Paws & Claws

I just spent my entire afternoon practicing epidural injections on dead animals (yes, dogs get epidurals too!)- holy crap those are intimidating! I won't have to deal with live ones until next semester, which is just as well, because I poked these pretty full of holes before I got the hang of it.

There's a vet visiting the school who is an AVC grad and now works as one of the zoo veterinarians at Magic Kingdom, so he's doing a bunch of talks this week! He gave one at lunchtime today about a trip he took to Malawi to help relocate a bunch of elephants. It was really interesting and he's a great speaker- he described standing up on top of an unconscious elephant to see over some tall grass to the rest of his ground crew, and instead saw the rest of the elephant herd wandering over to see what was going on. Apparently the recommended course of action in this situation is to crawl under the unconscious elephant's legs to avoid being trampled while waiting for a helicopter to return and scare off the herd :). (Don't worry Mom, I probably won't be moving too many elephants this summer). It was a great talk, and I'm looking forward to his other ones!

In a dramatic break from tradition yesterday, I actually watched the entire Super Bowl, which I'm pretty sure I have never done before. It was a pretty good game, and I've finally learned a bit about football :).

My cat is soooo cute ^___^. He's stretched out on the arm of the couch asleep next to me right now :).

I babysat a cat for one of my classmates this weekend while she went home to Nova Scotia. Calcifer absolutely adores other animals and he always tries really hard to make friends with them, but Jade was not interested in playing with him at all. He kept leaning in close to her and licking her nose, or rubbing his head against her shoulder, and she would just growl at him! He tried so hard, it was adorable :). She's just not that into him, I guess ;P.

I finally wrote my pharmacology exam this morning. It was pretty easy, happily.

Naturally, after I tortured myself through studying last night, it snowed this morning and school was closed (at 8:25, they decided to close, and my exam was 8:30. Everyone was at school, ready to write. Nothing like a last-minute decision, UPEI). I really just wanted to write and be done, I'm not worried about this exam at all, and I'm sick of studying for it -__-. I guess I'll just spend my snow day playing Zelda instead, since I finished studying. It says something about the workload of this semester that I've probably never played video games so much in my life. I guess it's the calm before the storm- 3rd year is supposedly pretty insane.

Mom complained because I hadn't updated this!

I've actually had a pretty busy week (not with school work, though!). I got together with a bunch of classmates for a games night over the weekend, which was pretty fun :). Then I had broomball on Saturday night (first game of the year!). We lost to the class ahead of us, but we beat the first years, which was our first won ever, so that was pretty exciting.

On Sunday night, I went lambing again, because as exhausting as t is, it's really fun! For anyone who doesn't know what "lambing" entails, we basically hang around the barn all night and keep an eye on the sheep so we can help them with birthing. I've done this at a couple of farms, and this farm has a pretty intense process. The farm is centered around breeding lambs for meat (the other farm I went to actually focuses on milking sheep, so they don't have nearly as many lambs at one time). Because the price for lamb is highest in the spring, this farm uses some hormone therapy to breed their sheep for a January lambing. It's very cold in the barn and the lambs will die of hypothermia if everything doesn't go perfectly, so they have to be watched pretty closely all the time. Also, these sheep have been selected to produce a large number of lambs (triplets and quadruplets are pretty normal for this farm, and there were two sets of quintuplets born last week), so abnormal birth presentations are pretty common. The result is that the students wind up delivering a lot of the lambs, rather than waiting for the ewes to do it naturally. This is pretty unusual for a sheep farm, but it gives us some great hands-on experience.

Lauren and I got 7 lambs on Sunday (a triplet and a quadruplet). I delivered two, she delivered two, and three were born naturally, so it was a pretty eventful night. Unfortunately we lost one lamb (he was born not breathing- we revived him, but he didn't make it. Not sure what was wrong, but he didn't seem to be able to draw a breath properly). He was one of the quadruplets, so losing one of four wasn't a huge surprise. All of the others came out fine! I also got to practice milking sheep, because we had to make sure all of the quadruplets got enough milk. I'm honestly pretty terrible at it, and trying to milk into a little bottle is even tougher. I was getting better by the end, though! It was a good night, but I didn't get to sleep at all, so I'm still catching up from that. Between sheep wrangling and broomball, though, I'm still pretty sore too!

