Welcoming All Creatures Great and Small
Meet MidWeek’s newest columnist, veterinarian Dr. John Kaya, whose love for animals means he never turns away a sick one. Here he holds four newborn husky pups
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on include the penguins and flamingos (at Hilton Hawaiian Village), a goat, frogs and koi.
Ironically, Kaya’s roots are in fishing as his family owns Kaya Fishing Supplies, which has been in business since 1911.
And his love for animals extends from the office to his own home in Nuuanu, where you’ll find two Korean Jindo dogs (named Diesel and Hunter), two cats (Pebbles and Rocky), one cockatiel (Beeker), three box turtles (Donatello, Michael Angelo and Leonardo), two poison arrow frogs (Speedy and Don) and an aquarium of fish.
Yes, Kaya’s love for animals is evident, but his love for children also never left him. After trying for nine years, he and wife Jan finally welcomed a baby girl to the family, Jada Faith Hitomi Kaya, now 18 months old.
“Through faith and prayer we were able to have our first child,” he says. “Being a father is awesome. It’s everything I thought it would be and more. If it’s in our future, I’d love to have more children.”
Kaya, who attends New Hope Christian Fellowship, credits faith for not just his daughter, but also to things that he’s seen happen in veterinary medicine.
“I’ll have clients who have a strong belief and through heavy prayers, I’ll see cases turn around that were truly miracles,” he explains.
When he’s not busy working or being a new dad, Kaya enjoys writing. He’s in the process of writing a book, and, of course, there’s his new column in MidWeek.
And if his face looks familiar, it might be that you’ve seen him on TV. He appears on Love Your Pet on KHON2 at 7:50 a.m. Tuesdays.
“Through this column and on TV, my purpose is to educate people on animals,” says Kaya. ” I bring animals to the show and talk about different diseases and medical conditions. I also do a lot of school visits where I bring my pets, and I’m at a lot of high school career days.”
Since becoming a veterinarian, Kaya says he’s seen the field change with new technological advances and discoveries.
“The quality of medicine and what you are able to do for your pet is much more extensive and much more acceptable than it was before,” he explains. “For example, it’s not uncommon for us to do chemotherapy or for owners to give insulin injections to their diabetic animals. If we have a dog that is seizuring, we can now do an MRI or a CT scan, which we’ve had the capability of doing before but it’s more common now.
“There are a lot of things that we do. It’s a very exciting field. It’s always challenging and I love animals.”
>> Dr. John Kaya’s The Wild Side column on MidWeek.com
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