Travelogue: Southeast Asia, Day 2

Editor's note: Jockey and veterinarian Ferrin Peterson is traveling in Southeast Asia to help refugee groups with the veterinary care their animals need, helping humans to survive the refugee crisis in a war-torn area. Click here to read yesterday's blog post.

Once we reach the village, we set up camp which means successfully tying up your hammock between two sturdy trees to sleep in overnight. We bathe and wash our clothes in the river, and the pack animal team roams freely like a herd of wild horses. They always return at feed time, of course. The villagers cook for us, which consists of a rice dish with meat from one of their village animals and a vegetable. My past two trips were during my Christmas breaks from school, and on Christmas Day the villagers offered us their delicacy: cooked chicken feet. Thankfully there were always enough people around that I could nonchalantly pass that dish on to the next person.

I have an exciting, yet testing journey ahead of me. Veterinary medicine is challenging enough, working with patients who do not speak and amongst species that are so different from one another. A sedative that can relax one species can cause euphoria in another species. Each species has their unique Achilles heel: it is not always their feet and gut.

The pack team currently consists of seven mules and nine Mongolian ponies. I plan to vaccinate the pack animal team against rabies and Japanese encephalitis. I attempted this on my last trip, but when we reached our destination and I retrieved the vaccines from the transport cooler, I saw they had frozen, which ruined their efficacy. That was disheartening after packing them all that way and wondering when the next opportunity would arise for someone to vaccinate the herd. Hopefully I improve with temperature regulation this go-around.

Some of the training sessions I have planned for the pack animal handlers include: basic observations of a healthy versus a sick animal, checking vital parameters, body condition scoring, hoof care, wound care and bandaging, medication routes, nasogastric intubation for choke, and fecal flotation to detect parasites (the medical facility is equipped with a microscope).

Another important aspect I wish to address is selecting for their pack team. One or two of the village leaders travel to the city to select the Mongolian ponies and mules. In the past, they had introduced a gray mare with very poor conformation who could not stand up to the demands of her new job, and as a result she slowed down the entire team. They told me that in the city there is a Monkhood ceremony where the young monk rides in on a “white” horse. When the village leader saw this gray mare for sale, he assumed she must be a good deal. I just spent weeks looking at top Thoroughbreds going through the sales ring in Kentucky. I will have to readjust my lens for the type of horses best equipped to trek through mountains and thrive in jungles.

I also plan to teach the villagers to pass an orogastric tube down a water buffalo's esophagus and into its stomach to relieve bloat. I taught a village this technique on a past trip despite only learning it from a YouTube video. The entire village came to watch me do this crazy “magic trick.” To my relief, I successfully passed it into the rumen and then watched several villagers do it, too!

I have learned to go in with a plan but to be adaptable and always ready to rise to the occasion. I believe it is important to give back and share the knowledge a person has acquired, but to never underestimate the importance of local understanding about someone's culture and environment. Most importantly, I am going in with an open mind to see how the villagers and I can learn from and help each other.