Reading week catch up

What a busy last week! I swear the day I wake up without a busy schedule I know I'll be dead! The last week of school flew by. Had a huge anatomy exam on Tuesday that went pretty well, though missed a few things for sure (how important could the coagulating gland on a chicken be that is has to be on the lab identification portion?) Had a nutrition FINAL on Friday that studying for kept me on my toes. So hard to get in a studying mode when all you can think of is home. It did not go well. Was told to study general concepts but got tested on [icky details.... we'll see how the mark comes in but I have low expectations of that one, and I LOVE nutrition, oh well.
Drove home Friday afternoon after playing hookey from afternoon histology class. Saturday came out to the lake. Spent the day Saturday getting the low down from Aunty Sherry (FernValley01) how was headed to Mexico Sunday who I was going to be farm sitting for! Snuck in a couple rides too, one with my mom and one with a younger girls who boards her cushings affected mare for the winter. The rode out to our hayfield was freshly plowed and so the footing was great and we had a fabulous ride.
Digger, my 9 year old gelding, has always had very sensitive mouth issues and I am a super driving rider so I always had a lot of trouble collecting him up. It been 4 months since Ive really ridden, but in that time I have been doing equilates, a Pilate's form for riders, as well as studying as much as possible on some of older dressage masters tips and techniques. Well, I gently cued digger with the reins to bring his head down, and lightened my seat by lifting my core muscles and shoulders and low and behold Digger picked up the bit and rounded his back up to meet me. Lovely collection, something I have only ever dreamed about with him, but more on that for another time.
Sunday Aunty Sherry left. Did morning chores then went ski dooing with my brother as well as we went for a ride together, since then I've Been Feeding and studying and going into the local vet clinic for some hands on. Got to help IM pin a dogs leg today which was really cool.
Monday it started snowing, and its been snowing and blowing ever since. Over 1ft of fresh powder, which is stunningly beautiful but sure hard to slug through, but onto the pictures!


snow storm

digger and I

my brother and I out for a ride

mom out for her 2nd ride post accident


stallion cactus looking for his share of the grain

The "kids" getting their taste of grain so that the mare in the background with cushings can get her meds in peace.

Andee waiting for her grain

Fix and Arse very excited for their grain

The boys looking pathetic in the snow

Cows waiting to be fed

Filling up the mares stock tank

Feeding the steers

Digger coming up for the fork feeding hay

An overveiw with the geldings in the foregorund and the cows watching me in the background.

Sunday in pictures

As something different I figured I would take you along for a boring Sunday of studying at school, seeing as I do nothing but study on my time "off".
So the room mates cat woke me up at 8 as she had spent the night At friends and he was lonely. Got up and had breakfast then headed off to school at around 930. Got to school



and first went to the anatomy lab for a study session.
This is the anatomy lab all setup for reviewing for our Tuesday exam on GI tract and reproduction.




At about 1130 I was finished going though all the specimens and so decided to go meet my friend venti vanilla americano with milk at Starbucks. Starbucks is a 15 min walk from the vet school and it was -25 out, so it was a nice refreshing walk.
Here is Starbucks and I back in the locker room at school after our walk back.

Stopped to nuke the now chilled coffee in the microwaves before heading up to the library that opened at noon.
This is the atrium of the library and my favorite place to study as it has such nice natural lightfrom the sky lights and I like the smell of all the plants

You can see the checkout desk, computers, and functional part of the library behind the atrium. The vet med library is always super quiet and has 1000's of reference books that make studying all that more interesting.

Here is Starbucks and me studying.

Sat here till 3 when I decided to go hit up the lab again.Lots more people in there this time. This is the anatomy cooler where we keep all the formaldehyded specimens including a complete horse, cow,calf,sheep, and about 45 dogs between my class and the animal science students.


Random hamster in formalin in a box.... looks like he water skiing or something..




Penis's!!! Now that we got that out of the way........




So at about 5pm realized I was exhausted so decided it was time to head home.





This is the agriculture building across the street from vet med, can you tell we're in Saskatchewan where Agriculture is king??

Tomorrow I will be posting pics of all the things about horses you wish to have seen but never have.....



