Puppy Breath!

So I've been really down lately and just a little lonely so I decided that I really, really needed to make a friend of the canine variety! Yesterday I contacted the Foster Coordinator of PAWS (People for Animal Welfare on St.Kitts) to see if I could foster a dog or puppy (if that's all they had). If you remember be mentioning the pregnant dog, Princess Buttercup, well she had her puppies on my first day of vet school (which for some reason I find significant). Her puppies are now almost 8 weeks old, but 2 of them still don't have permanent homes. My friend Kendra is fostering one of them and I'm fostering the other. The third one that's left is being adopted this weekend. So anyway he is very cute and yay I have a puppy! Here are some cute pics of him. They named him Eric, but I refuse to call a dog Eric so yeah he doesn't really have a name right now!

The Bad Thing About Rape Is…

Today (Thursday) was a rather uneventful day being the day after our last exam of round 1 everyone was just waiting for the weekend. As I mentioned the other day I baked a cake to celebrate the ending our exam round 1 and of course I brought it into school to share with everyone! I was trying to play "catch-up" all day with the classes that I moved to the side to study for my exams and that sort of worked. I studied anatomy for a while so at least I know what's going on in the pelvic limb now. Histology is still a mystery to me, but I'll figure it out and I finally understand what afterload is so physiology is coming slowly (Don't you dare make a "that's what she said…" joke!) The most eventful class today would hands-down go to Nutrition. As you recall I dedicated a post a few days ago to my hilarious Nutrition professors, well here's another one for you. As we are discussing different feed stuffs we get to canola or also known as the rape plant. In the words of Dr. Naylor, "I assure you rape is not a sexually deviant little plant, but the problem with rape is it…". Of course he was drowned out by laughter, but if you are actually interested in the scientific reason why the rape PLANT is bad it's because it contains an acid which can be toxic to the animals that eat it. If you are really interested the difference between canola and rape isn't just a name difference to make canola seem more appealing, it's the fact that the canola plant has been modified to not contain this toxin. Yep this is the stuff I learn in nutrition! Also in case you were wondering, "the problem with Canada is that they can't grow soybeans, but they can produce a TON of rape". Haha, ok on a more serious note (not really), did you know that hay bales can spontaneously combust? I guess if you've worked on a farm you would, but I had no idea. Pretty cool! Anyway a good life lesson, don't let a wet hay bale play with the other hay bales in the barn unless you could be without a barn!

Another Sunset And On To A New Day

Today marks a very special day because it was the last day in my first round of examinations. I can now proudly say that I've conquered the beginnings of each class in my first semester of vet school without dying (although I came close a few times, LOL). With that said, I have a very long road ahead of me involving a TON of work on my part. I'm confident in that I deserve to be here now as I am extremely confident that I deserved an A in Biochem with ATW (just saying). With all of that in the past I now need to convince myself to keep up the momentum and continue to do well. My goal for the next round of exams is to NOT stress out so much before and mainly AFTER the exam. Note: this is a lot harder to accomplish (as I'm sure many of you already know) than it seems. Thank you to all of you for your continued support and a special thanks to all of those who "believe in me" you know who you are! Today was all in all a good day! I did well on Nutrition (well the exam…I can't say my food intake was spectacular today), my refrigerator was fixed (yay!), and I baked a cake which I am more than happy to share with anyone who comes to find me in school tomorrow! Anyway on that note I have a TON to catch up on tomorrow but hopefully I'll find something hilarious to post about soon!

Nuances of Nutrition

So I have an Animal Nutrition exam on Wednesday and in studying I've rediscovered all of the wonderful quotes said in lecture by both Professor Reich and Professor Naylor. Now I've already mentioned quite a few of Reich's best and you most likely, "don't give a flying fandango", but I'm going to share with you some more of the ridiculous, sometimes hilarious things these two professors have said in the course of lecture. I'm not sure if I've told you before, but "LIVER = GOD". There is no greater being in the entire body (although I would have to disagree and say that the liver can't possibly be God because it is constantly listening to that insanely bossy insulin as well as the hormones that occupy the lesser managerial positions). Also thanks to Reich I will never ever forget that the nucleus in adipocytes is pressed up against the membrane like a squashed fly on a windshield in case you were wondering. Also for those of you that LOVE cats, did you know that "the lion is the King of Parasites" and here you thought he was just the King of the Jungle! What I think Reich meant was that instead of hunting for food a lot of times lions will scavenge for food and steal food from other hunters. Personally I love lions and I don't blame them for stealing food when they are starving and there just aren't enough gazelle on the Savannah. I mean really who actually likes those hackling hyenas anyway? Remember when pancreatic lipase breaks down triacylglycerol it doesn't want to be inappropriate and you give you the middle finger so only 2 fatty acids are removed and you are left with monoacylglycerol. Always, always remember that if there is not enough bile, or fat absorption fails for some other reason you will be left with that stinky, slimy, shimmery, silvery, shiny, slithery, steatorrhea!

