Dehorning Day

It showed up on our schedule as "Calf and Heifer Management", which, judging by the way this block has been going, sounded like another lecture and maybe a demonstration of... something involving calves. (We just finished a midterm Friday. Let's just say it wasn't really coming in on our radar.) So it was a little bit of a shock to read the lab instructions over the weekend and find that they included directions on nerve blocks and how to use a dehorning tool. Sorry, you want us to what? You do realize we've only been vet students for three months, right?

This might not have been quite as scary had Block I not instilled in us the fear of the bovine head. Large animals, owing to their large size, have heads that are mostly filled with air (yes, horse people, you may laugh). Their sinuses are enormous relative to ours to reduce the weight of the head and make it less of a burden for the animal to carry around. Horns are an interesting addition to these air pockets in the cow. They start out as horn buds on young calves, little bony disks just above the skull, and eventually fuse with the skull and the sinus just beneath it. Ideally, calves are de-horned before the disk fuses, to avoid breaching the sinus cavity and inviting lots of nasty infection when the horn is removed. And this is where Block I made us all afraid to ever de-horn a calf. The dehorning tool is basically a self-heating hot iron rod with a cupped end- you press the hot end onto the anesthetized horn bud, hold it for a second, and scoop the little piece off. Simple... except that calves' skulls are rather thin, just like human babies', and holding the iron on too long can occasionally result in cooked calf brain. VERY BAD. Block I liked to frequently remind us of this just in case some of us managed to forget the image of rotisserie brain (with necropsy pictures included).

Actually, it seems like the risk was a little overstated in practice, at least with the style of iron that we used. Or, I assume it was, since 20ish (heavily supervised) first years managed to dehorn 10-15 calves without leaving anyone screaming in pain or neurologically damaged. Still, standing there with a squirming calf between your legs and having a hot iron shoved into your hand to be pressed onto the cute furry animal's head is awkward, no matter how encouraging and wonderful the instructors are. I definitely support dehorning cattle of any type- of course it's not ideal, but do YOU want to handle a 2-ton wad of muscle with 360-degree kicking skills AND horns?- and whenever anyone complains about early-life animal alterations I'm forced to remind them of how we circumcise human males at a day or two old, and they seem to work out (Freud notwithstanding). No living thing has a stress-free existence, and sometimes living indoors, safe from predators, with medical care and constant access to food, comes with a day or so of ouchies for the safety of the handlers. (I haven't met any adult horn-less cows that held a grudge.) Making sure that the process is done well and with as little pain as possible is our job, and it's why I don't mind these kind of awkward tasks- because whether or not I agree with it, I'm glad that they're teaching us to do it right.

And, campylobacter be damned, we did give our calf a hug and some snuggles when we were done. Fuzzy winter calves *are* just about the most adorable baby animals on Earth :)

*EDIT: Technically the procedure we performed was disbudding, the removal of the horn buds, but it was all lumped under the term "dehorning" in our lectures. If you're curious, this is AVMA's position on dehorning/disbudding. I do have to disagree slightly with them on one point... breeding for polled (hornless) cattle is probably not the greatest idea because monkeying with genetics tends to bring a host of other issues. See- the English bulldog, the Manx cat, the Dalmatian, etc. Breeding for one trait just doesn't end well for the breed in question most of the time.

Lack of posting... more soon, I swear

Sorry about the lack of posting... there's been a lack of interesting to post about unfortunately. Our Block II midterm is tomorrow which will be *so* much fun, what with the fact that most of us hate it and there will be 6-10" of snow on the ground in our way to getting there. Yippee. One more hoop to jump, of many that are waiting.

On a happier note, I start volunteering with the local SPCA's behavior program on Saturday so I may have interesting things to post then. There's also a lab at a local dairy coming up and then... Christmas break! All two weeks of it!

Anyway, back to the books... wish me luck!

The Farrier Shop

The art of the farrier and blacksmith is hardly romanticized, but perhaps it should be.

