Potosi alumni Brittany Horner graduated in 2019. Brittany was a part of many clubs throughout high school, including FFA, SADD, environmental club, FCA student council, national honor society, and band. Brittany also played volleyball, and basketball, and competed in track and field. Brittany always had a love for animals and always wanted to have a career that involved animals or agriculture. During high school, Tracey Brunton brought to Brittany's attention a career path as a vet tech. To make sure that a vet tech was the career that she wanted to do, she job shadowed at a couple of veterinary clinics.
After Brittany graduated from Potosi, she attended MATC. Brittany didn't have many options for colleges that offered a vet tech program. She toured both Madison and Kirkwood. Brittany chose Madison because they offered a transfer program to Platteville. The transfer program allowed her to get a bachelor’s in animal science with an emphasis on veterinary technician.
Not only did the transfer program allow her to get the degrees that she wanted, but also made it possible to go to Thailand. UW-Platteville allowed people who were interested in the vet med field to be a part of the study abroad program in 2023. UWP does this study abroad program every couple of years. Brittany was able to go in January for two weeks. While she was in Thailand, Brittany got to take care of elephants. Brittany got to do many things during this trip and had a big culture shock. “Everything was so pretty and different from home,” Brittany said.
Brittany visited temples and meditated with a monk and then got blessed by the monk. A story that Brittany told was about getting a stomach bug when she got there. Brittany also got to go zip-lining in the mountains, but it was unfortunately when she had a stomach bug. While Brittany had the stomach bug, she didn't tell anyone in her group about it and ended up giving it to them.
In Thailand, there is a statue for every day of the week. Each statue is covered in gold flakes. When you go to put a gold flake on one of the statues, you have to put it on the day that you were born. Brittany had to go back to her calendar and figure out which day of the week she was born to figure out which statue to put the gold flake on. Brittany learned many things about the culture from this trip.
Brittany got to spend one of the weeks in Thailand at an elephant nature park. “I experienced being a vegan for a week and found out that I could not be a vegan,” Brittany said.
During the first day at the park, a 7-year-old elephant started chasing them for fruit. The fruit they had was for the elderly elephant. One of Brittany's favorite things was being able to follow the elephant doctor around. While she was following the doctor, she got to help put cream on the elephants' sores, give shots, and bandage up the feet of an elephant that had stepped on a landmine. Brittany got to learn a lot about the elephants. She is very glad she had the chance to take this trip and got to meet many new people and make many new friends.