Summer Blogging Hiatus

Since arriving home to Canada after my placement in Jersey I have been keeping busy.  So blogging sort of slipped my mind.

I completed my two final husbandry EMS placements.  The first was my small mammal placement.  I went back to my old university to work at the Central Animal Facility at the University of Guelph.  The central animal facility is responsible for caring for all research animals used at the university.  I was sort of dreading this placement because I didn't think it would be interesting.  But I was pleasantly surprised I was wrong.  Learning the measures required to ensure the welfare of the lab animals was really interesting.  And I got to work with lots of different animals including mice, rats, a rabbit, shrews, turkeys, chickens, frogs and calves.

My second placement was my poultry placement.  I went to a layer farm near Ottawa.  I unfortunately timed my visit with very hot weather.  In the morning I would help in the egg packing station.  I would put cartons on the conveyor belts for the automatic egg packer, and put the eggs that had been collected by hand on the conveyor belt to go to the washing station.  But my main job was collecting eggs from the barns.  They had just received new birds so the birds hadn't all figured out that they were supposed to lay their eggs in the nests.  On my second day I spent 4 hours in the 30 degree barn collecting over 3500 eggs by hand.  Although interesting to learn about the egg production industry, the poultry placement was definitely not my favourite.  The highlight of my placement was getting to visit lots of family in the Ottawa area.

I have also been enjoying my summer break and doing some non-school related stuff.  Toronto hosted the Pan Am Games.  I got to go watch the Canadian women's field hockey team play Argentina.  The Canadians lost but it was still a great time.

A couple weekends ago I toured around Toronto with a couple friends.  I also went up the CN tower for the first time.  Since I have lived about an hour away for my entire life I figured it was time to finally go up.  The view from the tower was beautiful.

Looking down through the glass floor

The PanAm Games Torch

Panamania (free cultural shows from PanAm countries in Nathan Phillips Square)

It's hard to believe that in just under a month I will be heading back to Edinburgh and in a month and a half I will be starting my second year of vet school.