Today was our farrier lab, where we got a crash course in what farriers do and how they do it. For those who don't know, farriers manage horse feet, performing trims and maintenance as well as their more well-known task- making and fitting horseshoes. It's fascinating to watch. The farrier trims and studies the foot, taking into account a myriad of factors from the size and shape of the hoof, to any lameness or asymmetry the limb might have, to what the horse does as his day job. Through some secret algorithm in their head they come up with a shoe type... there are thousands. Iron, steel, rubber, plastic, aluminum. Smooth, ridged, studded, toe grab, heel grab. Raised, rounded, bar across the heel, frog support (the frog is the sensitive part of the hoof, akin to a dog's paw pad). Toe clip, quarter clip, clips all around. Nails or glue. And more. It's mind-boggling. When the farriers make their own shoes (some are formed from metal bars, others are fitted from premade forms), the bar must be heated 1/2 at a time and hammered into shape in only a few minutes before it cools. While pounding at this blistering hot piece of metal with a very heavy hammer, the farrier must also be thinking about the shape of the hoof he's trying to fit and therefore the final shape of the shoe- it's not like he has a pattern to work off of, and every hoof is different. There's also the risk of things going terribly wrong at every stage of the process. During trimming, there's about 3/8ths of an inch of space between insensitive hoof material and a bloody, painful mess. If the shoe isn't fitted correctly in any way, a horse can be permanently damaged- the old saying is very true: no hoof, no horse. There's also the fact that you're applying hot and sharp things to the main weapon of an animal about ten times your size who may or may not like you fiddling with his feet.

We got some interesting historical trivia during our demo as well. Apparently Napoleon, in his conquest of Moscow, had his blacksmiths fit the horses' shoes backwards on the march in, so that trackers would think they were retreating. This worked beautifully until it snowed, and the horses had no traction (and the blacksmiths had no time to fix it). And we all know how that conquest ended. When Alexander the Great marched his mounted armies into Asia, he never made it further than India because his horses weren't shod, while the Asian horses were. Alexander's cavalry had to rest for months at a time while their hooves grew out... sitting ducks for enemy attacks. Horses profoundly altered history as we know it... and so did their farriers!

All told, I developed an even deeper appreciation for farriers today... and was even more thankful that my heart lies in small animal medicine. When I have a horse someday, I'll be more than happy to pay somebody else to handle his pedicures!

Something Fishy at Lynah Rink

On Jan 6th, 1973, a Harvard Crimson hockey fan made the terrible mistake of throwing a dead chicken at the Cornell Big Red's goalie after the Crimson lost, 5-2.

This unleashed the fury of the Lynah Faithful. And the Lynah Faithful are not to be messed with.

For those not familiar, Cornell is very, VERY attached to its Division I hockey program. Lynah Rink, our home ice, is known as the most hostile venue in all of college hockey, and with darned good reason. The Lynah Faithful (i.e. Big Red hockey fans) have a long, long memory to accompany our sheer obnoxiousness... mess with us, and we'll make sure your grandchildren know about it. (Literally.)

About that chicken.

The Faithful took this as an affront to our agricultural school heritage, which is a button you really don't want to push with Cornell students. While the school has risen in stature in recent years, we're still sometimes seen as the un-Ivy Ivy League... the kind of country bumpkin cousin that you smile politely to at fancy parties but don't actually consider part of the family. So, needless to say, the chicken was not well received. The next time Harvard came to play at Lynah, the Faithful unleashed some Old Testament-style wrath unto them... in the form of a volley of fish and squid. Throw chickens at us, will you? Take THIS, ya smarmy Argyle-wearing coast-dwelling smarty pants.

Also very Old Testament-style is the fact that the tradition continues on their children (er, successive teams), and their children's children, and on to the seventh generation (and probably past that). Tonight's Cornell v. Harvard game had its traditional fish-pelting after the National Anthems, despite coat checks and dire warnings from the administration about repealing season tickets and so on. And kudos to the guy who held on to the whole octopus until the end of the third period... made a beautiful silhouette as it arced gracefully over the boards and, um, almost hit our player. But still. The thought was there. (And we won! 2-1! Yay!!!)

You just can't do school all the time... and hockey is such a wonderful way to vent your frustrations onto total strangers in a completely socially accepted manner! (That, and Block II continues to be less than thrilling, so I have nothing else to write about.)

