This past week, I have been privileged to participate in the 12th annual Veterinary Leadership Experience through the Veterinary Leadership Institute.  This week has been phenomenal.  The goal of the program is to allow veterinarians and veterinary students the opportunity to take a step back from everyday life to do some self reflection and to learn about leadership styles that may differ from their own.  The result is an transformative experience that allows you to step off the busy treadmill of life and look inside yourself, redefine who you are, and return back to your daily life with a new outlook and a new set of skills to revolutionize the world around you.

VLE takes place at Ross Point Baptist Camp in beautiful Post Falls, Idaho.  The scenery is absolutely beautiful and serves as the perfect backdrop for the transformations that take place within us as we reflect on ourselves and our leadership styles.  Led by John and Fay Batchelder, this great facility and staff work hard to provide an environment for growth, fun, and learning.  If you're considering a team-building experience or camp, you should definitely check out Ross Point.

It has been so incredible to be with a group of professionals and students who are committed to looking within themselves to see what they can do better to be a leader.  Everyone here was simply fantastic and I have made some friends that I will have for life.  We were divided into groups and I was fortunate to be placed in the wonderful Group 7 - Team Septapus.  With our wonderful facilitators, Glennon Mays and Fay Batchelder, we were unstoppable.  We even adopted Glennon's mustache as our team mascot and all the guys shaved their beards to be Stachetastic.  I learned so much from this group of people and I know I've got some lifelong friends here.


This experience has been incredible and has really changed the way I think about interacting with people. We spent a lot of time talking about our Meyer's Briggs preferences.  The MBTI is a test that assesses your preferences in situations and places you in a category of people with similar preferences.  And while some studies have shown that the boxes the test places you in aren't necessarily accurate, there is real power in understanding where you fall on each spectrum and how you can be more accomadating to people whose preferences differ from your own.  If you haven't taken the test you can take a version of it HERE.  People really do have different ways of viewing the world and this is just one way to be self-aware in your interactions with others.  As we talked about this in our small group, it was clear that these preferences really do matter to people and that we should take everybody's preferences into account when working in a group setting.

Every morning we'd meet to discuss important aspects of leadership - from understanding our MBTI preferences, to conflict resolution, self-assessment, and effective communication and listening, we covered just about every aspect in effective leadership.  It was amazing.  Dr. Betsy Charles showed us so many wonderful videos and took us through some amazing activities and I just wanted to share some of them.

One of my favorites is the concept of Lollipop Moments - profound moments of leadership we may not even be aware are going on.  Every single one of us has the potential to change the world for somebody else - we just have to be willing to try.  To learn more about what I'm talking about check out this TED Talk:

But the best part was definitely going shark diving!  We went with Marine Dynamics - a group of scientists that study Great White Sharks and use the money they make from cage diving to fund their studies.  It was great we were able to have such a cool experience and fund important research at the same time.


But mostly it was just pure awesome.  These sharks are HUGE!  I thought it would be scary, but it was just amazing the whole time.  Poor Caro got a little bit seasick, but once we were in the water with these incredible animals it was all better!

Linda had a GoPro with her and she got some incredible footage of our experience with the sharks!

It was finally our turn to work on the coolest animals out there.  We were ecstatic!


Our very first immobilization was on four Cape Buffalo bulls.  Cape Buffalo in South Africa harbor many of the diseases that could cripple domestic cattle production like foot and mouth disease, brucellosis, tuberculosis, and theileria. Our plan was to get them down and then to get the testing done as soon as possible.  But the buffalo had other plans.  Two of them fell into the watering hole while the drugs took effect.  That meant we had to run in and hold their heads up so they wouldn't drown.  Unfortunately, that also meant I slipped and fell into an acacia tree and got covered in thorns. Somehow with everything going on, we still managed to get the testing done and wake them up in a decent amount of time.  The thorn story is a pretty funny one and I actually won best submission to the Student American Veterinary Medical Association's publication The Vet Gazette for it so you should go read it and laugh by clicking here.



Our next immobilization was on with zebras.  We needed to relocate two female zebras from Amakhala to a nearby game ranch.  So we set out looking for them and found a herd with some red hardebeest.  It didn't take long for us to dart the first one.  But when we got to her, it turned out she was lactating.  We didn't see a foal with her when we darted her so we did a quick preg check.  Turns out she had a baby somewhere out there so we woke her up and went back to lookin.  We finally got our two ladies down and loaded into the truck for them to head to their new homes.  We definitely learned a few things with these immobilizations - tracking a zebra running through a herd of stripes is difficult and even though Mike is big he can't be the only person on one side of the stretcher to lift the zebra into the truck.