Classes are going pretty well. They're more interesting than last semester, and the course load is not too heavy, so I have time to do lots of other things. I spent a significant portion of the weekend actually tutoring some first years for the exam they had on Monday. I have one on Friday, so it's finally time for me to do some actual work :).

I went lambing last night, which was pretty fun. It was a much slower night than last year, but I always enjoy hanging out with the sheep. We had two lambs born, but unfortunately, one was dead when we got to it (it was born while we weren't in the barn and its mother was a bit of a spaz, so I'm not sure if it was stillborn or if the mother just didn't know what to do with it). It's twin was fine, though, so the evening wasn't a total loss. It was a much warmer night than last year, so that was nice.

I really enjoy spending time in this barn- it's a bit run down and messy, to be honest, but there are always birds in the rafters and mice in the straw, with sheep and lambs all around. It's the kind of barn I used to see in picture books when I was little, but never seemed like a real place to me at the time (also, I fell in a manger while chasing a sheep, which resulted in me having a host of Christmas songs stuck in my head for the rest of the night). I sort of feel the same way about PEI in general- I used to see all of these drawings in storybooks of farms and farmland, and since they were kid books, there were animals crammed into every corner of the drawings. I always thought they were a bit ridiculous because Newfoundland is never really like that- the wildlife is around, but you rarely see it. In PEI, I can take a walk in the evening and see a family of foxes, a handful of mice, a river full of ducks and some bats all at once in the same field. It's slightly surreal to me!

Classes this semester actually seem much better than last semester. There's a bit more of a focus on actual medicine, and most of our lecturers so far have been good. Our theriogenology (animal reproduction- apparently this word doesn't mean anything outside of veterinary medicine) professor in particular is hilarious. I wish I could videotape him- he's always going off on wild tangents and acting everything out with his hands; his lectures are pretty convoluted to follow, but he succeeds in not putting me to sleep, so I'm still learning from him!

Me and Calcifer had a great time home for Christmas! I think Calcifer enjoyed having a whole house to run around in! He's going to get bored pretty fast now that he's back in my little apartment. I was very impressed that he didn't attack the Christmas tree! He was actually very well behaved, aside from jumping on the table and getting into some leftover ham one night. Unfortunately, Amber wasn't very fond of him- I've never seen Amber snap at anything, but went after the cat a couple of times. Poor Calcifer just wants to be friends!

Getting back to PEI was a bit of an experience. My flight out of St. John's was delayed by nearly two hours, and then my connection to PEI was cancelled and we were told we couldn't get another flight until Tuesday. After 5 hours in a line-up for hotel vouchers, we were told there was a bus scheduled to take us to PEI and I got back about 3 in the morning. I was super impressed with Calcifer- he's such a good traveller! I put him in his harness before we left, and brought his leash, so I let him out of his kennel for a while when I was waiting in line. He wasn't nervous at all and the airport staff thought he was adorable :). He was pretty exhausted today, though; he slept on my bed for 8 hours straight this afternoon. It was a pretty exhausting trip and I'm pretty glad I wasn't the only one stranded. There were several other people from my class stuck with me, so at least we kept each other company in the line-up. I'm glad to be back now, though.

I was scheduled to go lambing tonight (keeping an eye on the sheep and helping deliver the lambs), but my partner was stuck in Montreal and I didn't have a car, so I called and explained that we couldn't make it. Hopefully I'll be able to go another time, but I kind of would rather sleep tonight anyway!

(Also, it is making me sad to look at my mood icon set right now :(. I'm sorry Matt Smith, but I'm going to hate you for a while; don't take it personally).

So there's been a trend going around internet blogs where people summarize what they've done in the first decade of this millennium. I don't know if I can remember what I did in the past ten years, but I'll try:

2000: Went to Europe. Started high school. Quit girlguides and joined Scouts.

2001: All I can remember from this year is going to CJ with the Ventures. High school was pretty uneventful for me.

2002: More boring high school, I guess.

2003: Was this the year of Cabaret? That was pretty fun. Also went to Bandfest in Toronto. Graduated high school! Started MUN.

2004: Added Neuroscience to my major. Worked at a pet store (my first real job, I think)

2005: Critter Care! Decided to try for vet school.

