Page 135 - The Hunt - Spring 2022

LIVING LARGE
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Dallap-Schaer works with radiology service chief Dr. Kathryn Wulster and chief of surgery Dr. Dean Richardson at Penn Vet’s New Bolton Center.
each other on the job, catching the same communicable diseases. By separating them into teams, “If one person got sick, we didn’t lose that function.”
In the early days of the pandemic, Dallap- Schaer headed to Lowe’s one evening to get tape to mark off safe distances on the floor
of the facility. “We pioneered in contact tracing, using bar codes and an app so we knew where everyone had been during the day,” she says. “We had no workplace transmission of COVID with the staff.”
Naturally, some things didn’t work as planned. The idea of separating owners from their animals didn’t always work, as sometimes the huge animals would only be handled by the people they trusted. And some owners balked at wearing masks during barn calls.
But Dallap-Schaer has always had a lot on her plate, and COVID hasn’t stopped her
A typical 12-hour
day begins at the
farm around 5 a.m. Dallap-Schaer works
with her husband for about an hour tending to the herd of sheep, which can range from 60 to 80 head—plus chickens, bees and whatever else her husband has decided the farm needs.
from working on other projects. “We want to improve our clinical service, and we need to continue to work with advanced imaging,” she says. “We also need a new facility for students.”
Perhaps with the exception of a number of Latino thoroughbred jockeys, the horse world is not a very diverse one, and Dallap-Schaer hopes to help change that. “We’re trying to create more diversity in vet school,” she says.
She believes part of the answer is creating events and programs that allow children to be around the same large animals she sought out as a teenager. “What we need to do is begin a pipeline,” she says—one where one minority student follows another into veterinary and other clinical positions.
The logic of that approach seems obvious. Dallap-Schaer is living proof that you don’t have to grow up with your own horses to make a living saving them. TH
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