Our next immobilization was with Cape Buffalo again, but this time with seven cows and a young calf.  These girls had already had their testing done, so they were on their way to their new home. We split up into several groups so we could get it done quickly.  And just like the zebras, we had to move them manually and in case you are wondering, yes, Cape Buffalo are very heavy.




Our next immobilization was a bitter-sweet one.  We set out to capture six nyala bulls for translocation.  But when we went to move the animals to one side of the boma (this one was ginormous), one of the females spooked and jumped into the fence and cut herself pretty good.  After getting the males loaded (which was so cool - these animals are awesome), we found the female and darted her so we could get a look at her wounds.  They were pretty extensive so Dr. Brothers and Dr. Blue got to work suturing her up.  Unfortunately she was under just a bit too long, and didn't come out of the anesthesia.  Nyala are very sensitive animals and we just weren't fast enough.  But it was amazing seeing Dr. Brothers do all he could to resuscitate her.



Our next immobilization was with Black Rhinos!  Everything we had been doing was leading up to this moment.  Black Rhinos are extremely endangered, and the preserve we worked on is the source of approximately a third of the total population of these amazing animals.  Our goal was to immobilize two mothers and their calves to notch the calves ears so they could be easily identified by rangers on their anti-poaching rounds.  We also placed microchips in the horns and the nuchal humps of the animals.  If any of those animals were to be poached, their horns could be traced to the poaching incident so the poachers could be charged with poaching and not just possession of a horn.

The rhinos were huge.  One of the babies went down in an acacia tree (of course) and we had to lift him out.  At just a year old he felt nearly as heavy as some of the cape buffalo cows.  The rhinos were also much softer than the White Rhinos at Hogle Zoo but they're skin was just as tough.  You had to full on whack that needle in there to give them their injections.


When we woke them up, one of the mothers charged us.  Her name is Julia and apparently she doesn't like cars so everybody who works there wasn't surprised but we sure were!
After we finished working on these amazing rhinos, there was such a feeling of gratitude.  Here we were working on one of the most endangered and protected animals in Africa.  It was wonderful to know that our course fees funded the great work we did there that day.

But the day wasn't over yet!  We went and helped examine a Cape Buffalo cow who had recently aborted and now had a uterine infection.  And then...we practiced darting again.  But this time we were in helicopters and our target was Dr. Brothers' truck!  Best day EVER!



Our next immobilization was on a black wildebeest.  We needed to get two caught up for translocation.  That is easier said then done.  In order to dart an animal, you need to get within 30 meters of that animal so wind won't blow your dart off course.  But every time we would get within 35 meter, the herd would run off.  It took us a couple hours to get one, and we didn't get the second before the sun set.  But these animals are cool.  They've got these weird frilly nose tufts, a mane and a tail like a horse, and some cool looking horns.  They're definitely way cooler looking than the blue wildebeest that are much more common.



Our last immobilization was with giraffe.  And as far as the way it is done, this one definitely is the coolest.  We needed a bull and two cows to be relocated to another park.  We would get close to the giraffes, Dr. Brothers would dart them, and then if they took too long to go down, they would need to be tripped.  Giraffes are extremely sensitive to the anesthetics we use and if they are not reversed fast enough, they can die from them.  So it is important to get them on the ground and restrained as fast as possible to reverse them.

Once they are down, a group of five or so lie on the giraffe's neck, a blindfold and harness are put on, and cotton is stuffed in the giraffes ears.  Then the animal is reversed.  After that, you place ropes around the giraffe's legs.  Once those are in place, everyone jumps back and the giraffe gets to its feet.  From there you use the ropes around its legs to push and guide it into the trailer.  It was the coolest thing ever and the perfect end to the perfect trip.

This was the experience of a lifetime!  I was fortunate enough to spend a month in the amazing country of South Africa on a Conservation Medicine Study Abroad.

Elephant on Patrol

We spent a day in London on our way over and it was incredible.  We got a behind the scenes tour of the London Zoo by one of the veterinarians.  We got to see the hospital and feed some adorable baby meerkats who were staying there.  The Zoological Society of London seems like an awesome organization to work for.  They have three different areas veterinarians can work in - the London Zoo, the Whipsnade Zoo, and in their Conservation Department doing cool field work.

