Dr. Caitlyn Glick had a plan.

Finish vet school and go right into general practice.

“I always had a love for animals and growing up I couldn’t imagine a different career,” Glick said.

A career in veterinary medicine yes, but an internal medicine specialist – not so much. But her work as a fourth-year student in internal medicine was so impressive that she was awarded the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine Certificate of Clinical Excellence.

“I fell in love with internal medicine during our clinical year at Iowa State,” Glick said.

Still she needed a little push to tackle internal medicine full-time.

My friend and classmate, Kim Bebar, was the one who pushed me to pursue my passion of internal medicine,” Glick said. “Without her push, I don’t know that I would be where I am today.”

Today Glick is a staff veterinarian in internal medicine at the VCA Animal Care Center of Sonoma County in the San Francisco area. She joined the specialty and emergency hospital in 2015 after completing, first a rotating internship, followed by an internal medicine internship and finally a three-year internal medicine residency, all in New York.

In her job, Glick is responsible for receiving transfers from the hospital’s ER service, taking care of hospitalized patients in addition to seeing appointments and performing procedures – everything from routine diagnostic procedures to endoscopies and bronchoalveolar lavages.

“Being in internal medicine, I do enjoy being able to perform advanced diagnostics that I never thought I would be doing,” Glick said. “I have always been the type that likes to put all of the pieces together which is perfect for working in internal medicine.”

She’s also passionate about internal medicine and the results that come from a proper diagnosis such as removing a gastric foreign body from a patient with endoscopy rather than sending them for a surgical procedure.

“I also frequently have very sick patients hospitalized and it is wonderful when they are well enough to go home and rejoin their families,” she said.

But it’s not just dogs and cats at the VCA Animal Care Center of Sonoma County. The hospital works with a local wild animal park and zoo and Glick has had the opportunity to work on other four-legged creatures.

“I have been able to do ultrasounds on an African lion and a monkey in addition to doing an endoscopy procedure on a serval,” Glick said. “It’s always exciting to receive phone calls from them asking if they can bring animals to us!

“The entire staff loves it!”

Including it seems Dr. Caitlyn Glick.

Farming has always been a passion of Dr. Rich Caves. Growing up in Oskaloosa, Iowa, he assumed he would make a living on the farm.

Things change though.

“In high school I realized that full time farming wasn’t in my deck of cards, so I became interested in veterinary medicine,” said Caves. “I’ve always enjoyed livestock and working with farmers.”

Even though a little less than half of the Osceola Veterinary Clinic’s patients are large animals, Caves says he has long had an emphasis as a large animal vet at the clinic where he is a partner. Even his photo on the clinic’s website emphasizes his large animal focus.

Today Caves and the clinic’s other three veterinarians split the patients evenly. But there was a time Caves and his business partner, Dr. Judy Little (’97) were the only doctors. Little handled all the small animal patients, while Caves took care of the large animal appointments.

Caves hasn’t given up farming all together. He is a partner with his father’s farming operation near Oskaloosa. They currently have 80 beef cows and farm approximately 500 acres of row crops.

“Raising cows and farming ground is in my blood,” Caves said, “it has been since I grew up on the farm. It is what comes natural to me and gives me fulfillment outside of veterinary medicine.”

While his dad takes care of the day-to-day responsibilities, Caves heads to the operation on his days off from the clinic. And you’ll find him back on the farm come planting and harvest seasons.

“Farming is definitely a way that I unwind outside of veterinary medicine,” Caves said. “Now that we have more help at the clinic, I definitely try to make work-life balance more of a priority.”

He also credits his family for keeping him grounded.

“My wife, Tiffany, is the main way I stay pointed in the right direction,” he said. “She knows that I am a hard worker but always makes sure that I have fun.”

“I have two boys, Kipton and Grayson, that love to be with me wherever I am. They make things better no matter what I am doing, whether it’s working cattle, farming, hunting, or just being together as a family.”

Something New Every Day

If you like routine then Dr. Hayley Springer’s job wouldn’t be for you.

“I really enjoy the variety this position offers me,” Springer said. “Each day can look so very different.”

Springer is an assistant clinical professor and extension veterinarian at Penn State University. Her primary appointment at Penn State is in Extension where she serves on three different teams – livestock, dairy and vector borne disease.

But that’s not all she does.

“I have days where I teach undergraduates all day, others when I’m traveling to farms, and still more engrossed in research,” Springer said. “I am the only extension veterinarian at Penn State with small animal experience, so I pick up a lot of companion animal flea, tick and mosquito education.”

In her role as an extension veterinarian, Springer produces a wide mix of articles, videos, and online courses, as well as providing in-person educational events. She does what she terms as “a fair bit of production-related teaching,” including co-teaching one undergraduate course and providing guest lectures and labs in many others.

Springer also co-teaches courses in Penn State’s newly developed One Health minor. She mentors undergraduates working on research projects and has even taken on mentoring an honors student for her undergraduate thesis work.

In addition to her professional duties, Springer is pursuing a PhD in pathobiology with a focus on pre-harvest food safety through mitigating antimicrobial resistance in dairy calves.

Like we mentioned earlier, it’s something new every day for Springer at Penn State.

Springer’s road to Penn State included a stint as an associate veterinarian for a mixed animal practice in central Pennsylvania before working as an on-staff veterinarian for a large Pennsylvania dairy. Before moving to Penn State, she also worked in cattle pharmaceutical sales.

It would come as a surprise to many who knew Springer when she was growing up in the Keystone State that she has focused much of her professional career on beef and dairy cows. Not that she would eventually become a veterinarian but rather her animal focus.