2006: I guess this was the summer I worked with the pigs. Was this the year we went to the Dominican, or was that 2007? That was pretty awesome- I went scuba diving. Started working at a vet clinic :).

2007: Graduated from MUN! BSc. with honours :) Applied to vet school (unsuccessfully).

2008: Got in to vet school!

2009: Still in vet school :). Delivered a lamb myself, and helped mom cat raise 6 kittens. Adopted a cat :)

Bottom line: The first half of the decade was pretty slow, but the second half has been mostly awesome! Looking forward to next year :D.

Home for Christmas and relaxing :).

ONE exam left. I really don't want to study anymore!! Our hardest exams got left for the end, so I really need to keep studying, but I'm pretty much out of motivation (my roommate finished today, which isn't really helping, either!). I can't wait to be done and get home for Christmas!!

I had my two rats euthanized on Monday, which was kind of sad. They've both been sick for a while, and I wasn't really comfortable leaving them with someone over Christmas. I sent them for necropsy, since I'm still not entirely sure what was going on with Squirt, and I want to take advantage of the school, since it's here. The vet who treated them was great, he covered a lot of my treatment expenses for both of them on his teaching account, since he doesn't treat rats often (he brought students in to all of the appointments to watch the procedures). I've had tooth trims, x-rays and an ultrasound for free, so these rats were definitely lucky I was at school- I never could have afforded them otherwise.

I should be studying right now, but my attention span has reached its end :/. So far, exams are going pretty well, no nasty surprises. I don't know what to think of tomorrow's virology exam though- our midterm was pretty ridiculous, but our quizzes lately have actually been pretty reasonable, so who knows. I am, however, not optimistic about pharmacology/toxicology next week. Pretty much all of those exams so far have been brutal!!

Since I'm just procrastinating, here's the website for the summer course I'm taking in Africa this summer: http://www.ecolife.co.za/vets.asp. It should be pretty awesome :D

Can't wait to get home for Christmas!! This semester is dragging.

Things that are not fun: wasting 3 hours of my evening waiting while one of my groupmates puts together our stupid presentation for our complete waste-of-time course (because said groupmate bailed on our previous meeting and insisted we schedule this one, at the last minute, just like I begged the group NOT to do), then having to re-do the whole evening's worth of work because groupmate's computer corrupted the file and I was the only one still awake to put the stupid thing back together.

Do you know how long I've spent on this stupid piece of @$*&? TOO LONG.

When is this semester over??

Oh, and I also booked my plane ticket for South Africa and reserved a spot in the wildlife vet program! It's a three week program in July, so I'll post some more details on that later :)

I guess I actually had a fairly epic week (which is nice, because the next three will be spent in a haze of studying and exam writing). We started sabre in fencing ("foil" is the style that involves jabbing each other with the sword that looks like a car antenna, the sabre looks a little more like an actual sword, and you do more swinging and less jabbing). It's cool in that it's a little more like actual sword fighting, less cool in that it is far too fast for my useless reflexes, so I pretty much suck ^^;. Another major difference is that the head is actually considered part of the target in sabre (thank god for face masks!). I have to be honest, I think me and Nicole (my classmate) got way too much enjoyment out of our instructor saying "stand within striking distance and practice hitting each other in the face". Seriously, I wish I heard those instructions a lot more often sometimes ;P.

On Thursday afternoon, we finished class ridiculously early, so a few of us went trail riding at one of the horse stables. It was a really gorgeous ride- I'm hoping we'll find time to do it again before it starts to snow!! We did a lot of trotting, and I think I'm finally getting the hang of posting, which was pretty exciting (for the non-horseback riders, a trotting horse is insanely bouncy and uncomfortable- "posting" means moving yourself in time with the bounces to be more comfortable). Then we tried to upgrade to cantering, which my horse took to mean "run like a maniac". Unfortunately, I was less successful with that and had my first experience falling off a horse >__<. Not terribly fun, but I managed to not get caught in the stirrups or do any major damage, so I guess it's a learning experience.

