about time...

sorry (again) for taking such an incredibly long time to update! eek!

Well I passed large animal medicine (which I was expecting--i didn't like the rotation, but there was no reason for me to fail), I passed large animal surgery, have finished radiology and am now on dermatology...OI!!

Large animal surgery: another sucky rotation, but the clinicians, residents and technicians were nice so i survived. I also got to do a lot of cool things like castrate two horses, extract a horse tooth, participate in a horse colic surgery (open abdomen!), and ultrasound a horse fetus:)
We also saw some weird stuff, like this goat that came to the large animal surgery service...the owners had rescued this goat from it's previous owners who were going through a messy divorce....apparently, the goats rear legs and ears had frozen off at some point.



The owners wanted prosthetics for him.....hahahha....there are a few companies that have made prosthetics for goats though...so we took pictures and sent them to those companies...we tried fitting him in this dog wheel chair you see in the pictures, but he didn't like it, and he got around fine without it...he would balance on his front legs and walk around--seriously! how crazy...

Next was radiology, a super-easy, laid back rotation...just what i needed after a month doing large animal with crazy on calls!
Radiology was fun....here is a radiograph of a tortoise...


I also got to go home for xmas eve, xmas...then came back to school because the clinic was open that friday, but drove back to GB friday night and spent the weekend at home...mother nature was super nice and not only made the roads driveable on every trip, but the snowmobiling conditions were PERFECT!!! here's me on my sled:)







now i am on Dermatology, which is also a pretty laid back rotation:) I'm learning a lot and relaxing--all good things:)

Let's pretend it is veteran's day week...then boards...now hell...

I'm really bad at keeping up on these posts so let's do a bunch at once....

First!
Veteran's day week! yay! well, i guess i'm not really that excited but there was a very cool display out near my house for the whole week...i almost teared up every time i drove by....

So I live near a HUGE cemetery and during that week, the Veteran's for Peace group set up this display along the road in the cemetery that was essentially a mini gravestone for every solider that has died since we entered this god-forsaken "war"

It was called the "memorial mile"


There was a sign between each year and each location (afghanistan and iraq)





Here you can see the graveyard in the back



they even put a little wisconsin flag on every gravestone that was for someone who was from wisconsin that died:(



and it went on all the way down the road for almost a mile




Pretty moving....

Anyway, my next rotation after therio was VACATION....to study:( sounded awesome but it was soooooooo exhausting....i woudl get up early in teh morning, either sit down at my desk or go to the library and try to put in 12 hours of studying a day for boards.

oh yeah--boards. that's why i was torturing myself--but what is boards you ask.

The veterinary boards exam is the big exam all fourth year vet students have to take and pass. it's one (of the many) requirements we need to get our license. this exam is intimidating though....a 6 hour exam of 360 multiple choice questions covering everything we've ever learned (and more). it is a very scary exam.

so after 2 weeks of studying i took it...and i truely feel like i failed...which means i would have to re-take it in teh spring...*sigh* we'll see...i'm not sure anyone feels like they passed, but i only knew 40% of the answers, so i guess we'll see how good of a guesser i am.

oh, i find out if i passed in february...so at least i have a few months of not studying...

so after vacation/studying, boards, I am now on Large Animal Medicine rotation. which is pretty much just hell. i did get to play with a baby goat yesterday, so that was fun. but that's about it. it's very horrible. Why is it hell? torturing animals. i hate it. last wed we had a dairy cow come in "down" (couldn't stand). after some radiographs we saw she had a broken femur (leg bone) and dislocated hip on the other side. Bone pain is extremely painful and a dislocated hip is likewise painful. However, her owners wanted her genetics so they chose to keep her alive for a week with us so they could flush her embryos before euthanizing her (they had bred her the day before she went down)

so this whole last week we had this broken cow in the hospital---just keeping it alive so we could kill it. and she was in horrible pain. We did the best we could to keep her pain to a miminum. We put an epidural catheter in so we could administer pain medication directly to her lumbar spinal cord, gave her NSAIDS, and slung her in a float tank (like a huge bath tub that cows can float in--this cow did love her float tank) but you could tell she was still in pain, and to me it's incredibly unethical to torture an animal for a week so you can get 1 embryo out of her. that's all we got out of her today before we euthanized her. and it will probably not be viable b/c she's been stressed out for a week.