Then we got to go around the zoo and just enjoy ourselves.  The London Zoo was the first zoo to abbreviate zoological gardens to the now common 'zoo' and it was so fun to see modern exhibits in old historical buildings.  Plus we got to see where the Harry Potter snake scene was filmed so that was awesome!
We also got to spend some time going around London before having to leave the next night for Africa.  London was beautiful.  It was so amazing to see the place I have studied in so many history classes.  Again the juxtaposition of modern with historical structures was just incredible.  The London Eye and our tour on top of a double deck bus were definitely my favorite parts.  It also happened to be the Opening of Parliament so we got to see the Queen drive by in her carriage and snap a few photos of her.  It felt very touristy but it was great.
We finally arrived in Africa and you could feel the excitement in the air.  This is what we had come for.  Dr. Peter Brothers from Brothers Safari's came to pick us up with my man Winston. He took us to stay at the beautiful Safari Lodge on the Amakhala Game Reserve.  The story behind Amakhala is pretty cool.  The land originally belonged to seven ranching families who decided that instead of cattle ranching, they would combine their land and work together to help preserve South Africa's beautiful game species.  For each 50 hectares a family contributed, they would be allowed to put one bed in their lodge so that each family's potential for tourists would correspond to what they gave.  The reserve is beautiful and it is staffed by some incredible people.

We spent the first few days going on game drives and studying.  The game drives were incredible. There are no words for seeing your favorite animals out in the wild.  It's breathtaking.  And our studies were also incredible.  We were taught primarily by Dr. Brothers but we were also fortunate enough to have Dr. Peter Buss from Kruger National Park come down to teach us Immobilization Pharmacology.  We even got to practice darting! These men are my heroes and I hope to be like them someday.
We also got the chance to go on a game drive on the beautiful Addo Elephant National Park.  The history behind this park is also pretty cool.  The area around Addo is full of citrus trees, so naturally Elephants would help themselves to their fruit.  But in the 1930's, people were not too fond of that. So they organized a hunt and killed all the elephants in the area except for 24.  Thankfully at that point, they stopped the slaughter and protected the area that would become Addo.  Because of the inbreeding that occurred there, the female elephants of Addo stopped growing tusks.  To combat this, SAN Parks brought in some big bulls from Kruger to reintroduce lost genes and now half the cows are sporting tusks.  This place was beautiful and it was so much fun to see so many elephants in one place.
After Addo we also visited the Born Free Foundation at the Shamwari Game Reserve.  The goal of Born Free is to rescue animals from bad zoos and circuses and release them back to the wild.  Some of these animals are not releasable so they stay at the facilities Born Free manages.  It was cool to see the animals, but I felt that in some of the cases with bad medical conditions, money spent on the conservation of their wild cousins would probably have a better effect.  But it was still cool for sure.
One of my favorite excursions was to Port Elizabeth where we got to go out on Algoa Bay with a group of scientists studying the endangered African Penguin.  Two of them were going to be staying on St. Croix Island for two weeks to study the largest rookery of these penguins and the effects the fishing industry on their breeding.  The ride over was magnificent.  We saw whales and dolphins and all sorts of cool birds.  St. Croix was beautiful. Pods of dolphins swam in its breaking waves and so many penguins hopped all around its rocks.  Getting the gear off the boat was a little tricky with the waves and the sharp rocks, but our captain managed to accomplish it.  When we drove off, it was impressive to me just how dedicated scientists are.  Those two were left on an island with only what they brought, planning on living in the little hut the team built years ago.
After a week or so learning to identify the various game species, learning about their biology, and learning about the pharmacology and techniques it takes to immobilize them, we were ready for our first immobilization, but you'll have to stay tuned for that!

All right guys.  I know that was a while.  But a whole lot went down since I last wrote last year.  That whole getting unengaged thing can be kind of a bummer.  So naturally I didn't really feel like writing and as a result, this place has been LAME.  Sorry about that.  Thankfully, lots of REALLY COOL EXCITING things have happened to me since then.  And I'm just going to have to catch you guys up on that as we go along.  So get ready. Here it comes.

First off, I graduated from BYU with Honors in Biology.  That was a long time comin, but I loved my time there and made some really great friends that will stick with me for a long time.

Secondly, this past summer I was hired as one of this year's Eco-Explorers at Utah's Hogle Zoo!  And I LOVED it!  There's something amazing about standing next to an adult African elephant or looking into the burning eyes of an Amur tiger that just gets your juices flowing.  As an Eco-Explorer, I had some amazing experiences with some of the coolest animals in the world.  And what was even cooler is that I got to share them with people and help them to see why these animals are important and what we can all do to help save them.  It was pretty awesome.  But since each of these experiences deserve their own post, they're gonna be coming interspersed with other posts from the other awesome life event that has happened since then - VET SCHOOL!

