Finished First Year of Vet School

I am officially done my first year of vet school (pending completion of three placements this summer and passing my Animal Body 4 exams).

My written exam was Tuesday of last week.  Wednesday I had my oral exam.  It was 15 minutes, consisting of 7.5 minutes of discussing physiology and 7.5 minutes pointing out anatomy structures on a fully dissected cow.  It was very stressful but I am cautiously optimistic that it went fairly well.

Wednesday afternoon I started moving into my new flat.  I am moving in with another GEP vet student from California.  We moved less than five minutes away from our previous flat, which made moving a little easier.  What made moving less fun was the fact that we were moving from a flat on the 4^th floor of a building to our new flat which is also on the 4^th floor.  I didn’t feel guilty for not going to the gym Wednesday!  I definitely got my fair share of stairs.

I also realized I never put up pictures of my residence flat so here are a couple just prior to moving out. 

My giant Canadian flag provided by a friend from home

View from my window.  Can just see Arthur's Seat on the right in the distance

Finding a flat in Edinburgh was been quite an experience.  I am used to looking for houses at my old university in January for a lease starting in April.  Here it is very different.  Flats turn over so quickly.  You don’t really start looking for a flat more than a month and a half advance at most. 

The first few flats we called about had already been rented by the time we called.  We quickly learned that we would have to be much more proactive.  We started checking every morning.  But that still wasn’t working.  So I managed to set up an account on the main rental sites and it would instantly email me about new properties. 

After a couple of cancelled viewings, we finally got to see a few properties.  We put an application in for one.  But we were rejected because we have the “student” tag associated with us.  So my friend and I got more strategic in selling ourselves.  We no longer were finishing first year, we were entering our clinical years of vet school.  We weren’t 23 and 24 years old, we were 23 and almost 25.  And eventually it worked.  We got a flat!  We were beyond excited.  And it was during our AHWFS handling exams so what a nice stress reliever…. Until they emailed back a few hours later and said that the landlord changed their mind and had decided to take the flat off the market and was going to rent it to family instead.

So back to square one.  We went to see a few more flats.  The one flat, the bathroom was so small you could stand in the middle and touch all four walls with your hands.  We decided against that one.  Then we stumbled across a flat that looked beautiful in the ad.  After the viewing the landlord seemed to really like us.  That evening we got confirmation the flat was ours!  We paid the deposit as fast as we could to make sure we didn’t lose the flat.

Since moving in, we have had painters in the flat everyday fixing windows in my bedroom and the kitchen.  So for the first few nights, we moved all of my stuff into my friend’s room.  It was absolute chaos.  Today the painters aren’t here so I am going to try and get some of my stuff into my dresser and wardrobe so that she can actually walk around her room!  The painters are coming back tomorrow but fingers crossed it is their last day.

Also I am posting this from a Starbucks because until June 11^th we don’t have internet.  Setting up internet here is a big thing that seems to take a long time.  We are changing providers from the previous tenant so they have to come in and set up a new phone line.   And the first available technician timeslot wasn’t until the 11^th.  Guess we are going to be internetless for another week and a half.

Once we get better settled and all the painters equipment is gone I will try and post a few pictures of our new digs.

A day away exploring, a day at home exploring and a day at the zoo

Last weekend a friend and I took a day trip to St Andrews.

We started by touring around the remnants of St Andrews Cathedral.

From the cathedral we walked down the break wall for the harbour and along the East Sands

Looking toward St Andrews castle from the break wall 

Heron in the harbour

A very tame seagull posing for me

East Sands

From the East Sands we headed to the castle.  St Andrews castle had a rough history having to be rebuilt several times throughout its tenure.  But my favourite historic event from the castle was when enemies tried to tunnel their way into the castle through solid rock.  The castle residents could hear their enemies digging.  So they started digging randomly inside the castle to try and meet up with the tunnel of their enemies.  It took three tunnel attempts but they finally found their enemies tunnel. 

After that we headed into the town for lunch and walked around the shops.

We then headed towards the Old Course and the West Sands.  The Old Course is holding the British Open this year in the summer and the preparations were well under way.

The world famous Swilcan Bridge

There is a footpath/road that crosses the 1st and 18th fairways which you are allowed to walk across. I find it so foreign to be able to walk across a golf course while people are playing (but also pretty cool)

The first and 18th fairways

Looking back toward the Royal and Ancient Golf Club

West Sands

West Sands

This past Wednesday, the entire second year and GEP classes went to the zoo.  We had to prepare a 5-10 minute talk on mammalian adaptation of one animal.  I had to prepare a talk on Meerkats.  Cool Meerkat fact:  They are immune to many venoms.  This allows them to be able to eat scorpions (once they remove the stinger!).  Other than our talks we had the day to tour the zoo.

