The U of G provost has announced the composition of the OVC Dean Search Committee.

Dr. Elizabeth Stone’s second five-year term as dean will end in 2015.

The committee will be chaired by the provost and also includes:

• the dean of a College named by the provost – Rob Gordon, Ontario Agricultural College

• three tenured faculty members/continuing appointment veterinarians — Jeff Caswell, Pathobiology; Thomas Gibson, Clinical Studies; Todd Duffield, Population Medicine

• departmental chair (outside the OVC) - Robert Mullen, Molecular & Cellular Biology

• one regular full-time staff member from OVC named by the provost — Carol Ann Higgins

• one OVC student named by the provost — Mythri Viswanathan

An OVC staff member who was instrumental in the success of several key events including OVC ‘s 150^th anniversary celebrations is leaving the College.

Tara O’Brien, a member of the OVC Dean’s Office team since 2010, is leaving effective July 6 to take on a full-time permanent role at McMaster University in the Department of Economics.

“We are very sorry to see Tara leave the OVC,” said OVC dean Elizabeth Stone. “Our loss is most definitely McMaster’s gain and we will miss her helpful and informative way of doing things.” 

Tara has served in a variety of roles since moving over to the OVC in 2010 from the U of G School of Engineering, where she was the research program co-ordinator. She was initially hired as a program manager for the 150^th anniversary celebrations and took on a key role in a number of projects including two Global Development Symposiums and the publication of three books.  More recently, she transitioned into a role as a financial accounts manager and support person for the Dean’s Management Team, and a special projects manager for the dean.  

Best of luck Tara.

Several OVC scientists will share in more than $10.5 million awarded to 60 University of Guelph researchers by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) for studies ranging from the molecular basis of movement to animal behaviour to analysis of Mars.

The awards were announced June 26 in London, Ont., by Ed Holder, minister of state (science and technology). Across Canada, the government will invest $340 million to support 3,796 research projects.

Thursday’s announcement lists the 2014 competition results for NSERC Discovery Grants, Discovery Accelerator Supplements, the Research Tools and Instruments Grants Program. Most research projects are supported for five years.

In addition, NSERC announced more than $78 million in graduate scholarship and fellowship awards.

OVC researchers who received funding include:

• Prof. Dorothee Bienzle, Pathobiology: $45,000 per year for five years to support studies of host response to lentiviral infection

• Dr. Amy Greer, Population Medicine: $25,000 per year for five years to support threshold theory as a framework for understanding infectious disease dynamics in livestock populations, and implications for the control of agriculturally important pathogens

• Prof. Thomas Koch, Population Medicine: $34,000 per year for five years to support research on domestic animal stem cell biology for understanding tissue development, maintenance and therapeutic intervention

• Prof. Adronie Verbrugghe, Clinical Studies: $29,000 per year for five years for studies on the role of gut microbiota in feline energy metabolism

• Prof. Matt Vickaryous, Biomedical Sciences: $53,000 per year for five years for studies of spontaneous regeneration in a novel amniote model

OVC graduate students were also awarded funds:

NSERC scholarships were also awarded to OVC graduate students including:

• Katie Clow (advisor - Prof. Claire Jardine, Pathobiology): wildlife ecology and factors affecting the distribution of lyme disease in Ontario.

• Lisa Santry (advisor - Prof. Sarah Wootton, Pathobiology): the role of the protein Akt in tumour formation and progression.

For more, see the U of G news release.

When equestrians take their steeds to a horse show, they may be focused on trying to win a red ribbon or two, or looking forward to seeing their friends and fellow competitors. From Prof. Amy Greer’s point of view, though, a horse show could be a high-risk situation.

Prof. Amy Greer

“You have horses from many different places congregating at the horse show, and often they are housed together and have opportunities to be in contact,” she says. “Horses can be asymptomatic – appearing perfectly healthy – and yet have a contagious disease. So there are risks.”