That's right.  I'm a first year veterinary student at the one and only Texas A&M University's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.  It's incredible.  Now that I'm here, living the dream, I can tell you that all those classes I took at BYU to fulfill every prerequisite of every veterinary school in the United States have been well worth it - and that they have truly pointed me towards my calling in life.  I love animals.  I love medicine.  This place is perfect.

I also got into North Carolina State University, University of Wisconsin, and the University of Illinois.  But when I came here for my interview, I felt this is where I was supposed to go.  And now that I'm here, I can safely say that it pays to listen to the Spirit when He's prompting you!  God knows what He's doing and I'm grateful for my time here, what I've learned so far, and the friends that I've made.

So stay tuned.  It only gets better from here.

Panama City

I recently got back from another trip to Panama.  It was amazing.  I haven't uploaded any pictures from my camera yet or taken Spencer's, so I don't want to talk about what we were doing so much until I can show you what we did, but I wanted to write about some of the little things this trip got me thinking about.

This trip kind of reminded me of my mission.  The last one did too.  Here I was in a foreign country with a metropolitan city next to the ocean (sound familiar?) trying to understand (I wouldn't say learn because that sounds like too active of a verb) another language surrounded by some amazing people.  It was just me and Spencer and it sort of felt like a companionship.  He really is an awesome guy.

I think the moment the reminiscence hit me the hardest was in our collection in David, Panama.  Spencer went to talk to a man who owned the land that one of the tributaries we wanted to work in ran through.  The owner came out of his house and just started to talk with us.  He was in his sixties or seventies, and he was just the most amiable little guy I ever met.  He told Spencer all sorts of stories - about how a dinosaur had been discovered in Panama, how it was dug up, how the Americans stole it and put it in one of their museums, and all that he's been doing to get it back where it belongs.  And though I obviously didn't catch any of that until Spencer told me, I just couldn't help but be impressed by the goodness of this man.

Immediately I thought of all the people I taught on my mission, all the great members I became friends with, my companions, the other great missionaries I served with, and of course my great Mission President.  I thought of the wonderful people of Singapore and Malaysia.  I thought about what it feels like to just give yourself completely to serving a group of people.

It was some nice thinking. 

But it wasn't all retrospective.  These trips have taught me a lot about science, about moving forward and progressing.  The knowledge of evolution the members of my lab possess is incredible.  And that knowledge is growing every day.  Right now as you read this, people all across the world are making discoveries. But it's not just science that's changing.  Novels are being written, movies are being filmed, speeches are being given, and prayers are being answered.  One of my professors (my awesome Evolutionary Biology professor Byron Adams if you'd like to know) showed us a study that shows that the entirety of human knowledge doubles every nine years.  DOUBLES! Can you imagine that?!  That notion of progress is what keeps me going.  I wrote in the talk I gave in church a while ago that stagnation is uncomfortable.  But thankfully progression, discovery, and edification is so exhilarating.

Every night, Spencer talked with his wife and little baby through video chat, and it gave me a little glimpse of what's ahead and complete dedication to another amazing enterprise - family.  It looked amazing.  My nostalgic contemplations reminded me of giving myself completely to a cause and as I looked forward to what's to come hopefully within the next few years down the road it was clear that life is full of so many good ones.

Morrie Shwartz said, “So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”

Let's find the right things and give them our all.

So in June, I got to spend 10 days in the beautiful country of Panama to collect fish for work!  We (meaning me, Ph.D. student Spencer Ingley, and M.S. student Preston Johnson) went down there to collect these little guys:

Brachyrhaphis episcopi

Brachyrhaphis roseni

Brachyrhaphis terrabensis

Now I realize you might not really care, but I'm going to tell you why anyway.  These fish live in the small streams of Panama and Costa Rica with some populations up high in the mountain streams away from predators and others down near the larger rivers that are full of predators like this:

Cichlid

As a result, the two populations have evolved quite differently.  It is suspected that B. terrabensis (low predation) and B. roseni (high predation) were once the same species, but separated due to the different evolutionary pressures they faced.  It also seems that B. episcopi is going through the same thing right now as the montane and lowland populations are going through similar changes.  So we went down to collect several killed populations for genetic and life history analysis and a few live populations for behavioral studies.

So in my head, I pictured us going through lots of beautiful jungle, but totally expected the place to be all gross and dingy, so you can imagine my surprise when this was the city I landed in.