Tapir

Zebra

Meerkat posing during my talk

Penguin Parade!
(They open the Penguin enclosure and whatever penguins want to come
out for a walk, they take on a little parade around the zoo)

Lastly, yesterday I finally climbed Arthur's Seat.  Strategically I didn't pick the best day because when I got to the top, people were sort of crawling around any time they got near an edge for fear of being blown off.  I have never experienced a wind like that!

Holyrood Palace

St Anthony's Chapel in the distance

Waiting out a random rain storm on a flat bit

Made it to the top!

View toward the forth

View of the city

Back at the bottom

This week I am actually going to have to start studying and stop being a tourist.  Exams are in just over a week!

The End is in Sight!

After coming back from lambing I had a week off to study for my AHWFS (Animal, Health, Welfare and Food Safety) five practical handling exams and written exam.

The first Monday of the exams I had my cattle handling.  This involved some rope work with the cow and identifying some breeds.  In the afternoon I had my sheep exam which involved some handling, some sheep husbandry questions and identifying different feeds.  The next day I went to the dog and cat home for my dog handling exam.  And then Wednesday first thing I had my exotics exam which involved holding a tortoise and rabbit (I didn't have to hold the snake!!) and discussing some of their husbandry needs.  And about an hour later I had my horse exam.

Waiting for my dog exam outside the dog and cat home

A much need study break hike up Salisbury Crags

Then it was a day off to cram some more information into my head before the written exam on Friday.

With exams done, on the weekend, a friend and I decided to do some more Edinburgh exploring and discovered Duddingston Loch and Dr. Neils Garden.

Canadian Geese are just as mean in Scotland as at home!

At the beginning of last week we got our handling exam results back.  And... completely unexpectedly exotics was my best exam followed by horses.  Never ever would I have guessed that!  

We are onto our last Animal Body unit.  This is an integration unit that involves some anatomy and problem sets.  Last week we got to ultrasound a leg of a horse to look at the tendons.  I really enjoyed the more practical aspect of that anatomy session.

The schedule is so light that I honestly don't know what to do with myself.  I guess some more exploring is in order!  

Only 3 more weeks of classes and then exams.

Lambing Adventures

For two weeks during my Easter break I went with a fellow classmate and worked on a sheep farm near Kirkcudbright, Scotland.

Our trip started by discovering that the way we had been pronouncing Kirkcudbright (Kirk-cud-bright) was unbelievably wrong.  Apparently they ignore a bunch of the letters and pronounce it Kuh-coo-bree.  We drove through the Scottish country side and arrived at their farm to see fields filled with sheep.

We started work that first evening by basically being shown where everything around the farm was and how the farm worked.  We were served an incredibly tasty tea (Canadian translation = dinner) and pudding (Canadian translation = dessert).  Then it was off to bed to get some sleep.  Little did I know that the first night would be the only night I would get to sleep through the entire night!

For the rest of the two weeks we would have breakfast around 8am and start working after that.  We would generally work until 9 or 10pm with breaks for dinner (Canadian lunch), tea and if we were lucky a coffee break.  At night we would either be responsible for checking the lambs at 12am and 6am or 3am.  It was a lot of hard work and very little sleep but it was such a incredible learning experience.

Along with caring for sheep and lambs during lambing time I learned a lot of other things about sheep.

1. Sheep really like food

Feeding time for the ewes was always an exciting time.  Spreading the pellets for the group pens was quite a challenge.  The ewes would see you coming and jam up to the front of the pen so that once you were in the pen you had no where to go with the food.  I found you would have to fake one way and then dump the pellets the other way to have any chance of successfully spreading them.  They are also super aggressive with their food and have no problem pushing one another out of the way.  We decided we would run in with the buckets of food to try and catch the ewes off guard.  Except that then they started associating running with food so anytime anyone ran anywhere they would all start going crazy.

Feeding the ewes in the pens also involved some strategy.  You quickly learned which ewes had to be fed first.  Some of the ewes would climb the bars of their pen trying to get at the food.  That was scary because you were always worried they might step on their lambs when they climbed down.  Other ewes were less subtle and would just jump into another individual pen to get at food.