Even worse, when the show is over and the horses go home, that prize-winning show jumper may carry the infection back to the other horses sharing his stable. It may be difficult to trace back to determine which horse brought the disease to the show premises.

Greer hopes her work can better inform our understanding of disease dynamics in animals and help us improve disease control and prevention strategies.

The Cobourg, Ont., native has found her way around North America, completing her undergraduate studies at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, her master’s degree at Trent University in Ontario and her PhD in biology at Arizona State University, where she worked on infectious diseases of animals. From there, she did a post doc at the Hospital for Sick Children research institute in Toronto and was then hired by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). In January, she started in the Department of Population Medicine at Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College.

For more, see the story in At Guelph.

Nutrition is becoming an increasingly important part of the DVM curriculum, and OVC pet owners can help ensure its success.

Dr. Adronie Verbrugghe, Clinical Studies, is collecting pet food packaging to be used in lectures and assignments aimed at helping student veterinarians learn to read and interpret nutrition information and ingredients listed on pet food labels for dogs and cats.

“We would like to collect a very large range of diets, so everything is welcome” said Verbrugghe, “from wholesale and grocery store, pet store, to diets sold by veterinarians. Also, diets for every life stage (puppy/kitten, adult, senior) are welcome. For dry foods, we’d like to receive the whole bag, while for canned food just the label is fine.”

Starting in the fall, Phase I students in the Clinical Medicine I (VETM*3430) course will receive four hours of nutrition instruction based on the nutritional assessment guidelines of the World Small Animal Veterinary Association and the American Animal Hospital Association.

Verbrugghe said the first lecture will specifically focus on the patient: taking a diet history, performing body condition scoring and muscle condition scoring, screening evaluation to identify risk factors that prompt diet change, deciding when an extended evaluation of a patient’s nutrition is needed, calculating a patient’s energy requirement and food dose.

 The following lectures will introduce students to the pet food industry, what products are available on the pet food market and where they are sold. They will also learn to read and interpret pet food labels and various nutrition claims and ingredient myths will be discussed. Discussions will include commercial products as well as raw and homemade diets and the pros and cons of various options available to pet owners.

The packaging material will be used to illustrate the lectures and in a nutrition assignment during the Phase I small animal primary care rotation with  Dr. Deep Khosa in the Smith Lane Animal Hospital. The students will assess and discuss various elements of pet food packaging including product names, nutritional claims, ingredient list, guaranteed analysis, nutritional adequacy statement, and more. 

Pet food packaging can be sent to Dr. Adronie Verbrugghe, OVC Clinical Studies Rm. 2148, or it can be dropped off in the OVC Health Sciences Centre nutrition work station Rm. 1275.

An OVC alumnus has been appointed a Member of the Order of Canada.

Dr. Norman Willis OVC ’63 was honoured for his leadership in veterinary science and his contributions to the development of national research centres that study disease vectors between animals and humans. The former executive director of the Canadian Council on Animal Care, Willis was among 86 new appointments to the Order of Canada announced by Governor General David Johnston on June 30. Among the honourees were astronaut Chris Hadfield, filmmaker David Cronenberg and comedian Rick Mercer.Dr. Norman Willis

Willis is a highly respected consultant in the private and public sectors and a renowned authority on the prevention, control and eradication of animal diseases. He is a lifetime honorary president of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) — having served a full term as vice president and president from 1997 to 2000 — and is the only North American to lead that organization since its founding in 1924.

He has also held leadership roles with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and served as Canada’s chief veterinary officer for nine years. In the late 1980s, Willis played a key role in the design and construction of Canada’s first and only Containment Level 4 (CL 4) laboratory complex — the highest level of biocontainment and security — at the Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health in Winnipeg. He also served as its first executive director.

Willis has also represented Canada on the world stage, participating in agricultural trade talks between Canada, Japan, China and other Asia-Pacific nations. His work has been recognized nationally and internationally with numerous awards, including the Carl Block Award from the Canadian Animal Health Coalition in 2005, and the Gold Medal for meritorious service to the OIE in 2007.

