Charletta Begaye
At
the time this profile was written, Charletta Begaye,
Navajo, DVM, was a senior veterinary medicine student
at Colorado State University. She works in a small
animal hospital in Tucson, Arizona.
Pursuing Her Dream with Determination
Begaye grew up on a Navajo reservation with lots of
animals, particularly livestock and dogs. She acknowledges,
“The traditional ways of taking care of cattle and sheep
are good. The animals are not confined to a feedlot. They
are allowed to roam. That’s healthy.”
Begaye, however, also had some concerns: “I always wanted
to do something for the homeless dogs who had mange. There
was no vet on our reservation when I was small. Later I
wanted to help people as well as animals. I wanted to teach
people how to take care of animals and improve the value of
cattle.”
Begaye began preparing herself for veterinary medical
school. “When I was an undergraduate at the University of
Arizona, during the summers and during breaks I worked at a
veterinary clinic at my home in Chinle with Dr. Kimberly
Draper who is one-half Navajo. When she left, we were
without a vet for a long time. There was no place to take
sheep that had been attacked by dogs.”
“It took me four tries to get into vet school,” she says.
“I was turned down the first time I applied, so I got a job
in Tucson as a vet tech. The second time I applied, I was
given alternative positions, but that didn’t pan out. Then
I moved to Flagstaff where I went for another bachelor’s
degree in accounting because I thought that would help me
run my own veterinary practice. I also worked at a clinic."
Then Begaye got a call from Colorado State inviting her to
participate in the Vet Prep Program. She accepted the
offer, did the one-year program, and then was admitted into
the vet school.
This
article was originally published in the Autumn 2002 issue
of
Winds of Change. (The cover
artist is Virginia Stroud, United Keetoowah Bank of
Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma.)