Cleveland Equine Clinic in Ravenna, OH has truly become my new home away from home. The first time I went to shadow at the clinic was the summer of 2014, before my senior year of high school. I did this as part of my senior project, which aimed to gain experience in a potential career area. After that experience, I gained definite conformation that this was a career I was interested in pursuing, especially in relation to working with equine. After the completion of my senior project, I continued to go back and subsequently spent the entire summer of 2015 there along with both winter and spring breaks my freshman year of college gaining over 200 hours of experience in total.
The time I have spent so far at Cleveland Equine has been monumental in relation to the knowledge of equine veterinary medicine I have gained by being there. For applications to vet school, it is required to have a certain amount of hours logged working directly with a veterinarian and I have gained comprehensive and hands on knowledge of the field by doing so. By spending time at this clinic I learned critical thinking skills in order to deduce what is wrong with the horse. I learned to use my senses in order to detect abnormalities in the horse’s step to be able to treat the horse and how treatments vary based on budget and the age and job of the horse. Learning this skills has helped me to alter the way in which I learn. It takes more than just memorizing, it has required me to learn by doing and repetition. The more I learn to palpate legs and watch horses move; the better I will become at picking up on subtle abnormalities. This knowledge about learning can be applied to many other things in my life, especially school, in relation to the way I prepare and learn material.