College Vet Trip

My trip with loop was by far the best summer of my life! I attended the summer in between my Junior and senior year of college, the year I was applying for vet school. Elephants have been my favorite animals for as long as I can remember, so when I found out that I was going to spend the summer with them, it was a dream come true. In the city the mornings start off with a quick instructional lesson of what we'll be doing for the day, vax, blood draws, parasite testing, spay/neuter etc. Then you spend the afternoon actually practicing and doing what you just learned alongside some great vets. I easily god 200 hours of supervised experience! Almost every evening we went to a different market and really got to experience the true culture of Thailand. While at the markets we got to break up into small groups and explore on our own, never once did I feel as though I was in an unsafe situation and we were provided with cell phones to call the staff if we had any concerns (which we never did).

At ENP we worked alongside the American vet we had been working with the whole trip but also the Indian and Thai vets that are on staff at ENP. I was expecting to 'look but not touch' and boy was I wrong! We worked with the vets developing diets, administering medications, performing treatments, cleaning wounds, and helping to diagnose problems with these gentle giants. We got to meet the founder of ENP Lek and spend lots of time with her learning about her dreams and visions for this park. While at ENP we got to treat and learn about a large variety of animals, not just elephants. At the park they have cows, water buffalo, bunnies, monkeys, birds, and a small animal shelter, we definitely had our hands full! However, it wasn't all work, we enjoyed tubing down the river, playing in the monsoon rains and bathing the elephants, which almost always turned into a water fight.
Our weekends were full of sight seeing trips to temples, mountains, waterfalls, a butterfly garden, and even a tiger park where we got to bottle feed baby tigers!

The trip was fantastic, however, the staff made Thailand feel like a home away from home. Our program director helped me edit my personal statement for my VMCAS application and the vet we worked with all summer even wrote me a rec letter. Noom and Aum, the staff and the hostel we stayed at were so great! They taught us so much about thai culture, they were pretty much like walking text books to us! They probably got so tired of hearing us ask...well how do you say this in thai. I became fast friends with all of the staff and the people on my trip, and I stay connected with them on a daily basis thanks to social media!

If you're looking for experience before vet school, a pre vet student, interested in vet med, or just an animal lover, this is definitely the trip to go on!