Offsite Electives

During this externship, students will spend time with Dr. Walker and learn what being the director of milk quality at one of the top 15 food and beverage companies in the United States entails. This will include spending time at beverage and yogurt processing plants, watching the receiving of milk at the processing plant when it is tested for food safety and quality, visiting a milk quality testing laboratory, visiting at least one farm where a food safety and/or animal welfare audit is taking place, and generally developing a framework for how food animal veterinary practice relates to food quality throughout the supply chain.

As the Director of Milk Quality role is multifaceted, the experience can be tailored to the student’s interest. For example, this position involves discussing how animal welfare policy is developed at an organizational level, ensuring that Danone products are safe, good quality, and come from farms that align with the corporation’s standards, developing standards for quality and safety of food products, and managing the quality and food safety of milk and liquid dairy supply from farm to factory. Any one of those can be highlighted or focused upon during this externship.

The extern program at Coral Springs Animal Hospital is designed to give you an opportunity to take the knowledge you have obtained in the classroom and observe it in the setting of a general, emergency, and multi-specialty private practice. We hope to help you develop your skills in gathering and assessing information accurately by observation while developing an ability to arrive at sound clinical judgments. You will get out of it as much as you put in. Our program does not offer a lot of hands on work except for individuals who are experienced in veterinary nursing duties. The maximum amount of time you can do an Externship with Coral Springs Animal Hospital is a total of eight (8) consecutive weeks (longer externships can be arranged for international students based upon availability).

Coral Springs Animal Hospital is a general practice and emergency hospital with a specialty referral center for Surgery, Internal Medicine, Oncology, Dermatology, Radiology, Cardiology, Ophthalmology, E/CC, Behavioral Medicine, Specialty Dentistry, and Neurology.  We are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Coral Springs Animal Hospital is an AAHA Accredited hospital in General Hospital, Specialty Surgery, Specialty Internal Medicine, Specialty Oncology, Specialty Canine Rehabilitation and Sports Medicine, and Specialty Neurology. We are proud to have been awarded the AAHA Referral Practice of the Year for 2015 as well as PetPlan Pet Insurance Hospital of the Year. We were VETERINARY ECONOMICS "Hospital of the Year" in 2012 and AAHA Featured Practice of the Month, August 1990.  Our 42,000 square foot hurricane-proof building originally built in 2008 is one of the most modern, attractive and efficient veterinary hospitals anywhere. Our on-site 1250 KV diesel generator provides automatic switch over power for the entire hospital in case of an electrical failure. The hospital can run for approximately five days on a full take in case of a hurricane power outage.

Our goal at Coral Springs Animal Hospital is to expose the extern to ethical and expert clinical standards. 

This elective experience is an ambulatory equine practice, with in-depth exposure to dentistry, podiatry, and alternative medicine (equine veterinary spinal manipulation) as well as general practice.  The practice sees a high volume of dentistry cases, many of which require periodontal/diastema treatments and/or dental endoscopy.  The practice holds podiatry clinics at least once a month for problem cases along with a BWFA certified farrier, employing digital radiography before, during, and after trimming and shoeing.  Equine Veterinary Spinal Manipulation ("chiropractic") is used along with traditional lameness modalities to treat performance horses.  The practice also sees general cases in wellness, reproduction, lameness, etc.

To shadow a Board Certified Veterinary Behaviorist. They commonly treat: 

Aggression    
Cognitive Dysfunction (Dementia)    
Leash Reactivity
Noise Phobia
Thunderstorm Phobia
Urine Marking
Separation Anxiety  
Refractory Housetraining 
Urination and Defecation outside of the litterbox                  
Feather damaging behavior
Compulsive behavior
Night Anxiety
Generalized Anxiety
Global Fears
Fly Snapping
Circling/Spinning