Moving on.....

I have moved my blog....sorry guys!! Yahoo had a better page!!!

The fun part of blogging

You know, one of the coolest things about blogging is that I can say anything I want about anyone I want for any reason. I'm only bound by anti-slander laws and the privacy act. So as long as I tell the truth and don't give out SSN's, it's cool!!! I can recant all sorts of sordid details about anything I see and hear!! How cool is that?!?!

wink wink nudge nudge

Update on the Hamster

Well, he's doing fine...gimping along like any other 3 legged hamster.

But I found out that the bill for this $5 creature was a whopping $75!!!

Who knew?!?

Will the hamster's leg grow back? (and other Amberisms)

You know...we have some very interesting people working at the hospital. There's always something strange going on.

Among other things, I'd like to discuss Amber. She's a sweet, kind-hearted person. She means well, but sometimes things just don't come together as they should. She says things that we call "Amberisms". Mind you, she means well, but sometimes she just doesn't think before she speaks.

The most recent Amberism (I'll get to the others) is the discussion about whether or not the amputated leg of the hamster would grow back. The leg was being amputated and she asked the doctor how long before it grew back, I swear. It might have been good for a chuckle if we knew she was only joking. The uncontrollable hilarity came from the fact that she was deadly serious. Later, the receptionist jokingly asked the doctor how to bill for this (not one of our most common procedures) or should we bill her at all since the leg was going to grow back.

Oh and I forgot, shortly after the amputation, Amber frantically called me to the cage of the recovering hamster. In a panic she said, "Come look at him, what's wrong?!?! He's wobbling all over the place and he keeps falling down and walking in circles!" I tried to contain myself and explain that he's only been out of surgery 5 minutes. Still partially sedated and missing a leg, of course he's going to walk funny!!!

The day before, another employee heard Amber constantly referring to a dog named Toot. The employee couldn't recall a patient named Toot and went to check the cage card. There, in black and white was printed "TOTO". She told Amber the dog's name was Toto, not Toot and how the hell did you come up with Toot? Amber's reply was "How in the hell did you get TOTO out of that??? There's no 'D' in it?!?!"

For a brief while, she was our "groomer". Her second client EVER was a sheltie. The owners wanted about an inch taken off the fluffy butt of their adorable sweetheart. Amber was nervous and tried to get out of it once she had told the client it would be no problem. No such luck...she promised a client that she could and would do this, now she was stuck. So, up on the table went the sheltie. I wasn't present for the entire process, just bits and pieces here and there. Lets suffice to say that it wasn't long before the dog was ruined. Amber, in her despair, threw the clippers on the grooming table, flopped her head and arms on the same table and practically wailed at what she had done. She stormed out of the clinic, visibly upset and I was sent after her to calm her down. Outside, she was running her hands through her hair and said to me, "See, I'm so stressed that my hair is falling out!!" and presented quite a bit of hair that was no longer attached to her head. Then she realized, "No wait, that's from when I hit my head on the clippers, nevermind." Turns out that when she flopped her head down, she had failed to turn the clippers off and ended up shaving a half dollar size section of her hair, all the way to her scalp.

Yes, all of these things really happened. I could go on in more detail, but I swear, the story didn't change. We tell Amber that she practically has a guaranteed job with us, if for nothing else, then comic relief. The poor girl.

Damn cat!!

First Satan, now Damion. If a cat walks in our door named Lucifer, Beelzebub, Faust or the like, I'm not touching it. I got my left thumb damn near torn off Tuesaday and it hurts like hell. Ya know how your arm always hurts for a day or so after you get a shot? Well, it's cause they stuck it in the muscle. Damion stuck his big, fat, nasty sharp tooth in the meaty muscle just below my thumb...twice. Well, both canines anyway. Add to that, his OTHER set of canines punctured my hand right between my thumb and forefinger. All in one quick bite. My hand naturally hurt ALOT, but it was sore all the way up to my shoulder for a while.
Even the Dr at the acute care clinic told me to quit coming in with the same problem!! Oh well, hazards of the job, I suppose.
Damn cat.