History factoids courtesy of eLynah.com... where you can read about the rest of Cornell hockey lore if you like (Harvard isn't our only ancient grudge, just the most persistent!)

Heather Gets to Stay In Vet School

And even passed Block I by a respectable margin, to boot.

*happy dance*

Aaaaand back to work!

Ithaca in Autumn

It's been a week since Block I finals ended (no, I do not have any grades yet... we're assuming that I get to stay in vet school) and we're just finishing up our first week of Block II, the next series of torture... errr... the next step in becoming a Cornell veterinarian. Not gonna lie, it's boring as heck. I'm fairly certain you don't want to hear about DNA transcription and mitosis and all that jazz (Lord knows I don't) so I'll probably refrain from mentioning it at all. You can thank me later. Block VIIb is shaping up to be a bit more interesting- it's a combination of husbandry, ethics, and nutrition (no, I do not know who decided that those topics went well together) and involves some time at the SPCA and a farrier lab (read: horse hoof care), among other things. So we'll see how that goes!

But since the pace has slowed down from Kentucky Derby to a basic workout around the track, we all get to stop and look around a bit, and enjoy this beautiful city in my favorite season. I live on the edge of town, which is a bit more "wild" than downtown in the sense that I have some interesting animal neighbors. I heard a pack of coyotes one night not long ago, and have been serenaded by a pair of great horned owls every night for the past week or so. I've also become addicted to Sapsucker Woods/Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which is a neat bird and wildlife sanctuary right up the road. I've started some semi-serious birdwatching as a result of hanging out there- it's an excuse to get outside! The Lab also run a neat website called eBird, where you can log your sightings of birds anywhere in the world. The data is useful not only for your own records, but for the scientists at the Lab as well, who use it in their studies. Plus it's kind of cool to watch your "life list" of bird species keep climbing!

The picture above was taken at Sapsucker Woods Pond, though I did kind of cheat- this was taken around mid-October, nearly all of our leaves are gone by now. Can't wait to get back out there today- sixty degrees!!! And... snow predicted for Sunday. Ahhh, western New York.

The End of Block I

Four days of testing later, it's over... let's hope I don't have to do it again :/

Currently we're all walking around a bit zombie-like, gathering up loose penguins, in shock that 12 weeks have actually gone by (when did it get cold out?). In those 12 weeks we've "solved" 11 cases, torn apart 28 dog cadavers, sheep eyes, horse larynxes, cow hearts and countless other animal bits, poked and prodded at 8 (living) horses, 12 beagles and 20-odd cows, smelled like formalin, barn, hay, and every species of domestic animal droppings, crammed 3 thick binders and countless textbook pages of information into our heads, spent days on end in the library, and likely killed a collective two hundred colored pencils and dry-erase markers in the process.

And (we think) we lived.

And now for the next 3.75 years.

Honestly though, after the big 8-hour monster test on Monday, the week wasn't all bad... the notable exception being the Block VIIa oral exams on Tuesday (our exam on how to do a physical exam). Not that they were difficult (quite the opposite, actually), but it was the little burst of bad omens that decided to occur just before them. I pulled my stethoscope out of my locker 15 minutes before the exam and watched the diaphragm flutter to the ground at my feet... seems the little chunk of plastic that a parakeet bit out of the rim a few weeks ago did more damage than I thought, and the ancient plastic finally cracked all the way through and let the diaphragm go. (For those who don't know, the stethoscope was my grandfather's and is probably at least as old, if not older, than I am.) For a moment, I felt a little like Harry Potter with his wand broken... the moments before a final exam (or fight with dark forces) is a poor time for the tools of your trade to disintegrate. Fortunately my lab partner had hers so I was not stethoscope-less for the exam, AND the damage is quite fixable.

Once that crisis was averted, all the test-takers had to go wait in the breezeway (large hallway to the large animal barns) for the professors to call us in. Down the breezeway, a few people led a horse out and walked him around a bit, which didn't get much of our attention... it's a working hospital, after all, horses and cows come through the breezeway all the time. What did alarm us somewhat was when the horse was suddenly not standing, then laid on his side. A down horse never, ever means anything good. We then learned that the "old breezeway" where we were waiting to take our test is where large animals are routinely euthanized, because the necropsy freezer is right there and they can fit a bulldozer in to move the body. This was not nice to discover moments before a final exam. Fortunately, I was taking a test when the body was moved... and turned out luckier than the girl who got stuck in another exam room because the body was in the way. Such are the perils of vet student life.

