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.

Maybe The Best EMS Week Yet

Time for another post from an airport.  I am in Southampton for my layover flying home from Jersey. I had an incredible time in Jersey.

My placement week unofficially started Sunday evening with feeding the calves.  I discovered that Jerseys make very cute calves.

Monday I officially started working.  They had me start by feeding the heifers that were going to be shown on the weekend.  The heifers were tethered in a small fields so that they could get used to wearing a halter and being restrained.

This young girl was in the under 12 month class

After feeding heifers I started taking them for walks.  Those girls had never been led before so they had to be taught how to walk.  This involved a lot of tugging on their halter ropes and periodically some input from another person pushing them from behind.  But it was amazing how quickly they learned.  By the end of each of their sessions they would walk without much, if any struggle.  The next walking sessions with them involved trying to make them walk more like a show animal and less like a young animal excited to be out and about on a walk.

Next up was walking the cows.  Most of the cows had been shown before so it was just reminding them how to walk properly.  They generally walked really well and it was just like walking a very slow 450kg dog!

On a walk with the cow that I think had the best personality

Over the next few days I continued walking heifers and cows and did some other tasks around the farm.  One of the days I fore milk stripped every cow during the milking.  (Foremilk stripping is done to clear teat canal and also allows you to check if the milk is healthy and the cow doesn't have any infection in their udder.  In the perfect world you would do it every milking but it is time consuming.  The perfect thing for free labour like me to do!)

Towards the end of the week it was time to start prepping the cows for the show.  This involved giving them a summer shave all over their body and also shaving their udders to make the milk veins look more prominent.  The young heifers have more fur than the older cows, so they leave a strip of fur along their spine.  They then shape it and cut it into a sort of mohawk to make it look like their spines are perfectly straight.

The weekend rolled around and it was time for the show.  Saturday was the cows.  We loaded up the cows into the trailer and took them to the show ground.  When we got the cows there, it was time for a good scrub to make them perfectly clean.  After their cleaning everyone was on the lookout for any cows pooping.  If a cow pooped, the poop was scraped up right away (to prevent them stepping in it) and their bottoms were wiped with a baby wipe.  I have to admit, when I signed up for a dairy placement I did not expect to be wiping cows' bums with baby wipes!  Then it was time to grease them up.  They sprayed their fur with WD40 to make them look shiny and keep any fly away hairs down.  After that they sprayed their hooves with black spray paint to make them look perfectly black, and their tails were back brushed to make them nice and fluffy (I was in charge of that).  

In the first class (Heifers in Milk) the farm I was working for had 5 cows to show.  Not having five people to show them they asked me to show one.  So about 2 minutes before their class I got a 30 second run down on how to show a cow.  My cow placed 9th of 14.  But my farm won the class which was fantastic.  They went on to win every subsequent class except for mature cow.  And when it came to the championship, the were both Supreme Champion (what a great title name!) and Reserve Champion.  In non show terms it means they finished first and second overall which is incredible.

Ansom May Anemone, the supreme champion over Jersey June 2015

Sunday was the heifer show.  The farm didn't do as well but still had a very respectable day.  The show was such a fun experience.  I had never even seen a cow show before so to be involved in one was incredible.

When booking my flights I decided to stay an extra day to be able to be a tourist for the day.  I started by taking a walk along the cliff path close to the farm.

On a clear day you would be able to see France in the distance

Next I went to a Museum called La Hougue Bie.  Throughout history La Hougue Bie has been many things.  It was a neolithic site of worship 6000 years ago, has a medieval chapel on the mound and during World War II was a bunker for a German Labour Camp.

The Medieval Chapel

I finished the day off by going to Gorey, a small village on the Eastern Coast.  There I visited Mont Orgueil Castle.  It was first mentioned in history in 1204, but most of the modifications and buildings that remain today were built starting in the 1500s.  Its location was strategically chosen to protect Jersey from French invasion.  After the castle I spent a little time walking through the village and along the beach.

Looking toward France

Mont Orgueil from Gorey Beach

My week in Jersey is definitely up there in the rankings of my best EMS placements.  I would go back in a heartbeat!


PS:  I made the Jersey Paper!

You can see a gallery of pictures from the Jersey Summer fair here http://jerseyeveningpost.com/news/2015/06/15/gallery-thousands-enjoy-a-flavour-of-the-islands-country-life/

I had no idea what they were saying

With nothing I had to do this last week I did a bit more exploring around town.

I went to Dean Village and walked along the water of Leith with a friend.  Dean Village is just a few minutes walk from downtown but it is a whole different world.  The village used to be the centre of water mills and the buildings that are there still reflect that today.

The water of Leith

Then Wednesday two of my classmates and I went to Stirling for the day.  As part of our Husbandry Extra-Mural Studies, we had to attend a livestock market.  So we went to United Auctions in Stirling.  It was quite an experience!  We watched both cattle and sheep sales.  I have been to an auction in Canada before. I had trouble understanding the auctioneer there because they talked so fast.  Well add a Scottish accent into the mix and it was pretty much hopeless.  I could usually understand the final price that the animal would sell for, but anything said before that, I usually had no idea what they were saying.

Once we had finished at the market we toured around Stirling for the afternoon.  We visited a sweet shop that was unbelievable.  I have never seen so many different types of chocolate and fudge.  So naturally I had to try some.  

Clotted Cream Fudge, Irish Cream Fudge and Bailey's Creme Brûlée Chocolate

We then walked around and looked at Stirling Castle and the Church of Holy Rude.  

Wallace Monument (The same Wallace that the movie Braveheart is about)

Stirling Castle

Stirling Castle

The Church of Holy Rude

The Church of Holy Rude

Finally as we were leaving we spotted a milkshake shop.  They advertised 150 different flavours.  There were so many choices!  I settled on a double decker milkshake.  (Double decker if s british chocolate bar that I can best describe as a cross of mars and twix bars).

Now I am off on an adventure.  I am currently in the Edinburgh Airport waiting to board my flight to Jersey.  I am going to spend a week doing a placement at a jersey cow dairy farm.  I am really looking forward to the experience!

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!