When it comes to helping cat and dog owners, Traci (last name held by request) is willing and able to offer assistance where she can.  Traci has worked in the veterinary field for over ten years. Working from the same clinic under the title of Emergency Vet Technician, she has seen it all. Her clinic is fast-paced and as she says, “boredom is rarely a luxury there.”   

With the onset of the Internet, Traci began to notice a lot of misinformation being passed around on dog and cat message boards. Alarmed at the content of some of the posts she read, she decided to do something positive about this problem, and so in 1999 she started Cat Health Online. She was taught the basics of HTML by a friend, and learned the rest purely by trial and error, but over the months the board began to take shape and people started to join. 

At first, the board consumed most of her time as she put up an impressive array of accurate cat health information in a mini reference section. Everything from nutrition to kitten care can be found there, and since emergency veterinary care is her specialty, she placed a handy Emergency Reference guide on her site as well.   Developing a no-nonsense approach to answering posts, her board quickly gained a foothold with cat rescuers and other cat care specialists, as well as cat owners themselves. Several members have been with her from the beginning and along with her they continue to add to the substantial knowledge base that has grown there. She spends about two hours a day on her board answering questions, and her extensive knowledge of veterinary medicine is evident when you read her replies.

I asked her once why she hadn’t gone on to be a vet, and she laughed and said that in her position she has the best of both worlds. She works with a wonderful team of veterinarians, and in her duties as a vet tech; she gets the hands-on experience of taking care of each animal that arrives. Giving medications, doing treatments, monitoring the in-house patients and dealing with the emergency cases, all serve to keep her motivated to learn and helps to expand her knowledge base, for each situation she encounters at the clinic is unique. And after work is over and she comes home, if she can help someone on the internet who is struggling to understand lab results, or give them added

information to ask their vet so that an

informed decision can be reached and ultimately help a cat or dog, than her role is clear. For Traci, the animals come first and all pets are the priority.  http://www.cathelp-online.com/phpBB2/