To All The Unsung Blog Posts - Part 1

I had many interesting ideas for posts that never got written. Here's a slew of the most interesting snippets that never made it to the light.

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- At a small animal clinic, during one exam there was this very cute little kid who was really into learning about everything that was going on. The vet had a kiddie stethoscope to give him, and he spent the rest of the exam listening to everything--the dog, his parents, himself, the table. The first time he put it on, he put it in his ears backwards, and after being corrected, was very concerned about getting it right every time after that. He kept interrupting to ask "Is it on right?" before listening to another inanimate object.

- One of my classmates fostered a paralysed dachshund that came through the hospital. The dog had a little mini wheelchair, and hung out with us in the student lounge. She was very friendly and would wheel around and get stuck on things.

- While on emergency rotation, a dog came in critically ill. I spent several hours with the team, participating in a small part of monitoring while they performed lots of dramatic procedures. At one point, I got sent to run down the hall to the lab, to see if we had results back on clotting times. They weren't back, and in the 5 minutes I was gone, the dog died.

- We toured a deer farm and a pig farm, which were really cool, but don't make for interesting stories. Though one of the techniques at the pig farm to tell if the feed mixer is doing a good job, is to drop in a bunch of sprinkles and look at their distribution in the final product.

- To prepare us for dealing with clients, we had to break into groups with an actor assigned to each group. We had several scenarios, and had to practice things like delivering bad news or dealing with an angry client. Some of the actors were apparently quite difficult! All of this was recorded so we could study it later. My group was a bunch of pansies and nobody would volunteer, so I ended up going twice.

- On our public health roster, we took tours of several meatworks--beef, lamb, and poultry facilities. While much of my class hated this, I actually found it fascinating. Everything was so clean and orderly. Plus we got to walk through the chiller, where the stripped carcasses hang on slow conveyor belts like we were in a horror movie.

- I'm not sure I ever talked about our naked calendar, one of the fundraisers for Halfway Day. I'm not sure what I did with the photos from my group, but you can check out the current Barely There calendar website for general photos, and maybe even support the current third years! Updated every year by the new class.