Attention OVC faculty members and clinicians: there is still time to sign up as a speaker at the “Lunch With ….” session presented by the OVC in partnership with the 2015 Ontario Veterinary Medical Association  (OVMA) Conference and Trade Show.

Popular with conference delegates and referring veterinarians from across Ontario, the Lunch With…  event takes place on Friday, Jan. 30 at 12 p.m. at the Westin Harbour Castle in Toronto.

The sessions is to allow general practitioners an opportunity to sit down and discuss a specific topic directly with an OVC specialist. The topics are typically current, common issues/medical conundrums that veterinarians are facing.

Based on the survey results from the recent Veterinary Team Appreciation Rounds at OVC, timely topics might include:

• new drugs,revised guidelines

• updates on diagnosis/management of diseases we see often such as thyroid disease, chronic renal failure in cats

• tricks of the trade - helpful hints and techniques in the ICU

• cardiology, diagnosis/management of common conditions

• cardiac vs. respiratory disease, including thoracic radiographs

• post-surgical rehabilitation

• anything oncology related

• itchy skin (dermatology)

• review of common tumor types. i.e name, where usually found, behaviour (i.e. locally aggressive, where they metastasize to etc…), treatment options.

• Nutrition (raw food vs. commercial)

If you are interested in facilitating a session, please email Victoria Wentzell (vwentzel@uoguelph.ca) with your topic/title, a brief description (40 words max).

In order to the meet the publication deadlines, all facilitators, topics and descriptions must be confirmed by this Wednesday, July 9!!

As a thank you, OVMA will set you up with a complimentary conference registration for the day you choose to participate which allows you access to the exhibits and other scientific sessions on that same day.

The OVC Summer Leadership & Research Program (SLRP) presents a handy “how to” session on preparing and presenting scientific posters.

The training session is part of the SLRP program but is also open to OVC graduate students.

Participants will learn how to prepare a poster using PowerPoint and how to present a poster at a conference.

Titled “How to Create and Present a Scientific Poster,” the session takes place Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. in Room 2500 (Population Medicine, Stewart Building) and is expected to last about an hour.

There is still time to enroll your dog in an OVC study examining the relationship between vitamin D intake and vitamin D status of healthy dogs and those with cancer.

Benefits of participating in the study:

• complete blood count and biochemical profile

• physical exam

Inclusion criteria:

The researchers are recruiting

• large breed dogs

• 6 years of age or older

Exclusion criteria:

The researchers cannot accept dogs

• already receiving vitamin D/calcium supplements 

• previously diagnosed with cancer

• showing clinical signs of systemic/infectious disease (other than cancer)

• receiving corticosteroids within two weeks prior to study enrollment

The study involves

• filling out a dietary questionnaire and 7-day food log  

• bringing your dog in for blood collection  

• bringing in a sample of your dog’s food

For more information, or to enroll your dog in the study, please contact Nicole Weidner (nweidner@uoguelph.ca) or Dr. Adronie Verbrugghe (averbrug@uoguelph.ca).

OVC researchers are recruiting puppy owners for a puppy development study.

Dr. Jason Coe, Population Medicine, along with post-doc Janet Higginson-Cutler and recent MSc grad Rachel O’Connor, are looking to recruit people who have puppies under 20 weeks of age to complete four online surveys throughout their puppy’s first year of life.

To participate in the Puppy Development Project, click here for the consent form and puppy enrolment survey.

A special issue of the journal Zoonoses and Public Health highlights years of work by an OVC faculty member focused on applying the principles of evidence-based practice and systematic reviews to questions of animal health and zoonotic disease.

Dr. Jan Sargeant, Population Medicine, and Dr. Annette O’Connor, a veterinary epidemiologist at Iowa State University, are the authors of the June 2014 issue of the journal titled “Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis in Animal Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine.” It provides ‘one-stop shopping’ for information on conducting systematic reviews in veterinary medicine and animal agriculture.

