Puppy Therapy :)

Full Moon

Well school is really starting to pick up and if I thought I was studying hard before, now it's just overwhelming. The past few days have been kind of a blur since it was only a four day week I've been kind of confused as to what day it is and where I'm supposed to be all week. I would be lying if I said that I didn't have time to write some new posts in the past few days, but I wouldn't be lying if I told you that I didn't really have that much to talk about. You heard all about my Tuesday in my last post so as you can see the week didn't start off that great. Wednesday wasn't especially exciting either. For anatomy I had radiology which is never interesting and Dr. B has started to teach histology for the next two weeks and I can't say I'm a huge fan. The afternoon was sort of eventful as Dr. Reich (professor for Nutrition) decided it would be cool to do a demonstration to start class. We were discussing ingestion of lipids and so in his confident fashion he takes a big spoonful of butter and pops into his mouth and disgustingly "chews" it for the next minute or so before he swallowed. Pure lipids right there and according to Reich the heart loves lipids (which it does since it can burn them for energy), unfortunately I don't know if his arteries feel the same way! In case you were wondering excessively fatty poop is known as, Steatorrhea. That's right I taught you all a big veterinarian word! Stinky, Slimy, Slithery, Silvery, Shimmery, Steatorrhea! Since I don't really remember Thursday I'm just going to say that it was probably just uneventful. There is only so much one can remember before everything just fades into a big blob. The only thing I remember about Thursday is Dr. Reich's pep talk which was much needed. Basically he told us that the Admissions Committee, which he is a part of, chose each and every one of us because they know that we are capable of doing the work necessary to succeed. The motivation to do that work is up to me of course, but at least they believe in me :).

Today was a great day because I had small animal palpation first thing in the morning and while we do learn important skills and information in this class it is also pure puppy therapy time. I've mentioned this before, but one of the most awesome things here at Ross is that the university has a dog colony which we have access to starting our very first semester. These dogs are used for palpation and other various educational things throughout all of the semesters. Today I worked with Digger who is an amazing shepherd mix. He's probably a little over a year old and he's such a good dog. I'm sort of in love. Anyway we went through and just felt around the thoracic limb as we are learning the basics of a physical exam. Most island dogs have gigantic lymph nodes because there are a lot of tick-borne diseases on the island, but Digger's were fairly normal and closer to what you would feel in a healthy dog back in the States. Anyway my favorite day of the week from now on will probably be palpation so expect to hear a lot about these dogs. On top of that I went to the first meeting of the Animals on Campus Club (AOCC) which is focused on taking care of the dog colony by doing obedience training, agility training, enrichment exercises, fundraising, and coordinating adoptions when the dogs are released from the colony. Did I mention that Digger is up for adoption in December? Yeah, so anyway these dogs make excellent patients and fantastic pets because they are worked with so much. Through AOCC hopefully I'll get to play with the puppies even more through training and walking the dogs while the second semester students have their exams. (The second semester students are responsible for taking the dogs on a 15 minute walk twice a day so on exam days AOCC volunteers to walk to the dogs so they still get their walks and the students get to study). I'm really excited about working with the dogs so expect to hear more about it soon!

In other news I have my first exam of veterinary school on Monday at 10:00AM. I'm a little nervous, but at this point I just have to buckle down and study!!! Anyway that's all for now I'll probably post again sometime this weekend or after my test on Monday.