Penn Vet News

Enhancing Dairy ‘Farm Health’ for Economic Viability, Success

As the bar for keeping a farm out of financial stress nudges higher and higher, experts like Dr. Joseph Bender, Assistant Professor of Clinical Dairy Production at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School (Penn Vet), seek innovative solutions to not only stabilize the viability of the family dairy, but help it to flourish. Through their work at Penn Vet’s Center for Animal Health and Productivity (CAHP), he and his colleagues combine expertise in dairy nutrition, reproduction, health economics, and conventional veterinary medicine, to boost economic productivity within animal agriculture.

Exploring Future of Laminitis Care, Prevention at April First Tuesday Lecture

Join Penn Vet’s Dr. Andrew van Eps, Associate Professor of Equine Musculoskeletal Research, as he shares exciting updates on advancements in laminitis management as part of the First Tuesday Lecture series at New Bolton Center.

Making headway against a killer virus

Ebola just isn’t going away. Following the major 2014 outbreak in West Africa, the deadly infection came back with a vengeance last year in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it has claimed nearly 550 lives to date.

The impact has been felt closer to home as well.

Learn About Cutting-Edge Cancer Care for Cats and Dogs

The University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine (Penn Vet) will present a free panel discussion for pet lovers on caring for companion animals diagnosed with cancer to be held at Penn Vet’s New Bolton Center on Wednesday, March 20, 2019.

Setting up Foals for Success: Ten Things to Do

From December to August, breeding and foaling season, Dr. Michelle Abraham has her hands full with pregnant mares and foals.      

Pediatric Puppy Leads Her Litter

English Bulldog Missy recently gave birth to her first litter. All puppies were healthy except one, who had a potentially mobility-limiting limb deformation. In just a few weeks, the tiny little bulldog would be the first of the brood to walk.

Sports Medicine ‘Sleuths’ Unravel Lameness Mysteries during March First Tuesday Lecture

Join Penn Vet New Bolton Center’s Elizabeth Davidson, DVM, ACVS, ACVSMR, and Liz Arbittier, VMD, CVA, as they kick-off the spring First Tuesday Lecture series with their talk "Mythbusting the Lameness Exam Part 2: Comparing Your Interpretation of Lameness to What Scientific Data Tells Us.”

Joey the Senior Cat Triumphs Over Illness with Help from Friends

For most of his life, Joey was a happy, healthy cat—never sick and always in charge. With nary a sniffle, the scrappy domestic short hair has lived with his owner Amanda Arrowood since he was found as a kitten in West Philadelphia. But, at the age of 13, Joey started losing weight and suffering from chronic diarrhea.

What's Age Got to Do with It? Caring for Geriatric Horses

The idea that age is but a number is as true for animals as it is for humans. Horses, especially ponies, are routinely living to the mid-twenties and even thirties. Often, the equines still enjoy life, work, or performing into their third decade.

Shelter medicine is on a roll

According to the Humane Society of the United States, nationally an estimated 70 million dogs and cats lack a home. Of those, about 6.5 million wind up in shelters each year. Ensuring that more of these pets find a loving, caring home—and receive the proper veterinary care to stay there—is a daunting challenge, one that motivates the veterinarians and students who make up the Shelter Medicine Program in Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine.

Penn Vet Launches Mobile Clinic

In 2016, there were 50,000 animal intakes in the Philadelphia region’s animal shelters. The University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine (Penn Vet) Shelter Medicine Program provides clinical care support to several of these shelters and works to reduce the number of animals entering them to begin with. The program is about to increase its regional reach and impact with the Penn Vet Mobile Clinic, a new 40-foot-long facility-on-wheels that will help more vulnerable animals.

Hindering melanoma metastasis with an FDA-approved drug

For cancer to spread, it needs a hospitable environment in distant organs. This fertile “soil” can provide a home to circulating malignant cells. Recent research has shown that cancer cells from the primary tumor can help ready this soil by sending out small vesicles. These vesicles contain a cocktail of molecules that “educate” healthy cells to prepare the target tissues for cancer cells to seed and thrive. Blocking this process offers one strategy to stop metastasis, which is often responsible for cancer’s lethality.

Big-hearted Quarter Horse Fights through EPM to Finish Strong

“Allie Kat is the friendliest, sweetest horse. She loves everyone,” said Tracy Barbeito about her six-year-old Quarter Horse. But the mare’s big-hearted nature isn’t always a good thing. Because the performance horse “loves to please,” her charming personality can make it hard to know when she’s not okay. It took an alarming head tilt a little more than a year ago to alert Allie’s caretakers that something was amiss with the horse’s health.

Specialized Surgery Gets Goliath Back to the Farm

Steve and Leah Jefferson were looking for a way to protect their 38 chickens from roving coyotes on their 10-acre farm in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Goliath was their answer. The Great Pyrenees joined the family in the spring of 2017, when he was just eight weeks old. The Jeffersons quickly realized the “flock dog” would be spending as much time indoors as out.

Tolerance, Transplant Immunology

In collaboration with scientists and clinicians, Dr Raimon Duran-Struuck established a liver, kidney, bone marrow and pancreatic islet pre-clinical transplant program.

Going out of the box to learn to treat exotic creatures

Rebecca Revay, a fourth-year veterinary student at Penn, never had a dog growing up. Instead, her home’s animal census included “red-eared sliders, fire-bellied toads, some parrots, guinea pigs, hamsters, a lot of fish tanks, and a couple snakes,” she says.

Equine Field Service on the Beat for Clydesdale Cops

Clydesdale cops Spartan and Julio help keep the peace in northern Delaware, so the horses’ massive bodies must always be up to the task. With their human riders, the equine officers police parks, neighborhoods, and community events as members of the New Castle County (NCC) Mounted Patrol Unit.  When recent eye issues bothered both horses, their sergeant called New Bolton Center’s Equine Field Service.

Shelter Medicine Program Expands Shelter and Community Outreach

Every year, 6.5 million stray or surrendered animals enter shelters, 1.5 million of them are euthanized. In Philadelphia, the city’s shelter alone admitted 19,000 animals last year.

Enter Penn Vet’s Shelter Medicine program with a mission that includes keeping animals from ending up in shelters at all. The program helps improve the lives of the city’s most at-risk animals. And early next year it will start covering more ground with a mobile clinic.

Solving Sports Medicine's Trickiest Mysteries

Penn Vet’s Dr. Elizabeth Davidson loves a good horse mystery. She and her team of equine Sports Medicine experts at New Bolton Center have solved many cases of ‘just not right’ horses, athletic animals who aren’t performing well but don’t have any obvious clinical complaints.

Sniffing for science

Bonnie, a sleek border collie mix, is practically vibrating with excitement. After getting a signal to start her search, her owners release her. She bounds, snuffling and wriggling, to a stainless-steel wheel, roughly 4 feet in diameter, with 12 numbered ports along its edge. Upon locating her target, she crouches down to signal her find, only to spring back up as she hears a mechanical click and cries of, “Good girl! Well done!” She finds her owner to receive a treat, and then gets ready to do it all over again.