Wednesday, December 15, 2010

A Day in the Worklife: Chet Thomas

By Drake Allen

Chet Thomas, 43, has been the main vet at the Brookside Veterinary Hospital for 16 years. Thomas deals with stray, sick, or very unhealthy animals all the time, and sometimes it can be a matter of life or death.

Thomas received his vet training at OSU. He grew up in Southern Oklahoma as a child, and he now lives in Sand Springs. Thomas also attends the Brookside Business Association meetings every month.

Farm animals were really the only animals that Thomas was around when he was growing up as a child. Like most Americans his favorite animal is a dog.

Thomas arrives at work everyday at 8 a.m., and his average workday consists of about 10 hours. "When you get to do what you love for a living it does not seem like work,” he said.

Thomas sees about 20 patients a day, and about one percent of those animals are in fatal condition. “The most common thing that I usually see animals coming in with is a skin disorder,” he said.

Most of the time when patients come into to see Thomas with a problem their animal is having he will normally send them home with medication and maybe schedule a second visit for the animal.

Most of the animals he sees are dogs or cats, and sometimes exotic animals like birds. “The most unusual animal that I have had come in would probably be a pig,” Thomas said, “and this pig was far from small.”

The Brookside Veterinary Hospital takes in stray animals. They also adopt the stray animals out to associations like All About Animals. They also allow people to come in and take a look at the stray animals.

“It is extremely tough when something fatal goes on and you are the vet who is working on the animal to try to help prevent this from happening," Thomas said. "Sometimes it is hard to cope with but you have got to move on quickly, because it is the name of the business.”

Thomas gave me the chance to play
with the animals that are in the back, the ones that you can adopt, and he let me see the stray animals. The Brookside Veterinary Hospital also allows the public to come play with the animals that they have.

I took three animal pictures. One is a cat waiting for its owner to come pick her back up. I also took a picture of a stray dog, very sad because the dog was very unhealthy.

Then I got a picture of a parrot that was at the front of the hospital, a fixture there. The parrot has quite a sense of humor, making funny comments while you wait in the lobby.

I also got a great picture of me feeding the parrot a peanut. He would take the shell off and eat by himself.


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