Summer Student Program
Westhills Equine Veterinary Services offers seasonal positions for veterinary students looking to gain experience, mentorship and exposure to all aspects of general equine practice
ABOUT WESTHILLS EVS
Westhills Equine Veterinary Services is a 5 doctor equine practice located 10 minutes west of Stony Plain, Alberta. We offer a variety of services including preventative medicine, dentistry, reproduction, sports medicine and emergency care. Our facility offers stocked treatment areas, a large, heated arena for lameness exams and exercising horses year round, numerous 24 hour monitored stalls for hospitalized patients, covered outdoor pens, a round pen and a complete lab with several in-house capabilities.
Our practice has a large sports medicine and lameness component and is well equipped with two portable digital radiographs, four digital ultrasounds, shockwave, Prostride, PRP, an endoscope and a gastroscope. Two of our veterinarians are also licensed in chiropractic and acupuncture and one of our RVTs is certified in massage therapy.
General equine, preventative medicine and 24/7 emergency services make up the remainder of our busy caseload. Our patients range from top level performance horses to backyard companions, which results in a very diverse caseload that helps students to identify their future goals and interests, and gain experience in all aspects of horse care and handling.
During breeding season we also have two full-time veterinarians that focus exclusively on reproduction. We artificially inseminate a large number of mares with fresh and frozen semen as well as perform embryo transfers. Stallion services such as collections, shipping semen, freezing semen and phantom training are also provided. In addition, we offer foaling out services including emergency dystocia and neonatal foal care.
Schedule and Duties
Summer student positions are available from May-September and are flexible based on school start and end dates. Students are rotated through different roles of the clinic including veterinary assisting, reproduction and in-hospital patients management and are also on a call rotation for experience in after-hours emergency care.
The veterinary assisting rotation is based around exeriencing the day to day appointments and cases involved with general equine practice, both in-clinic and ambulatory. The student will assist the veterinarian with handling horses, running diagnostic equipment, managing lab samples and other general clinic requirements.
The reproduction component consists of working alongside our reproduction veterinarians, handling reproduction patients, assisting with the management of our recipient mare herd, monitoring in-clinic foaling mares and assisting with neonatal foal care.
For the hospitalized patient management rotation, the primary focus is assisting with in-clinic patient treatments and care. Our hospital is very busy in the summertime and therefore includes great opportunity for experiencing case management of a wide variety. Any free time in between scheduled patients treatments or duties is used for assisting with in-clinic appointments or other required tasks around the clinic.
On call rotation is shared amongst all summer students and allows for experience in emergent cases.
APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS
- Letter of intent
- Resume
- Appropriate references
- Eligibility to operate a motor vehicle
Positions available for 5 students per year.
Please submit applications via email to:
office@westhillsevs.com