I have exams starting next week, and several projects due, so I'll be pretty swamped until Christmas break. My brain has finally switched into "school" mode (about 2 1/2 months too late, but better late than never. I have two and a half weeks to memorize almost 200 viruses). I've also been tutoring a couple of first years for their exams, which actually makes me feel far more productive than studying for my own! For some reason, a lot of vet students have difficulty sorting through piles of information to find the key concepts, and I'm actually pretty good at that, so I'm a decent tutor, and I enjoy seeing people finally understand the material :). I'm really hoping to tutor embryology and parasitology next semester- embryology is super simple if find the right way of thinking about it, and it drives me nuts how many people in my class came out of parasitology without learning how to actually identify a ton of basic parasites, so I really want to teach someone how to do it! (The number of people in vet school without basic microscope skills is stunning- thank you Carol for making my life miserable in Cell Biology!!). Too bad I have no tricks for learning this semester's material :(. Memorization is just not my thing :/.

So much to my shock and amazement, Squirt is actually doing ok! She perked up a lot by Saturday evening, and now she's pretty much back to her old self. Not sure what happened to cause the bleeding, but for now she seems to be under control. She's still going to keep deteriorating, thanks to the tumor (it's already causing her to have some trouble walking and holding her food- I'm hand feeding her a few times a day to make sure she eats enough), so I still suspect she won't be around much longer, but at least she's ok for now!

I had a pathology wetlab last week, which was pretty fun (if slightly disturbing)! It was on necropsy of domestic animals (it was an optional after-school lab for the pathology club). I like to get involved in as many of these as I can (I did an avian necropsy not too long ago), because we don't actually get a whole lot of opportunity to see necropsies. Half of pathology is recognizing when something looks "normal" and when it doesn't, so the more dead animals I see, the better, I guess. Our class pathology labs this year generally consist of looking at abnormal specimens, most of which have been preserved, so practicing on fresh animals is pretty important (apparently the slaughter plant that used to be on PEI closed down a couple of years ago, which resulted in the loss of a good source of fresh pathology specimens- the plant used to send us all of the condemned pig corpses).

I did a cat (I made sure to pick one that looked absolutely nothing like Calcifer- cutting up animals that look like my own pets is disturbing, even for me). I didn't find any terribly exciting lesions- he looked like a pretty healthy cat, but had been euthanized, and judging by the brand of food in his stomach, I suspect he was from the shelter. I did find a good-sized tapeworm in his intestines, though.

Nothing else terribly exciting going on this week, but one of my rats (Squirt) has been really sick. She's been very clumsy for the past 2 weeks, and I suspect it's being caused by a brain tumor (pituitary adenomas are insanely common in rats, particularly females). On Thursday night, she also developed severe vaginal bleeding, so I took her in to school and had x-rays and an ultrasound done. We couldn't find any obvious tumors in her abdomen, so we're still not entirely sure what's going on. Likely treatment would be a spay surgery, but since her brain tumor would likely kill her anyway, I don't think it's worth it. I brought her home for the weekend, since she still seems reasonably comfortable. If she's still bleeding on Monday, I'll bring her back and likely have her euthanized :(.

One of my classmates made an interesting discovery last week- we had a radiology lab and were invited to bring our own dogs in to take x-rays of them. It turns out that the dog my friend adopted from a North Carolina animal shelter a couple of ears ago actually has a bullet in one of her shoulders! There probably won't be anything done about it, since it's clearly been there for years, but it was a pretty unexpected finding!

There is a depressing lack of animal contact in second year (it's mostly theory and classwork), but some of my extracurricular activities give me a little more exposure. I had a small ruminants club field trip yesterday to deworm some llamas, which was an interesting experience. The dewormer is in the form of an injection, so we had to round all the llamas up and hold them still enough to poke them in the neck with the needle. I don't expect many people reading this blog to have any experience working with llamas (neither do I, so I'm trying to get as much exposure as possible during school), but they're pretty tough to control. There's a reason people use these things to scare coyotes- they will pretty much run you down at every opportunity. We coralled them in a tiny pen so that they were packed too tightly to move, then did the injections. Of course, they weren't packed too tightly to spit, which they did. I'll be honest, I could have lived without that experience (by the way, it's no "spit" so much as a spray of rumen fluid, and it stinks). They're still adorable, though, and it was a fun time!

I also did a wild bird necropsy lab last week, so that was pretty fun. I worked on a Canada goose who turned out to have been shot in the chest with a lead pellet (which is apparently illegal to use). There was also an owl with a broken wing and a couple of bald eagles that seem to have been hit by cars, so they were neat to see.

