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The Texas A&M Veterinary Emergency Team (VET) recently returned to the Bryan-College Station campus after a 23-day deployment to the Hill Country to treat dozens of rescue dogs that worked to locate missing people.
When the news spread that the Guadalupe River was flooding the communities all around it, Dr. Debra Zoran, the director of VET, said she knew they would be needed.
“When this happened … it was immediately obvious it was going to be a very large search and rescue,” she explained. “We were we were starting to get ready to go even before I knew I had the official request.”
First responders were on the scene within hours, and the search for people spread for miles.
VET deployed 12 of its members. They were later joined by three disaster assessment and recovery agents from the university and 10 veterinary medicine students.
Zoran said their job was to be on the edge of the theater, while the dogs and rescue teams were on the ground searching for hours across many miles.
“On average, would walk an area along the river somewhere between 10 and 12 or even 14 kilometers … in the heat, in the muck, in the hills, in rocks, in the debris,” she added. “The dogs are tracking three to five times that.”
The rescue dogs didn’t get to stop and eat. They worked tirelessly day in and day out, Zoran said, so she prioritized work and rest cycles for the animals.
“As they came out, every day, we would do physical exams on them and find, ‘okay, these muscles are getting extra tight or extra sore or extra this,’ like an athlete would do. And so our job became, in many ways, athletic trainers,” she explained. “So we are helping them with massages, with stretching, acupuncture, acupressure, anti-inflammatory medications so that they can rest that night and get ready to do it all over again.”
In total, about 150 dogs were walking along the river — from both federal and state agencies. Zoran said even volunteer dogs from the community joined the search for the missing.
“The biggest thing that we did was post work exams and rehab of work injuries and rehydration and helping, keeping them in mission,” she said.
Zoran emphasized that the program was not the first VET program, but it is the first program to teach its students how to treat and respond in a disaster.
“We’re hoping to be the model for others. Because I think every vet school should do this in some way, maybe not to the extent that we do it. Texas is such a big state, and we have so many disasters,” she explained. “Every veterinarian needs to know this. And every state needs to know how to do this.”
The Texas Legislature just approved $5 million to help the VET program grow the program.
Zoran was optimistic for the future: “It’s a really exciting time for us, from the perspective of what’s coming in the future, and what we’re going to be able to do for the State of Texas and beyond as it comes to animals.”
Great Job Gabriella Alcorta-Solorio & the Team @ Texas Public Radio Source link for sharing this story.