Now Professor Naylor isn't quite as vivacious as Dr. Reich, but in his own British way he can be quite entertaining. I'm afraid that most people don't really understand his British sense of humor, but he can be funny at times especially when he's comparing our class to a herd of cattle. Yep, he's done that a number of occasions. One time in particular we were discussing overcrowding in cattle and he said, "well you all should understand that quite well". We are the largest class so far at Ross so I understood his sentiment, but my classmate next to me turns to me and exclaims, "Did he just compare us to cattle?". Apparently Dr. Naylor doesn't always use his head. He recounted a story for us in lecture while we were discussing supplemental mineral blocks for cattle and horses and the like. Pointing to a picture of a colorful wall of mineral blocks he says, "This is in Mexico and look at all of those pretty blocks. I have NO idea what was in them, but I made the awful mistake of licking one and got very, very sick"! I can't imagine what would possess the man to actually lick a mineral block out in the middle Mexico meant for animals, but clearly it was a terrible idea. While today's lecture is not covered on my exam I will share with you anyway the funny moment of today's nutrition lecture. The question was, "Can you make US Whiskey out of Ryegrass? Yes or No." The answer was No and right around 68% of the class got it wrong so Dr Naylor says, "Here's a fun slide with a serious message: Drink Scotch!" Regardless we later learned that the answer was in fact no because rye grain and ryegrass are completely different and while you can make alcoholic beverages such as whiskey and beer from rye grain you cannot use ryegrass. Now you know!!!

OH and before I forget, Did you know that most common domestic animals do NOT need to consume Vitamin C because they can synthesize it??? I bet you didn't! Of course this is not true for animals like rabbits and guinea pigs, but I ask you, "When's the last time you fed your cat an orange?" On that note I leave you until after my nutrition exam, wish me luck!!!

The Week of Rain

Sorry I haven't updated you guys in a while but I've been busy with exams and the hassles of rain storms that make hurricanes look like fun! Last time I wrote in here was before my exams so just an update on that end of things: Even though I freaked out about both anatomy and physiology I ended up with grades that I am proud of. Now I'm in the homestretch of these first set of exams with only Animal Nutrition left on Wednesday! Besides the exams we've had a hard week with the storms. On Tuesday the roads were so bad that people were stuck on campus after midnight or even overnight. It was crazy. Good thing I never leave my apartment once I'm home, LOL. Anyway the rain just kept coming which was bad news for my clothes on the dry line! Ru and I had some adventures hanging our clothes all over the house so we had something to wear to school the next day! Seriously, we need a dryer! After our Physiology exam on Wednesday we actually had time to clean our apartment. The dishes were piling up and the fridge smelled really bad and the floor was kind of gritty. So anyway you get the picture. Ru took dishes and I started on the rest finishing sweeping and mopping all of the floors and cleaning the bathroom before she finished the last dish. Now you would think in such a messy apartment bugs would be a huge issue. Well you would be wrong, because as soon as the apartment was sparkling clean we were inundated with ants. They were EVERYWHERE. Lesson 1: Rain brings even more bugs inside! Speaking of bugs we had another centipede incident! It was tiny, but still gross just hanging out on the living room floor like that. So now I present you with the following:

Katee's Sure Method of Killing Centipedes:

Step 1: Grab a large, heavy, useless book and throw it down on the centipede. (Note: Dorland's Medical Dictionary or Small Animal Clinical Nutrition work best)

Step 2: Quickly step onto the book to ensure the centipede does not crawl out from underneath

Step 3: Jump on the book

Step 4: While still standing on the book pretend you are doing the twist so that the book moves from side to side

Step 5: Pick up the book slowly to ensure that the centipede is in fact dead!

As you can tell these buggers are very hard to kill! Please note that this method is much safer than using ½ a can of BOP on the centipede!!!!

On Friday afternoon the sun finally came out so in case you were wondering the Caribbean is the Caribbean again! Ciao for now!!!