And also fortunately, I probably did the best on that part of the exam despite the omens of doom. Hopefully I did passably well on the rest... time will tell...

In the meantime... I'm sleeping in tomorrow then I'm outta here for two days, heading back to Geneseo and Rochester for a weekend of reunions :) Yeah for getting my life back (on loan) for 72 hours!!!!

Breaktime- The Penguin Suicides

In the spirit of the dreaded Block I Finals, I thought I would share the immortal analogy of Dr. Linda Mizer, about how the vet student's brain works. She said this sometime last year, and it has since been embraced by most of the students here at Cornell for its downright scary accuracy.

Your brain is an iceberg. All the information you put into your brain are penguins. In vet school, there is a penguin population explosion of epic proportions, and that iceberg gets pretty crowded in short order. So, penguins start jumping off... first little penguins like where you last put your pen down, or forgetting your lunch. Then bigger penguins get squeezed out... when was the last time I ate lunch, exactly?... and finally, in the hope of keeping the vet penguins squarely in the center of the iceberg, things like "what's my phone number?" and "how to talk" jump off into orca-infested waters. It's quite the frightening scene. Of course, post-final, I believe there is a penguin-kicking party where all of the vet penguins are unceremoniously shoved off, and a rescue attempt is made for some of the more important penguins. We'll see how that goes.

Anyway... that is how we think. That is why we may not appear "normal" during school time... we've just lost a few penguins. Or a lot of penguins. But hopefully you get the idea.

Back to penguin-cramming!!!

Temple Grandin at CVM

So, it's the week before Block I finals, but I wasn't about to miss this talk!!!

Temple Grandin is a professor at Colorado State University who has done absolutely remarkable research in animal welfare. She has Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism, and uses insights from this disorder to view the world through an animal's eyes. The human autistic brain and the domestic mammal brain apparently have quite a few similarities- for example, Dr. Grandin describes her attention to detail over generalities (the opposite of "normal" human perception, which tends to gloss over details), and notes that animals view the world the same way. She uses these insights to improve animal welfare, by designing more humane slaughterhouses and shelters, promoting education of animal workers, and much more. She's also developed a theory about integrated animal health- how veterinarians need to take animal behavior, physical health, and the owner/handler of the animal into account to really get a complete picture of the animal's well-being. Hey, I think more *human* doctors ought to pay attention to that model in treatment, not just veterinarians... with other people replacing "owners" of course! :)

I had heard of Dr. Grandin before- she's quite well known in many animal-related fields- but I was even more impressed meeting her in person than I was hearing about her reputation. She's a fascinating speaker to listen to- she clearly has an excellent grasp of the animal mind, not just due to her Asperger's but through decades of research into animal behavior. And Dr. Grandin herself is an interesting story, having been born with a disability that cripples some people socially, but one that she has embraced and transformed into a unique body of research that has benefited thousands of animals. She's an inspiration and I was THRILLED to see her in person!!!

Now, if only I can pass the Block I/VIIa finals and put some of those wonderful ideas into practice as a veterinarian ;) To explain why I won't be writing until after next week, I must first complete:

- An 8 hour written exam
- A 30-minute oral exam
- A laboratory exam
- Another, shorter written exam
- A practical exam

... over the course of four days. Should I survive, I will be back in contact with the outside world again by next Friday. In the meantime, if you don't hear from me, I haven't died (probably) but I'm just existing in an alternate dimension called Vet School Hell, and will be back eventually. Alert me if the world ends, or if McCain wins the presidency, which is about the same thing (sooner or later). So long, wish me luck!

The Bovine Rectal Lab

Caution: not for the faint of stomach!


Yes, we finally had The Bovine Rectal Lab.

Yes, it smelled really bad. No, an hourlong shower didn't completely remove the smell, but that's kind of a cow thing. It just sticks.

