Birthday weekend

My last birthday during vet school! Rob flew out on Friday and left on Monday, and even though it was a short time, we still had a lovely weekend. Friday was a typical half-day, we watched part of Cruella (just couldn't bring ourselves to finish it!) and eating.

This was the set up for the surgeries!

 

 

On Saturday, Nicole and I were up at 6:30am to go to a Romani village called Ostrovany to spay some dogs. A vet that graduated last year organised a spay campaign with a local shelter, who captured the dogs for us. There were 3 vets doing the surgeries, and 11 students helping out. 2 of the students were 5th year Slovak students who were collecting blood and rectal swab samples for their diploma thesis. In total, 11 dogs were spayed, 1 cat spay and 1 cat neuter. It was a pretty hectic start - one vet had never done a spay before today (!) so we were supposed to only anaesthetise 2 dogs so one vet could do one, and he could watch the other vet, but people were a bit gung-ho, and 3 dogs were premedicated so he had to do one alone. The dog must have been in heat because she bled like crazy - not ideal for your first spay! After that, the day settled, and we got into a routine. The shelter had organised to use the local primary school which was a bit funny! The school bell kept going off, even though it was a Saturday! 

We were supposed to be finished by 5pm but they kept catching more dogs, so we kept saying "just one more!". I did leave early with some other people, but Nicole stayed until around 8pm I think! Very long day! Very interesting though, and important work. The shelter people told me that they had already removed 150 puppies from this village, but there were easily 200 more. Hopefully there will be more campaigns, and hopefully we will be able to do some surgery!

On Sunday, my actual birthday, Rob surprised me with doughnuts for breakfast (which were delicious but made us both feel a bit sick!), and then we hopped on a bus to Jasov, a village west of Košice. I found a list of day trips from Košice, and Jasovská Jaskyňa stood out to both of us (Jasov cave). Considering this is my last year in Slovakia, I think it's about time that I take advantage of living in such a beautiful area! The public transport in Slovakia is on another level, too, it was only €5 for an hour bus journey there and back, on a lovely sceinic road, and a very clean bus. I think it might be against the rules in Slovakia to talk on the bus though, no one else ever talks. 

There are tours of the cave at certain times, we were aiming for the 11am one, but the bus got in at 11:03 and it was a short walk from the station, so instead we did the little walk around the lake and into the woods. It was supposed to be around 45 minutes, but we saw so many mushrooms that it took us closer to 1.5 hours. Never seen such variety in mushrooms before, every step there was a different species! We saw an amythest deciever, common puffballs, some russula species, and so many others that I couldn't identify! We did see a couple of people with huge baskets full of mushrooms, so all the choice mushrooms had already been foraged (not that I would trust my identification to eat any old mushroom!). Anyway, we ended up missing the next tour too, so we sat and ate our sandwiches in the sun until the last one. 

Finally, we went on the tour. The cave is around 8-9ºC and while we were dressed warm, a hat would not have gone amiss (and it's not like I have a shortage of knitted hats). The tour was in Slovak, but the tour guide did translate a bit for us which was great. The cave was beautiful, unlike anything I've ever seen. Weirdly, the cave had absolutely no smell, and they used to (or still do) do events where you can sleep in the cave, because the high humidity and lack of pollutants can be really good for your lungs!