Stupid People

You know, I never cease to be amazed at the stupidity of the general population when it comes to the pets they "love".

A recent posting on the bulletin board asks for a new home for a 7 year old kitty. Kitty got along great with the older dogs they had/have, but the new, younger dogs that the owner's brought home are just stressin' poor kitty out wayyyy too much. Therefore, Kitty needs to go. It's not fair to poor Kitty to be upset all the time and therefore she needs a better home than the one she's known all of her 7 year life. Does it ever occur to people that the damn cat lived there first and to get rid of the damn new dogs that are causing the problem??? Apparently not or the sign wouldn't be on our bulletin board.

Then there's the baby kitty that got adopted out from the hospital and came back two weeks after moving to her new home. The owner suddenly realized that she's never seen the poor baby eat AT ALL!!! Mind you, this is after TWO WEEKS!!! A now 8-week old kitten that hasn't eaten in two weeks is an extremely pitiful and heart wrenching sight. The poor thing is literally skin, bones and fur.
Honestly, I will be truly surprised if the creature will live. If it does, it will be solely based on the love and dedication of one of our staff who takes her home every nite and force feeds her kitty formula every 4 hours. The kitty comes back in the morning to be weighed and evaluated and observed for the day.
Now mind you, if the owner never checked to see if the poor thing ate, who thinks the baby even got so much as a second glance while there? Imagine, taken from her mother and siblings to a strange home and then left alone, ignored and starved damn near to death.

Then there's the 9 year old dog that was never spayed, in a home with a male that was never neutered. The end result was three still born puppies, an emergency hysterectomy and a question about survival. Just counting cash alone, had the owner's originally paid the "lofty" price for a spay and neuter, they would have come out cheaper and with a more likely chance at survival for the female.

More and more I prefer to hang out with the furry friends than the humans entrusted with their care. I wonder if I'll ever get used to ridiculous things like this...probably not. And come to think of it, I hope I never do. In my opinion, it would be a sign that I no longer cared and I hope that never happens.

Sane owner of healthy critters.

I have attached a link to my gross photos and if you REALLY want to see this stuff, you can head over there yourself. I'll do that and if I decide later to actually put up the pics, I can.

So anyway, I've learned a lot of useful information about all sorts of really cool stuff that comes in handy here at my house of critters. Case in point, the night Red (my pit bull/bullmastiff mix) decided to snitch about 3 pounds of raw ground beef off the counter. I knew that it wasn't really the best idea and he'd probably end up sick at some point. Better under controlled circumstances than in the bed later that night. Luckily for us, that very day a dog had come in suspected of eating rat poison. Inducing vomiting was a priority, naturally and since you can't get them to stick their "finger" down their throats, the physician had something wonderful in his bag of tricks. I recalled the dosage of the stuff that most people keep in the house and realized that I somehow had to figure out how to get a pint of it down my dog's throat. Out we went to the driveway and started pouring. If you have the guts (no pun intended, well, ok, maybe) to go look at the results, you can take a look at the link to my pics. Needless to say, all 3 pounds of raw ground beef, his dinner and all the slime and slobber ended up on my driveway a shortwhile later.
Now it may or may not sound like a lot, but 3 pounds of ground beef (or anything, for that matter) is more than it seems. Hosing it down to the gutter wasn't really an option. The only thing I could think of was to get a dust pan and a garbage can.

Okay, so that was one of the nastier things that I have to deal with, either at home or at the office. But if you think about it, it's not much different than working with a bunch of lil kids, right? Except for the shedding, the drool and being attacked on occasion!

Another of my early photos (when I just got to hang out and watch). This is a tail docking of a 3 day old springer spaniel puppy. 

This is one of my first (of many) surgery photos taken from the animal hospital. This is from a declawed kitty. 