On an unrelated not, we had the disturbing experience last week of getting broken into. Some guys climbed up to our second floor balcony and got in through the sliding doors. They took my roommate's flat screen tv and laptop. Fortunately, they didn't get anything of mine, but it was still pretty unsettling- we were both at home in bed at the time, and thought the noise was the cat knocking things over (not an unreasonable assumption- he's pretty noisy at night). They were already out of the apartment when I realized what was going on. The police were here, but they have yet to turn up anything.

I had CAT action this morning, which is the feral spay/neuter program that AVC runs. Basically, people trap feral and barn cats and bring them to the school. Students get to practice spaying/neutering them, they get vaccinated and sent back where they came from. Students get put into teams of four with one student from each year.

Our first cat was male, so me and the first-year split his neuter and did one testicle each (cat neuters are pretty easy, so it doesn't take long to learn how to do them. The neuter went fine, and I successfully drew blood for the feline leukemia test, so that was pretty encouraging :).

Our second cat was female, so the third an fourth year students did her spay while me and the first year monitored anesthesia. Part way through the surgery, she stopped breathing (which isn't super uncommon, it happens because of the anesthetic sometimes), so we both took turns ventilating her until she started to breath again, but then her heart suddenly stopped. One of the professors stopped by right then, so I grabbed him, but we weren't able to save the cat :(. We had noticed prior to surgery that she was super thin, and once she died, the fourth year student started poking around in her abdomen a little more to see if she could spot an obvious problem that could explain why the cat died. She realized that there were no small intestines in the cat's abdomen! That made us wonder if she may have had a diaphragmatic hernia (sometimes the diaphragm can get a hole in it, letting some abdominal organs slide into the chest cavity). We extended the incision to have a look, and sure enough, the poor cat had almost no diaphragm- Her intestines, stomach and part of her liver were all in her chest! It seemed to have been a congenital defect- it looked as though the diaphragm never completely formed, so it's kind of surprising that the cat lived as long as she did. There was no way for us to have fixed her problem- it was too severe to even correct surgically, so it's probably better that she died under anesthesia, rather than in a field somewhere. It was at least nice to know that it wasn't our fault that she died- even though we couldn't think of anything we had done wrong, it was comforting to find that the cat had such a huge problem (and even though it was very sad, it was kind of a cool condition to see, so most of the other students present came over to have a look at her).

Catch-up time again, since I'm procrastinating studying (I have actually started this time, though- serious!)*.

Stuff from last month that I still didn't really get around to mentioning here:

-we had "industry day" at school, which means a bunch of drug reps put up displays of their products around the school and give students candy to get their attention (I guess that should stop working past the age of twelve, but it doesn't). I actually had some decent conversations about some of the drugs- I'm more familiar with them now, so the whole thing was more interesting than last year, and I guess it will be more relevant in fourth year, when I have to start considering actually buying some of these things.

-I went to a free weekend conference about animal welfare. The focus was largely on palliative care for ill/elderly pets, and deciding when to push euthanasia. It was a good conference with some really good discussions. I largely go to these things (I went to a euthanasia conference last year, which was fantastic) due to a couple of cases (one in particular) that I saw at my old clinic where animals were still being treated long after they should have been euthanized. I realize that it's a tough decision to make for everybody, and I've seen plenty of people who put it off for a while, but these cases were well beyond that point. I never felt that the vet in charge of them handled the situations very well, and I'm always looking for ways things could have gone better.

We also discussed the incredibly awkward situation of parents who attempt to sneak the family pet in for euthanasia while the kids are at school- I've watched this sort of thing happen and always had a probIem with it, so I was kind of relieved to hear the speaker say that he directly asks these clients to reconsider their decision to keep the kids out of the loop. Their are some things I feel you absolutely should not lie to your kids about, and this is one of them.

I have to say that I'm incredibly grateful for my experiences at Sunrise assisting with euthanasias and speaking to clients both before and after. There are a lot of unexpected situations that come up and I've glad I've had a chance to observe some of them without having to be in charge. I feel like I'll be a lot more prepared for those sorts of things when I go into practice.

