The first Black man to earn a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine degree did so 123 years ago, in 1897. Seventy-one years ago, in 1949, the first Black woman followed in his footsteps. It has been 75 years since the establishment of Tuskegee University College of Veterinary Medicine (TUCVM), but African Americans today make up only 2.1% of the veterinarian workforce.

 It’s time for us to address this lack of diversity among American colleges of veterinary medicine.

Despite TUCVM producing roughly 70% of all African-American veterinarians, Black Americans continue to be underrepresented in the profession. In the past 10 years, five new colleges of veterinary medicine were established at Midwestern University, Lincoln Memorial University, Long Island University, University of Arizona, and Texas Tech University. None of these new colleges are at HBCUs.

According to 2019-2020 American Veterinary Medical Association data, 3% of the 13,548 students enrolled in US veterinary schools are Black, with African Americans treading behind all other ethnic-minority groups except for American Indian/Native Alaskans, foreign nationals, and students who choose not to divulge their race/ethnicity.

It is imperative that we address the lack of diversity within the veterinary profession, but to do that we first must address systematic racism and oppression within higher education. The racism, oppression, and bigotry that have been the subject of recent public outcry exist within the confines of classrooms all across America, and lack of representation makes it nearly impossible for Black Americans to pursue a number of careers, including veterinary medicine.

To truly do away with the injustices against African Americans in this country means to provide HBCUs with appropriate funding. Moreover, to increase the number of Black Americans who pursue a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine degree, there must be more colleges of veterinary medicine at HBCUs. 

It is well past time for another veterinary school at one of our nation’s HBCUs. Take your pick: Delaware State University, Florida A&M University, Lincoln University of Missouri, North Carolina A&T State University, South Carolina State University, Tennessee State University, University of Arkansas Pine Bluff, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Virginia State University, West Virginia State University, University of the District of Columbia, and many others.

Black lives matter, Black representation matters, and Black veterinarians matter! We are greater than 2.1%.

Jonathan Dumas is a third-semester student at Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine and is the current Student American Veterinary Medical Association/Student Government Association president.

1. Labor force characteristics by race and ethnicity, 2017. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Published August 2018. Accessed August 11, 2020. 

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/race-and-ethnicity/2017/home.htm

2. AAVMC annual data report 2019-2020. American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges. Accessed August 11, 2020. 

https://www.aavmc.org/assets/site_18/files/data/2019%20aavmc%20annual%20data%20report%20(id%20100175).pdf

Articles

One veterinary student explains why establishing veterinary medicine programs at historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) is key to addressing systemic racism within the profession.

Why we need more veterinary colleges at HBCUs

All mammals pace their way through similar milestones, from embryogenesis to birth; then infancy, youth, and adolescence; and, finally, maturity, senescence, and death.

 But every species ages at its own clip. Some compress their lives into a couple years, while others, like certain whales, take an entire century to cycle through the life stages.

Because ripening times vary widely among animals, correlating the age of one species with that of another is like comparing apples with oranges. This reality contradicts the age-old credo that we can calculate the human equivalent of a dog’s age simply by multiplying by 7.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine recently created a formula that offers a more accurate comparison of age in humans and dogs. It is based on fluctuations in the way dogs and humans attach methyl groups to the nucleotide bases in their genomes as they advance through the years.

The methylation pattern — or “methylome” — of the cytosine–guanine dinucleotides (CpGs) is an epigenetic mark that modifies gene transcription and thereby regulates the speed at which an organism ages and reaches specific physiologic milestones.

Not only do people and dogs age at mismatched rates, but the two species differ in their racing times between each mile marker. The comparison between them is not linear as the 1:7 years rule of thumb suggests. The data from this study, recently published in 

 illustrates this perfectly. While a 9-year-old dog, for instance, has the approximate genetic wear-and-tear of a 65-year-old human, a canine yearling doesn't equal a 7-year-old child, but instead a 30-year-old human ready to start a family.

Investigators came up with these correlations by collecting blood from 104 Labrador retrievers at different life stages, ranging from 5 weeks to 16 years. The subjects were mostly recruited at canine-centric events, such as dog shows.