But with the exception of the weather and the miracle of peristalsis, it WAS pretty fun :)

It was definitely like playing James Herriot. The weather even cooperated... 45 degrees, cold driving rain and even a hailstorm, in a mostly open barn. In short sleeves. I suddenly have a renewed appreciation for all those chapters of Herriot sweating it out in a barn on a distant hilltop in the middle of February, trying to correct a malpositioned calf... because just checking the rectum in a barn in October was pretty taxing. The man's arms must have been made of steel. All those "circular and longitudinal" muscle layers of the large intestine we learned about made themselves startlingly clear when they were trying to expel appendages... you start to feel your fingers tingle after a while and then it's time to go.

The amount of anatomy you can check out with the rectal exam is pretty neat though. You can feel fetuses (all of our cows were pregnant), kidneys, hip bones, and the abdominal aorta has a pulse so strong it goes around your entire hand. To the farmer, this exam covers all the important stuff- the digestive system and the reproductive tract. And the cows don't object much, other than the whole peristalsis deal... probably not the best part of their day but they tolerate it much better than horses, who can actually die pretty easily if a rectal exam is done clumsily. (Ok, horses die pretty easily as a general rule. But damaging the membranes of the rectum and unleashing infection into their abdomen is a shortcut.)

We also milked the cows enough to perform a California Mastitis Test, which checks for infection in the teats. So I got to milk a cow today too! :) I'd be happier if it didn't put my head in such a compromising position near the feet, but again, cows are mercifully peaceful and nobody decided to kick. Besides renewing my Herriot appreciation in this cow lab, I also have a new respect for old-school hand milkers... because at the rate that stuff was coming out, it'd take a looooong time to fill one of those old milk cans!

And yes, I got pictures. Because whether or not you admit it, you all want to see it... it's like a requirement to be an official vet/vet tech student, to have a cow rectal picture. So here you go...

Before....

And after!



Good times all around... now for another shower...

Kidneys for Kitties and Other Feline Miscellany

We haven't had any terribly exciting live-animal labs lately so sadly, I have no feats of heroism/horrific embarrassments to report (really, it seems to only go one of those two ways, and there isn't much separating one from the other...). But we did have our only Cat Lab last week, and it relates to something pretty crazy I learned in tutor group Monday, so I'll try to make something up from that.

Of the domestic animals, cats really do have a hard time of things. It looks really good on the surface- there are more owned cats than owned dogs in this country, for example, and just look at how spoiled those are!- but the fact that cats reproduce like rabbits just doesn't work in their favor, especially since they revert to a feral form in pretty short order (thus getting outside human supervision, and reproducing even more). On my last visit to the Tompkins County SPCA, there were maybe 15-20 dogs at the shelter.... and over 500 cats and kittens. In other words, cat overpopulation is a BIG part of the BIG problem of pet overpopulation, and the cats are the ones to suffer for it.

So back to tutor group... we learned about an interesting incentive for some owners to let another kitty into their lives. One of the major medical killers of cats is kidney failure, and the sad thing is, once it starts, there isn't much you can do to stop it... until recently. UC Davis and UPenn both have feline kidney transplant programs... yes, feline kidney transplant... that can give your kitty another chance. In order to do this, the programs suggest/require that you adopt a healthy cat from a local shelter to serve as the donor, so that ideally you'll end up with 2 healthy cats, 1 kidney each. If a) you have a limitless bank account, b) the surgery goes as planned and both animals live, and c) your senior-citizen renal-failure kitty gets along with the new young donor cat, then perhaps some kind of happily-ever-after can occur. Hopefully.

I'm not saying it can't happen... but it's ethically sticky at best. While I think it's great that the technology is available, if very new, I'm not sure how feasible it's going to be in the long run, and if it even should be a serious consideration for renal-failure cats in the future. You wouldn't/shouldn't/probably couldn't adopt a child to provide some biological parts for your own kid (although I'm pretty sure I saw that once on Law & Order)... while it doesn't line up 1:1 for cats, it still feels kind of odd. I suppose animals are subjected to a lot worse through animal testing and food production, though, so who's to say that taking a kidney for a noble cause is wrong? Interesting!

Cool stuff coming up... next Tuesday is the infamous BOVINE RECTAL EXAM lab, and next Wednesday is a CPR lab being held by SVECCS (Student Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Society) that I'm participating in, so I should have real stories by then :) But after that is Block I finals so there may not be any posting (or other contact with the outside world) for a good week or two... just a heads up!

