Working as a veterinarian is no simple job, nor is the amount of schooling involved on the path to this career. Giving the public a peek into the lives of these students and professionals, a new Animal Planet docu-series, “Life at Vet U,” was filmed at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine and features Medford resident Lindsay Gallagher.
“Animal Planet was always my favorite channel as a kid, and watching shows like Emergency Vets, Victoria Stillwell’s It’s Me or the Dog and Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter influenced my life,” Gallagher said.
Additionally featuring many four-legged patients and their owners as the stars, this series began filming in February and followed a half-dozen fourth-year veterinary students, all who have since graduated, on their rounds through May at Penn’s Ryan Hospital in West Philadelphia and its New Bolton Center hospital in Kennett Square in Chester County. The show first premiered on Saturday, Oct. 1, at 10 p.m.
“I got to watch the first episode at the premiere party at Penn Vet, where I got to share the experience with my mom and sister and many members of my Penn family,” said Gallagher, who received her bachelor’s of science degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. “Through this experience, I gained a deeper understanding of myself. I was given an incredible opportunity to do a lot of good, and I hope that I can keep that ball rolling even after the last episode has aired.”
Although the cases she was given and things she learned while participating in the show are now strongly ingrained in her memory, participation also had its challenges. While filming, tasks such as putting on and taking off microphones, communicating with the producers and the film crew about cases and doing what she calls “on-the-fly interviews,” where a student or a clinician is filmed talking about a case, added to Gallagher’s already busy fourth year.
“Getting used to what it’s like to film a show was a challenge in the beginning,” Gallagher said. “You have to be conscious of things like labels on name brand items that would have to be blurred out, not hanging the stethoscope around your neck where it would hit the microphone and trying to verbalized what you were doing or thinking so that it would make sense to people watching.”
While she had previously been unfamiliar with these particular elements of film production, she was familiar with the veterinary work the feature entailed. Gallagher knew veterinary science was her calling since she was in undergrad studying biology with the intention of working on conservation of wild species and habitats. She admits that much of her love of veterinary medicine and companion animals stems from a summer she volunteered at a South Jersey animal shelter, in combination with her time spent in the rural farmland and forest of Medford.
“Growing up where I did in Medford meant that for my entire life I have been surrounded by animals — cats and dogs, a few farm animals at my house, my grandfather’s beef cattle farm that I visited frequently and a wide variety of wildlife species,” she said.
Gallagher is working as a small animal private practice intern at Red Bank Veterinary Hospital in Tinton Falls. A rotating business internship, she spends much of her time practicing medicine, but also on business and management. It is the only internship of its type, and there was only one spot available, so she considers it a great accomplishment.
“I have a lot of goals, but they can all be summed up into the overarching goal of changing the world,” Gallagher said. “I want to pursue a specialty in veterinary behavior and through that bring more quality information to the general public to help them better understand and manage pet behavioral issues.”