Using DNA extracted from whole blood samples, a technique called syntenic bisulfite sequencing was applied to characterize CpG methylomes in regions of the canine genome that mirror those of humans. About 232,000 CpG sites have been found to be conserved between humans and dogs. Of these, 54,469 CpGs were well profiled in both species. Regions included exons, transcription start sites, and CpG chains or “islands.”

The researchers looked at whether the conserved methylation alterations in dogs and humans followed a constant rate of change, and whether this tempo correlated with the lifespan of each species, as is the conventional wisdom.

 For this, they lined up the age of each dog with the average age of its human methylome “twin.” The canine methylomes were also compared with those previously measured in mice.

To resolve whether conserved changes involved particular genetic regions, they coned down their study of CpG methylation sites to 7942 genes for which orthologs were present in all three species. From this, they spotted 394 genes for which methylation values showed conserved age-dependent behavior across species.

These genes occurred within five clusters, primarily developmental in function and concentrated near transcription start sites. Four of these clusters — associated with synapse assembly, neuroepithelial cell differentiation, and anatomic patterning — displayed methylation that amplified with age. The fifth cluster involved leukocyte differentiation and nucleic acid metabolism and demonstrated decreasing methylation with age.

Until now, epigenetic clocks have been used to study methylome data within a species rather than across species. But a review of established methylation values in different species reveals closer epigenetic correlations when using conserved developmental genes (less than 400 in the current study) than when casting a wider genetic net.

Analysis of the data shows that the rate of methylome remodeling is determined not only the lifespan of a species — the shorter-lived the species, the more rapid the remodeling — but also by the timing of key physiologic events.

Tracking changes in how methyl groups attach to DNA strands reveals a conserved, though nonlinear, age-related progression between dogs and people. The study also shows that dogs age more quickly than humans at an early age, then trickle along following sexual maturity.

The highest methylome similarities — and greatest epigenetics-physiology agreement —were observed when pairing young dogs with young humans and senior dogs with aged humans: It’s easier to define a dog in human years at either of these two poles. However, these same genetic comparisons during the intervening adolescent and mature stages are murkier.

One limitation of the study is that it used DNA from whole blood, for which age-dependent drops in leukocyte population occur in both dogs and people. These shifts could influence the findings. Second, the study focused exclusively on Labrador retrievers. Expanding the scope to include other breeds (canine subspecies) could modify the results.

Characterizing epigenetic changes across both breeds and species may help solve more global riddles, such as whether the timing of epigenetic changes early in life influences the overall lifespan of a species, or of a specific individual within a species.

By highlighting conserved patterns of epigenetic changes across species and throughout life, this research suggests that aging is more a continuation of development rather than a distinct process. By matching — or, rather, mismatching — those patterns among dogs and people, we now know that the common question, “How old is my dog in people years?” is not as straightforward as once thought.

Dr. Capuzzi is a small animal veterinarian and journalist based in the Philadelphia area.

Field AE, Robertson NA, Wang T, Havas A, Ideker T, Adams PD. DNA Methylation Clocks in Aging: Categories, Causes, and Consequences. 

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Wang T,Ma J, Hogan AN, et. al. Quantitative translation of dog-to-human aging by conserved remodeling of the DNA methylene. 

 2020;11:1-10.doi: 10.1016/j.cels.2020.06.006

Alisch RS, Barwick BG, Chopra P, et al. Age-associated DNA methylation in pediatric populations. 

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Hannum G, Guinney J, Zhao L, et al. Genome-wide methylation profiles reveal quantitative views of human aging rates. 

. 2013;49(2):359-367. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2012.10.016

Maegawa S, Lu Y, Tahara T, et al. Caloric restriction delays age-related methylation drift. 

. 2017;8(1):539. doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-00607-3

Lowe R, Barton C, Jenkins CA, et al. Ageing-associated DNA methylation dynamics are a molecular readout of lifespan variation among mammalian species. 

. 2018;19(1):22. doi: 10.1186/s13059-018-1397-1

Petkovich DA, Podolskiy DI, Lobanov AV, Lee SG, Miller RA, Gladyshev VN. Using DNA methylation profiling to evaluate biological age and longevity interventions. 