I shouldn't be so judgemental b/c i drink the milk and eat the cheese that comes from dairy cows. i should be vegan.

but anyway, i'll stop my ranting and get on to better things like thanksgiving!! yay!! i get to come home, at least for the day:) back to work on friday.

Here is a nice happy picture of a cute animal so i end on a positive note:)

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_14507.cfm

thank god it's over

Today marks my last day of Therio! yay!

I was on with three good friends of mine so that made it bearable and full of laughs:)

One day, we were at a dairy farm palpating what felt like a billion dairy cows, when this tour group of Algerian business people came walking through the barn. So here I am, armpit deep in cow butt, covered in manure, when a man asks me, "are you inseminating?". I politely answer "No, I'm rectally palpating to determine her stage of cycle". Oh, I can be professional--and you doubted!

These Algerians were constantly shapping pictures and taking video of us. I wonder what newspaper or TV show is showing me in Algeria. We laughed for a good 20 minutes after they left.

oh, but the day got even better!

We went to culver's for lunch where there was a big to-do about them lying to us vegetarians about the meat products in their food. The short version is that the culver's corporation states on their allergen pamphlet that none of their food is certified vegetarian and all may contain trace amounts of animal products. So not only did several employees argue with us that the potato au gratin soup was vegetarian (it's not...it has fish and pork in it) but they shouldn't ever use the word "vegetarian" b/c the corporation has that disclaimer. This was a serious problem for me as a vegetarian and could have been a lot worse--if i was jewish i'd be morally outraged and if i was allergic to fish--i'd be in the hospital!

anyway--i wrote a letter to the culver's corp asking to get it in their training protocol so more serious situations don't arise. i got a letter of apology back so i was satisfied. the funny thing was, in the letter they included gift certificates for free food baskets at culvers......hmmm...i wonder if they even read my letter or maybe they're getting their kicks by giving non-vegetarian food to a vegetarian, "good luck eating this!". haha, whatever.

And finally, this friday we went out to a dairy goat farm to do a herd evaluation which was pretty fun. Essentially we got a tour of the farm and ultra sounded a ton of goats to see who was pregnant. Goats are awesome animals--they are so curious and hearty. The picture at the top is me standing next to a goat in the milking parlor. Goats go up ramps so when they are being milked (from behind) the milker doesn't have to stoop. This picture adequately represents the part of the animal we were concerned with on this rotation, although slightly obscured by the tail;)

Theriogenology

I am on my next rotation: theriogenology, or in laymans terms, how to make things reproduce as fast as possible.

ok, maybe that's a biased view, but honestly I am morally opposed to 90% of the this rotation. It has been incredibly difficult for me to deal with--the first few days I was going from rage to tears inside--why am i on this rotation?!?! dear god?!?!

because it's required. Funny thing, our clinician said this rotation is required so we gain skills (mainly cattle palpation skills) for ambulatory--another required rotation where we ride around with a large animal vet. But i have set up a different ambulatory rotation in commercial poultry medicine. When i told our clinician that he asked "then why are you here?"

that's the question i ask myself every day.

Earlier in the week we worked up two male german shepherds who were not producing sperm. As theriogenologist, our goal is to find out why they aren't producing sperm and fix them so they can breed again. my answer is NEUTER!!! there are too many animals dying in shelters every day--i honestly don't give a $&*% about breeders and would love to spay/neuter every one of their animals.

The rest of our time we spend doing large animal stuff. mainly cattle palpations. "what is cattle palpation?" you may ask. Palpating cattle is where you stick your arm up a cows rectum (what i'm doing in the picture at the top) and find the ovaries to find out what stage of estrous or pregnancy they are in. It's a routine practice done on every single dairy cow and makes me want to become vegan. Cows tolerate it ,but they don't like it.

*sigh* i'm now in my defeated-tolerating stage and am trying to focus on the few cases we talk about that involve an actually sick animal. Trying to find the light at the end of the tunnel; meanwhile i'm forced to molest cows so i can get my license......

Necropsy!

So now i'm back from the emergency center. It was a good rotation over all. I learned some things and got to meet a bunch of people. I also got to work with the only avian specialist in the state so that was awesome! The only downside is that it's mostly interns and residents, so I didn't get to do as many things as I did at the first center--because they're all learned too.

