Vet Student at Košice

Everybody says "spaying and neutering aren't day one competencies", however, I do like to be prepared - so I booked a week at a spay and neuter clinic in Spain. The clinic is run by a very nice man, Wayne, who retired to Spain 20 years ago. Not one to settle down, and concious of the many lost and stray animals around Spain, he set up the neuter clinic to help learning and newly graduated vets to improve their surgical skills. We also get to practice putting in catheters and intubating animals, which is a good skill to have too. This was another thing that I sorted out about a year ago, when I was still a bit unsure if I really liked surgery or not. I've watched a lot of surgeries, I'm not squicked by the blood or anything, but as time has gone on, I realised that I much prefer the medical side of things. However, it wasn't cheap to visit, and I'm going to have to do surgery at some point, so I might as well learn in a relatively controlled environment.  O...

Even though I know I get terribly homesick, I keep booking placements really far away from home. This time, I'm in the midlands.  My first day was a little slow - there were 3 inpatients, a chameleon, a ferret and a pigeon. The chameleon needed a partial tail amputation that took all of 5 minutes, the ferret had an ultrasound revealing a very advanced (likely) cancerous process, and was sent home on steroids. That was a particularly interesting ultrasound because he also had a very abnormal kidney - so abnormal that to begin with the vet thought it was the gallbladder. The pigeon is an racing pigeon who had become lost a year ago, but was caught by a cat that pulled some of his primary feathers out so he couldn't fly. This is apparently quite a common occurrence here, and one of the vets has a colony of released ex-racing pigeons living nearby.  I followed some consults - several rabbits, guinea pigs, a hamster, a gerbil and a tortoise. The sad thing about exotic animals is th...