Lambing!

One of the requirements of my first year at school in the UK is to do 12 weeks of animal husbandry experience. We're required to do 2 weeks of dairy, lambing, horses, pigs, and 4 weeks choice.

At the recommendation of a fellow vet student friend at UCD (dublin) I spent two weeks at a wonderfulsheep farm in Buncrana, Ireland. The farm had about 750 ewes, when we arrived 350 of them were still left to lamb. We helped out in all aspects of the farm - which involved feeding everyone that was still being housed, administering any required meds, moving ewes and lambs as required, and the most exciting bit - helping out with lambing. By the end of the 2 weeks arm length gloves had definitely lost their novelty! I really enjoyed lambing - and will make a point in future years to spend time with some farm vets during the spring - to get more repro experience with the farm animals.

Here is a video I made to show you what it was all about!

Days 5 and 6: small animals

We took off our 3rd day and went sightseeing: hiking around a volcano and lounging by a warm beautiful lake.  Then we got to work for our last two days in the clinic.

The last two days at the clinic were full.  It started off slow, with only 6 or so animals around, so 3 of the vets and 2 students went off to the horses.  It was nice having a slower morning because I got to learn and try out some new skills. I started placing IV catheters in the dogs (to help fix the earlier problems of starting to wake up during surgery) and I got in my first 3 on the first try! I also helped hand instruments to the drs, and worked the pre-surgery table, to keep the animals coming.

                                            Animals recovering from their surgeries

But by noon we somehow had 20 animals left for surgeries, so things picked up. In the afternoon everyone came back from the horses (they saw 80!) and we sped up and got through everyone, though it was a long day

Other than spay/neuters, they also performed one more leg amputation and removed some tumors in a dog. We got in a little, tiny, skin and bones dog from a village a few hours away. The dog couldn't keep any food down and basically hadn't eaten in a week - he was very sad looking. The Drs. figured he must have a foreign body in him, but doing a surgery was risky, due to his state of health. They decided to re-discuss the case the next day.

                                           Trachea dog a few days later, looking good!


Day 5: Our last day in the clinic was a short half day, we did about 10 surgeries. I got to be Claudio's helper, and placed many of the catheters - it was exciting to get better at it and feel useful. We had 4 or 5 cats to neuter, and we each got to help out with another one or two. I enjoyed seeing each dr's different approach to tying the knot.

After the spays/neuters they decided to try an abdominal exploration on the skinny dog - he'd spent the whole morning on fluids. They found his organs full of air, but no blockages and looking for the most part healthy. His airways where also clear (they stuck a tube down to check). So they sealed him up and put him on a plethora of anti-parasitic drugs.  I heard in the evening he looked a tiny bit healthier, and actually stood up and walked around a little.  We heard a report a week later that he was doing much better.

Amputee dog from the first day, looking good!

That wrapped up the vet work for our trip. Overall I really enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. Everyone (vets, students, volunteers) were very helpful and willing to share tips or teach and I think we all worked well together and got a lot accomplished. Personally it was also exciting to gain some skills (like placing ivs, more practice with Ims and Subqs) and actually feel what it was like to neuter a cat or tie a suture. I hope to help out on another world vets trip in the future - hopefully as a vet student or vet!

Day 3: equine

I spent today at the equine coop.  In Granada there are many work horses - they pull carriages around town for tourists, they transport materials (they wait in lines outside "home depot") and they help out on farms.  The Coop is a building the owners can bring their horses to for work for example shoeing, or vet work.

                        On a previous trip one of the vets had given a halter to this horses owner.He was very proud of it, though didn't quite know how to put it on.

Almost all the horses that came through got vaccinated (west nile, tetanus etc), dewormed, and vitamins-  I got lots of practice giving IM injections to horses.  Communicating with the owners was our biggest difficulty, as none of us spoke fluent spanish and the people who usually helped communicate where busy in the morning, but we did our best.


Many of the came in with bad tack wounds, and we tried to tell them how to keep the horses healthier - changing the padding more often, or using padding (some didn't). 
It was sad seeing the condition of some of the horses that we could do nothing about. We saw a few very bad cases of laminitis - the owners think it is from a spider bite.

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We had a very good turnout, by the end of the day we'd vaccinated 95 horses! The vets performed two castrations. Many of the locals and owners gathered around to watch the castrations. They were all male, and it was amusing to me to watch them flinch and look uncomforatble throughout the operation:

We had one horse came in with a sarcoid tumor on its leg.  Apparently it had been cut off before but grows back, our vets think it may be virus related. We cut it off again and in January when the next vet trip comes they will bring some cancer drugs to try and treat it. The vets kept warning that cutting it off would be a "blood bath" but it wasn't too terrible, just a little bloody.

When world vets first started treating horses in the area, there was a lot of mistrust of the vets and they have been working hard over the years to overcome this.  Today there was a lineup of horses, some of which traveled in quite a distance to see a vet.  It was great to see how they have gained the trust from the community and are able to help out the local horses.