Evidence-based practice has become a core concept in an increasing number of fields, including veterinary medicine, says Sargeant, director of the Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses (CPHAZ).

“Systematic reviews have been used for the last 20 years in human healthcare and are an important component of evidence-based medicine. Veterinary medicine is picking up the same concepts,” says Sargeant. Unlike narrative reviews, which are often broad in scope, systematic reviews are designed to answer a specific clinical or policy question using a structured series of steps with multiple reviewers at several steps to reduce the potential for bias.

“These reviews are widely used in human healthcare and increasingly used in veterinary medicine for companion and food animals, as well as wildlife.  They provide a scientifically defensible summary of current knowledge on a particular topic without the user having to read vast amounts of primary research on the topic,” says Sargeant.

In human medicine, a number of organizations — including the Cochrane Collaboration, The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination — have established methodology for systematic reviews in healthcare.

Systematic reviews have been around for a long time in human health care; however they don’t work quite the same in veterinary medicine.  For example, veterinary medicine deals with multiple species, unlike human healthcare that deals with individual patient care.  Consent differs in veterinary care and husbandry practices differ between countries. As well, in human healthcare a patient can die, in veterinary medicine, a patient can die or be euthanized, adds Sargeant.

Zoonoses and Public Health is a journal that aims to bring together veterinary and human health care researchers and policy makers.  This special issue encompasses more than eight years of work for Sargeant and O’Connor, who undertook more than 30 systematic reviews as they laid out the approaches to completing these reviews.  This work was supported in part by Sargeant’s Canadian Institutes of Health Research / Public Health Agency of Canada chair in applied public health.

The first of six articles provides an overview of systematic reviews, the second focuses building evidence across study designs and the third focuses on the details of clinical trial design in veterinary papers. The final three papers in the journal focus on how to conduct each step of the systematic review from formulating the question to interpreting the results, with the final chapter on meta-anaylsis (the statistical combination of data from multiple research studies) providing basic coding for conducting a meta-anaylsis.  

Beyond the benefits to researchers, educators may want to use this material to teach the process and methods of systematic reviews in an undergraduate or graduate veterinary course, adds Sargeant.

Why do systematic reviews? They have value for both for the veterinarian in the field who doesn’t have time to read a volume of information and for informing policy development, says Sargeant.  “With a systematic review, someone finds all the information and the totality of what we know about a particular question. So it is a good way to find information.”

At the policy level, systematic reviews are increasingly used to inform practice and policy in medicine, education and public safety, she adds.

For example, it is a transparent way to provide the numbers used in regulations surrounding food safety. 

“You can see where the data came from for the decisions. For example, if you feed genetically modified organisms to a beef cow does it affect it as a food source? Here’s how we found out, how we combined the information, how we got the answer,” she said.

“Systematic reviews can also highlight the need for specific information, which is also important so we can see where there are gaps in research.”

OVC faculty and staff are invited to attend a community meeting focused on the Veterinary Clinical Education Program (VCEP) funding from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.

The meeting is scheduled for July 15 from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. in Room 1800 PAHL. The presentation will be led by Dr. Kerry Lissemore, OVC’s associate dean academic, and Rich Moccia, U of G’s associate vice-president strategic partnerships will also attend.

The format will allow plenty of time for questions.

In addition, faculty and staff who were unable to attend the June 17 community meeting on the OVC budget can view a video of the presentations by Dr. Elizabeth Stone, OVC dean, and Stephanie Nykamp, associate dean, clinical program.

The dean provided an overview of OVC financial report for 2013-14 (May 1, 2013 - April 30, 2014) while Nykamp presented the year-end picture for the same period for the OVC Health Sciences Centre.

The DVDs are available to borrow from the Office of the Dean.

