The people and the animals behind vet school

It’s one of the most famous veterinary schools in the world, thanks to the antics of Trude Mostue and Steve Leonard in the 1996 BBC television series Vet School.

20 years on and the school, based at Bristol University’s Langford campus, is still leading the way, training the next generation of vets and pioneering research which has the potential to help both animals and humans.

We go behind the scenes to meet some of the people at the cutting edge of animal science.

Dr Kate Allen, senior lecturer in equine sports medicine

Dr Kate Allen helps to look after some of the country’s most talented and pampered racehorses.

“I’d ridden as a child and still ride and compete myself so I was very interested in the horse as an athlete and sports side of thing. A lot of my work now is in race horses…the horse as an athlete as opposed to sick horse – and that is what is really exciting.

“None of the horse I see are sick – I am looking for more subclinical things, low-grade niggles which may be just enough to stop them performing to their absolute ability. We’ve had horses come in who have gone on to win some of the big races – it’s very exciting!” 

Dr Christine Whiting, research support officer and Lou Mitchard, clinical research nurse

Christine Whiting 

“I support and facilitate research – helping people to access facilities in Bristol, explaining what is available, advising on the welfare side of things and making sure people know the full spectrum of what they can do before they start a research project. We have lots of research projects going on – from studies looking at parasites in African farm animals and to diseases which affect humans, such a chlamydia.

“In January the university hosted an international conference on sustainable farm animal production. People came from 40 countries for the conference and I was one of the key people to organise it. We had some high-level key note speakers which was really good for Bristol and put it on the map for global food security.” 

Lou Mitchard

“I’m a veterinary nurse and worked in practise before I saw a job advertised here. I’m now doing a new role – use my veterinary nurse training to support the research projects. I helped one student who was doing a study of dogs. I had to go round the dogs we had on site every morning to find ones which fitted the study criteria, liaise with the owners and help when the dogs went on the treadmill to be studied. 

“We’ve also done a research project with the RSPCA to study rabbit hut sizes. We measured how stressed the rabbits were in different circumstances. The study went back to the RSPCA and into its campaign work.” 

Professor Jo Price, head of the veterinary college

Professor Price is not only the head of the vet school but she is also one of its most distinguished alumni.

“My job is to shape the direction and make things happen. The core business at Langford is the vet school – it’s the reason Langford exists. For the first three years veterinary students are in Bristol. For the last two years they move here to Langford. We have a farm, abattoir and veterinary clinics and hospitals – we have to teach vet students to be clinicians and students learn in a real life veterinary situation.

“It’s a bit of a myth now that vet school is the hardest academic subject to get into. We need people who can problem solve, think on their feet and be good communicators. I graduated from Bristol in 1983. Some things have changed dramatically (80 to 90per cent of graduates are now female) but other things haven’t changed at all – vets are still vets.” 

Dr Jo Murrell, reader in veterinary anaesthesia

“I do 30 to 40 per cent clinic work and the rest of the time I spend in research and teaching. I became interested in anaesthesia in my final year at college – I don’t know why but I decide it was what I wanted to do. There are drugs that work better on some species than others and we used different techniques for different species.Obviously the challenges of anaesthetising a horse are different to anaesthetising a dog or a cat. 

“If you anaesthetising a horse they are induced in a padded box so they can’t hurt themselves – for small animals they can recover in a normal cage. Anaesthetising cats is challenging. They are much smaller than dogs and it’s difficult to assess pain in cats. There are lots of technical challenges associated with them.”

Jacob Neeves, student 

Being a vet student is not all about sticking your arms up a cow’s bottom – Jacob Neeves has his sights set on a career in the laboratory rather than a farm.

“I’m currently in my fourth year and I wanted to study veterinary science from I was very young. When I was 15 I spent a year working every Saturday morning at a small animal practise and I spent some times on farms. It was one part observation, one part filling the criteria of getting in vet schools which require many, many weeks of work experience. 

“As I’ve gone through the course I’ve found that I am definitely more inclined to look at things from a theoretical point of view and that is my end goal. The facilities here are brilliant and Bristol is fantastic city to study in. As a student Langford is very different – you go into a rural habitat but it’s still really enjoyable.”

Read more: Behind the scenes at Bristol Zoo