Oh, and I didn't study all weekend, Friday night was our valentines happy hour, had a date auction and someone made a beer bong to auction off.....


But it somehow never made it on the bus for the drink a small town dry pub crawl so being the clever resourceful vet students that we are someone brought clean palpation sleeves to have beer drinking contests out of....



oh dear, gotta have a little fun though right?

Quick update..caution, gross pictures!

Got my physiology midterm back,89%!!!! 2nd highest mark, (first was 89.5) Feels good to be the youngest in the class and still kick butt! Went to a few lunch hours talks this week, the first one conditioning the equine athlete. This talk was given by a professor who rides endurance and runs marathons, and shes over50! She and her horse had qualified for the last world equestrian games but being in Dubai during the school year was out of the option. Has her sights set on Kentucky 2010! Awesome presentation and some really cool gadgets such as an on board heart rate monitor etc showed how to apply and modify ideas across disciplines too. 2nd was by the top equine surgeon in the school who presented on equine emergency care. Was really cool and learned a lot.
Anatomy midterm Tuesday on repro and GI as we have Monday off for the family day long weekend. Have a nutrition final Friday. Tomorrow is my classes happy hour follow by a pub crawl and I am so excited to go out and let loose for a bit!
Give you the details Saturday!
Angela


Here are some pics from our equine digestion lab. This old mare was donated to the school by her owners when they decided to euthanize her due to old age, poor condition, and she was very lame. She was euthanized and then we got the awesome privilege of using her to further our knowledge.
First one of the equine internal medicine specialist came in and did a mock laparotomy, like they would for exploratory colic surgery and I got to be his assistant. Was super cool for a horse vet wanna be. We then spent 3 hours dissecting every inch, as its not very often you get the chance to do something like this.

Poor old thing was also pregnant, 90 day old fetus

What a horses gastro intestinal tract looks like spreadout

Every body pretending to be a surgeon!


Note: Horse was euthanized before any of this occured! Was allready set on the surgical denno board when we arrived

Party planning as the social life goes down the toilet??

It is my classes turn to host a happy hour this Friday, and although I am not on the committee it has somehow turned into my project. Have a lot of experience from planning big dances and parties in undergrad at the U of A and i guess word leaked out. I really enjoy this kind of thing, when it is me who is supposed to be doing it. needless to say I will be spending tomorrow afternoon out shopping for all the supplies and alcohol. Organizers hadn't even thought of getting plates and cups!!!! I want to make sure we do Good job on this as it really reflects on our classes capabilities to the rest of the school. After the happy hour we will be going on a "drink a small town dry" pub crawl, where we take school buses to a small town, undisclosed location, bar and attempt to drink the bar dry. Did this a lot in undergrad with the agriculture students and its always a blast as everyone in the bar is from your group and I LOVE country music.
Unfortunately after this weekend we have major exams every week till the end of the school year. I guess this year over reading week I will actually being doing a lot of reading!!!!

Just for fun here some more artwork from my highschool years.

THIS IS WHY I Am IN VET SCHOOL!!!

What a fabulous night!!! It is lambing time and all the first year vet students along with agriculture students have the joy of night lambing watch. Each person is assigner a 4 hour shift, mine being from 8p-12a. I was partnered with friend Taryn from class and 4 wonderful ag students. The group before us had 0 births so we were expecting a slow night when 2nd check out there was a lamb!! Brought it into the indoor pens with mom to give them some one on one time to cement the maternal bond. There are about 50 pens, almost all full! We continued our outdoor checks and made sure all the indoor lambs were nursing when we noticed around 9p that a ewe had a fluid bag indicating birth approaching. we gave her an hour but still no lamb and she was pretty agitated so we brought her indoors to get a closer look. So I glove up to explore her uterus(thank god for smallish hands, those ladies are narrow!) and to my dismay find back legs, lots of back legs, too many for 1 lamb. Everyone took a turn exploring and then we two vet students set to work! we got the first lamb extracted breech, as Taryn resuscitated it I went in and pulled out a second! As that one was being resuscitated I explore once more and pull out a third! They were pretty cold and shaky so we put them under a heat lamp but their awesome mom quickly set to work drying them. we then took them and weighed them, they were all hefty 5kg boys. dipped their umbilicus in iodine to prevent infection and put them back with mom. The next rotation would be arriving soon by this point so we helped all 3 suckle to make sure they got that necessary colostrum vital for their immunity and when we left all 3 babies were doing awesome!
This was such an awesome experience as for the first time we were completely in charge. We vet students were the highest authority around and were to make all the calls. There has always been a relative, vet,or older/senior student around and I am used to being relegated to watching. It was awesome to get hands on and my little ego swelled just a little when the agriculture kids asked " if there is problem can you deal with it?" and I could say YES!! I may be young, but I know my stuff and loved the opportunity to prove that to myself.
It was an awesome night that ended way too soon, but it just makes all those ours of class and the long road to get here that much more worth it!
Pictures