Day 2: small animals

We worked a full day in the clinic today.

We took in 41 dogs and cats, most of them for spaying. The vets also performed one leg amputation and fixed up trachea dog (mentioned in previous post).  I worked at the anaesthesia area, and shaved and prepped the animals for surgery. I got to do a few of the pre-anaestethic im injections, however the one IV I tried I couldn't hit the vein. Hopefully later on the trip I'll get proficient at that.  I also did my first surgery! Just a neuter on a little kitten, very closely supervised, but it was fun to actually hold a scalpel and get involved.

                                           Cleaning the tools

 Our biggest problem today was keeping the animals asleep, even with extra doses of the anesthetic they kept wanting to wake up, which is not a good surgery trick!

We ended the day with the trach dog. They prepped him and cleanned him up, and intubated him (which was crazy, cause you could see the tube through the hole in his neck). It worked out better than we all expected I think. They where able to close the trachea w/o having to cut into any of the rings, and then stitch up the skin over it. We wrapped his neck up in cotton to prevent him from moving his head back and opening it up too far. As he started waking up from surgery he barked! Before this due to the hole he'd been hoarse and could barely make a noise, so this was promising. Apparently the next day he barked alot, so hopefully its healing well.

                                                  Getting ready for surgery.
                           
                               

                                                                     All stitched up

Nicaragua

I am now spending a week in Granada, Nicaragua on a World-vets trip. We arrived last night around 8pm - our team is comprsied of 4 vets and 4 pre-vet students. Today was a mostly relaxing first day, we had a tasty brunch (donated by a hotel) and then went to the clinic to drop off supplies we brought and set up shop. Upon entering the gates we were immediatly greeted by 5 or so excited dogs, wagging and jumping up on us. I started petting one of them on the head, which he seemed to like, then I ran my hand down his back feeling how skinny he was (very skinny) when suddenly he bit me! While he didn't really puncture my skin, he left quite a few teeth marks and chomped down hard. Interesting start to the day :) This dog it turns out, has a hole in his neck. As a puppy his owners had put a collar on him, and then he grew, and the collar didn't, cutting his trachea open. The hole is about a quarters width, right into his trachea.. He is one of the patients we will be trying to help this week.


While we weren't supposed to do any vet work today, we got in call about a horse with a broken leg someone had noticed in a field. We all piled into a pickup truck and drove out to find him, hoping that things were exagerrated, and he would just have a cut. But when we found him his front right leg was very broken, and the whole leg was swollen, and useless. He was well mannered and nice and probably only a yearling, but we had to put him down. It was a sad start to the trip. After putting him to sleep one of the vets shot him in the head - if you use euthanasia solution like in the states, it will kill any animals that may feast on the meat (ex: raptors).

We ended the day in a tour of the city by horse drawn carriage - we will be working on the carriage horses two of the days this week. Then we took a boat to some of the little islands created by a now dormant volcano.
It was a pretty full day for a day off, but I'm excited to get started tomorrow in the clinic.

The seal goes home!

First off, sorry I've been mia from this blog for the end of summer. I've been spending less time at Paws, and more time working with domestic animals of various sizes and filling out applications for vet schools. But there will be more updates.

BUT - the harbor seal that we've had for a long time, has finally been released back to the wild! You can read it about it in the Seattle times or on Kiro


Here is the fatty seal still in his pool at Paws, getting ready to go home :).

Squirrel season!

Squirrel season is officially in full swing. Last night we had no volunteers show up, so we got to work, moving efficiently and speedily, to accomplish the nights chores. 6pm - feed all the nocturnal animals - I made a delicious meal for all our raccoons, that included dog food, sun flower seeds, apples, and some fish.
Then we tubed a few of the animals not eating on their own, did a few cleaning chores, and got started on the evening med list early. Luckily the med list was shorter than in past weeks, and we got through it in record time, finishing by 8:30.
So I felt like we were doing ok to get out of paws on time at 10pm... Then I remembered the squirrels.
A week ago we had about 5 squirrels, we now have over 20. All getting fed formula/milk out of little syringes, which is not a fast process. Its lucky baby squirrels are so cute!


(Someone on youtube feeding a baby squirrel).

Some of the volunteers from the bird nursery came up and helped, since they are running low on baby birds (their season ends as our second squirrel season begins). But feeding them just takes a long time, no matter how cute they are. Especially when one of them says he's not hungry, and squirms and screams at me instead. I finally discovered he prefers being wrapped in a towel like a burrito, and then he was willing to drink his 8ml of formula.
It was around 9:30 by the time we finished with the squirrels (overall it took maybe 2 hours, since other people started at 7:30). Then we rushed through the evenings chores, and head home after 10:30. It was a full, squirrel filled day. And it may only get worse in the next few weeks :).