Dear colleagues

Welcome to the December issue of the Davis-Thompson Foundation (DTF) newsletter with the compliments of our brilliant Managing Editors, Javier Asin and Jeann Leal. Thank you Javier and Jeann.

November was a very active month with training activities all over the world in English, Portuguese and Spanish. Amongst the latter, was the 3rd Venezuelan Seminar of the DTF and Latin Comparative Pathology Group, in Barquisimeto, Venezuela on November 21 and 22. The Seminar was an utter success, but when the international speakers were ready to fly back to their home countries (Spain and Argentina), most major airlines suspended flights to and from Venezuela. Our Venezuelan colleagues, led by Dr. Yaritza Salas, were not deterred by this and immediately organized travel by land and air for our speakers to Cucuta, ~600 km from Barquisimeto on the Colombian side or the border with Venezuela. From there, the speakers flew to Bogota where they took international flights home. This episode is a perfect example of the resiliency of our speakers and the brilliant way our hosts look after our speakers. Thank you Yari! As always, the Foundation continues with its training activities even under the most difficult circumstances.

Please peruse these pages to find myriad training opportunities all over the world in several languages for the rest of the year and in 2026. Also, enjoy the reports on our most recent training activities. Amongst those, I want to highlight Dr. Brian Murphy’s outstanding DTF Latin American Roadshow, through which he visited Chile, Brazil and Mexico, lecturing for 12 hours in each country. This was an enormous effort that received overwhelming positive responses from a grateful audience and the DTF. Thank you Brian!

Finally, I close this message with a heartfelt thank you to one of our very special volunteers and member of the Board of Directors of the Foundation: Dr Mike Dark. See below our special article of appreciation to him. Thank you Mike; we could not do it without you!!!

Looking forward to meeting you in one of our training activities.

Warmest regards,

Francisco Uzal, DVM, MSc, PhD, Dipl. ACVP

Chief Executive Officer

Davis-Thompson Foundation

Ph: 951 751 0027

E-mail: fauzal@ucdavis.edu