‘I can’t think of myself as anything else’ : Delaney’s path to becoming a veterinarian takes her to South Africa and Ozark County

<p class="p1">This week, veterinary student Delaney Sweeney is helping treat horses in Louisiana. Last week she was working on cattle and small animals in Ozark County. And a couple of weeks before that, she was tending to lions, giraffes, wildebeests and impalas in South Africa.</p><p class="p4">Delaney, 25, daughter of Souder residents Sean and Cleta Sweeney, is a little more than halfway through St. George’s Veterinary School in Granada, West Indies. Although she grew up in Ozark County and got acquainted with other kids her age in Gainesville when she played on sports teams and participated in horse shows here, she graduated from Ava High School in 2010. Then she graduated from Drury University in Springfield in 2014 with a double major in biology and chemistry and a minor in global studies. After she completes her third year of vet school this fall, she’ll do her clinical studies, beginning in December, at Texas A&M in College Station. </p><p class="p4">She’s home most of this summer after a pleasure trip to Europe followed by a month in South Africa, where she and her St. George’s roommate did an externship arranged by their school with the African Conservation Experience, working at the Blouberg Animal Clinic in the city of Louis Trichardt.  </p><p class="p4">“We worked with wildlife there, and the work also had a small-animal aspect,” she said. “Early mornings, we would do wildlife – darting them to tranquilize or sedate them – and then treat them, usually with vitamins or antibiotic or whatever was called for. Some of them we treated for ecto-parasite issues. Then sometimes we would tag them by the ear if they were being sent somewhere else; we would get them ready for transport.”</p><p class="p4">The wildlife she treated were mainly part of the wildlife industry there, which includes game farms that raise the animals for hunting – “although we did work on some beef cattle and dogs and cats too,” she said.</p><p class="p4">Her favorite part of the South African externship was when she “got to go in a helicopter  and saw wild giraffes running. It was spectacular,” she said. </p><p class="p4"> While she’s back home in Ozark County for the summer – except for the current brief stint in Louisiana at an equine clinic – she is working at the Gainesville Veterinary Clinic with veterinarians Bob Mains and Robin Deck, who are not only her employers and mentors but also longtime family friends. Growing up, she knew the couple’s sons, Nick and Ben, through 4-H and other activities. “I did horse shows with Robin, and Nick and I were best friends when I was little. And Bob and Robin were our family’s vets,” Delaney said. “I love working with them. They treat me good, and they don’t give me answers. They make me work for it so I learn something.”</p><p class="p4">She helps Robin with small animal cases in the clinic and also accompanies Bob to area farms. Most recently, at a cattle ranch, she helped with “two vaginal prolapses that Bob let me stitch up. He walked me through the first one and then the second one he let me do while he helped me,” she said. </p><p class="p4">At one Ozark County cattle ranch, she helped with a “far-from-attractive” procedure in which a dead, unborn calf had to be removed from the cow. It was grueling and gruesome work for the petite vet student. But the cow’s owner was apparently impressed. He rewarded her effort with a tip. “He gave me a feeder pig,” Delaney said. Another Ozark County farmer also tipped her – with a $20 bill.</p><p class="p4">Delaney grew up on her family’s farm at Souder, where her parents also operate The Concrete Works, which manufactures concrete livestock feeders, freeze-proof stock tanks, storm shelters and other items. She rode a horse before she could walk.</p><p class="p4"> “When she was still in diapers, we sat her on a 30-year-old pony while we fixed fence,” Cleta Sweeney recalled, laughing. “She would sit there, braiding the pony’s mane while we worked.”</p><p class="p4">The Sweeneys’ other daughter, McKinzie Gorham, is a nuclear engineer working with the U.S. Department of Energy. She and her husband, Davy, also an engineer, live in Idaho.</p><p class="p4">Delaney grew up “wanting to do something with science. I thought I might like to teach high school,” she said. “But after I did my practicum at a school in Springfield, I decided that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I had finished my general education classes and asked my father and some other people I respected what they could see me doing. My dad said, ‘Why don’t you be a vet?’ I honestly hadn’t even thought of it. Now I can’t think of myself as anything else.” </p><p class="p4">She worked at the Whetestone Veterinary Clinic in Mountain Grove during college, and she has also worked during vet school breaks at the Gainesville clinic. </p><p class="p4"> Delaney refuses to brag on herself, but her mother let slip that Delaney is one of only three St. George’s students selected to do their clinic studies at Texas A&M. “And she couldn’t have gone to South Africa unless she was a top student,” Cleta said. “But really, the most important thing I have to say is that she’s so happy, working with Robin and Bob. They’re doing so much to help her.”</p><p class="p4">Delaney’s “dream job” after she graduates is to work in an equine clinic somewhere. “But I have to pay my bills, and equine medicine doesn’t do that,” she said. “I’m not saying no to coming back here or living in a rural area somewhere. Robin and Bob throw out that idea a lot. But I don’t know yet what doors will open and  what I’ll be offered. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”   </p>

<p class="p1">Getting to play with a two-month-old lion club was a special pleasure during Delaney’s veterinary externship in South Africa.</p>

<p class="p1">Souder resident Delaney Sweeney, a third-yet veterinary student, recently worked with veterinarian Barend Harris at the Blouberg Animal Clinic in South Africa as they treated wild animals at a game farm. They’re pictured here with a blue wildebeeste they had sedated so they could treat it and get it ready for transport to another game farm.</p>