-I've had two more Animal Care Committee meetings. Reading all of the research protocols is bit of a pain, but I'm generally enjoying being on the committee. It's definitely a learning experience! I'm actually contributing to some of the meetings now that I'm getting the hang of the procedure, and occasionally a really difficult problem will come up, so it's interesting to see how those get solved.

-Completely unrelated to school or veterinary work, I've joined the university fencing club :). I'm so desperate to avoid schoolwork that I am actually turning to physical activity. This may be my healthiest semester ever. I have to say, fencing is pretty fun, and I'm slightly less terrible now than I was when I started! As a peculiar side effect, however, the right side of my body is perpetually covered in small, perfectly round bruises from the point of the foil. It looks like some strange pox.





*I read the entirety of Pride and Prejudice rather than study for my Virology exam, which, considering my general dislike of romance novels, really says something (the prof for that course is somewhat... less than motivating. Aside from the fact that he looks like a James Bond villain)

Since I have five more hours in the Deer Lake airport, I'll attempt to catch up in this blog :) (also, I'm procrastinating on some homework I brought with me, what else is new?).

The last weekend in September was the AVC open house. It's an annual event where the public is allowed to tour the school and students set up displays for them to look at. Unlike last year, I didn't paint any cows (it was done by the incoming first-years, I think). Instead, I painted large animal rear-ends for a pin-the-tail game, which still made for an interesting evening. Our class was also allowed to take advantage of the event to do a little fund-raising (we have to fund-raise the money for our graduation ceremony at the end of fourth year). One of the students in my class has run a carnival and worked as a clown (he is an exceptionally well-rounded student- I think he's also been a firefighter and a pilot!). He brought a cotton candy machine and taught a bunch of people in the class how to tie balloon animals (some of them tried to figure it out before he arrived, which was disastrous and resulted in a lot of badly misshapen but very colourful animals, as well as a good few swords, because that was all anyone could actually manage to make! It also seems as though cotton candy is a lot more difficult to handle than it looks! There were flying sugar chunks everywhere the evening before the open house when people were trying to learn how to use the machine. We made a fair bit of money, though, so I guess it was worth it. I didn't volunteer for any cotton-candy shifts; I was manning the exotics booth which was a lot more up my alley. I brought Squirt in (because she's adorable and it's a good opportunity to show people that rats aren't all creepy-looking!). I also got to spend some time handling some of our teaching animals and showing them off- we had Nitro the bearded dragon, Gretel the box turtle and Voldemort the albino corn snake (who was very popular!).

The open house was on Saturday, and on Sunday, we had our first small ruminants field trip. We went to a sheep farm to do some hoof-trimming. Since sheep have evolved to live in fairly rocky, barren areas, their hooves don't wear down properly when they're kept in barns and on soft pastures, so they need to be trimmed periodically. I did this a few times last year, and I felt much more comfortable with it this year, which was great (it no longer takes me 1/2 an hour to do one sheep!). I also finally figured out how to flip them myself, which I didn't have as much opportunity to try last year. (To explain sheep flipping: sheep hate to be touched, and run like maniacs when you get near them- they look cute and helpless, but they will sooner flatten you than cooperate with you. The best way to keep them still to have their feet trimmed is to roll them over so that their sitting on their butts with their feet in the air. Once you have a hold of their front legs, they're fairly easy to control. This is, however, easier said than done, and involves catching up to the sheep, grabbing it by the head, jamming your knee into it's flank and rolling it over, while being careful not to pull on the wool, which bruises the carcass and devalues the sheep if it's sent for slaughter. Also, a full grown sheep is very heavy). There were a lot of sheep on the farm, so we got a lot of practice.

On the same field trip, we also visited a wool mill, where they not only spin sheep wool, but also pet hair (they had some very nice samoyed hats), so if you've ever wondered if that was possible, it is! They also handle a lot of musk-ox hair that gets sent down for processing from some native communities up north. Musk-ox wool sells for about $90 a roll (and is amazingly soft- if I ever become a millionaire, I want a blanket made out of this stuff), and a pelt is apparently worth $2000! It is an unbelievable insulator- we all held a piece of the un-spun hair, and it literally heats up in your hands within seconds.

Now I'm going to finish my homework and watch some more Battlestar Gallactica. God, there is nothing in this airport.