The story of new OVC professor Valerie Poirier’s dog Makalu (he’s named after the fifth highest mountain in the world) gives you a peek into Poirier’s international career. At the age of nine, the black-and-white Makalu has lived on four continents. He started his life as a street dog in Nepal, where he was found by one of Poirier’s friends, a Red Cross worker. “I was living in the United States at the time but planning to move to Switzerland,” she says, “so I said I’d take him if she could get him to Switzerland.” She did, and Makalu had a new family.

Four years later, Poirier moved to Australia, bringing Makalu along (and adding an Australian cat to the household). Four years after that, she and her partner came to Canada, bringing both animals and their son, who was born in Australia and is now 19 months old.

“Makalu loves Canada – he hadn’t seen snow since we left Switzerland – but the cat, not so much. In Australia, the cat loved to chase lizards and snakes, and he’s quite disappointed now with just mice to catch,” says Poirier.

Her travels have not just been for the purpose of giving Makalu more adventures. Poirier is bringing her international expertise in radiation oncology to OVC, where she will be working with a new linear accelerator (now under construction) to do intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and image guided radiation therapy (IGRT) for animals with cancer.

Poirier, who grew up in the Gaspe Peninsula, graduated from the University of Montreal’s veterinary program. After a one-year internship there, she went to Madison, Wis., to study medical oncology.  Following that, she headed to Switzerland, where she studied radiation oncology while also teaching medical oncology.

“I became interested in oncology because it includes so many aspects of medicine such as surgery, imaging, pathology, chemotherapy and radiation,” she says. “This work is also at the leading edge of research in the treatment of both animals and humans.”

In Australia, Poirier worked in Brisbane at the first radiation therapy unit in the southern hemisphere.

At OVC, her job will be primarily clinical as she gets the radiation therapy unit up and running. The linear accelerator will be cutting edge, she says, and much improved over the 15-year-old model she used in Australia. “It’s much more high-tech – the technology has improved exponentially.” New advances allow radiation to be much more tightly targeted at the tumour, avoiding damage to the surrounding tissues.

Both large and small animals will be able to have radiation treatments in the new centre, and Poirier is expecting to treat between 10 and 15 each day. Animals have to be anaesthetized for the treatment because they are required to keep completely still.

Part of Poirier’s job now is to visit private veterinary practices, discuss their needs, and let them know about the new services that will be available. “We’ll be the only veterinary hospital in Eastern Canada with this kind of equipment, and we expect to bring in cases from all over,” she says.

While she has no research projects on the go now, Poirier expects to develop some in the future “because I like doing research and because we need to. There is so much to learn.”