high risk of getting injured, and yet we did not, and we got the job done. So I remember as an intern, I was called to a Scottish Highland beef operation. You know, those are the ones, the really fuzzy ones with the big horns.

Host: I personally just want to hug them and take photos to post on Instagram, but I guess you should not, be doing that.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Maybe not, at least not this one because the client had called to have her horns removed because she was goring other animals with her horns. So, I regrouped cause I got there and thought maybe this isn't a good thing for me to do by myself for the first time. So the next day I came out with Dean Warnick when he was on our ambulatory faculty and we darted this cow with some sedation. He then lassoed the cow and I ran up and gave her some more sedation intravenously.

Host: I want to make sure I'm getting this image correct. For those of you who are listening who are not at Cornell, Lorin Warnick is our current dean, and I think I heard you correctly. You said he lassoed like with a rope. This, this guy with a lariat. Oh. Even better image. That is amazing.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Yep. So we got it done. Nobody got hurt, cow did great. Those are the calls you really remember.

Host: I, and maybe for future events I might ask him to pull out a lariat, just see what happens. Amazing. So in that same vein, I would be remiss if I didn't also ask you about your toughest day. I think just like when we think about veterinary schools, sometimes we have our rose colored glasses on and we're like, yay, we got through it. And that's absolutely true. But veterinary medicine is tough and it's sometimes rot with some really tough days mentally and physically. So with that in mind, could you share your toughest day as a veterinarian?

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: I have two that come to mind very quickly, and they're very different scenarios, but one was a not a medical error, but a medical complication. And the second had to do with euthanasia of a large number of animals. So the first, I actually was on one of my farms for a routine herd check, and they asked me to castrate their farm dog. So like any good ambulatory veterinarian, I said, sure. It went okay. We got it done, tied off, no bleeding. All good. Put the dog in a little kennel we had brought. And said, don't just leave him here. We were going to go do some pregnancy exams on the cows, and then I'd come back and check him. So maybe an hour and a half later I came back to check on him after we'd finished herd check and the children of the family had gone in and let the dog out of the crate, and were running around the room with a duck. So, I was like, that's not good. And it was a white dog and I lifted up his lip and his gums matched the color of his fur.

Host: For those listening who are not familiar, gums should be nice and pink, like a piece of bazooka bubble gum. Just in case you're not in our community. White. Not good.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: It was definitely not good. And so he had run around and he had started bleeding from where we had neutered him. So, first I was like, oh my gosh, we need an adult. And then my students were like you're the adult. And I was like, this is not good. So I scooped up the dog and I brought the dog back to Cornell University Hospital for Animals and brought it into the emergency service and said, please fix this. And it was a really good experience because, one, I had to call my boss and tell him that this happened and own it. Two, I got to interact with the emergency veterinarians here who did a great job of, one fixing the problem and two, telling me that it happens to everybody and that it just was unfortunate that it happened to me like the second time.

And then I communicated with the clients. And what I learned most from that experience was that, I owned that there was a problem, we addressed the problem, I kept the clients updated and nobody was upset, actually, other than me feeling you know, that adrenal squeeze. And what's funny is the next month when I went back, they'd gotten a new dog and they said, Hey Jess, will you castrate this dog? And I said absolutely not.

Host: That will be a no.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Correct, but I, it was so good for me to learn that we're all going make mistakes. We need to own those, communicate well, and likely the outcome will be much better than we originally thought.

Host: I really appreciate that story. I love that. I really appreciate that it also highlights the camaraderie that a lot of veterinarians have. So, one, you got to probably talk to colleagues you don't get to see very often at the small animal emergency hospital. Right. Our Cornell University Hospital for Animals is run by an emergency service, just like the most fabulous conditions that see a variety of things. It's really lovely that you shared in that experience together, even though it was really tough.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Yeah. The other day that jumps out at me was on one of my dairy farms where they had had a I'll say, farm accident and we had six adult cows that had to be euthanized for broken body parts of a variety of types. So very uncommon, kind of freak farm accident, and it was really hard. I did it, because it was the right thing to do for those animals. They were not, able to take away their pain. But that's a really hard thing mentally, I think when you're not thinking about it ahead of time to show up to a scenario like that. So I came home, I had a partner to go talk to. It was a little bit before group texting and things, but I had some friends that I could chat with and it was just really good to debrief and know that the next day would be better.

