Bovine Pedicures, Dead Ponies, and Another Day to be Grateful to be a Small Animal Person

Block VII- never (well, rarely) a dull moment.

Today was our lesson on bovine hoof care, which we expected to be a lecture and demonstration but in reality involved a line of rather disgusting cadaver feet, dull knives and sore arms (and few coveralls, since, well, we were kind of expecting a lecture). Bovine hoof trimmers are called just that- hoof trimmers- and are not related to farriers, who trim horse feet. Don't ask me why. It's a large animal thing. Anyway, wherever these particular cows came from couldn't have been such a nice place, as the hooves were all kinds of overgrown and we got an impromptu lesson in various lesions and disorders of the bovine foot as well as how to give them a pedicure. Did I mention the disgusting part? (No formalin either- nice and stinky.) Our task was to "trim" the pointed ends of the toes to an appropriate length, then "file" the rest of the hoof to a flat, even surface. I use these terms loosely since the reality is that you must hack and wrestle the pointed ends off and scrape, grind and saw at the rest of the foot to get even the smallest bit accomplished. Dead feet were used because living cows would have sent us flying across the breezeway, and we would have certainly deserved it. The only thing more discouraging than our pitiable attempt at hoof trimming was when the instructor came over to our "finished" foot and calmly removed another finger-sized chunk of hoof in about three seconds without breaking a sweat. Actually... I lied about the most discouraging part. The breezeway struck again... more depressing than futilely hacking at hoof wall was the three forklifts full of dead ponies and foals coming out of junior surgery, since the upperclassmen were finishing up a non-survival surgery lesson. Probably not the worst thing in the world- we're vets, dead things happen, especially in school - but it was more than enough death for one afternoon. Still, as they say, never a dull moment... and yet another reason to sigh and think "Boy, am I glad I'm going into small animal medicine."

On the bright side, at least they didn't ask us to trim the ponies' feet...