The good thing about teaching is witnessing light bulb moments when students understand something. The bad thing about teaching is when they catch you doing something you told them not to do, said Paul Schiltz, staff veterinarian at William Woods University.
"I always tell them I don't want to see a needle cap in their mouth," he said, adding he was once called out for doing that exact thing. "But when you see that confidence grow in their own ability to determine (a diagnosis) "
Schiltz stood outside the university's indoor arena Wednesday afternoon holding one end of a leather lead line. At the other end was a Morgan gelding, "Tater" (not his registered name), who was in thrall, chomping grass and swishing his tail at flies. Tater's right front foot was wrapped in vet wrap and silver duct tape, protecting the hoof after a surgery to remove a benign tumor from the inside of his hoof wall.
"It will take eight more months or so to heal, " Schiltz said. "It took three veterinarians, two farriers and eight students to do that surgery."
The surgery was in May, and Schiltz was part of the surgical team.
"It takes nine months to a year to grow an entirely new hoof," he added. "He's an incredibly useful horse, and we're willing to put the time in."
Schiltz joined the staff at William Woods University in August. He's in charge of all the university's horses.
"We have 157 stalls on campus, so there's 157 horses on campus," he said, adding more are squirreled away at other sites owned by the college or leased out for the summer.
During the school year, the horse population can go up to 200. Schiltz said his job is to take care of their needs and also teach courses.
"I'm originally from the Chicago area," he said, adding he attended Loyola University-Chicago and then the University of Illinois-Champaign. After school, he and his wife moved 2,400 miles to western Washington state where he practiced at a veterinarian firm for four years.
"We loved the area," he said. "The practice wasn't very progressive, and the horse industry tanked, so there weren't that many to work on. Plus, we were far from family."
With two young children at the time, Schiltz and his family found new digs in Missouri at Equine Medical Services in Columbia. He and his wife now have three children.
"Fast forward 20 years, William Woods made a huge commitment." he said. "Over the last 20 years, we talked about how much sense it would make to have a veterinarian on staff."
Schiltz applied for and gained a new position as veterinarian and director of pre-veterinary studies at WWU. He was familiar with the college and its equines, having been their primary care vet for those 20 years. He also had experience at WWU as an adjunct professor and guest lecturer.
"It's been a pretty easy transition," he said.
The hardest thing Schiltz had to face was getting used to teaching, but professor emeritus Gayle Lampe helped straighten him out.
"When I first arrived, I told her teaching was a big adjustment, and she said, 'You've been teaching your entire life,'" he said. "I realized it's not the teaching that's different - it's the environment. I'm in a classroom versus one-on-one doing client education."
Schiltz said one advantage of having an on-staff vet is being able to take care of small problems before they become big problems. The college also is expanding clinical space, he said.
"We're in the process now of building our own clinic," he said, adding it will be used for the college's horses and not the general public's. "It will be the William Woods Center for Equine Medicine."
Horses in the WWU program were all donated to the college, Schiltz said.
"They tend to come to us with a little medical history, and we're very good at managing those problems," he said. "When the horses come, they're all examined for soundness, and X-rays are made of their feet and hocks so we have a starting point. Their teeth are examined and dentistry performed if needed."
In a corner of the covered arena is a horse-sized digital scale.
"I had an intern most of this summer - she's applying for vet school - and she's studying the daily fluctuation of a horse's weight," he said. "She took a group of 10 horses and weighed them daily for 10 weeks."
They found the normal variation of a horse's weight could be 30 pounds in either direction every 24 or 48 hours.
"That raises the question, how can a horse lose or gain 30 pounds in 24 hours?" Schiltz said.
On average, horses drink 10 gallons, or 83 pounds, of water daily. And what goes in - including hay and grain - also must go out, accounting for the variation.
"Right now, she's starting a new group," he said. "We're looking at 10 warmbloods who will now be weighed several times a day, such as before and after exercising."
Letting students perform these types of experiments to determine answers to their questions is key.
"It's a really great opportunity to challenge students to develop research projects and go ahead and perform the study," Schiltz said.
The curriculum continues to evolve to accommodate students more interested in either general horse keeping and training versus those interested in going to veterinarian school, probably with a biology background. Other current studies include developing a protocol for the use of stem cells. One horse, Ellie, fractured her elbow in a place not accessible by surgery. The decision was made to harvest her bone marrow to get stem cells, culture and multiply them, and then inject them into the elbow, Schiltz said.
"The hope is they will develop as cartilage, and we hope that will prevent arthritis from developing," he added. "We're also doing a survey to determine the level of parasites."
He said that study has revealed worming the WWU herd twice a year is sufficient.
"We only found six horses that needed to be tested more often," he said.
Schiltz also teaches his students the difference between patients and clients.
"I never had a horse walk through the door with a checkbook in their mouth," he said. "You have to get along with people. You either enjoy that or you don't."
Schiltz - who dabbles in a little trail riding - said the WWU equestrian environment is a little piece of heaven.
"My favorite thing about being here is the ability to intervene quickly and treat problems earlier and more aggressively," he said. "The educational side is the light-bulb moment when something really crystallizes and makes sense, when students have a certain sense of mastery about it. It's been interesting because it's a brand new position. We've been able to evolve it into what works best for everybody."