The Highs and Lows of a Vet-In-The-Making

My worries were completely unfounded – I’m loving the practice I’m at this week!  It’s an equine practice, but it also does a plethora of other stuff – small animal, large animal, local zoo vet.  Although it’s mainly the horses I’m involved with.  It’s great to get some more hands-on work with the horses, and I haven’t felt nervous around them which is great, because one of my main aims of the equine work was to gain confidence around horses and ponies, as having not had much experience with them made me a little unsure of how to handle them.  So I definitely feel like I’ve achieved this goal!

Today I got to go on call with one of the vets, which was great (albeit freezing – it must be the first time it’s snowed here in October for years!).  Got to see a laminitis diagnosis, but also a greatly-improved laminitis case (all in the same yard!) which was good to see.  Some routine vaccinations, a look at how dental work is done, a horse with a nasty cough and some wound follow-ups.  As well as plenty of time to chat to the vet between calls, about life as a vet, work experience, vet school, the merits of different types of practice, getting into vet school etc.  So all in all, a very useful and enjoyable day. 

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be helping out with sheep vaccinations – I love sheep work, so am looking forward to that!  I hope to see some surgery at some point too – the surgery is amazing, and the endotracheal tubes are like gutters, I swear! 

So all in all, a good week so far – I’ll remember to look back on this post if I’m feeling nervous about a future placement!

Just so you know, I am still here!  Am crazybusy once more, having spent a week on a sheep dairy farm, a week on a pig farm, and am currently doing a week at a small animal practice!  I’m completely enthused by everything (except perhaps sore feet), and am spending the evenings trying to catch up with writing up notes and researching things, but my head is such a blur of information, having learnt a huge amount in the past three weeks!  The more I do stuff though, the more I get so excited about the prospect that that will be me one day! Spare days have invariably been spent singing, so there has been little time for much else, but next week I’ve got a few days off so am hoping to catch up on things more!  In the mean time, if anyone knows of any heavy duty, lightweight, steel toe-capped, waterproof, breatheable footwear then let me know… Or maybe I should just start getting used to sore feet – I’ve certainly made a good start!

I’d like to think so anyway, because today I spent the day at my first abbatoir.  I was a bit unsure as to what to expect, and how I’d handle it… I’m not normally squeamish, but I realised that this was probably going to be a bit more gruesome than I’d seen before.  Not least because I’d be watching the killing of the animals, and I very much doubted it was going to be much like the peaceful euthanasia of an elderly cat.  It also wasn’t very encouraging that nearly everyone I told about what I was doing had the same reaction; something along the lines of disgust/horror followed by a pale-faced, ‘I couldn’t do that’…  but hey, I’m getting used to those reactions, and I expect there are plenty more in the life of a vet – I can see that from reading other vet/vet student blogs!

When I first arrived, the place was totally clean and killing hadn’t started for the day, but as I was talking to the meat inspector a sheep suddenly appeared hung from a hook, the killing process clearly having already started.  I won’t go into graphic details here (and will leave out the Sweeney Todd references), because it was gruesome; nobody can deny that.  However, it really wasn’t the horrible experience that some people may expect.  The killing process itself is extremely quick and humane, and not nearly as traumatic as it is often thought to be. 

And apart from that, I have to say that I found it fascinating.  As I think I’ve mentioned before, I find anatomy fascinating, and today’s experience was very hands-on – I learnt things that you can never learn from a textbook, such as the texture of lamb’s lung with and without pneumonia, as one example amongst the wealth of other things that I’ve seen today!  By the end of the day I was elbow-deep in pig organs, (amongst numerous other things that I won’t mention here for the benefit of some readers!) but it isn’t as bad as it sounds, and I think that it is vital to have a good understanding of, and be able to recognise what is normal, because if you know that, then you can spot abnormalities and therefore the problems which jeopardise the health of the animals and the humans that consume it.  I really think that it has been such a valuable exercise and I would definitely recommend it to other work experience students. 

But even if I weren’t applying to vet school, I still think it is a good experience to have had – it is my view that if I wish to eat meat, then I should be able to face where it comes from.  As my Dad said to me, ‘chickens don’t grow in packages’. 

But anyway, I have learnt a huge amount in one day – my supervisor was fabulous (mainly the meat inspector), explaining everything as he went – I wish I had a dictaphone to record everything he said… not that you’d have heard it over the noise anyway!  But he really was a wealth of knowledge.

So now I think I’m justified in saying that I’m officially not squeamish!