Dyce, Sack, and Wensing’s Textbook of Veterinary Anatomy 5th Edition

Book Preface

It is an honour and a true privilege to be entrusted with the task of preparing the 5th edition of Textbook of Veterinary Anatomy by Dyce, Sack and Wensing. When starting as a graduate teaching assistant in veterinary anatomy courses, I never did or could imagine such an opportunity. Of the three highly distinguished anatomists and original authors of this text, I met only Prof. Wolfgang Sack at the American Association of Veterinary Anatomists meeting in Knoxville in 1996, when I was a postdoctoral fellow. Naturally, I was in awe of him! But he was highly encouraging of my efforts to become a teacher of veterinary anatomy.

I have taken exceptional care to maintain the foundational integrity of the textbook as developed and nurtured by Profs. Dyce, Sack and Wensing. Students accept this text to be the “go-to” anatomy text for their foundational reading as well as a quick check-in. I have also found this book in large numbers of veterinary clinics, and veterinarians attest to its authoritative usefulness in their clinical practice of veterinary medicine. These observations underscore the established value of the text and its fundamental endurance.

There are many current trends that impact the teaching of veterinary anatomy. These trends, including an increase in the volume of veterinary clinical and biomedical information, have resulted in reduced allocation of time to educate students in veterinary anatomical sciences in general. Veterinary embryology has nearly been eliminated from the veterinary medical curricula. The time in veterinary curricula to teach histology has also been reduced significantly. There however is resurging realization that these trends are not fostering development of sufficient foundational knowledge of veterinary anatomy and an integrated set of concepts for the students. For example, the growth in the use of imaging modalities in veterinary medicine has created a need for better education in veterinary anatomy. Also, reduction in time devoted to the instruction of veterinary anatomy is stimulating interest in more integrated teaching of anatomy, histology, and embryology; the Textbook of Veterinary Anatomy has been at the forefront of such integrated instruction of veterinary anatomy.

The 5th edition of the Textbook of Veterinary Anatomy introduces many changes and makes a gentle pivot to indicate the future direction of the book. In preparing this edition, I have had many discussions with students, and some with fellow teachers. The major changes are as follows:
• significant editing of the text to remove many redundancies;
• removal of text that is not germane to the veterinary medical student;
• addition of nearly 100 new figures;
• addition of many figures at the sub-gross level to create a link between the gross anatomy and histology;
• addition of a new chapter on camelids;
• creation of more than 120 highlighted text boxes to make to easier to grasp important concepts and some clinical features;
• addition of new tables to summarize information;
• creation of a new box called Comprehension Check at the end of each chapter to facilitate group discussion and practice;
• introduction of new contributors: Dr. Gillian Muir has worked on chapters related to the nervous system, and Dr. Judy Klimek and Dr.

Emily Reppert have contributed a new chapter on camelids. Dr. Jaswant Singh, Dr. Ors Petnehazy, Dr. Kalman Czeibert, and Dr. R. S. Sethi have contributed illustrations.
Taken together, these changes enable the textbook, while maintaining its rigorous content, to start
to look toward a new phase of its life.

This work would not be possible without the exceptional support received from the Elsevier team. In particular, I express sincere thanks to Penny Rudolph, who engaged me in the creation of educational materials for learning veterinary anatomy. Having worked with her in creating Elsevier’s Veterinary Anatomy Flash Cards and Veterinary Anatomy Coloring Book, I have enjoyed doing so again in preparing the 5th edition of the Textbook of Veterinary Anatomy. Throughout the preparation of this edition, I received high levels of support and encouragement from Alexandra York, Kamatchi Madhavan, Shelly Stringer, and Brian Loehr.

Finally, I thank many teachers and students who been instrumental in my development as a teacher. Special thanks to Dr. Alastair Summerlee, an exceptional teacher and scholar, who gave me my first opportunity to be a graduate teaching assistant in anatomy laboratories.

I look forward to receiving comments from students and my fellow anatomy teachers to make further improvements to the book and will welcome their opinions on the changes introduced in this edition.