Zoo Trip

I had an amazing experience yesterday - I was chatting to a lecturer I know about exotics work after our lecture and somehow got invited to go and assist her at the zoo!

Our first task was to sedate and examine a hog deer with an abscess on his face. To do this we needed to first dart the animal to get close enough to give more drugs. Fun! I was lead through all of the equipment and drugs involved, and then briefed on my task - anaesthetic monitoring for the procedure.

It all went fairly smoothly as the abscess was lanced and radiographs taken of his head to look for signs of dental disease. Unfortunately it looks like he may have to be knocked out again to get a tooth removed to stop the problem. Photos when I can find them!

We spent a few hours checking out various other animals around the zoo, my favourite being the rhinos again. I was tasked with distraction duty (food!) whilst the vets examined an injury to his horn, trimmed bits and flushed it all out. The rhinos are brilliant, I love being close to them as they are so big but can be very gentle when hand fed.

I'd love to go back again, but first we have a few exams and the Easter holidays. Fingers crossed for next term!

Teaching

As part of our course we are expected to teach the other years when we eventually get to final year, a prospect that terrifies most of us. We not only have to know our subject, but pretty much anything else that is going on as well, for example we may be presenting equine ortho cases and be asked questions about neurology or anatomy. I guess it's good practice for finals!

I decided to get some practice in this week and went along to help the 2nd year students with animal handling and some 3rd year students with suturing and hand-washing. We mainly covered the basics of dog handling - breed, age, sex, restraint for blood samples, tape muzzles and how to give a tablet. Some people didn't have a clue which seemed really odd to me, although I guess my inability to handle horses must surprise some people.

These things become second nature in the later years, especially when you get to see practice - they won't be very impressed if you can't handle a dog for a blood sample. Some people got the idea fairly quickly, others took their time.

Overall I think it was useful for everyone. It was good revision for me, although I may have developed bad habits in the past few years. Good luck with the handling exams 2nd years!

Motivation

It's nearly the end of term and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to focus and actually do some work. We have an exam in under a week and I really need to do some revision but it just doesn't really feel real yet. Just getting bored of the constant sitting in lectures learning stuff that just isn't that interesting for me.

Post-exam I'm off to see the tortoise post-hibernation checks which could be quite exciting, then covering ICU for the evening. Then back to Wales for 3ish weeks of EMS, so hopefully some fun stories. Just need to survive the week.

Busy week

Another long one! For some reason things start to pick up towards the end of term giving us more information and less time to revise before the exams. It doesn't make much sense to me, but then again nor do a lot of things.

In just over 2 weeks, after a whole load of lectures, a few practicals and 2 exams I'll be heading back to Wales to work in practice again. It's lambing time at the moment and things are fairly swamped so hopefully there will be a great chance to learn new things and practice the old things such as a sheep caesar, but this time with new knowledge.

We had the chance to practice our farm animal clinical examination this week - possibly the only chance before the exam after Easter. I found the clinical findings were fairly easy but my main problem lies with the more basic knowledge - the breed and ageing an animal. Time to resit the old animal husbandry notes I think. And I finally found the pre-scapular lymph nodes in sheep!