VERNON HILLS ANIMAL HOSPITAL
          Caring for your pet as tenderly as you do.

              1260 S. Butterfield Road
               Mundelein, IL   60060
              PHONE:  847-367-4070    FAX:  847-367-0374
             VHAH@comcast.net

STAFF BIOGRAPHY

 


Dr. Stephen L. Barten

 

 

 

I was one of those kids who had every kind of animal for a pet. My parents had a succession of dogs and cats, but my bedroom was always full of cages and aquariums, housing rabbits, rats, gerbils, hamsters, possums, boas, lizards, turtles, frogs, salamanders and fish. Even though my dad would have liked me to join the family machine shop business, both parents recognized early on that I only would be happy working with animals.
I studied zoology in college and picked veterinary medicine as a career because I would be working with animals every day and also would have the opportunity to learn exciting new things throughout my career. I still have a lot of pets. "Betty" is a Jack Russell Terrier who goes everywhere with me. Many of you have seen her in the halls of VHAH; I bring her to work every day and she plays in the office or sleeps under my desk; she's slowing down now that she's 15 years old. I keep 10 snakes, each in a private heated cage, in my basement. Most were raised from eggs and are relatively old, ranging in age from 10 to almost 20 years. I also have a 15-year-old leopard gecko that used to belong to one son who is now in college.
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I also am interested in clinical and nature photography, as well as technical writing and lecturing to veterinary groups. I have articles and photographs published in a variety of veterinary textbooks, journals and magazines. I go on snake hunts every year, but just to see and photograph them, not to collect. I am an avid scuba diver and do most of my diving throughout the Caribbean, although I have visited Cocos Island off Costa Rica and Fiji. My most exciting dives were with the schooling hammerhead sharks at Cocos, cage diving with great white sharks at Isle Guadalupe, Mexico, and bumping into an 8-foot-long alligator in murky water with only 2 feet of visibility in the Cooper River, South Carolina, while diving for fossil shark teeth.

Degrees
Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from the University of Illinois, 1978
 
Areas of Interest
Dogs and cats, reptiles and amphibians, small exotic mammals, laser surgery, photography
 
 
Personal Interests
Scuba diving, digital photography, traveling and seeing nature 
 
 
Recently attended Continuing Education 

North American Veterinary Conference, Orlando, January 15-20, 2010. Dr. Barten is the NAVC Exotics Session Coordinator and the NAVC CEO likes his work enough that he has doubled the assignemnt to 10 years (2006-2015).  Each year Dr. B coordinates a total of 90 exotics lectures and several laboratories including Avian, Exotic Companion Mammal, Reptile, Zoo, Wildlife and Aquatic Medicine. This gives him the opportunity to attend many lectures and keep up with the latest developments for both extoics, but also more importantly, dog and cat medicine.  After the conference Dr. B visited some herpetologist friends in Florida for some nature photography of Florida's beautiful birds and reptiles, including his first ever wild Eastern Diamondback.

 

North American Veterinary Conference Expedition Conference to Churchill, Manitoba, October 29-November 4, 2009.  Dr. B joined 22 other veterinarians to observe and learn about Polar Bears and other Arctic wildlife, including Arctic Foxes, Red Foxes, Moose and Wolves.  He also learned about the sport of dog sledding, and got to participate in a dog sledding outing (at night, under a full moon, zero degrees F).  They saw and photographed over 50 Polar Bears.

 

Association of Reptilian and Amphibian Veterinarians Annual Conference, August 11-15, 2009, Milwaukee, WI. Cutting edge topics on reptilian and amphibian medicine and surgery, a behind the scenes tour of the Milwaukee Zoo.  The conference was in conjunction with the Association of Exotic Mammal Veterinarians so Dr. Barten also got to see some lectures on rabbit and rodent medicine.
 

North American Veterinary Conference, Orlando, January 16-22, 2009. Dr. Barten remains the NAVC Exotics Session Coordinator through the 2012 conference and coordinated a total of 90 exotics lectures and several laboratories over the 5 days of the conference. He attended courses in dermatology, dentistry, and pain management.

 

Association of Reptilian and Amphibian Veterinarians Annual Conference, September 17-21, 2008, Los Angeles, California. Cutting edge topics on reptilian and amphibian medicine and surgery, a behind the scenes tour of the Los Angeles Zoo

 

North American Veterinary Conference Expedition Seminar to Antarctica, February 15-25, 2008.  That's right, ANTARCTICA!  Dr. Barten joined a group of 30 veterinarians who met in Atlanta and enjoyed a behind-the-scenes tour of the Georgia Aquarium, including observation of a whale shark feeding.  The group then flew to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and from there to Ushuaia, the most southern city in the world at the tip of South America.  After a short tour of Tierra del Fuego, they boarded the ship Explorer II for a cruise across the notorious Drake Passage to the Antarctic peninsula.  They saw pods of Humpback Whales, Albatross, Penguins (Chinstrap, Gentoo and Adelie), Seals (Antarctic Fur, Crabeater, Weddell, and Leopard), and many seabirds.  Lectures centered on the natural history and medicine of Antarctic creatures.  The Drake Passage threw a storm at him on the way home that the crew rated an 8 out of 10 for severity, but he got home safely with hundreds of spectacular photographs.

Ultrasound training course June 22-24, 2007, Grand Rapids, Michigan. We have a new ultrasound machine and we're learning how to use it better.

Affiliations

Chicago Veterinary Medical Association
Illinois State Veterinary Medical Association
American Veterinary Medical Association
Association of Reptilian and Amphibian Veterinarians
Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles
Chicago Herpetological Society
Society of Aquatic Veterinary Medicine (scuba diving veterinarians)