And I feel like this post deserves a Bob Barker sign-off... Don't forget, SPAY AND NEUTER YOUR PETS!!!

Rumens are awesome.

I never really appreciated it before, but a cow is basically a giant vat of bacteria that happens to be alive. We had yet another cow lab today at the dairy farm where we palpated and listened to the rumen and other assorted digestive pieces. The rumen, for non-cow people, is one of the 4 stomachs of a cow, and takes up about the entire left side of the animal (this picture doesn't begin to do it justice. It's HUGE.) It's where most of the fermentation of cow digestion goes on (read: lots of bacteria), and beyond that is what is referred to as a "Block III/IV issue"... I'm in Block I and don't care yet :) Still, we have to learn to palpate the rumen and listen to its normal rumen-y sounds, which is quite fun. The rumen normally contains several different layers of semi-digested food, which allows for a neat trick... if you push your hand into the side of the cow over the middle of the rumen, it actually leaves a dent for a minute, like a Tempur-Pedic mattress! The cows don't mind this, they barely looked up from lunch. The purpose of all this bacterial goodness is to provide protein and fatty acids to the vegetarian cows- most of the protein in their diet actually comes from digested rumen bacteria. Cool, right? Cows are really giant milk-producing bacterial colonies!

So the next time you have a glass of milk, thank the cow and all the billions of bacteria that helped produde it! :) (Or won't you be drinking milk again?)

Pig Lab, or: Heather Actually Did Something That Looked Cool

Or so they tell me.

Just a little test post from this week to get things going :)

My lab group had the infamous Pig Lab on Tuesday this week, which was pretty interesting. I do have to say that out of all the farm animals, I'm really not a fan of the way pigs are kept, but for better or worse, it is what it is right now and we have to learn about it regardless of how we feel. We visited the hog house that's run by the Ag & Science school here and got a tour and an intro to (quasi)commercial swine management and medicine. We didn't actually do much- our professor told us that this is one of about 3 pig lectures we'll get in 4 years at school- but at the end she asked for volunteers to catch and bleed a pig as a demonstration. While I didn't volunteer per se, I was apparently the only one who had actually seen the diagram of the pig's jugular veins, and however fuzzy that image was in my head, before I knew it I had a Vacutainer in my hand and somebody was snaring the pig. (They have a noose-like rope slipped over their nose behind their canine teeth, for anybody wondering... they chew on the loop out of curiosity, then you just close it on their snout and they're caught.) Judging by the applause, apparently hurling my 5'6" frame over the 4' fence, jabbing the pig in a seemingly random spot (Dr. Smith was pointing, that helps!), and getting the Vacutainer perfectly full on the first shot looked really good! With no extraneous bloodshed! So... apparently my calling in life is that I'm a pig-bleeding prodigy. Really useful skill in small animal medicine, of course.

So yes, that's me in the picture by the pig's neck in all that disposable outerwear... does nothing to keep the smell out, FYI. Pig smell is definitely not my favorite barnyard scent and it's unbelievably clingy. The pigs themselves are actually very cute though, especially the little-to-medium-sized guys. While I'm pretty well convinced that I'm not going into large animal/farm medicine, I'm kind of interested in following developments in swine management, in the hope that someday they can make it better for the animals. In the meantime... maybe I'll take a look at that farmer's market pork next week.

Welcome to my Vet School Blog :)

So, I've been getting so many questions to the effect of "How is vet school going?!!!" that I started forgetting who I told what to, and repeating things or leaving things out, etc. So in order to answer that question MUCH more efficiently, I'm just going to post all of my vet school stories here and you can all read them at your leisure :) You can also subscribe to this blog using the bar on the side- it can either bookmark it or add it to other services. I'm trying to figure out a way that you can have the blog email you every time I update but so far I lack the technological skills to do that, so it's up to you to check ;) I'm going to TRY to update it weekly-ish but I make no guarantees!

So read and be entertained by the amount of times I get kicked/bitten/covered in unnamed muck/drooled on/etc! Pictures will go up when available!

Enjoy!