getting nursing started

triplets

the delivery team

lamb mom surfing

cute!

Late is better than never!

Well last weekend I did manage to sneak home for a self declared 3 day weekend. I left right after class Friday and returned at midnight Monday night. Got home to Edmonton around 6pm on Friday, just in time to have a nice sit down dinner with the family.... something that never occurs out here! Its always dinner in front of the lap top or tv for me. There was an Agriculture formal at the U of A so after dinner my brother and I got dressed up nicely and went to the formal. It was so nice to get to see my friends, and also to see everyone dressed up nicely for a change!
Saturday morning we headed out to the farm. I spent the early part of the day working with Eurus. It is so hard not being able to keep consistent work hours with him! We pretty much had to start from the basics. WHOAH and personal space. He is over 15hh as a yearling and can be intimidating behind you when you know he has no breaks and no discretion for knocking you over! We managed to get that fixed though with a little help from Aunty Sherry (FernValley01). He was very good though about picking up his feet and the bit.
Later in the afternoon my future employer, Dr. David Cliplef cam out to Preg Check some cows. I have been doing a lot of repor studies at school and getting a lot of practice with the ultrasound so he brought the portable monitor for his ultrasound system so I could follow along. Dave has a really neat ultrasound. He carries the machine in a small backpack on his back and the image is put onto a pair of sungalss's type eye wear. Makes preg checking a breeze! It was so cool to apply what I am learning to a real life situation!
Didn't ride Digger as it was way to icey outside and no ride is worth either of us getting hurt.
On Sunday I started off the morning by going for a ski doo ride with my dad, bro and sister. We headed out to a spot that we always went to when we were little kids and had a hotdog and fire just like when we were kids. It was so nice and quiet out there. Poor Dad, had to feign wanting another hotdog just so the moment wouldn't end so fast.
That afternoon my mom, who had a bad riding accident in October, got on a horse again for the first time! I was so proud of her. She was terrified, so I jumped up on her horse blue first for her. This is not the horse that threw here. Blue is the steady eddy of the place, the horse you can trust anyone of any skill on, and he proved his worth that afternoon! Mom was smiling fron ear to ear with happiness. The Aunty Sherry hopped on Blue for a quick spin too with me, though unfortuenatly had to learn the downsides of riding in baggy sweats.... Digger was a good boy for me, a little revvy to get out but can you blame him? went from weekly riding to not being ridden in 4 months! Worked again with Eurus as well.
On Monday mom and I spent the morning on the farm both working with our young horses, me with my yearling Eurus and here with her 4 yr old mare Pepsi. We then headed into Edmonton.
Had another nice Dinner at home before all too soon we had to head to the airport so I could fly back to Saskatoon. My room mate picked me up at the airport on this end and we headed home. Got a few hours of sleep before the dream of a weekend was over and I had to head back to school!
Was met with an 830 to 530 day and had a ton of catching up to do for missing class on Monday, but it was worth it! I had a fabulous trip home and can't wait for the next 3 weeks to be over before reading week is here and I can head home once again.


Me and Mom out Riding

Heading out sledding

Me and the machine....

Me!

PregChecking Cows

Me and my boy Digger

Riding with Aunty Sherry and Skeeter

Working with Eurus in the round pen, was free lunging him till he made two attempts to jump the fence........