Rachel Strassburger

Aid in a multiple areas of mobile clinic practice - hands-on animal restraint and procedures, administrative duties, client communications, delivery of products, and maintenance of equipment and supplies. Duties Include: Maintenance of a prevention program for clients, focusing on education and increasing compliance for seasonal preventions against fleas, ticks, heartworm, and intestinal worms. Client services and administration work such as billing, booking, managing inventory and medical information, client and professional communications, drug logging, and call-backs in Daysmart Vet Software. Aid in appointments and procedures through restraint, preparation and maintenance of materials, and maintaining biosecurity protocols. Home delivery of client medications and food within Guelph and surrounding areas.

Working within the Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare to plan, promote, ans execute events for both staff and students. Duties Include: Planning, organizing, hosting, and attending all CCSAW Student Chapter events and programs , marketing of events through creation of posters and social media communications, and management of event budget.

Working within the Animal Biosciences Department at the University of Guelph to plan and execute events for both students and staff, including sports games, seasonal holiday activities, "stress-busters", group socials, crafting events, and trivia nights.

Assistant Teaching ANSC*2210 - Principles of Animal Care and Welfare. Duties include: Running weekly discussion-based seminars for groups of ~20 students, grading oral and written assignments and examinations, answering student questions regarding course material, and proctoring examinations. Course Description: Students will be introduced to major ethical theories that deal with humanity's duties to animals. The relationship of ethics to science will be discussed. Factors that contribute to the quality of life of animals will be considered and methods of assessing animal welfare will be described. Common causes of reduced animal welfare will be covered. The course will also deal with how different cultures approach animal welfare and attempt to regulate it.

Assistant Teaching ANSC*3090 - Principles of Animal Behaviour. Duties Include: Helping groups of students develop a research question and experiment, monitoring course email accounts, grading written assignments and examinations, and answering student questions regarding course material. Course Description: This course deals with why vertebrates behave as they do (with particular emphasis on mammals and birds), covering the causation of behaviour (including learning, motivation, affective states, hormones, sensory processing, and neurobiological mechanisms); function (both immediate/proximate and adaptive/ultimate); ontogeny (including socialization and sensitive periods); and phylogeny (especially the influences of taxonomic group and domestication). This framework is then applied to the following aspects of animal behaviour: foraging, anti-predator responses, sleep, sociality, mating, parental behaviour, play, dispersal and territoriality, animal intelligence, and behavioural pathologies.

First point of contact for a group of ~8 students in ANSC+4560 - Pet nutrition, alongside professor and graduate teaching assistants. Duties Include: Coordinating group meetings on an as-needed basis for upcoming assignments. Answering student questions regarding assignments and course material. Overseeing drafting of group contract, group infographic, and aiding in understanding of individual assignments.

Presentation - style contest, hosted by the University of Wisconsin - River Falls campus, focusing on assessment of welfare of various species (bison, laying hens, lab rats, and tortoises), utilizing science-based methods and reasoning. 3rd place overall team score!

Live-in training for puppies being raised to be service dogs for children with Autism. Duties Include: Preparing older dogs for advanced training, with emphasis on higher-level skills required to aid autistic individuals. Teaching foundational public access and working skills for dogs to enter advanced training, and evaluating older dogs for eligibility to enter advanced training. Long term and short term hosting of puppies and dogs, both under my own guidance and the guidance of others who need time off. Attendance of bi-weekly group training sessions in various public spaces.

Clinical assistant on the University of Guelph campus, working with on-campus teaching animals and within the large animal emergency clinic. Duties Include: Animal restraint and handling for standing surgeries, surgical induction, euthanasias, scopings, emergency workups, nasogastric intubation, bandage changes, and blood draws of horses, foals, cattle, goats, sheep, alpacas, and pigs. Animal care duties such as feeding, grooming, exercising, loading trailers, facilities and enclosure maintenance, maintenance of biosecurity protocols, and medical record keeping in Smartflow software. Transport of teaching animals to different facilities during summer seasonal changeovers. Completion of U of G online animal handling and safety courses.

Animal care and semen collection duties for Holstein, Jersey, Angus, Charolais, Hereford, and Brahman bulls. Duties Include: Washing and handling bulls during semen collection. Feeding, grooming, clipping, health monitoring, cleaning, catching, and aiding in medical treatments of bulls. Facility maintenance, including heavy machinery maintenance and use, pen cleaning, maintenance of water bowls, and aiding in maintenance of biosecurity protocols.

Poultry welfare research in the lab of Dr. Tina Widowski, working with faculty, Master's and PhD students on ongoing projects at the Arkell Research Station and online. Duties Include: Conducting experiments, recording observations, data collection, video analysis, sample collection and dissections. Weighing, catching, hatching, and transporting chicks, pullets, and hens. Aiding in vaccinations, blood draws, leg and wing banding, radiographs, health checks, and chick sexing

Summer contract position assisting in the SLAH small animal teaching hospital. Due to COVID-19, regular student involvement was put on hold, and only pets were permitted to enter the building. Duties Include: Blood draws and in-house blood, fecal, and urine testing, including diagnostic microscope work with blood smears, fecals, and ear swabs. Aid in surgery, intubation, IV catheter placement, anaesthesia monitoring, instrument sterilization, TPRs, laser therapy, wet and dry rehabilitation, surgery setup and takedown. General restraint tasks, transport, husbandry, and handling of patients. Work with veterinarians, RVTs, receptionists, and final year DVM students.

Course-based program, with project focusing on anxiety in client-owned dogs, investigating the role of peripheral serotonin in fear behaviour. Emphasis on statistical methods in research, pet nutrition, advanced ethology, scientific welfare assessment, scientific communication, and meta-analyses.

4-year program focusing on genetics, physiology, behaviour, welfare, and nutrition of various agricultural, domesticated, and wild animals.