Renovations to the Companion Animal Hospital (Small Animal Clinic) continue with a temporary shift of the hospital entrance to the Animal Cancer Centre.

As Phase 2 of the renovations gets underway, all small animal clients will be routed through the Animal Cancer Centre entrance and all reception and billing services have shifted to there as well. Clients will be escorted from the cancer centre to the exam rooms via the Sunken Lounge area. Interior barriers will be constructed around the Sunken Lounge area to provide privacy to staff.

It is expected this change of entrance will occur the week of July 14.  Further information will be provided to hospital staff as soon as the date is confirmed.

The driveway will remain open and signage will be posted in the entrance and parking area to direct clients. There will be a 15-minute drop-off parking spot and four metered parking spots available at the front of the Animal Cancer Centre. Metered parking continues to be available in P64, adjacent to the Companion Animal Hospital. If clients anticipate they will need assistance to bring their pet into the hospital from this parking area, they are asked to please contact the Companion Animal Hospital and staff will assist them.

When completed, the renovations will include a new front entrance, lobby and reception area as well as five new exam rooms, a client comfort room, call centre, billing and discharge area, and donor walls.

Please check the Health Sciences Centre website at www.ovchsc.ca and click on News and Events for regular updates on the renovation.

The University of Guelph’s website and email services will be temporarily shut down at midnight on Friday, July 18th until 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, July 19th for maintenance.

Please note that during this time emergency service are open and available at the Ontario Veterinary College’s Health Sciences Centre.

To contact us during the shut down, please call the following numbers: Animal Cancer Clinic (519) 823-8830, Small Animal Clinic (519) 823-8830, Large Animal Clinic (519) 823-8840, Ruminant Field Services  (519) 836-3510.

The next few decades will include the emergence of a definable middle class the world over, with the majority of that growth in developing countries, said the president of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Rohinton Medhora.

In his keynote address, at the Global Development Symposium 2014: Critical Links between Human and Animal Health at the Ontario Veterinary College in May, Medhora pointed out that in most growth phases, inequality worsens.

With growth will come more demands on governments to manage that inequality, he added.

CIGI is a nonpartisan think tank located in Waterloo, Ontario.  Its research programs focus on the global economy, global security and politics, and international law.  

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight targets established by the UN in 2000 to mobilize critical development issues by 2015, are “the only place where everyone comes together to talk about the world they want to live in,” said Medhora.  But there is nothing in these goals about growing the pie, just about dividing it up more evenly, he added. There’s also nothing in the MDGs about security, transparency and openness, or about research and development.

On top of this no one is dealing with the Internet as a truly global resource. Increasingly, he pointed out, countries will shut themselves off from the Internet.  CIGI has a project looking at different models to bring some governance back to the Internet.

Also of critical importance, the world needs to take action on climate change. Some areas of the world are making progress on important issues such as hunger and women’s representation he said, but not making progress environmentally.

Watch Rohinton Medhora’s full presentation at GDS2014 below and learn more about the Global Development 2014 here.

OVC faculty and staff are invited to attend a community meeting focused on the Veterinary Clinical Education Program (VCEP) funding from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.

The meeting is scheduled for July 15 from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. in Room 1800 PAHL. The presentation will be led by Dr. Kerry Lissemore, OVC’s associate dean academic, and Rich Moccia, U of G’s associate vice-president strategic partnerships will also attend.

The format will allow plenty of time for questions.

Dr. John Prescott

When it comes to managing the impacts of antimicrobial use in animals and the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance, Canada could learn from its Olympic athletes, says an Ontario Veterinary College (OVC) professor.

Dr. John Prescott sees parallels between the issues surrounding antimicrobial resistance and the take-home message from a keynote address delivered a few years ago by cross-country skiing gold medalist Beckie Scott. At a 2011 conference on antimicrobial stewardship in Canadian agriculture and veterinary medicine, Scott said reaching your goals takes time and it takes continuous improvement and refinement of seemingly small details to perfect techniques.   

