The Rocky Mountain Collegian

April 28th, 2007

CSU grads featured on Animal Planet

Editor’s Note: We apologize to fans & readers for not getting this up sooner. We had some technical difficulties (we lost it) but they have been fixed (we found it). Sorry Everyone! 

OK, I think it is understood that Colorado isn’t exactly a hot spot for television and film. You wouldn’t even believe how excited I got when I saw a shot of Denver’s Ogden Theater in the film “About Schmidt” (as well as that 7-Eleven across the street from the venue…you know, the place for post-show Slurpees).

But there have been a few spaces carved into the world of entertainment for our state to be a part of. “E-Vet Interns” is a series on Animal Planet that features six doctors fresh out of vet school, and a seventh doctor participating in a surgical internship, who are working with an experienced veterinary team at Alameda East Animal Hospital for a year (it is located in the general vicinity of Denver).

According to Animal Planet and the Alameda Animal Hospital Web sites, a couple of the doctors are CSU graduates (photos courtesy of Animal.Discovery.com):

• Dr. Michelle Nanfelt is graduate of CSU (she is originally from New York) and is participating in the surgical internship. (Photo: Dr. Nanfelt)
• Dr. David Gall, a former therapist, returned to school at CSU to earn his veterinary degree in 2002 and pursued his interest in radiology.

Who else thinks this is awesome?

On a more personal note, this totally blew my mind…I was watching an episode the other night (”The Specialist’s Edge”) in which staff surgeon Ranier Ko taught Dr. David Gall an important surgical technique on Benny, a dog who (this is hard to even type let alone think about), after recently being neutered, developed a severe hematoma mass in his — well, you know…nether region. (Good news, they got it taken care of, and now the poor dog can actually sit down again.)

Although disturbing, that’s not the part that blew my mind. The woman who brought in the dog had her niece with her. As soon as this little girl’s face came onto the screen, I immediately recognized her from the children’s art center I used to work at in Loveland; later remembered she was the daughter of one of my elementary school teachers. Totally weird…

Anyway…Benny’s case is exactly the kind of thing you should expect to see in this series. The doctors deal with a wide variety of issues and animals, from dogs, cats and guinea pigs, to snakes and elephants (one lucky doctor learned how to take a fluid sample from an elephant’s trunk at the Denver Zoo; and yes, it was pretty much as gross as it sounds).

While the show actually premiered its first seven episodes in January and February, they are currently playing reruns on Animal Planet.

Check it out Monday nights at 7 and 7:30 p.m. (and again, look out for sporadic reruns).

Hooray for Rams — representing on Animal Planet! Woo hoo!

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 28th, 2007 at 6:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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