National Vet Tech Week : Meet Nikole
October 14th – October 20th is National Vet Tech week. Vet techs are a key part of the veterinary medicine industry – whether they are drawing blood for lab work, administering vaccines, comforting an injured or sick animal, or cleaning up patients’ unfortunate little (or big!) accidents. They are knowledgeable about our pets, and attentive to their needs. They know how to think fast on their feet, and even when they’re exhausted from a long day, they’ll still muster the strength to help lift a nervous, sixty-pound dog into a car after a vet visit. Vet techs face a variety of daily challenges, and no two days are the same. Our beloved pets aren’t always on their best behavior at the vet (who can blame them, really!) but vet techs love on them and treat them like their own no matter what. Vet techs are rockstars, and the world wouldn’t be the same without them!
This week, we want to highlight a few of these amazing people to show our gratitude and to celebrate the important part they play in helping us reach our mission in creating a better world for all of the animals we love.
Meet Nikole!
Nikole was born in Kentucky, but has lived in Tennessee since she was a year old. She shares her home with her dog, Burrito Mandito, who is an American Bulldog/Pitbull mix. When she isn’t working, she enjoys drawing, playing video games, and visiting the dog park with her best friend.
Nikole has worked in the pet industry for six years – she started out working in dog grooming, training, and doggy day cares, as well as small animal, reptile, and aquatics care. Nikole loves animals and all of the different things she learned and experienced in those roles, and it inspired her to do more in the animal welfare industry. Nikole remembers the decision to enter into the veterinary medicine industry :” Working in all these different environments, I was inspired to go further and stumbled across vet tech jobs. I’ve been a vet tech for close to a year now, and I absolutely love it. I’m hoping to eventually go to school to further my education.”
Nikole now works as a vet tech at a non-profit, high volume spay and neuter clinic. This clinic, located in Nashville, Tennessee, works to reduce animal overpopulation by ensuring that spay and neuter services are accessible to everyone. Nikole quickly learned the important role spay and neuter plays in the wellbeing of animals, and each day, she gets to see what a huge difference this simple procedure makes for those animals as well as the entire community. “I love animals, and spay/neuter is always a hot topic. I never really knew much about the importance of it, so I wanted to get into the field to help others learn too!
“Seeing the number of animals that go without spay/neuter is really alarming. I didn’t realize how bad the problem is especially with community cats repopulating constantly. I sleep better at night knowing at least a handful of animals were helped that day, because even a small dent in the big picture is progress!”
And she is right – even just spaying or neutering one cat or dog will prevent thousands of puppies or kittens who will grow up without homes and end up in shelters. In a world where millions of cats and dogs die in shelters each year due to overpopulation, prevention through spay and neuter is key. We extend a huge THANK YOU to vet techs like Nikole, who work to keep our pets healthy and happy, and to help us build a better world for our animal friends.