Now I'm back at school and on necropsy rotation. A necropsy is like an autopsy, but on animals. It's not something I get very excited about, and I wasn't enthused going into this rotation, but I did get to do a necropsy on a cockatiel and a whooping crane this week--so that was awesome!! I also helped with a cow necropsy and did most of a horse necropsy by myself! It's morbidly festive! haha It's kind of a rough adjustment--as students were used to being very careful when having an animal open for a surgery--delicate tissue handling, taking your time, etc. But here, it's all SLASH and RIP! literally! I had no idea was i was cutting but the clinicians kept telling me to keep going! Big knife in hand, horse leg up in the air, i'm hacking off the leg, ripping into the abdominal cavity, slicing up the spleen and digging out the brain.

At least this rotation is appropriate for the season;)

surreal

The other day at the emergency center a dog came in with a pretty much pathognomonic posture called schiff-sherrington. He was recumbent (laying down) with his front legs stiff in an extended position and his hind legs were limp with flaccid paralysis. Essentially it means he has a spinal cord lesion where the thoracic vertebra meets the lumbar vertebrae--midback. As we talked to the owner and got set up for radiographs to diagnose it, we watched his signs get more severe--his legs got more stiff, he lost all reflexes in his hind limbs and his head started to bend backwards in what's called opisthotonus, another sign of schiff-sherrinton. We radiographed him and sure enough, his vertebrae had fractured right at the thoracic-lumbar junction, almost completely severing his spinal cord.

The surreal part was that I had studied schiff-sherrington the night before. It was almost creepy.

There is no treatment (not even palliative) for schiff-sherrington, so the dog was humanely euthanized. The owners were distraught--they had no idea how this had happened--the dog was outside on a line and the owners had gone inside for a few minutes only to return and find him like this. Sad story:(

OREOS!

just break complicated topics down into terms of food or beer and i understand

http://www.truemajority.org/oreos/


stupid war....

missing post...

Sorry, this one was supposed to go after the last wildlife post but before the emergency post.....

9.12.08

I’m sad to leave the wildlife clinic I’ve had a BLAST the entire time and loved every minute of the long hours. Besides learning a lot and enjoying myself, I’m glad I came out here because it solidified my desire to go into wildlife medicine. I definitely want to be a wildlife rehabilitation veterinarian. Now the only standing in my path is the shortage of jobs (less than a dozen full-time wildlife vets in the country…..it’s going to be a waiting game). But I’m going to apply to a couple wildlife medicine internships and a couple exotics/small animal practices and maybe some emergency practices for back-up. I’m crossing my fingers I get one I want!!!

The last two weeks I was back at the vet school on the small animal internal medicine rotation. I had some great cases and some sad cases. Since it’s a vet school (ie well-known referral center) we see extremes; I learned enough but the pace was a bit slow—or rather less efficient than I was used to. But it was a good rotation. I saw some sad cancer cases, some good immune-mediated disease cases that we were able to treat and some cases we never figured out. Good learning lessons.

So now I’m at a small animal emergency center. It is great! Everyone here is incredibly helpful and nice. Last shift, I got to place some intravenous catheters, watch a splenectomy surgery (taking the spleen out of a dog who had hemangiosarcoma), and suture up a wound by myself. Good times

Well I’ve got a long weekend of work ahead of me so I better get some sleep

emergency medicine!

So right now i'm at an emergency/referral vet practice near milwaukee. This place is awesome!! the staff is helpful, the vets are great teachers, and i'm not only learning a ton but getting to do a lot of hands on stuff.

The techs have been great in letting me draw blood and place catheters, and teaching me how to improve my techniques. I've gotten to watch several surgeries including a splenectomy, liver lobectomy, and foreign body removal. I've sutured up a laceration by myself and fixed up two anal gland abscesses. I've also learned about disc disease, severe rodenticide toxicity, other toxicities, seen a lot of CPR, and a ton of other stuff. The hours are great at this place and allow me to be there during the busiest times of the day.

