A little overdue update

How has it been 3 weeks since my last post?? That basically describes how second year is going - sooo quickly!

Recap:

- IMATS/Toronto: my friends and I had a great girls weekend and took advantage of the amazing makeup sales at the show - I won't need to buy anything for a looong time now.

Best friends since elementary school :)

While everyone else in TO was at the Jays game, we were here :)

- Cow palp: the lineup at the palpation lab was so long that I only got to try out the simulation model, but it had a real uterus in it so it was pretty close to the real thing. I didn't expect the ovaries of a 1500 pound animal to be so small! Tomorrow is the next lab so I'll be able to actually put my arm up there - the things that vet students get excited about :)

- Classes in general have been much better this year, I've really taken a liking to hematology because I find it amazing how we can look at a blood sample and uncover so much of what is going on inside the animal's body. We've gotten the chance to perfect our blood smearing techniques and also got to practice tissue sampling last week. Yay for learning clinical things!

- Shadowing opportunities: this year we have a mandatory week of shadowing a 4th year student on rotation. Mine isn't til December but I'll be doing it in small animal surgery and I'm so excited! it'll be a great chance to see what I'll be doing in 2 years (that is also a terrifying thought). The surgery club that I am a part of has also set up shifts for the small animal emergency team, where we're "on call" for a shift and if there is an emergency surgery we will get called in to observe.

- Asepsis lab: we had our first surgery lab last week and after practicing a full surgical scrub, I have never had cleaner hands (perfect for a germaphobe!). We learned scrubbing, opening surgical packs, gloving and gowning - sounds simple enough, but it is quite a process when you have to keep all the rules of sterility in mind.

Feeling like vets!

- Tests: we've already gotten 2 (very small) ones out of the way, so I'm finally getting back into the studying routine. Coffee coffee coffee!

This past weekend was (Canadian) thanksgiving so I got to go home and spend time with my family, Matt's family, and my friends. It was a nice few days of relaxation before getting back into school mode. Daisy is unfortunately still in London, she is doing much much better after her kidney infection has gone away but she is still showing some signs of her ongoing kidney inflammation (nephritis) - peeing in her bed occasionally is the one that I'm most concerned about, especially because she sleeps in my bed when she's here in Guelph with me. We have her on the vet prescription kidney diet now and once things are under control hopefully she'll come down. I miss her a lot and I don't like to have my parents take care of her every day but it's what's best for her health and my stress levels right now. (Thanks mom and dad, if you're reading this!)

Looking pretty good for everything she's been through! <3

Snuggles 

Today is Tuesday and we got the day off, so I'm looking forward to a 3 day week! I'm supposed to be spending today catching up on homework though, so I'm gonna end this here. Thanks for reading :)

Goodbye classes!

Wow, can't believe it's already been over a week since I posted last! In that post I was talking about our big practical exam (the OSCE) so I'll go through that first.

We basically had what felt like a scavenger hunt all over OVC. I started in the computer lab doing a multiple choice exam which was a good station to start at because it gave me a few minutes to wake up and get my brain working. Then I changed into my large animal gear and went over to the barn for 7 stations involving horses, cows, sheep, and various bits of info about nutrition, infection control and history/medical records taking. My animals were all (thankfully) cooperative and although the 5 min per station time limit was a little stressful, I survived. Then I had 5 mins to run back to the main building - literally run, in steel-toed boots and coveralls...not the most ideal - and change into my lab coat to start the small animal portion. We had similar stations as the large animal part, just substituting the barn animals for the sweet little teaching beagles :) much more within my comfort zone. Next thing I knew, the 3 hours were up and we were done! Obviously people lost their minds like some people always do during exams (see my rant post from a few weeks ago, I'll spare you my sass in this one), but I felt confident and it was really a moment of "wow, I've learned so much this year". Before September I knew next to nothing about large animals!

That weekend the University of Guelph hosted College Royal, an agricultural fair. The only thing I cared about was the barn because they brought in a bunch of animals - donkeys, bunnies, goats, and mini horses (!!!) to name a few. Matt and I went to check it out for a bit and now I think I need to have a donkey in the future - along with my multiple dogs and potential horse - yes, I have a problem.

Other than classes, nothing much exciting has happened in the past week or so. I went home this past weekend because we had a long one, I got to catch up with my family and friends and also got to go to Matt's improv comedy show - finally, I've had to miss the last few because I've been in a different city!

Matt on the left doing "jazzercise"...improvisation at its finest!

Got to spend some time with this cutie :)

Today was exciting because we officially finished classes!!!!!!! About time, as I mentioned before I was going crazy sitting in class for the past month. Time to get into the exam zone - we have a small test tomorrow and then 4 exams starting a week from now. Bring on the coffee!

An eventful week!