Host: Wow. I think, you know, a lot of times when we think about euthanasia, people's minds tend to go to the small animal world. Right, and it's tough for us, but of why wouldn't we think it's tough for you? So even as a small animal veterinarian, it's just kind of nice to hear that everyone typically understands the struggle, those who practice clinically.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Yeah, and I think it's really important to have a network both to chat with, but also for your network to offer to be there and answer the phone or answer the texts because we all do need to talk about these things. It's not good to hold it all in.

Host: I very much appreciate that. And you hopefully people have family and friends, but sometimes it's tough for even family to understand. I mean, I think my parents, I'm a first generation American and my parents, I'm pretty sure still don't know quite what I do, which is understandable. So that network is important and I hope, you know, and I tend to share this with our students, that I hope that they understand the faculty are their network also, and they can always reach out.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Yeah, we talk about this in our farm animal surgery class when we discuss euthanasia and methods and the emotional aspect of it, because I think we should talk about that more.

Host: 100%. I really, really appreciate you bringing that up. And so well, we'll go to a little bit of a lighter discussion cause I, I know that things can get deep and, and emotional in veterinary medicine. But, kind of the cool thing about working at a veterinary college is not only that you get to practice medicine, but you also get to do research and you are what I like to refer to as a DD. Now for those listening at home, she is not in fact my designated driver. She is in fact a double doctor and so she is board certified, to deal with all things amazing, ambulatory and ruminant. But she is also a PhD and does tons of research. By the way, her lab has very cool stickers, I highly recommend you get one. But could you tell me about what your lab does? Like what, what is your main interest as far as research goes?

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Yeah, I, I really love research and I think that ties in the first things I started to do with undergrad, with veterinary medicine. And so I am the driver of the McArt Dairy Cow Lab ship that you don't drive ships. But there you go. And we do a lot of applied epidemiological work on dairy farms. So I see issues during my clinical work that are problems for my producers and we set off to answer them. So our, our kind of overarching goal is to help cows transition through calving into early lactation in a way that improves or smooths out the process so that their health is better, their wellbeing is better, and in the end they are more productive. And so I have graduate students, actually one just defended her thesis today, so it's very exciting. There's PhD from the lab and we get a lot of interaction from veterinary students who work over the summer or during the school year in my lab. And I absolutely love that. And we have undergrads, so we are out on farms, collecting data. We do a lot of math. It's fun.

My favorite part is chatting with students or veterinarians or dairy producers on what we find and how this can improve, whether it's the veterinary practice that they have on farms or if it's farms themselves. What can they do management wise to make life better for our cows.

Host: That's amazing. So I, hear what you're saying, or at least what I think I'm hearing is that, you know, you may help a lone animal every now and then, but then it's really important to understand trends, especially when farms have tons of cows, right? And your goal, of course, is to make them as healthy as possible to help our farms produce all of the good things that literally the US enjoys.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: Correct. And it's fun because you get to work both on that individual cow level, so treating an individual cow, to a population level where we get to see, you know, what's the best way, what's the best method of helping cows calve and getting them the food they need so that they can start off doing well afterwards.

Host: So if there was one question, you're like, this, this question, this mystery in cows, I would like to solve this mystery. What would be that question? Like what are you trying to solve?

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: I think if you ask me that question on any different day, I might give you a different answer. But one of the things I'm really excited about now is we are working with a colleague in food science, Dr. Dave Barbano, who is fabulous milk chemist and does a lot of work with cheese and calibrations. And there are these machines that do Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. I call them, FTIR. It's easier.

