Brent Volker puts on his white lab coat and approaches a stainless steel table where a mixed-breed dog waits to be examined.

Volker, however, is not a veterinarian. He is a first-year veterinary medicine student, and today’s lab involves giving a dog a physical.

“I call it ‘touching a dog’ class,” Volker said.

The class is actually called Clinical Foundations: Canine Physical Examination, and it involves examining live and dead dogs.

Sophie — the name Volker’s group gave the dog — is very much alive. The first lesson the trembling dog bestows upon the eager students is to always watch the patient. She jumps from the cold, chest-high table at her first opportunity.

The clean, white room is full of activity as about 50 other students scrutinize their dogs. Sophie is too busy trying to play with her group to notice all the excitement around her, so it only takes a minute to get her back on the examining table.

“I wish we had a short, fat dog,” Volker said as he holds Sophie down.

For four years, veterinary medicine students spend most of their time inside the Veterinary Medicine building. Everything they need to learn — the anatomy of domestic animals in their first year, diseases in their second year, procedures in their third year and practice of all they learned their fourth year — is in one building.

Students can even file all their paperwork, such as registration, in the Veterinary Medicine building — making their only interaction with the main campus an electronic one, said Donald Draper, the associate dean of academic and student affairs for the College of Veterinary Medicine.

“You could go here for four years and not have to go to main campus for anything,” Volker said.

All the classrooms, offices and the hospital are in one building, but the maze of hallways can be confusing to a newcomer.

Volker said it took him 30 minutes to find someone’s office at first. He said he can end up in the wrong hallway if he doesn’t pay attention to where he’s going.

Back on the table, Sophie enjoys the attention between the pokes and prods as the group takes her vitals.

“They’re cute for the time being, but you can’t get attached,” said Tara Wellman, freshman in veterinary medicine who is in Volker’s group. Wellman said the junior class will operate on the dogs later in the week; they will later be returned to the freshman class for dissection.

Volker ties gauze around Sophie’s nose as a muzzle before another group member draws her blood. Sophie seems friendly, but Volker said his first dog did, too — until it bit him.

Debra Liu Ta-Ying is one of the four seniors in blue scrubs who oversees the class. She checks to see if the group needs any help.

“First year was the worst,” she said. “Then it gradually gets better.”

After finishing Sophie’s physical, Volker and his group clean the work area and disinfect the table. Then they head to the library to look up answers to the lab questions.

“Anyone who comes to vet school with the idea that it’s going to be easy and they’re going to fly through it is either really, really smart or very disillusioned,” Volker said.

According to the ISU catalog, the first two years of vet school provide students with a basic science education and prepare them for the clinical experiences of the final two years.

Students learn basic structure, function and biochemistry of domestic animals in their first year, Draper said.

Pam Kramer is a junior in veterinary medicine. Although she spends a lot of time sitting in lectures making notes about abortions in horses and how to fill out prescriptions on printouts of PowerPoint slides, she doesn’t spend all of her time in the classroom — as a junior, Kramer also goes to surgery.

Veterinary medicine seniors have to complete rotations in microbiology, public health, radiology, anesthesiology, intensive care, emergency, necropsy and pathology. They also have to choose a rotation option: Small animal, food animal, production animal medicine or equine.

These rotations are a minimum of two weeks long and don’t leave much free time, said Stephanie Thomovsky, senior in veterinary medicine.

“I don’t think anyone has a job because your schedule is too erratic,” she said.

While some rotations are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., others require her to be at the teaching hospital for up to 17 hours a day.

Thomovsky is now on the ICU and emergency rotation. It operates in three shifts: 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., 3 p.m. to midnight and 11 p.m. to 8 a.m.

A Rottweiler — one of about a dozen animals under her care — is unable to stand because of a neurological problem and is propped up by a towel. Its back is shaved from surgery and its incision is stapled closed. It eats a mixture of baby food and dog food. The food could be inhaled into the lungs if the dog eats while lying on its side, Thomovsky said, so she watches to make sure the dog is OK. When the dog begins to gag, she holds it up more and comforts it by rubbing its side.

Fortunately, a burp solves the problem, and Thomovsky can move to her next patient, a Newfoundland mix.

Its right hind leg is bandaged from surgery on a torn anterior cruciate ligament, but its whines are more for attention than from pain. The students fondly call the Newfoundland “Big Baby.”

In the next cage, a cat is recovering from surgery on a broken pelvis. Thomovsky flushes its stomach tube with water. Soon it will have food injected into its stomach.

Keeping a cat on food is especially important to prevent the body from sending too much fat to the liver, Thomovsky said.

“You don’t want an anorexic cat,” she said.

The cat passively accepts its treatments and looks to see where Thomovsky has gone every time her hand leaves its neck.

In between her shifts at the ICU, Thomovsky studies for her North American Veterinary Licensing Examination. She must register her score in states that she would like to practice in order to receive her license for that state.

After graduating and passing the six-and-a-half-hour examination, students are able to find jobs in private practice, educational institutions, international agencies, the government, the armed forces, public health and other related areas.

Volker earned his undergraduate degree in dairy science and hopes to have an all-dairy practice. After growing up on an Iowa farm, Kramer hopes to work with cattle, preferably cows and calves.

Thomovsky, on the other hand, isn’t excited by large animals and wants to work with dogs and cats.