In a week i go to another practice where the hours are not very good and i hear it's just a step down from this place--but as long as i learn, i'll have a blast:)

yay for emergency medicine!

to counteract my rant---something that makes me happy:)

I'm sitting here in panera studying when a 45-50year old man starts talking to a 60 year old man about how feedlot beef cattle and other industrial meat animals have the shaft. Feedlot lot beef cattle are fed a diet of pretty much pure corn and antibiotics. Feeding cattle pure corn produces stomach ulcers in cattle. These stomach ulcers are extremely painful and allow bacteria into the animals' bloodstream which can cause a miriad of problems and ultimately death. The antibiotics, labeled "growth promotants" are needed to counteract the ulcers to allow the cattle to live long enough to slaughter. If the cattle were allowed to live longer, the antibiotics wouldn't be able to last that long and the cattle would die of rumenal ulcers. The reason cattle are fed a diet of pure corn is to get them to grow faster so they can go to slaughter faster....less time spent raising the cattle means more money for the feedlot owner.

anyway--i'm sitting listening to this conversation in the conservative city of milwaukee and it makes me happy to hear that people are thinking:)

if this is news to you, here is a good, reliable link to read about it:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/industrial/

the last bit of tufts wildlife center:(

>
EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

Here is me in the ocean in Massachusetts:) yay!

So updates on some of the animals in my last blog: the painted turtle with the hook through it’s head and the broadwing hawk with the broken wing were released! Woo hoo!!

I just realized I didn’t talk about the broad-wing hawk. Well, here he is.

He came in as a juvenile with a broken humerus. We placed an intramedullary pin and external fixature which was taken off two weeks later. We needed him to heal fast and perfectly because he needs to migrate to south America (right about now!). He healed great , was reconditioned and released! Yay!!

Here are some more animals…

This snapping turtle (40+lb male!) came in with lower jaw fractures and a shell fracture. A couple days before I left I got to help wire his jaw back together and clean/wire the shell fracture. He was doing well when I left.

This great-black backed gull had swallowed a fishing hook—it was a really really big one! I assisted the wildlife medicine intern during surgery. We had to go into the bird’s stomach to get the hook out. It’s a lot harder than in a cat or dog. Birds don’t have an abdomen and thorax (chest cavity) like mammals do. They have one cavity called their coelom. This is because they don’t have a diaphragm—they

have thin airsacs that pump air in and out of their lungs. These air sacs are thinner than cellophane wrap

and all over their coelom. So when we were cutting into the coelom, we had to cut through some of the air sacs---you could smell the gas anesthetic in the room—it’s a crazy surgery—very cool! He made

it through surgery and was doing great when I left!

Not sure how well this picture will come out but it’s a newly hatched snapping turtle!! He’s so cute!

This bird is an osprey. Osprey eat fish. And that’s it. They are also….umm…let’s say not the brightest. Sorry, that’s mean. They aren’t dumb—they are very set in their ways of eating fish in the wild. So in captivity—many simply don’t eat. When you get an osprey that doesn’t eat, you have to tube feed it which is stressful on all involved. I took on the osprey after it had been at the center for a week. He wouldn’t eat and was being tube fed. Then I took the case and he decided to start eating;) I think he just got sick of me grabbing him three times a day to feed—hee hee. They are really beautiful birds though.

And I have to end on the cutest picture ever…check out this squirrel with a splint on his broken leg!!! Awww!

a rant...i'm sorry

I need to rant about this....i promise to catch up on my posts (including another one about the wildlife center) after this one--but I just need to post this.

I was working at an emergency center last night when some random person (i think who works there? i don't know who she is) made me want to explode.

A dog was anesthetized and getting prepped for bilateral (both knees) TPLO surgeries. TPLO is used to treat ligament tears in dogs' knees. It stands for tibial plateau leveling osteotomy---what they do is they cut off a chunk of the top of the tibia so the femur sits more nicely on it--so the torn ligament isn't needed---the knee will stay "together" because the tibia has been flattened.

So the dog is getting his lower back shaved for an epidural to control pain---because cutting off two chunks of bone is VERY painful!

The anesthetist is explaining that you don't need to clip this area super short--just get most of hte hair off--because teh hair on a dog's back can grow back slow--so they try to leave some there.

Then this random person starts getting into a heated discussion about how if it was her dog and the hair would grow back slow she wouldn't have the epidural done.

"you would refuse an epidural for your dog even if she was getting bilateral TLPOs?" asked a tech

"yeah--i can't bear to see that shaved spot on my dog for months" the random woman said.

"but what about pain? TPLOs are very very painful" said the tech again.

The random woman went on stubbornly about how she didn't care and would not let an epidural be done.

I'm new at this clinic so i forced myself to stay out of the conversation---it was one of the hardest things i've ever done.

