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!