"Bucket Sheep" - Notorious for stuffing her head in food buckets while you are trying to spread the pellets

Did someone say food?

2. Sheep are flock animals.  When separated from the flock they are pretty unpredictable

I unfortunately learned this the hard way.  It was midnight and hailing when one of the few ewes that were left outside (and not due to lamb for another week I might add!) decided it would be the perfect time to start lambing.  At this point she had already had one lamb and was preparing to have another. The farmer wanted to get her inside before she had her second lamb.  So the farmer and I got her cornered.  She had two options, run between me and the fence and run between the farmer and the fence.  Well turns out she didn't like either of the those options.  She took one look at me, decided she could take me and ran full speed at me.  At this same time, the person holding the flashlight thought they heard something across the field.  So they turned their flashlight away from our cornered ewe.  When she put the flashlight back on the ewe, she was less than three feet from me running full speed.  I braced for impact but 90kg of ewe was too strong for me.  She blew me over backwards.  I did my best to slow her down and held onto her neck for a bit while she dragged me across the field but in the end it was futile.  She broke free.  So we called in more help and got her cornered and caught the second time.

She looks so sweet and innocent in this picture...

3. Sheep are tough

These ewes have their lambs and then immediately (for the most part) stand up and lick their lambs clean.  What human after a natural birth would be up for standing?

I think we found our toughest ewe during the second week.  She had started to lamb in the morning but she wasn't making any progress.  So the farmer decided it was time to intervene.  Normally pulling out a lamb that is in the wrong orientation or is just a bit to big for the ewe to push out, is well under a five minute task.  We were ten minutes into helping her and we were no closer to having her lambs out.  Both lambs were trying to come out at the same time.  So it was hard to figure out which lamb should come first and what legs belonged to what lamb.  As time went on, it was becoming less about the lambs and more about the ewe.  The farmer had become concerned with getting the lambs out (hopefully alive but as time was going on, it was looking less and less likely they would be alive) so that the ewe would survive.  After 15 minutes of manipulating the lamb, the first was born... and by some miracle alive!

We gave the ewe a five minute break so she could bond with her lamb and clean it up.  Then it was time to get the second lamb out.  10 minutes passed, no progress.  20 minutes passed, minimal progress.  It was in the right orientation but still not coming out.  30 minutes passed no progress.  At this point the farmer was getting very stressed.  For some reason he decided to let me have a go at pulling the lamb out.  Of the students there, I was the most experienced "lamber" with probably helping 10 lambs, 8 of which were straightforward and easy.... so all in all not very experienced.  So I worked at it for a for a while when all of a sudden the tension on the lamb gave way and it started coming free.  To this day I still have no idea what I did to get the lamb out.  We all expected this lamb to be born dead.  Lambs don't usually survive 10 minutes of being pulled, let alone 45 minutes plus.  But even more amazingly than the first lamb, she was alive!  So naturally for the next few days those lambs were treated extra special and were watched very very carefully

But what amazed me the most was after less than five minutes of us getting the second lamb out the ewe stood up and started cleaning her lambs!  We had hands inside of her pulling on lambs for the better part of an hour and all she needed was a few minutes to recover.  That is amazing.

Miracle Lamb Number 2!

4. Lambs are pretty darn cute

Don't need any words for this one.  Here are some cute lambs.

5. Not sheep related but... Scottish weather is very unpredictable

The first week we were there it was miserable.  It was cold, reaching almost freezing at night, crazy windy and raining a lot.  On, I think, our third day there the farmer asked me to check and count lambs in one of his fields.  So I set off.  As I was heading to the field dark clouds started rolling in.  Well, good thing I was essentially in a waterproof suit.  I started counting lambs.  I was supposed to count 12.  When I got to 8 it started hailing.  At first it wasn't awful.  But it progressively got harder and harder.  It was getting quite painful to be outside in.  So being probably a five minute run from any actual shelter I decided to take cover in a gorse bush.  And that's when I found the rest of the lambs.  They had the same idea as me but they had launched themselves into the bush and their fleece was all tangled so they were stuck.  So, while it was hailing, the lambs and I hung out in the bush while I freed them from the gorse.

The second week the weather was incredible. 15, sunny and no wind.  I could not have asked for anything better.

6. Also not sheep related but... Scotland is gorgeous

We were spoiled by the location of the farm.  My iPhone pictures do not do it justice.

Sunset with the Sheep and Lambs

Lambing was probably the hardest I have ever worked but I would do it again in a heartbeat!