Hey guys! Soo my life has gone from one extreme to another - the past week or so has been crazy busy! Let's get right into it:

• Blood smear: A few weeks ago I mentioned that we were practicing blood smears in Histo - recently we got to stain them and look at the cells under the microscope. Baby steps! Mine was pretty good, and marks the first and only time Histology has seemed clinically relevant (insert unimpressed face here).
• Having a life: A few of the girls and I went out last Friday night, it made us feel old (seeing undergrad students at the bar that seriously looked 14 years old..) but it was nice to be doing something other than school :) We ended the night with poutine which made it even better!
• Horse care week: I just finished with our assigned horse care week. The horse people probably found it boring to walk and groom horses every morning, but as someone with zero horse experience but who has always loved horses, it was fun :) other than the 7:30/8:30 am start times in -22 degree weather, of course. The teaching horses are such sweethearts and it just strengthened my neeeeeed for a horse! Like right now would be great...I'll keep it in my room. That's allowed, right??
• Physical exams: Finally feeling like a vet! We finally got to use our stethoscopes and do physical exams on horses and cows (small animal is next week). I learned that you can (sometimes) make a cow pee on demand...of course mine didn't cooperate, but I saw it happen! We also all had a lightbulb moment with one of the cows that had a left displaced abomasum - translation: one of the 4 chambers of the stomach in cows is usually on the right side, but if it becomes filled with gas it can actually move to the left side. We've been told repeatedly in lab and lecture that it sounds like a basketball hitting the pavement due to the air, but when we all got to hear it we got suuuper excited. So cool! :)
• Hunger games movie night: Last Wednesday our social committee organized a hunger games movie and pizza night in anticipation of the 3rd movie that came out on Friday. Since there are 12 districts in the hunger games and OVC has 12 practice groups, there was also a costume contest. Group 9 has the worst district (grain farmers??) so we wore plaid and then decided to mix it with the OTHER district 9 (aka the alien movie). Our creativity made us win the group prize so now we have a restaurant gift card to use :)

Whew I think those are the highlights! Tomorrow we have our histo midterm so I've been just studying lately. I'm going home on Friday to drop Daisy off :( but it will be for the best, because our 4 December exams start next Monday. I actually cant believe it's almost Christmas break! I'm getting excited to catch up with everyone back home, and of course eat, eat, and eat some more. I'll be posting some time next week, once exams calm down for a few days. Bye for now!

We had a good snowfall this past week and Daisy loooved it!

We can't take pics of the teaching animals, so here's my lovely coveralls and boots

My blood smear! That's a neutrophil in the middle :)

Night out :)

Thanks to Rachel for this genius idea

Cows & Stethoscopes

Hi everyone :) first off - we have a crest! this amazing thing will soon be on jackets and hoodies and the million other pieces of merch I'm going to buy so I can show off ;)

This week I got to touch animals!! I want to say "finally" but apparently lots of vet schools across the world hardly have any contact with live animals until second year, so I won't complain about waiting 3ish weeks!

We had our first large animal handling lab yesterday, which I've been anticipating since I come from an almost entirely small animal background. I've always loooved horses, I've ridden a few times but I don't know anything technical about them. We started with basic skills like haltering, leading, picking out hooves and grooming. My group's horse was named Violet and she was new to the teaching barn so she was very curious but behaved great :) now I reeeally want a horse in the future! Then we moved to the dairy barn and got to halter and restrain cows, which is a messier and more sweat-inducing job, but cows are so damn adorable. Those eyes and ears and giant sloppy tongues make up for the fact that they like to explode with pee and poop whenever they feel the need to. It was awesome to feel a bit like a farm vet in coveralls and steel-toed boots, and I'm already looking forward to "horse care week" where we get assigned to care for a horse daily.

We also got to do a heart lab in anatomy, which ended with the prof doing a live dissection of a horse heart (or was it a cow..either way it was as big as my head). Only vet students would gasp and go "ooooooh it's beautiful" when the valves of the heart were visible.....yes we're nerds!

This week was super tiring with 4/5 days starting at 8:30, and I would have normally slept in this morning (Saturday) but we had our professional welcoming ceremony! My family came down to watch me get officially welcomed into the profession, complete with a stethoscope and an embroidered blue lab coat - I guess I'm here to stay! The speeches themselves weren't all that thrilling for the most part (especially at 10 am..) but our class' presidents gave an awesome speech about the 2018 Ivory Owls - the line that stuck with me was "we get along with every classmate we meet because we're all slightly different versions of the same person" or something like that - so true :) afterwards my family and I walked around some gorgeous nature trails which Guelph is full of.

I'm ending this week very tired but also very happy :) ..until I have to study all day tomorrow for our first test on Monday :( but that's life - and an excuse to drink more coffee!