Question about photos

I'm trying to decide whether or not to post some of my more graphic surgery photos. Any ideas? I personally don't think they're that disgusting, but others vehemently disagree!! I've been called WEIRD, ODD, NOT RIGHT IN DA HEAD!!! hmph

What a day today!!!

First, I started this blog to chronicle the daily grind of being a "vet tech in training". I'm at an animal hospital in Jacksonville, FL. It's a small practice...2 veterinarians, 3 techs, 5 kennel staff (3 FT and 2 PT) . I started working there right after Thanksgiving 2004. I had NO prior experience other than the pets I'd had throughout my life. The owner of the practice decided to take a chance on me and hired me on as a kennel attendant. At first, I loved it. I was thrilled to be doing something I felt more suited for and looked forward to learning more and more of the world of veterinary medicine in general. It didn't take too long before I grew bored from the lack of intellectual challenges. Once the routine is learned, there's not too much else to being a kennel attendant. Granted, you need to have more than a few brain cells to be a kennel attendant because it's not exactly easy. I just became bored with the constant and unchanging schedule of bathing, cleaning and picking up poop. Granted, I still clean and pick up poop (along with other nasties), but it's interjected with lots of interesting, er....interjections!

I was always curious about the other things that went on in the hospital and when a spare moment presented itself, I'd find myself hanging out watching surgery, assisting the techs and vets with minor tasks when they needed an extra body or another set of hands. I found that I liked that aspect of the daily operations and made myself more and more available as opportunities presented themselves.

When the hospital ended up with a shortage of techs, down from five to a meager two, I naturally found myself being needed more and more often. I allowed them to realize that I was quite handy since the techs were working 7 days a week and were exhausted both physically and mentally/emotionally. It wasn't long before I was "promoted" to "Tech In Training" and relieved of my duties in the kennel.

It's grueling work some days, a breeze on others. Everyday I learn something new and I love it. Some days it seems like it will never end, the monotony of annual exams, itchy skin and diarrhea. Those are the days you wonder how you keep from going insane from the repetition.

Then there are days that are full of the interesting, bizarre, emotionally draining, physically demanding, and downright hilarious series of patients. Days that you are so busy that your mind doesn't leave the four walls surrounding you for hours on end. There are those days where everyone is working together like a well-oiled machine with a seemingly strange sort of ESP. It feels good to get through a huge schedule of patients plus the ones that just "show up" that you think would throw us off our game.

We also have the days that it seems NOTHING goes right, we're all running around like chickens with our heads cut off, bumping into each other, trying to get "our game on" and failing at every turn. The chaos is exhausting and draining.

Naturally, it's the former of the two that I naturally prefer. It feels good knowing that you survived (although it doesn't seem like it at first) and came out ahead.

Today was the day that for the most part ran smoothly (although heavily) despite some of the patients/problems that came in to the hospital. Two long time patients came in at the same time and neither left alive. Their medical condition basically demanded euthanasia since there was no further quality of life in their futures. You'd think that situations such as these would make any of us an emotional wreck, and it does, just not for the reasons most people think.

No, none of us are heartless humans that could care less if a patient dies, regardless of the road it takes to get there. If we were, wouldn't be doing what we do. Acknowledging that euthanasia can be the kindest treatment of all is easy when you see the patients as they decline and are no longer the pets they once were. The emotional gut wrencher comes from seeing the "parents" as they desperately beg the physician for any hope that their pet will again be the pet they knew. It's difficult when you KNOW it's not possible, no matter what heroic measures could be performed. Sometimes it's just the end and that's that.

Maintaining composure and professionalism can be difficult at times. Normally under those circumstances, most people would think that as long as you don't have to see or hear the owners during this time, then you'll be okay. That's very true. However, when you're the tech that has to stand by, unable to escape the owner's overwhelming emotions, it's very difficult. I was "lucky" today that I was only closely involved in one of the two situations.

My only consolation is knowing that next time, it just might be a little easier. As time goes by, you learn to cope.

But, after such a physically and emotionally draining day, I found myself asleep at my desk an hour after my last sentance. Which means that it's time to head for the bed.