. 2017;25(4):954-960.e6. doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2017.03.016

By tracking age-related progressions in gene methylation patterns of dogs and comparing them with those previously observed in people, researchers have constructed a new “epigenetic clock” for translating dog years to human years.

DNA debunks age-old ratio for dog years to human years 

There are times in practicing veterinary medicine that you just need to stop and think for a bit about the patient you are examining. It is during these moments that a little peace and quiet would be nice.

For me, unlocking the mystery of upper hind end lameness in a horse often requires a tremendous amount of contemplation. I enjoy these cases, but have been known to just sneak off to my office for a few minutes to assimilate the accumulated clues to make a logical decision about what the problem is or what should be done. The more difficult the case, the more quiet I require.

One of my clients is a 5-foot barrel racer who has some world-class horses and is a blast to be around. When Tera shows up with a lame horse, it usually and requires my full concentration. The problem is…Tera is a talker.

When I say she is a talker, I mean this little gal can’t stand a moment of silence. It is almost like she has a pathologic aversion to being in the presence of others with no conversation occurring. She will see to it that something is being said at all times, largely by asking questions. This means that you have to be involved in the process of stamping out quiet with her.

One particular day found me working up a very difficult lameness case for her. I was digging deep into my gray matter trying to piece together the clues to why her 7-year-old gelding was 0.3 seconds off, but the answer was slow in coming. Every time I began to ponder the results of the last portion of the exam, she would sense that things were too quiet and hit me with a volley of questions.

The last thing I wanted to do, of course, was hurt her feelings by asking her to be quiet, so I began looking around for something that would occupy her for a little while as I thought about the problem at hand. She was rambling on about some horse she had ridden 10 years ago that acted a little like this one when it occurred to me that her constantly moving hands were a vital part of her talking arsenal. I began to wonder if the talking would stop if I could somehow still those hands.

As she entered her fifth or sixth paragraph about the horse from 10 years ago, I simply handed her an empty syringe case. She never stopped talking or moving her hands; she simply accepted the case and continued on with the story without so much as a comma. Next, I handed her an empty bottle of carbocaine, which she gladly accepted with her other hand and just rolled right on with the story.

This was actually getting kind of fun. I was beginning to wonder how many things she would hold before she actually looked down to see what they were. So, I handed her a hoof tester, which is used to determine the location of a painful area in the foot of a lame horse. The tester was heavier than the other items and Tera had no readily empty hand to hold it in. This stopped the chatter momentarily, but she simply took the instrument and placed it under her left arm and continued on with the story.

I maintained eye contact with her and made occasional head movements to make her feel as if I was listening intently, all the while handing her more things: an earpiece from an otoscope that was sitting on the counter, then an extension set (still in the package), followed by a digital thermometer and the case it came in. She was still going with the story but her tempo had slowed just a bit. It was now becoming almost impossible to move her hands, which obviously was causing the conversation cortex in her brain to sputter a bit.

I stopped handing her stuff for a second to see if she would notice all the things she was holding for me. Nope. Time to hand over some more. There was little room left to accept things. She had arranged them in various places to make holding them easier, but still had no idea what she was holding. I handed her a package of 2-0 Vicryl suture material, still in the plastic, then a pair of rubber gloves I had just taken off. Not enough? How about a 3-inch stack of 4×4 gauze?

Finally, Tera lost all ability to move her hands. She was now holding enough stuff that she had to mash some of it between her arms and tummy. When this happened, all talking came to a standstill. But she still had not looked to see all I had given her.

A few moments passed with no noise coming from either of us. I just stood there looking at her and finally couldn’t maintain a straight face. She asked what I was giggling about.

“Thanks for holding all that for me,” trickled out the corner of my now laughing mouth. When she looked down to assess what she was holding, Tera started laughing, too. Pretty soon we were both laughing so hard that others in the clinic came over to find out what was going on.

“I guess you figured out that I can’t talk if I don’t move my hands. Well, I was just getting to the good part of that story when you handed me all this stuff,” she said as she started setting it all down on the counter.

“Oh no!” I bellowed before she could get her hands empty. “You have to hold all that until I have had enough quiet time to figure out what is wrong with your horse. Then you can set it all down and start telling me the story again!”

