Dr. Ahmed Shawky and veterinary student Tyler Quinones after a successful surgery.

Editor’s note: We’re sharing a series of student summer experience Q&As in their own words. This is the second (Q&A No. 1 and Q&A No. 3). Edited for length and clarity. 

Tyler Quinones, DVM student from the class of 2027, was the inaugural recipient of the Evelyn and Mohamed Selim full scholarship study abroad internship in Cairo, Egypt. She worked both with Dr. Ahmed Shawky at his El Gezira Pets Clinic on Zamalek Island and with Madam Nihal Selim’s Friends of Zamalek nonprofit rescue organization over the course of just under two months.

The clinic and the rescue organization are closely intertwined with the clinic providing veterinary care and the rescue organization providing animal welfare, education and adoption services. The late Evelyn and Mohamed helped underwrite the clinic and were relations to Nihal. The internship experience was the brainchild of Ali Selim, son of Evelyn and Mohamed and cousin of Nihal.

We sat down with Quinones to learn about her time in Egypt.

Tyler giving "a little bit of an emotional connection" to a kitten.

Helping a macaque breathe deeply in the Zamalek clinic with Dr. Alaa Khalid.

Tyler and a baladi street puppy she named Batata, which means Potato in Arabic.

Q&A

What type of practice were you working in?  

There were four other doctors who worked there with Dr. Shawky. There are no veterinary technicians there, so they would have to do everything. It was really all hands on deck.

It was mostly small animals – mainly cats and dogs. A lot of it was working a lot with the street dogs because there's a really big street animal population, especially on Zamalek because the surrounding cities, especially in Cairo, they'll actually bring their animals and dump them onto the island.

What did you day-to-day look like?

Basically, the clinic is 24/7, so we would work more of the afternoon and evening shifts. We would start around noon and go to the clinic and then we'd be there until like three in the morning doing all our stuff. (For example), we would get up, feed the street animals making sure that they were still all OK. And then getting to the clinic, making sure that everyone has morning medications, and they also do boarding there, so just making sure that all the animals who aren't sick are still OK.  

And then it was basically just walk-ins 24/7 from all over. There were also usually a couple cases a day that would be brought in that were abuse or abandonment or things like that that we'd take care of. In the evening usually is when we would do more of our surgeries and things like that – any spays and neuters that needed to get done and then any of the emergency cases. Then run home and get a couple hours of sleep and do it all over again.

At the time of the internship, you had just finished up your first-year of veterinary school. What did this internship add to it?

That was the one of the biggest culture shocks for sure. The first day I got there they threw me right into the OR and I did a feline neuter. They really wanted help. With the way the schooling (in the U.S.) works, I was quite knowledgeable about some of the things, and I was able to help a lot. I was able to do full spays, neuters and everything like that. And they would have you be lead surgeon. And daily meetings and everything like that, they would just get you involved. Like what do you think our treatment plans should be. What medications do you think would work best? Especially with a lot of the strays, they would have complicated cases where there's not really like one standard care of treatment, so you really just have to brainstorm what's going to work.

What was it like working with Dr. Shawky?

He's definitely very passionate about veterinary medicine. He would really just kind of let me do it. Like the first spray that we did, he did it, and I assisted him. And then the second one, it was me. Then at the end of the night, he would teach me suture techniques and things like that. We would go through the different surgical tools, their names and everything, so that I could assist him in surgeries. It was very hands on, which I appreciate because that's how I learn best.  

How do you feel this experience helped inform where you're headed in your education and also in your future career as a veterinarian?

I think it opened a different avenue that I wasn't aware of. Here we have strays, but it's nothing like over there. It's a whole different population with new problems that we don't really have here – new diseases and new accidents that you just don't really see in everyday house pets. It opened my eyes to a new avenue that I could pursue traveling to other places and helping out over there – like relief veterinarian work; I think that would be really interesting. Because even with my very, very limited education, I was able to show them things that they didn't know as much as they were teaching me.

In addition to the amazing sites, Tyler described her tour guide and cat rescuer Mohamed Younes as a "true wonder." 

Enjoying a cold Coca-Cola is universal. Left to right: Dr. Ahmed Shawky, Tyler Quinones and Dr. Alaa Khalid.

Taking in the religious sites of Cairo with tour guide and cat rescuer Mohamed Younes.

Outside of work, what other activities did you do? 

Yeah, that was another part of it.  It was a lot of cultural immersions. So, they got me tours. We went to see all the pyramids and the tombs, and then we did like a full day touring all the mosques and the Coptic churches and they had some Jewish monuments there as well. And we did a lot of food immersion. They had some very interesting dishes that were fine to try, and some were very good. The liver I couldn't get past, but everything else was fine (laughs). They also took me to a couple of the owner's friends' houses, so we got to see different parts of the community. We went to Cairo and the malls and everything like that. 

And then as more of a vacation at the end, we went up to the Mediterranean. The lady who runs the rescue organization, her husband lives on a boat in the Red Sea. We spent a couple days there, which is like a three-hour drive. I was spending time in the ocean and that was really nice.

What did you enjoy most about the experience?

Working in the clinic was the best – being able to help those animals. Most of the doctors there were men, so I was like one of the only girls and was younger and just had a little bit of extra time on my hands. I was able to kind of help care for the animals a little bit – like clean them up, make them feel good about themselves. We had a puppy that came in that we rescued from the street that I named Batatas, which means potato in Arabic. I would hold her all day and she would actually come stay at my apartment. So just being able to give a little bit of an emotional connection to these animals who don't have anything, and the doctors are too busy actually saving them to really, you know, give them that connection. So that was amazing.

What kind of dog was Batata?

They're called baladis. Baladi is a native Egyptian street dog. They do have a particular look, but they basically are mutts. They’re native to Egypt, and they’re known for being able to live on the street. A lot of the other animals like the shih tzu and the pit bulls and the golden retrievers. Like they don't do well on the streets, but the baladis are actually able to survive there. Like they were born and raised there, so she was a little balladi, and they sent her to a rescue.