For our first Employee Spotlight, please congratulate Alondra!
Alondra is a Veterinary Assistant and started at Craig Road Animal Hospital as an extern. She knew one of the other veterinary assistants, Edith, who recommended the hospital as a place to finish her studies. She said she likes to keep busy and has been at Craig Road for a year-and-a-half. Once she was hired, Alondra started in customer service and later moved on to become a veterinary assistant.
Originally, her family is from Jalisco, Mexico but Alondra said she doesn’t remember much from that time. Her family’s house was broken down after an earthquake and they relocated to San Bernadino, California. Alondra and her family lived there for a number of years before moving to Las Vegas when she was 10-years-old. She has an older brother and a younger brother and is the only girl in her family.
Growing up, Alondra had a family dog named Peleza, a Poodle-Terrier mix. According to Alondra, Peleza loved chasing cats and would go crazy if anyone mentioned there was a cat nearby. Currently, Alondra has two cats named Bean (who’s a former street cat) and Sushi, and a couple of goldfish. Alondra adopted Sushi from Craig Road after his owners died and wanted to make sure he went to a good home. Bean and Sushi are slowly learning to get along and live with each other, according to Alondra.
Alondra said she knew for a long time that she wanted to work with animals.
“All my life I wanted to be a vet, but obviously it’s a lot of money to go to vet school,” she said. “So I wanted to start as a veterinary assistant and eventually become a vet tech. If eventually, I want to move somewhere else, I would start considering going to vet school.”
Alondra said the best part of her job is seeing the progress of the patients who come in.
“That always makes me feel happy because that lets me know we can always help our patients, to make them feel better than when they first got here,” she said. Alternatively, she says one of the more challenging yet rewarding aspects of her job is surgery.
She said a lot goes into making sure the patient who’s under anesthesia is okay, that the patient is breathing correctly, and that the patient isn’t crashing or trying to wake up.
“I think anesthesia is one of the harder aspects, but it’s also really good because you get to learn from it every time, but there’s definitely a lot of pressure,” Alondra said.
Overall, Alondra said she really enjoys assisting in surgery, especially with c-sections. She said she loves making sure the puppies are okay and hearing them squeak when they take their first breaths. She also thinks dental procedures are interesting, to see the progress of either cleaning or extracting teeth.
“The before and after is really cool,” Alondra said. “Sometimes you get a full mouth and then there are no teeth left, it’s really fascinating. There are so many things I enjoy about being here at Craig Road, so I can’t think of just one thing.”
In her spare time, Alondra said she enjoys acrylic painting, Picasso-style, and bike riding at Wetlands Park. Alondra also enjoys playing video games and is a big fan of the horror genre. Some of her favorite games to play are the “Silent Hill” and “Resident Evil” series. Alondra recently played “The Evil Within” series and said she absolutely loved it. Her gaming tastes also include “Grand Theft Auto V Online” and the “Call of Duty” series.
We appreciate your continued hard work here at Craig Road Animal Hospital, Alondra! Thank you for all that you do for our patients and clients!