A quarter of the way through my year
already – “Is that all?” I hear David Mountford cry.
Our trip to Toronto airport did involve a
stint on the wrong side of the road as I left a “gas station”, which did cause
much anxiety for the other driver and my passenger. So onto Salt Lake City (SLC) via Chicago for
the 60th AAEP Convention – “Howdy!”.
I thought that I wasn’t very well travelled but approximately 70% of Americans
don’t have a passport. But why would you
need to in just a huge and diverse country?
Our hosts could not have made us feel more
welcome. On the Saturday night we were
entertained at the President’s reception and met up with the outgoing AAEP
President, Jeff Blea DVM and his wife, Annie also DVM. His is an interesting career; his career as a
flat jockey of a few years was curtailed after he was involved in a serious
riding accident where he was “slammed” into the running rail, which left him
with a totally paralysed left arm. After
this he re-trained as a vet and is a now a practitioner who does racetrack work
- with effectively only one arm. I am
truly in awe of people like Jeff who conquer serious disabilities to succeed –
respect.
The weather was unseasonably warm with
clear blue skies and temperatures above freezing. The Convention format is very similar to BEVA
Congress with an opening ceremony and plenary lecture, which most delegates
attend, followed by multiple streams running concurrently, but as you would
imagine it was a lot bigger. Also I’ve
never seen so many Stetsons or cowboy boots in one lecture theatre.
The plenary lecture was delivered by Marvin
Beeman DVM, an 82 year old practitioner who still works a 4½ day week in the mid-west and hunts twice a week during the
season. He gave a very thought provoking
and inspiring insight into his work ethic both as a professional and a
businessman. He invited us to join him
and his family at the Convention dinner on the Tuesday night - what an
inspiration and he fully deserves to be wearing the crown!
There were a handful of UK delegates
including Nenad Zilic , from Barn Equine, Sue Dyson, Lynn Hillyer, Tim Mair
representing Equine Veterinary Education (EVE), Roger Smith, Chris House &
Jane Jackson, Rob van Pelt and our very own David Mountford. Even Gavin from BCF made an appearance in the
trade-stand area (which as previously mentioned was a lot bigger) and managed
to lure me into buying one of their new DR systems – it’s ok the deal wasn’t
clinched in the bar and my partners do know.
There were several opportunities to
collaborate with the AAEP – for example, there was an evening meeting of their
Internship Awareness Program (sic). This
involved approximately 60 equine clinics, usually called hospitals, advertising
their wares in an informal setting to undergraduates and recent graduates. Their programme is far more advanced than
BEVA’s Internship Awareness Proogramme but gave us some good ideas as how to
progress ours. David and I also had an
informal meeting with a company who are keen for BEVA to collaborate in an
Equine Veterinary Conference in China in the latter part of 2015.
SLC is another 2 hours behind Toronto
causing even more disruption to my sleep patterns. Every morning I was wide-awake at 3 am
regardless of the time I went to bed.
Understandably, I vacated the room and was in the “lobby” by 3.15am
doing emails etc.. It’s not unusual for
me to be in the hotel reception at 3.15 am at BEVA Congress but not usually doing
emails! The return journey coincided
with my body clock having finally adapted to the SLC time zone. It was an overnight flight arriving in
Heathrow at 11am and then straight back to work and into a weekend on call….
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