Host: FTIR much easier.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: So basically we can pass a light source through milk and we can measure the reflection from that, and it can tell us things about what's in the milk. And what we're working on is that some of the research that's coming out of my lab is that we can actually look at what's in the milk and it will tell us if cows are healthy and doing well, or perhaps have like just started to turn a corner of not feeling well. So we're looking at ways we may be able to implement this on farms so that we can have continual testing of cows that help us tell how they're doing without us poking them or bothering them.

Host: I love that so much. Better wellbeing for the cows, better health for the cows. And hello, if you're listening and interested in dairy medicine, doesn't that sound like something you want to be involved in? That's amazing. So I also see, because I stalk you a little bit on social media, it's fine. She's got a great LinkedIn. She's got very cool, by the way, if you don't follow Dr. McArt on Instagram, you are missing out. And I see that you are writing book chapters. That's incredible. I'm intrigued by this because book chapters seem like they wouldn't involve a lot. So just curious, what is your process for writing a book chapter? Like is there music? Is there a movie in the background? Like tell me all of the things. Do you write some notes? Do you just go, you know?

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: You know, it's funny because I'm that person that has to have almost white noise in the back. So I often have a movie I've been seen a billion times in the back, or I've got some music playing, and, my partner's like, I don't understand how you're focusing. And I'm like, stop talking. I'm concentrating. But, I usually do an outline. And what I love about book chapters is it's on the fence between evidence-based medicine, personal experience combined, which is a really fun place to be.

Host: To be quite honest, I didn't stop to think that personal experience could play a role in that realm. I thought it was just really matter of fact, evidence based.

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: That's the goal. But in the beginning, kind of the first step, whenever we have ideas for research or, things that we follow are when we, the first step of evidence-based is what is our experience and how does that generate a hypothesis for what we're going to plan from there? And so a lot of times when you have people who are in a research area, you have to go by what you've seen or what you suspect, and investigate that avenue.

Host: Amazing. So, okay. Not a thumbs up or research on that one. And darn it, cornell's doing really cool things with you there. Just a, a final couple of questions because this has been so lovely. We know that the veterinary profession has changed a lot since you and I were in school. I won't even share that, that length of time. What are some of the biggest shifts in the profession that you personally see as a practitioner? Like, what are the biggest things you think that our field needs to be aware of or watch?

Jessica McArt, DVM, PhD, Diplomate of American Board of Veterinary Practitioners: When I look at the ambulatory side of things, and often rural medicine, we have more and more veterinarians that are not coming from areas with a rural background. And I put myself in that category, right? I had no experience with farms until the end of college. And I think we need to do a better job of creating programs to expose young children to all of these different facets of veterinary medicine.

And I think other issues that have, these are, you know, well known but really have changed a lot since we were in school, is that it costs a lot of money to go to vet school and we provide services to a very diverse group of people, and that includes socioeconomic backgrounds. And I think one of the issues is that I really am worried that vet school is going to become economically non-viable for a portion of our population. Which is not okay. And on that same line, I think it's well known that, and the phrases, you know, this is the whitest profession and we really need to do a better job of getting a diverse student body. And that's not just racially and ethnically diverse, but from all different areas of the country or world from different socioeconomic backgrounds, from different life experiences, because that's going to help us provide better services for a wider population, and it's going to make us better what we do. And that's really important.

Host: I really, really appreciate that sentiment and, and again, for everyone listening, I, I think that that's, those are great thoughts for veterinary medicine across the board. And as someone who is a first generation American and speaks a lot in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space, I very much appreciate you bringing that up. It's not only about the people we, we serve, but it's about becoming better veterinarians by including a large variety of people from different backgrounds and different spaces. So I really, really appreciate that.

Dr. McArt, you are fabulous. I am so excited that Cornell has you, and I'm excited because I know how much the students love you and love learning from you, and I can't wait to see what you do, continue to do in the future, and I'm so excited that you are my inaugural guest on this podcast, it's amazing. And so I just wanted to thank everyone out there for joining us for this installment of the Cornell Veterinary Podcast. I'm Dr. Moyal. Make sure that you like, review and share this podcast. Please subscribe, to the show and stay tuned for more thought provoking conversations with the most fabulous and fascinating faculty around. I love alliteration. We will see you next time.