Continuous improvement is key in the ongoing issue of antibiotic resistance, said Prescott, who helped organize the 2011 conference and last week outlined how Canada is faring in this area during a presentation to the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association’s (CVMA) annual meeting in St. John’s, NL. The conference program included the 2014 Summit of Veterinary Leaders, a full day of talks devoted to the theme “Antimicrobial Stewardship: A New World Order.”

“We need to identify the problems, address the issues and move on, so that Canada can achieve a gold in this area,” said Prescott, who retired this spring after a distinguished 39-year career as a bacteriologist at OVC.

There are many areas where continuous improvements need to be made, said Prescott, including “how we use antibiotics, how we dose them, the diagnostic side of things, how we regulate them, who uses them, creating new antibiotics. There are dozens of things we can do to stabilize the resistance problem.”

The concept of stewardship is an important one, he added. “It’s the idea of taking responsibility for long-term management and care of something of enormous value.”

OVC is a leader in the field thanks to the work of scientists including Prescott and Drs. Scott McEwen, Patrick Boerlin and  Scott Weese. For many years, they have been involved in research into antibiotics and their use, the epidemiology and movement of resistant bacteria, understanding antibiotic use practices by veterinarians, and in the development of guidelines for practitioners and input into public policy.

McEwen chaired a 2002 national investigation into the impacts of antimicrobial use in animals and its relationship to antimicrobial resistance. The resulting report provided 38 recommendations to Health Canada to better protect the health and interests of Canadians in relation to antibiotic use in food animals.

One of those recommendations supported the development of a Canadian antimicrobial surveillance system. The Canadian Integrated Program for Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance (CIPARS) is coordinated by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), with the animal component located in the Laboratory for Foodborne Zoonoses (LFZ) in Guelph. It includes antimicrobial resistance and antimicrobial use components.  Part of the CIPARS surveillance program includes collecting retail and abattoir meat samples and comparing resistance in selected intestinal-origin bacteria to resistance in selected intestinal bacterial pathogens in Canadians.

There is a great synergy between CIPARS and the University of Guelph, and the CIPARS program has funded numerous graduate students at the OVC, says Prescott. “I think it’s been a great example of a federal government agency synergizing with a university on an important problem. I’m quite in awe of what CIPARS has achieved”.

Prescott co-chaired three national conferences on antimicrobial drug use in animals in Canada in 1999, 2005 and 2011, all of which have involved many faculty from OVC, as well as collaborators from PHAC, from industry, national farm organizations, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and consumers, among others. A subsequent committee (Ad-Hoc Committee for Antimicrobial Stewardship in Canadian Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine), including several OVC faculty, has continued to teleconference bi-monthly since 2011 to keep a national dialogue going.

Recently the group prioritized what needs to be done in this area, identifying 17 recommendations and ranking Canada’s work in this area against the World Health Organization, World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), Health Canada’s 2002 report and the proposed changes in food animal antibiotic use in the U.S. (Food and Drug Administration Guidance 213). The top nine recommendations relate to regulation, says Prescott.

“Overall, the group gave Canada a C- as a ranking, because we fall below international standards and the recommendations in the 2002 report to Health Canada. This means that we think that, overall, we have somewhere between an adequate and barely satisfactory understanding of the issues, and require somewhere between requiring improvement to marked improvement to meet modern standards”.  

While the European Union made changes to stop the development and movement of antibiotic resistance a long time ago, change has been slower here, says Prescott. However, Health Canada recently announced they will be developing options to strengthen veterinary oversight of antibiotic use in animals and removing the use of antibiotics as growth promoters, similar to measures that are being implemented in the U.S.

Resistant bacteria and resistance genes can move around easily, and improved stewardship of antibiotics in companion animals is equally, if not more, important as improved stewardship in food animals.