WHAT THE H(#*?!?! You are refusing pain management for your dog who is having an extremely painful surgery done because you wouldn't like his haircut? I can't think of a more selfish and ridiculous thing. I consider that inhumane, neglegent and if i was a judge i would slap her with a fine for animal cruelty. If i was the surgeon i would refuse to cut her dog. period. i just can't understand this kind of thinking---

all you have to do is put yourself in the dog's shoes---would you want to have bones cut off (and bone pain, i'm told, is horrible) with only 50% of the pain management?

i could go on and on but i better stop and do something productive---i need to get rid of this anger.

Wildlife Clinic!

August 16, 2008

Wow---I can’t believe I’m almost done here at the wildlife clinic! The first week I didn’t feel so busy but after that I just haven’t had any time to write anything down. But it’s simply amazing and I’m having a great time out hereJ Here are a few of the cases I’ve had (just a few…there are too many…)

This adult female painted turtle came in with a hook going up into it’s upper jaw and through its eye socket. We thought the hook was going through the eyeball so we prepared to take out the eye—but when we got to the hook out, the eyeball seemed intact! We left the eye in and are treating it with antibiotics. The swelling has gone down and next week we’ll sedate her to get a better look at the eye to see if she can still see out of it.

This loon came in having been grounded (loons should pretty much always be on the water) and thin. Her leg band had slid over her foot, causing a wound, but no other trauma or reason for her to be so thin. After a week and a half, she hadn’t gained much weight and she was still anemic. Loons are especially susceptible to a fungus called aspergillosis and once they have it, they can’t get rid of it. Since we couldn’t find any other reason for her to be so thin, we went looking for aspergillosis. Asper likes to live in the lungs and air sac walls. We scoped the loon (put a camera into her body cavity) and found fungal plaques on her air sacs. Since she’ll never get rid of it, if released she would probably die of starvation and eventually respiratory distress. Sadly, she had to be euthanized.

This salamander is from a local zoo. It has a mass around it’s eye. We anesthetized her and took a biopsy. Hopefully we’ll know soon what this mass is.

I don’t have pictures, but we’ve also went to surgery to repair a broadwing hawk humerus and a red-tail hawk ulna, went to surgery to remove hooks from the stomachs of another painted turtle and a black-backed gull. I’ll try to get pictures up soon.

Take care back in the Midwest! I’ll post soon again!

Off to MA!

Sorry this entry is a little late--let's just pretend it's July 27th;)

Leaving The Wilds was sad, but getting back into wildlife rehab is going to be amazing!! I'm so excited!

I left Cumberland, OH at 7am saturday morning. I didn't stop to sight see, but i did stop often to walk around get a snack. Here are a couple of the more interesting signs i saw:



a) peace, love and bbq??? last time i checked, bbq contained slaughtered pig, which isn't exactly all about peace and love....ha
b) bbq is good....good thing they put it on the sign or i would have driven right by thinking bbq was bad.
c) there is a special place in my rage box just for cannibalistic marketing ploys. idiots.

so that was fun.

Later, i drove by one of those "road-side" zoos that are usually horrible, horrible places for animals to live. This one had a good outer appearance, but i was curious as to how horrible the living conditions were. I asked "Can i ask where you get your animals from?" She replies, "oh they've had a lot for a long time; i think they get a bunch from auctions and sales."
I can almost guarantee now that the enclosures are too small, the animals malnourished, and that there is no enrichment for the animals. But they wouldn't let me in with out paying $8, which is bs. So i grabbed a brochure with a revengeful look on my face. "Ha! That's $1.50 you'll never be seeing again!" take that stupid unregulated road-side zoo of misery.

As I drove through New York, I saw this sign and almost died:



Oh no, your glasses aren't dirty, you aren't having a dream and you are not intoxicated. New York has somehow known about me my whole life! A deli in my honor! The only problem is when i went inside, a beer-belly man with sweaty pits was manning the deli which was only a counter in a gas station and they didn't sell t-shirts. oh well; i guess everyday can't be "nay day".

And so, After 13 hours of driving I arrive in Grafton, MA. Not too exhausted, and very ready to get back into wildlife medicine!

July 25, 2008

Last day:(

Today is my last day at The Wilds. I am sad:( ; this facility is amazing, the animals are incredible (and managed on pasture like they should be) and the people are completely awesome. Everyone here has been so nice and incredibly helpful. I’ve learned so much during my time here and enjoyed every personal interaction I’ve had.