Panama City

Every morning we got up, and drove into the jungle to look for small streams.  Our first day we found this beautiful resort with some amazing waterfalls, great hikings areas, and even a rope swing.  We had a great time, but unfortunately the awesomeness of the waterfalls made it impossible for the little fishies to swim up the streams.  So after some great pics, fun on the rope swing, and a few videos we had to move on.



Later that night, we found a site with tons of B. episcopi in the mountains and the roads were crazy but it was super pretty.

The next day we met up with Dr. Johnson and one of his former students and checked out the western part of Panama (B. terrabensis & B. roseni territory).  We found some pretty mountain streams and found lots of terrabensis.



That evening we stayed in this little town in the very tops of the mountains near the Costa Rican border.  Dr. Johnson had been commenting on the quality of the roads in Panama when all the sudden we turned onto this super rough, bumpy road he said, "Now this is like the roads in Costa Rica".  We found this little shop and it turned out we were in Costa Rica!  No passport stamp though...


The next morning we went down this super steep hill.  We thought we might tumble down the mountain but we made it.  It's crazy to think that there were motorbikes going up this thing!


At the bottom we crossed the first of many iffy-looking bridges, and found this beautiful stream with a decent amount of B. roseni.  It was definitely one of the most beautiful places we found roseni.  A lot of the other places were streams running through neighborhoods that were either super muddy or super trashy.


After this we split, cause Jerry and his friend had to catch their plane back.  At this point we had both finding the proper stream sites and the seining down so we were pretty much pros.  We spent the remainder of the day catching roseni and experienced our first Panama rain.  We were SOAKED.  And we were tired.  Our past nights of sleeping consisted of poor air conditioning, hard beds, and rooms like this:


So that night, we went for this.  It was much nicer :)

Gran Hotel Nacional

We spent the next several days getting a whole ton of fish.  And getting wet.  And the wetter we got, the more stinky our car got.  It was bad.  Rrrrrreal bad.  And the more streams we waded through, the more destroyed my shoes got.  But eventually we had enough dead fish and we started on our live fish collection.  The roseni site had tons of them, but we had to spend a long time finding a good stream that fed the same river up in the mountains to find a matching terrabensis site.  Finally we found one.  We got a lot of fish, and most importantly, we found Big Bertha.  This picture has two Brachyrhaphis terrabensis, one of them is normal size and the other one is Bertha.  She's great.

Big Bertha and Friend

By this time we were tired, wet, smelly, and now we had an eight hour drive ahead of us back to Panama City with 200 live fish in the back to worry about.  Needless to say it wasn't our happiest moment.  That drive lasted FOREVER.  But as we neared our destination, our handy GPS told us we were near the Ocean.  So we took what would be the BEST DETOUR EVER because we found this beautiful beach.  Feel jealous. Cause no one else was there.  We had the whole beach just to ourselves!






We got back to Panama City and headed to STRI (the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute - yes, we really are that cool) where we got our fishies comfortably situated.  We checked out the research areas too, and I have to say, this would not be a bad office view!




We met up with one of the scientists there and headed out to a national park to collect some episcopi. It was really pretty.  This was just the road to get to the collection sites!


But it wasn't all work.  We did get to see some pretty cool things.  And I would hate it if Aunt Diane didn't get to see some pictures of the Panama Canal.  We drove over it a couple times and there were some sweet bridges.  We were on the Pacific side of the canal, so we didn't see the locks but I found a picture of them anyway!

Gatun Locks

Our last day in Panama we spent getting stuff ready to leave, and then we went to the Temple.  It was beautiful.  The session was in Spanish so I had to wear one of the headsets, but it was great.  It was packed and I was happy to see so many in attendance on a Wednesday evening.  We had met the Temple President and some other people at church earlier and it was fun to see some of them again.





We stayed at the Temple Hotel.  It was super nice and only $5 a night.  The only requirement was to attend the temple each day.  Sounds like a great deal to me. 






The next morning we took care of all our stuff, got it ready to ship home, and got someone at STRI to take care of our fish until we get the permits to export everything.  It was a really fun trip.  But ten days hiking through streams really killed my shoes...


Spencer had a couple problems speeding...

Talked his way out...

...bribed his way out with this one.

And by the end we were all looking like mountain men.

Preston

(Me)

Spencer

But these two guys are great.  We had a lot of fun together.  And we got to see some great things.  Like this.  Why don't we have signs like this?!





Or Jesus Buses?




Or fearsome dragon horses?





We may never have the answers to those questions, but Panama is a great place.  It was fun to see the beautiful places the fish in my lab come from, and to learn a ton.  And hopefully soon, I'll get to go another great collecting trip!