As a licensed tech who has worked in a specialty/emergency hospital for 7 years and one who started in the field as an assistant I would be dissapointed to see unlicensed individuals given the responsibility of placing IV catheters. There is a certain standard of education that must be met and a skill set learned in order to obtain a license and that is not the case with assistants. When people bring their pets to our specialty hospital they are expecting high quality care. If instead we use their pet to teach these skills I believe patient care will suffer.