Today is my last day—and what an amazing day it was! There wasn’t much planned—but that quickly changed (just like every Friday;) ) In the morning, there was a bison that had had rotting membranes sticking out of her hind end for a day now; she either had aborted and now had a retained placenta or was a dystocia. If it was just retained membranes, we would probably just dart her with some oxytocin and possibly tetracycline. If it was a dystocia, we would have to immobilize (anesthetize her in the field) her and pull the calf. It was decided to immobilize her in the field so we could palpate her and tell for sure which it was, treat her accordingly, and be done for the weekend (also a good learning experience, the vet argued;).

So at 10am we took two trucks full of supplies out to the field where the herd of ~50 bison resided. We threw grain and hay down in the field to keep the bison occupied. Then I followed an Animal Management staff person out into the middle of the herd on foot (yes--walking in the middle of dozens of two ton bison!) and I darted the female with anesthetic drugs; it was a surreal experience!

After getting darted, the female took off running over the field and down a hill. We took th

e trucks and found her thrashing in the tall thistle (ouch!). The animal management staff tied her back feet and sat on her head while the vet gave her more anesthetic drugs. After palpation, we realized she had aborted and only had retained placenta. We gave her oxytocin (to help expel the rotting placenta), an antibiotic and a non-

steroidal anti-inflammatory. We then gave her a drug that reversed the anesthetic drugs and she was on her feet in less than 2 minutes.

Field immobilizations are sooo much fun:)

For lunch, the vet staff took me to the restaurant at the wilds and treated me to lunch (yayJ ) and then surprised me with going away gifts---I felt so special! Among the awesome and extremely thoughtful gifts was a small stuffed Takin which they had sewn the eye shut on (like the Takin eyeball we had taken out the week before!). how cool?!?! The stuffed takin (name Alcatraz) is now my traveling companion and is sitting looking out the front window of my car.

After lunch, we all hopped in the truck to give the giraffe dewormer. We cut a bunch of “browse” (branches trees that the giraffe love to eat the leaves and bark of) and brought it to the giraffe pasture. They don’t have much browse in their enclosure so they all eagerly came up to the truck and started eating. Then we could take a large syringe full of dewormer and squirt it on their backs. The dewormer gets absorbed through their skin and kills any internal and external parasites the giraffe might have. To have enourmously tall giraffes towering over you and practically eating out of your hand is again—a surreal experience!!

I then went back to the clinic, finished the project I’ve been working on for the last few weeks, said almost emotional goodbyes to everyone, exchanged email addresses and did not cry as I left the The Wilds.

What an amazing day:)

Off to MA!

The Wilds (part 3) and Hellbender-ing (part 2)

Knock on wood, The Wilds has been not that crazy of an externship. The case load is low, the free time is abundant and it’s mostly herd management. However, last week I had two “emergencies”.

First, a Bactrian Deer had been very pregnant for a very long time. Recently she had looked extra huge and had started to bag up. Last year, this same deer had a dystocia (difficult birth ---calf was born breech and she couldn’t have it, so they had to anesthetize her and pull it—calf was deadL but mom lived). With the history, we were anticipating another dystocia, so were watching her carefully.

It never fails. Friday afternoon right before we were about to pack it in for the night, Animal Management saw some discharge from her vulva. We went out there and couldn’t find the deer. After a good 30 min of systematically driving through the tall grasses, we found her hunkered down so far in the grasses, we almost ran over her. And sure enough, two little hooves were sticking out of her back end.

We went back to the clinic to prepare and Animal management herded her down to the “tamer” (like a squeeze shoot) where we gave her anesthetic drugs….after she went down in the induction stall, we pulled the calf (again breech, or caudal presentation) which was sadly dead. We medicated the deer and woke her up. She recovered well and looked fine. However she died overnightL The necropsy didn’t tell us why she died exactly. Sadness.

Later that week, all was quiet in the clinic. It was deemed a “paperwork” day to work on projects and get caught up on records. They day was jinxed from the start.

Around lunch time we found out that the male Takin (see pic) had gotten into a fight and one had gored the other’s eye. It was irrepairable so after lunch we anesthetized the Takin and performed an enucleation (surgically taking the eye out and sewing the skin over the eye socket). Luckily, everything went great; the Takin recovered fine and the eye is now healing beautifully! Here is a pic of me “expertly” giving the anesthetized Takin an injection while they remove the eye ball.