“I am definitely among the group of veterinarians who have known exactly what they wanted to be from a young age,” Springer said. “But I actually touched a cow for the first time when I was 17 and attending the Pennsylvania Governor’s School of Agriculture Sciences.”

This five-week, on-campus experience at Penn State introduced Springer to agriculture, research and she says, “most importantly cows!”

“I absolutely fell in love with all of it,’ she said. “I began milking for a local dairy during my senior year of high school and worked in a diary nutrition research lab during my freshman year of college.”

Which has come in handy for her career since Pennsylvania agriculture is dominated by the dairy industry.

“I certainly have a stronger background on the dairy side, but really enjoy working with beef cattle as well,” Springer said. “In my job I get to work with great research collaborators, talented teachers and an amazing team of extension professionals.

“Rarely does a day go by that I don’t learn something new.”

From Classmates to Business Partners

As fellow students in the Class of 2010, Drs. Troy Worth and Nicole Hanson Hendricks were acquaintances but no one would call them close friends.

Certainly not Worth or Hendricks.

“We didn’t spend a lot of time together in vet school,” Worth recalled.

They can’t say that now.

Worth and Hendricks are co-owners of Veterinary Services in Imperial, Nebraska, located in the southwest portion of the state. The clinic offers both large animal and small animal services.

Worth joined Veterinary Services right after graduating in 2010 and became a co-owner in 2014.

“This has been my first and only job,” he said. “I always wanted to own a clinic not only for the opportunities that arise from ownership but the many challenges as well.”

Hendricks path to Imperial and Veterinary Services wasn’t quite as straight and narrow. After graduating from Iowa State, she got married and spent three years at a small animal clinic in Kearney, Nebraska.

When a business opportunity came open for her husband, she moved to back to her native southwest Nebraska where she had a “tough time” for a year or so doing relief and part-time veterinary work. Then she learned about an open position at Veterinary Services.

After Worth learned Hendricks had applied for the job, he did a double take.

“When she contacted us about the job, I went right to my class composite to confirm that it was the same Nicole,” Worth said. “It was strange because we hadn’t had any contact since we graduated.

“I never thought in my wildest dreams I would be interviewing a classmate for a job.”

Hendricks’ move to Veterinary Services wasn’t without its challenges. Her new job initially required she practice both small and large animal medicine. It was a steep relearning curve for her since she “hadn’t touched a cow since vet school.”

“Small animals, I knew what I was doing,” she said. “With large animals, I had to look up the dosages off to the side so the client wouldn’t see what I was doing.”

“We hired Nicole for the small animal side of the business and it’s really taken off.” Worth said.

“From the very first day, she has been busy all the time.”

When one of the original practice owners retired in 2019, Hendricks leaped at the chance to purchase the other half of the business.

“Working for someone else, you are always wanting to do things differently,” she said. “You have to be an owner to be able to do that.

“There’s good and bad things about being an owner but in the end, you get to decide.”

With a population of just 2,000, Veterinary Services has to draw clients and patients from a 60-mile radius from Imperial. The practice has grown significantly over the years, adding not only new equipment but buildings as well.

Every month, Worth and Hendricks estimate another 15-20 new clients seek veterinary care at Veterinary Services. In addition to the co-owners, the practice has two other veterinarians – Iowa State graduates Dr. Jake Johnson (’16) and Dr. Meghan O’Callaghan (’20).

The two say the opportunity to work together before becoming co-owners was a great trial run to see if they could be compatible as owners. 

“I never thought we would be owning a practice together,” Worth said. “It’s been great – Nicole and I have many of the same ambitions and it just kind of fell into place.”

Back Home Again

Starting vet school at Iowa State in her late 20s, Dr. Tricia Tai was anxious to “just start working” after she completed her DVM and rotating internship.

Yet, it was during her rotating internship that neurology became her main focus, one she wanted to specialize in.

“So I made the decision to apply for a neurology residency but I was only going to try one time and if I got in, then great, but if I did not, I would have likely gone into general practice,” Tai said.

She got in and completed a three-year residency program at a private practice in Orlando, Florida.

“When I got the results from MATCH that I was accepted, I took it as a sign I was meant to do this,” Tai said. “It is becoming so hard to get a residency nowadays that most people have to do specialty internships after their rotating internships before even applying for a residency so I’m fortunate to have been able to get accepted straight away.

“It didn’t hurt that the program was my top choice,” she adds.

These days, Tai is back in her native Los Angeles at the VCA West Los Angeles Animal Hospital, the flagship VCA clinic and the largest VCA in the country. There she sees both medical and surgical neurology cases as the head of neurology and neurosurgery.

Ironically, she had no intentions of returning to her hometown. Instead she wanted to try living and working in either Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, anywhere but Los Angeles.

Then her intern director reached out to Tai when a neurology position opened up at the VCA hospital.

“I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work at this type of environment,” she said. “We have every major specialty here aside from dermatology. We have rotating interns, specialty interns and residents, so it is a great teaching environment.”

Tai sees dogs, cats and exotic pets at her practice, which allows her to dabble in medical neurology as well as neurosurgery.

“Neurology can be a very sad field,” Tai said. “It’s always hard regardless of the specialty and it’s never easy to counsel an owner to euthanize their beloved pet but I also feel that it is a privilege for me to be able to advocate for my patients and to relieve suffering when it is time to say goodbye.

“While there are many neurologic conditions that are not curable, the satisfaction of performing spinal surgery on a dog or cat that is unable to walk and see them back a few weeks later walking again never gets old.”