DR. CHRISTINE MILLER'S BACKGROUND
"I am an animal person and I have always been interested in animals. Zoos always appealed to me. They have a variety of animals, and I find the natural history and the behavior of animals fascinating. As opposed to domestic animals, wild animals are a little more pure, a little more challenging, a little more varied. If I hadn't gotten into vet school, I probably still would have pursued some other avenue of zoo work or work with wildlife. I wanted to be a vet all my life. I am interested in science and getting a medical background seemed like a reasonable thing to do. I like figuring out puzzles and solving things, and, of course, being of some help to the animals, too.
"I attended Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, as an undergraduate, then went on to vet school at Cornell as well, graduating there in 1985.
"After I graduated, I did two more years in pathology training. One of those years I did at Cornell, the other in Melbourne, Australia. I chose pathology specifically because I wanted the back-ground, not because I was interested in pursuing a career in pathology. There is only a limited amount of knowledge about the species we keep. The field is growing every day, of course, but to work with individuals animals, I felt it was important to know everything about them, including why they died and how they were made. I found that a pathology background would be useful, not only because I can examine the animals I treat and learn more about them when they die so that information isn't wasted, but because that kind of background lets you know more about what is normal in anatomy and surgery.
"When I got back from Australia I taught at Cornell for a year. From there I needed to get back into clinical medicine, so I did an internship at Colorado State University with a combination exotic animal and small animal medicine and surgery. In addition to the usual pets, I worked with exotic pets such as turtles, guinea pigs, ferrets, rabbits. I also worked in wildlife rehabilitation, mostly with birds of prey.
"After I finished my internship I was hired at Indianapolis Zoo as an associate veterinarian to help a friend of mine. Before I actually got started, she quit, so I ended up being the only vet there. But it was considered a temporary position for the year I worked there, and when I learned about the position opening here in Miami through a friend who used to work here, I applied. The job was also advertised through the American Association of Zoo Veterinarians, and you have to be active in that if you want to know what's going on. They have a newsletter and conferences and everyone talks to everyone else. We pick up the phone and call a colleague and say, 'Look, I've got a bear that's doing this weird thing. Have you ever seen it before?' And while you are talking to someone about those kinds of things, you also learn what the scoop is, where the jobs are opening up. I went through the usual process, sending in a resume, and then I flew here for an interview. It's just like applying for a job in any field. You need your letters of recommendation, and because this is a county job, you take your drug testing and your blood tests and go through all the paperwork. The whole process was speeded up, though. It took only about a month because they really needed to get someone on board here quickly. The vet had already left before they advertised the position officially."
A TYPICAL DAY
"I come to work at 7:30 A.M. and open up the hospital and make sure all the animals in quarantine are doing well. Unfortunately, because we are understaffed, two days a week I start cleaning and feeding all the animals. If not, I start working on the plans for the day. If I'm doing an immobilization procedure for an animal that will be transported or if I need to change bandages or whatever, I do that first. At 9:00 I greet the keepers in the hay barn and find out if anything happened overnight. We work through all the animals that need to be seen, I do the paperwork, grab some lunch, return phone calls.
"I run into every situation imaginable with the animals. I deal with trauma caused by a cage mate or trauma from something the animals did to themselves because they got spooked and ran into a wall. Or maybe a visitor threw something at them. We run into all sorts of diseases. Babies get everything from pneumonia to mal-formations. The old animals get diseases like cancer or heart, liver, or kidney failure, and in between they get infections or abscesses. You name it, if it goes wrong, I treat it. There is nothing different between animals and people except for some of the politics of the situation. Animals aren't going to talk back to me or sue me for malpractice. But they can try to refuse treatment, obviously.
"I work with everything from little lizards that weigh just a few grams to elephants and rhinos and tigers and bears. The keepers who take care of the animals assist me when I am out in the field. The majority of my work is done in the zoo, not in the hospital. For example, if we have a lion with a toothache, we wouldn't bring him into the hospital. We have special facilities meant to handle those animals. We have a hallway that the animals traverse as they leave their cages and go out to the exhibit for the day. In that hallway we have an area that we can close doors on that shuts it down into a small room. The back wall of that hallway is built so that it can be pulled tight against the front wall. We call that a squeeze cage. The animal is brought into this area and positioned so he can't really move around a lot. Then I can give him a shot or take a blood sample through the bars of that hallway. If I have to do something in their mouth or if I have to take an x-ray, then I would tranquilize them. But for a blood sample or vaccination it isn't necessary. It's over in a few minutes and they're out the door."
THE UPSIDES AND DOWNSIDES
"What I enjoy most in my work is the challenge of diagnosing cases or figuring out how to treat an animal when the animal doesn't want to be treated. Also, the same holds true for a unique animal that requires my improvisational skills in order to come up with a method of dealing with it. I like almost all the animals and I like the variety, but my favorite is working with the babies. Everybody likes working with babies. It can be such a heartbreak, though. You get so attached to them. If they are sick and you are trying to pull them through, you feed all your emotions into them, but they can die anyway. But at the same time, if things go right and you're able to save them, it can be the most rewarding experience. You just feel wonderful.
"Other downsides are the politics, the budgeting, the paperwork drudgery, the long hours. A lot of the times you don't mind the long hours, but there are times when you've just gotten home and you want to relax or go see a movie, and then you get called and you have to come back in.
"There are injuries to contend with, too, in this business. I think that any vet who works with animals is going to face a major injury in his or her life. If you work with animals everyday, sooner or later you're going to get hurt. If you work with zoo animals, your chances of being seriously injured are much higher. Or if you work with horses. You might work with 70,000 horses over the years and they are all wonderful. But there's always that one that can get away from you and nail you with a foot. We all take precautions and we're all careful in our jobs, but you run the risk when you work with animals that are capable of killing people.
I've had a partial amputation of my thumb from a chimpanzee. It wasn't a life-threatening injury, but it was significant just the same. People are really wrong when they think of chimps as being friendly animals. Chimps can be incredibly aggressive. They are very close to people behaviorally in many ways. They can be jealous, aggressive, nasty, cranky. And we don't put them in a situation where they are going to like veterinarians. When I show up, there's usually some pain or discomfort involved for them. They associate me with a shot, not as someone who really cares. They want to bite me and spit at me and throw feces at me. No matter what my intentions are, they don't want me around."