Every time she comes to the clinic now, I greet her with an armful of meaningless stuff and tell her if she can’t be quiet, she is going have to hold it all until I am done.

Bo Brock, DVM, owns Brock Veterinary Clinic in Lamesa, Texas. His latest book is 

Crowded in the Middle of Nowhere: Tales of Humor and Healing From Rural America

When a client won’t stop talking for long enough to allow you complete your diagnostic evaluation, sometimes you have to resort to strange measures.

Quiet, please!

Merck Animal Health has completed its acquisition of US rights to Sentinel Flavor Tabs (milbemycin oxime/lufenuron) and Sentinel Spectrum Chews (milbemycin oxime/lufenuron/praziquantel)—products that target common intestinal parasites, according to a 

The announcement comes less than 2 months after Merck Animal Health and Virbac agreed on a price tag of about 

With this acquisition, Merck now offers a comprehensive range of products that address the seven most common parasites that affect dogs: ticks, fleas, roundworms, hookworms, whipworms, tapeworms, and heartworms.

“Our veterinary medicines, including parasiticides, and vaccines continue to transform the animal health industry and further solidify our position in the US Companion Animal category,” said Merck Animal Health President Rick DeLuca, in the release.

For more information about this acquisition, visit 

With the completion of this deal, Merck Animal Health now offers products that address all of the most common internal and external parasites affecting dogs. 

Merck completes acquisition of Sentinel parasite products

 recently became the 44th U.S jurisdiction to accept certification from the Program for the Assessment of Veterinary Education Equivalence (PAVE) as part of the licensure process for international veterinary graduates. Now Kentucky has become 45th, according to the American Association of Veterinary State Boards (AAVSB).

PAVE evaluates the education equivalence of graduates of international, non-accredited veterinary programs on behalf of participating AAVSB member boards. An international veterinary graduate who has attained PAVE certification has proven their English proficiency, passed the program’s Qualifying Science Examination (QSE), and completed an evaluated clinical experience at an institution accredited by the AVMA’s Council on Education. Candidates must also pass the North American Veterinary Licensing Examination (NAVLE) and fulfill any other requirements set forth by the jurisdiction in which the individual wishes to practice.

“We're pleased the AAVSB's PAVE is continually being recognized and adopted by licensing bodies both within the AAVSB membership and beyond. The strength of the program is the continued involvement of veterinary medicine regulators in its development and administration,” said AAVSB Executive Director James T. Penrod, CAE, FASLA, in this 

. “We look forward to working with the Kentucky Board of Veterinary Examiners to make this program a success for them."

With the addition of Kentucky, 54 of the 62 AAVSB members boards now accept PAVE certification, in addition to states and provinces in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Kentucky is the 45th US jurisdiction to accept the certification for licensure from the Program for the Assessment of Veterinary Education Equivalence.  

Kentucky now accepts PAVE certification for veterinary licensure

According to the most recent data from Nationwide, skin allergies, ear infections, noncancerous skin masses, and skin infections constitute the 

top four reasons for canine veterinary visits

. To raise public awareness about skin problems and encourage conversations between veterinarians and their clients about canine skin care, Zoetis has named August Itchy Pet Awareness Month.

The campaign also includes a practice toolkit — complete with posters, emails, social media posts, and more — to help veterinarians start the itch conversations with their clients, as well as a website (

) to help owners discern whether their pet’s itching is normal or signals a problem.

Zoetis believes that engaging with clients in candid conversations about skin concerns is key to alleviating pet discomfort and owner dismay, because long-term solutions are available for most dogs.

“At Zoetis, we want all itchy dogs to get the help and relief they deserve. We are committed to innovative dermatology solutions, so veterinarians can restore the quality of life of dogs with allergic dermatitis long-term and build a strong ongoing relationship with their owners,” said Andrew Hillier, BVSc, MANZCVS (Canine Medicine), DACVD, associate director of dermatology medical strategy and medical lead for veterinary specialty operations at Zoetis, in this 

. “Itchy Pet Awareness Month will encourage more conversations and create more opportunity for dogs to be relieved from problematic itch behavior and get back to normal again,” he added.

The company has launched a new campaign to increase awareness about dermatologic conditions and prompt conversations between veterinary practices and clients. 