For International Women's Day Celia Marr shares how she got into equine practice.
"I spend around 80% of my working life as an internal medicine clinician and the rest as Editor of Equine Veterinary Journal. I enjoy that mix of some hands-on practical work and some more academic activity. I come from a farming and veterinary background, and like a lot of farm girls, I think I got into vet medicine through lack of imagination – when I was very small and asked which job I wanted, the options I was choosing from were teacher, shop keeper, farmer – which of course I knew girls didn’t do - and maybe a hair dresser, postwoman perhaps – so vet was the obvious choice. Once I’d settled on that path and entering vet school, I had vague plans of being a large animal vet but by the time I graduated I had at least settled on cardiology and horses, and there I have stuck. Specialist training in those days required a trip to the US and I was lucky enough to get a Fulbright scholarship for this – my early mentors were Max Murray, Sandy Love, Ginny Reef and Bob Whitlock and I benefited tremendously from their support particularly in my early career. I have mainly made choices on the basis of what I was interested in spending time on which is not to say I think everyone should be similarly focussed but this has worked for me."
She is a Specialist in Equine Internal Medicine and was awarded a Fellowship by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in 2016.
She graduated from the Glasgow University Veterinary School in 1985, then remained in Glasgow to complete both Masters and PhD degrees. She then held a Fulbright Scholarship studying equine cardiology and internal medicine at the New Bolton Center, University of Pennsylvania. Before joining Rossdales, she held positions at the University of Cambridge Veterinary School, Valley Equine Hospital, Lambourn and the Royal Veterinary College.
Her clinical and research interests are in Cardiovascular Medicine, Internal Medicine, Adult and Neonatal Intensive Care & Medical Imaging. She has published over 50 research papers and educational material relating to a range of medical disorders of the horse, concentrating on cardiovascular disease and diagnostic methods in medical disorders including editing a book on Cardiology of the Horse, the 2nd edition of which was published in 2010.
Celia is an Honorary Professor of the University of Glasgow and Editor-in-Chief of Equine Veterinary Journal.