The other male Takin – the one who had done the goring—was lame so while we were there, we anesthetized him for radiographs. He had some weird abnormalities on the xrays, but no broken bones, so we woke him up and over the next few days his lameness disappeared. AwesomeJ

And of course, I got to do some more “hellbender-ing” while I’m hereJ yay! We caught 4 the first day, 3 the second day and 2 the third day. Not incredible numbers, but still great. I’ve been doing awesome at drawing blood from hellbenders (not so good from mudpuppies, but they are much smaller). The hellbenders we caught on the last day had this awesome yellow color to them ( see pic), and we also found a baby spiny soft shelled turtle (see pic)—very cute!!

In other good news, I have an interview Tuesday (of all days, I know…) at what seems like a great vet clinic, for an internship. An internship is a year long job working at a clinic for very little money in hopes of getting some great mentorship—this is AFTER graduation (next May). I plan to interview at a lot of places this summer and early fall, but it’s exciting to get started.

Ok, I think that’s all for now…I leave on Saturday (July 25^th) for Tuft’s Wildlife Clinic in MA!! Yay!

Take care and I’m thinking about you Grandpa!

p.s. I have to show this picture of a small store in the middle of nowhere-ohio. It's hard to see in the pic, but tes, the sign says “family market custom killing” without any separation of the two phrases.

Oh and they sell t-shirts with that same uninterrupted phrase “Family Market Custom Killing”

Of course I bought one!

The Wilds (part 2) and The Cleveland Zoo

Przewalski’s horses are the only true “wild” horse (meaning they have never been domesticated).

The oddly cool thing about The Wilds, is that it's forcing me to learn large animal medicine in a way i actually like!

I thought I was lost cause when it came to large animal medicine. After 3 years of vet school--i said that I "hate large animal medicine". But now i am learning that i don't. What i dislike is the gigantic, commercial, production farm that is taking over every aspect of our food system.

Which brings up another one of my soap box issues: Americans are INCREDIBLY disconnected from their food. Most people have no idea how that carrot got on their plate or even think about how their steak was once a living, breathing creature. This isn’t a vegan rant—I don’t care if people eat meat. But I would jump for joy if everyone would take the time to learn how the food got from the field/farm to their plate, appreciate the process, and make knowledgeable food choices that strive for a more sustainable society.

Ok, I’m done. I swear.

Anyway, I’m learning large animal medicine and having a blastJ

I’m practicing my catheter placement skills (in the picture, I’m placing a jugular catheter in a Persian Onager, which is a species of wild ass that’s endangered); I get to help with liver biopsies, necropsies (which is an autopsy done on an animal), neonatal exams, and I’m getting to do a lot of DARTING! We go out in the truck to pasture and use a CO2 pistol to dart vaccines into animals.

And finally, lots of babies are being born, which means cuteness abounds!

Below are pictures of baby takin. Takin are massive mountain goat-like creatures. They have to have the CUTEST babies ever!

In addition to all the fun at The Wilds, I had the opportunity to spend 3 days in Cleveland. I was helping process bones for a research project; it was pure grunt work, but on the last day, I got to spend the morning with the Cleveland Zoo vet and other students. During that morning, we did a re-check on a seal with a tail wound and anesthetized 3 red kangaroos for radiographs, CAT scans, dental exams and blood draws. It, too, was fantastic experience and I learned a lot.

Update on the housing situation: Now that I’m in my own 2

^nd floor room (I spent the first week living in essentially a closet because there were too many people in the house), I get some studying done on the weekends. It’s Sunday afternoon and I look out my window (which is floor height), and there is a black rat snake crawling on the awning of our house. We went outside to see how it was going to get down and it had disappeared into the gutter, or possibly into the 2” gap between the roof of the awning and gutter (which appears to connect to the floor of my room)….

The other luxury amenities of the house include:

• limited water supply due to the well being itsy bitsy (don’t you DARE take longer than a 5 min shower or your roommates will devour you)
• the water supply available has a sulfur contend so high, you’ll pass out if you inhale
• heavily tick infest yard (oh, the joys of rocky mountain spotted fever and lyme disease!)
• a prior mouse problem (hopefully they have all moved out to the tick infested yard by now)
• “natural ventilation” aka no air conditioning (high of about 90 this week?)
• NO cell phone reception or internet at the house (I’ve been going through serious withdrawls)
• Rusty pots and pans (don’t worry—my tetanus vaccinations are up-to-date)
• A basement that smells like death (crossing my fingers no tornados hit while I’m down here)

Ok, while it’s all true, it’s really not bad. I’m making it sound worse for the sake of humor….at least I laughed.