(energetic rock music) ♪ Hey ♪ (energetic rock music) - Hi everyone, I'm Hana, and this is "STEM Works," the show where we explore careers in science, technology, engineering, and math, and what makes them so much fun.

We take you inside businesses and talk to professionals in their field and explore what they do.

And today, we are headed over to visit with our friends at Monte Vista Animal Hospital to see what it is that they do.

We all love our pets.

Whether it's a cat, dog, or any other form of furry, feather, or scaly companion, our animals are a part of our family.

Their personalities and fun-loving nature brings us endless joy, love, and companionship.

After all, they're our best friends.

And just like us they need our love and attention and need to be taken care of when they are sick or get hurt.

Veterinary hospitals specialize in caring for animals, where veterinary doctors, technicians, and assistants work as a team to utilize their expertise to take care of their patients.

In general, veterinarians get to work with all kinds of animals, big and small.

However, most small veterinary hospitals usually only work on cats and dogs.

And as a small animal hospital, that's what Monte Vista Animal Hospital is all about, taking care of our cats and dogs when they're in need of healing or just a regular checkup.

Today, we'll get to chat with veterinary doctor Ali Moore, vet tech Ashley Verrier, and veterinary assistant Nicole Jacinto to find out a bit about their jobs.

So come on, let's head over for a visit with our friends at Monte Vista Animal Hospital to discover all that they do to help keep our furry friends healthy and happy.

All right, let's get right into it.

What is your job at Monte Vista Animal Hospital?

- As a veterinarian, really every day is spent practicing medicine to keep people's pets healthy.

We can look at liver values, kidney values, protein levels, get red and white cell count.

We do orthopedics.

We do soft tissue surgery to performing dentistry.

- As a technician, we're kind of like the jack of all trades so you're doing anesthesia, you're in ultrasound.

Sometimes you're up upfront doing reception, answering the phones.

- [Nicole] What I do as a veterinary assistant is help assist the tech, the doctor, prep, the schedules, get surgery set up, stock the hospital.

- We check their teeth, we check their eyes, their noses.

We listen to the heart and lungs.

We feel their bellies.

Look at all of their joints to make sure that they're healthy.

- [Nicole] Checking in patients, going over anesthesia consent forms, going over history, medications, also monitoring the patient.

- A lot of the times, I'm actually calling lab results and really discussing in-depth blood work with owners and talking to them about doctor plans.

We do everything.

- Thanks, Ashley.

What other procedures do you perform to help keep pets healthy?

- We do see pets that come in on emergencies.

They come in with a broken leg and we give them pain medication, assess them, get them stable, fix the fracture so that it will heal and grow normally.

- [Nicole] In surgery, I'll be holding the pet and then the tech will intubate.

I'll get the stuff that's ready for the catheter to be placed and then the technician will go ahead and place the catheter.

- [Ashley] Similar to humans, we use an ultrasonic scaler to clean and polish their teeth and x-ray their teeth.

- [Alexandra] We'll listen to the heart, we'll listen to the lungs.

We check the mucus membranes in the mouth, so the gums and see if they're nice and pink.

And all of that, even if it's normal, gives us very good information.

- All right, so how does what you do help keep pets healthy?

- They suffer from the same maladies that we as humans do.

So we can have upset stomach from allergies, we can have dietary intolerances.

And it's up to us to do diagnostics so we just see if we can fair it out exactly what is going on.

- The vet field is pretty similar to the human field.

We all have the same working components so if you catch cancer in a pet early, it's the same thing as a human.

You just kind of extend their life.

- We practice preventative medicine, so we send them home with their Heartgard, flea and tick medications, give them their vaccines to help keep them healthy.

- [Ashley] Oral health is very important.

If you fix and kind of clean their dental disease, it can actually help their kidneys, et cetera.

- Why did you decide to go into the veterinary field and why do you love it?

- I decided I wanted to be a technician because I wanted to be the one taking the x-rays, drawing the blood from those pets, filling those medications, prepping their IV fluids.

You're scrubbed into surgery helping the doctor proceed with an abdominal explore or something.

- [Alexandra] There's nothing more rewarding than seeing kind of that hard work pay off and you're able to help them through it, and they come back and they're wagging their tail and doing really well.

- I've always wanted to be a technician when I was younger and I was a little nervous because I didn't have any experience and I'm really glad that I did because that changes everything because it was more than I ever thought that I would be doing.

- I get to come in and not only play with animals every day, I get to use my brain and my hands to do my work.

It's challenging.

Each day is something new, so it never gets boring.

- [Ashley] Honestly, it just brings happiness and joy when you're able to fulfill a pet's diagnostic treatment and you see them improve and you're able to say like, "We helped them with that."

- It does feel really great because we take care of pets and when they get better, everyone's happy.

They're happy, We're happy.

The pet's happy.

- So what does it take to operate and work at a veterinary hospital?

- I rely very, very heavily upon my assistants, my technicians, They relay information to us, making appointments throughout the day, interacting with clients, and actually doing some of these procedures like cleaning the teeth.

They help hold the pet.

- When we draw blood on pets, we can't make them sit still so you have to kind of with them wiggling and happy and excited to see you and wanting to lick your face, you have to hold them so that we can actually draw blood through their fur.

- [Nicole] Curiosity is a big thing.

You kind of have to figure out what kind of medications help with that.

If we need to do x-rays, if it requires an ultrasound.

- Problem solving is huge in our job.

Our patients cannot speak so it is up to us to use our detective skills and formulate a plan to best treat our patients.

- [Nicole] Being a part of a team is really big because we do work really close with each other.

It's very important to communicate and let everyone know I have Fluffy here today so that way we're all on the same page.

- How can we get into helping heal animals?

- The veterinarian field in general always needs hands.

There's different opportunities.

We can do training.

- [Ashley] You can go from being an assistant to a tech, just involves basically more schooling to go and get that degree to become a veterinarian.

- [Alexandra] In vet school, they teach you all of these things and how to use the instruments, how to hold a scalpel blade correctly.

- If something new comes in, and I've never done it.

I'm always like, "What is this?

I've never done this before.

How can I help?"

- Any other thoughts you might share with us?

- Don't let anybody define who you are going to be.

Have confidence and believe in yourself.

- If you want it, I would say go for it.

I truly believe that if you want something, it doesn't matter if you're coming out of high school, if you're doing it when you're 30.

- When you land on a career that you ultimately have chosen, it makes you passionate about it so I'm happy to say I'm a technician.

- I think if you want the job, I've never done something like this before and you're really passionate about it, I think you should go for it.

- I would really encourage you to ask questions.

So if you have pets at home, they have a doctor probably.

Even though they may seem busy, they would love nothing more than tell you about their profession.

- Wow.

How great was that?

Thanks to Dr. Ali, Ashley, and Nicole, we discovered all about what they do at Monte Vista Animal Hospital and how passionate they are about taking care of our pets.

I hope you had as much fun as I did finding out about everything they do at Monte Vista Animal Hospital.

Well, that's about all the time we have, but I wanna thank you all for joining us for this episode of "PBS Reno STEM Works."

You can find out more information about Monte Vista Animal Hospital at their website montevistaanimalhospital.com.

For more information on these careers and others, visit pbsreno.org/stemworks.

And as always, don't forget to get out there and discover what it is that gets you going and on the right path to your STEM future.

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