Humans of RESQ- Dr. Neha Bhave

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” they say! But sometimes the apple not only chooses to fall far from the tree but also decides to set out on its own journey. Dr Neha Bhave, the only apple from her family tree who decided to work with animals and to study medicine. Opening the most obvious professional door for her which was veterinary science. In High school, when most kids were still wondering what to do with their lives, she was already looking up colleges for veterinary science and worked her way into them where she studied and then did her post-graduation in Veterinary Surgery and Radiology.

During her college years itself she had resolved to work with an NGO. One fateful day when she brought an injured animal to be treated at RESQ where two of her seniors worked, she knew exactly where she wanted to work in the future. One of her seniors was Dr. Chetan, who not only is her colleague here at RESQ but also her husband now :) Needless to say, Dr. Neha shares a beautiful bond and is tied to RESQ in so many ways.

The thing she loves the most about working here is the variety of species she gets to treat and the constant learning that comes with it. When asked what her most memorable incident has been, “inserting an IV line in a snake for the first time, and also treating complex medical cases in leopards,” she says with sparkly eyes. Her transition from treating domestic animals to full-time treating wildlife, felt like undergoing a professional metamorphosis for her, as diagnosis in wildlife cases is exceptionally challenging, she quips.

When she’s not treating animals, Dr. Neha loves cook, listen to self-help podcasts and of course, shake a leg to trending music. She also loves to make Instagram reels and TikToks and shyly admits, that had she not succeeded as a vet, she would’ve been a full-time digital content creator. The statement she lives by is, “Always believe in yourself” and when asked what animal would she have loved to be born as, pat comes the reply with a gentle smile, “definitely a dog”.