Changes need to happen at regulatory levels in Canada, adds Prescott, “but we need to have an integrated view of things.”  Stewardship is about far more than regulations — it has multiple dimensions. Stewardship is about a culture of continuous improvement in every aspect of the use of antibiotics, an effort as hard and focused as that involved in winning a gold in the Olympics. Ultimately, Prescott says, Canada needs to be on the podium.  

An OVC pathologist renowned for her efforts to improve the health and welfare of laboratory has been awarded the 2014 Canadian Veterinary Medical Association’s (CVMA) Humane Award.

Dr. Patricia Turner, Pathobiology, was presented the award at the CVMA’s annual conference held last week in St. John’s, N.L.

Dr. Patricia Turner

Turner is recognized nationally and internationally for her work to improve the lives of animals used in research, both by developing ways to reduce pain and stress and by improving training for veterinarians in laboratory animal medicine.

In addition to teaching and research, she as worked extensively with veterinary medicine associations devoted to laboratory animal medicine and welfare. She has played a key role in shaping polices that positively affect the lives of animals through her work on the Canadian Council on Animal Care, which oversees the standards for animal care in Canada, on the CVMA Animal Welfare Committee and on the University of Guelph’s Animal Care Committee.

She led the creation of the University of Guelph’s distance learning certificate program in laboratory animal medicine for veterinarians, which has been well-received outside of North America and offers opportunities for veterinarians to increase their knowledge base and skill set. 

Recently she collaborated with Dr. Kathryn Bayne, global director of the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International, on a new textbook titled Laboratory Animal Welfare, the first publication of its kind in North America. The book was nominated for a 2013 American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (Prose).

Turner, a faculty member at OVC since 2002, has received numerous awards for her contributions as a  teacher, mentor and researcher. She was the inaugural recipient in 2007 of the North American Animal Welfare Award, sponsored by Proctor & Gamble and the Humane Society of the United States. She has also received the Charles River Award for outstanding achievements in laboratory animal medicine in Canada in 2009 and the Charles River Canada Award for outstanding achievements in laboratory animal care in Canada in 2008. In 2011, she received the Young Alumnus Award from the OVC Alumni Association.

The University of Guelph will host leading experts in the field of immunology this week at the Avian Immunology Research Group Meeting.

The conference takes place in Rozanski Hall July 16 to 19.

“This is a highly interactive meeting where cutting-edge research in the general area of avian immunology is discussed,” said Dr. Shayan Sharif, Pathobiology, who heads up the U of G organizing committee for the conference.

“There will be a mixture of oral and poster presentations with ample opportunities to establish new collaborations and exchange ideas.”

An OVC bacteriologist, a clinical nutrition post-doc, and the OVC Health Sciences Centre’s clinical counsellor were in the news recently.

Dr. John Prescott, Pathobiology, was featured in a CBC News story about the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance and efforts to control the overuse of antibiotics in Canadian agriculture.

For more, see the story on the CBC website and watch the video.

Prescott was a featured speaker at last week’s Summit of Veterinary Leaders, part of the 2014 Canadian Veterinary Medical Association’s annual conference. This year’s theme was “Antimicrobial Stewardship: A New World Order.”

Dr. Jackie Parr, a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Clinical Studies, is featured on a new “webisode” of the online program Dog Park Tales.  In the program, Parr explains how to test your dog’s weight, how to prevent problems from starting, and what to do if it’s already out of control. Watch it here.

The powerful bond between people and their pets, and the profound grief felt by pet owners when their pet dies, are explored in the summer issue of Grand Magazine, a lifestyle publication focused on people and places in Waterloo Region.

OVC clinical counsellor Bojena Kelmendi is featured in the article titled “Letting Go of a Beloved Pet.”

Kelmendi, who is a registered social worker trained in bereavement and grief counselling, works with OVC clients who are dealing with a pet that is very ill or the loss of a pet. She also works with OVC veterinarians and students who are looking for guidance in helping their clients or who need support to deal with stress and anxiety.

Read the article here.