Client Comments

I was doing some browsing this morning looking for funny veterinary quotes, and I stumbled on this website. This vet keeps records of some of the things his clients have said over the years- some of them really made me laugh, as well as wonder what our profession is doing that these even came up. But people are surprising in how they think veterinary medicine actually works. To me these things are common sense, and it was interesting to see how people without a medical background view certain issues. And it's also a good learning experience, to know to expect the unexpected and to be able to answer any kind of question or respond to any comments.

This is what he has posted.

1. "Rice stops itching."

2. "Can you declaw just one paw?"

3. "Huskies don't get fleas."

4. "How much is a quarter cup of food?"

5. "I have a large-medium to large-small sized dog."

6. "She's okay until she bites."

7. "Can you spay them while they're in heat? I've heard that it messes up their hormones and changes their personality."

8. "He's allergic to steroids."

9. "I sewed it up with dental floss but it didn't hold."

10. "How much will it cost to file down my dog's teeth. My Rottweiler is becoming aggressive and bites my Golden and I don't like that."

11. "If I have a dog and it's always been an outside dog, and you make him an inside dog, will that make him die? My boyfriend's book says so."

12. "My cat is eating extra food and because of this is fat. What can I do?"

13. Told to groomer: "He don't bite until you brush him."

14. First question when answering the phone: "How can I tell if my dog is dead?"

15. "If I buy a prairie dog, will I be allergic to it like I am dogs and cats? Is it like a small dog?"

16. "My dog has been run over in front of my house. How can I tell what it died from and how long ago it died?"

17. On the phone: "I won't be able to pay you, because I'm only five feet tall and my husband left the charge card on top of the tv and I can't reach it."

18. "I've been using my herpes medication on the dog's skin, but it isn't working."

19. "I didn't know I'd have to wait if I just walked in."

20. "I can tell when he gets bad breath his anal glands need to be done."

21. "I wouldn't have had him neutered if I'd known you were going to remove his testicles."

22. "Do you guys ever wear your dog's collar? I do. He has a spiked collar and when I put it on he gets really upset. It's funny. You should see him."

23. "Can I use Compound W on my dog?"

24. "As they breed dogs smaller and smaller, their hearts stay the same size. My Pomeranians have hearts the same size as a fifty pound dog."

25. "Rabies vaccines cause dogs to become aggressive."

26. "I don't want to neuter my dog, but I don't want to have puppies. Is there a place where I can take him where he can get his freak on. You know, like a doggie whorehouse?"

27. "I vaccinated the father, so I figured the puppies would be protected from parvo."

28. "Well, I don't see why we need to check the other dogs in my house for hookworms, they aren't related to this one anyway!"

29. "I don't need to do presurgical bloodwork because my dog is a purebreed."

30. "When a dog's healthy they stand on their toes."

31. "He always drinks a lot of water when his ears are bothering him."

32. "I have a cat at home. She's eating and acting fine. But, her butt fell out. Can I get an estimate to fix it?"

33. On a follow-up phone call, when asking the owner how their dog is doing, she replied, "Well, I have no idea, he's downstairs!"

34. Owner of a cryptorchid dog: "He has a lump up on his back. I think that's the other testicle."

35. "I break up the Heartgard into fourths and give 1/4 each day, because they're so big and he can't eat all of it."

36. "My dog got parvo from my Mom's cat."

37. "Are you telling me that you aren't going to allow me to take the medication home unless I pay for it first?"

38. "He's only chewing where his skin meets the foot."

39. "I deal with his hip problem by taping his legs together with masking tape. He seems to enjoy it."

40. "Ivermectin and Geritol is a home remedy for heartworms."

41. "Dogs with double back dewclaws are immune to rabies."

42. "I deworm my horses and since the dogs eat the horse manure that's how they get dewormed."

43. "Besides having contact with a male, is there any other way my cat could have gotten pregnant?"

44. "My dog was poisoned but we treated him with steak and ice cubes and he got better."

45. "My dawg had the internal sickness."

46. "He's been known to snap on occasion, but he doesn't bite."

47. "If you never feed beef to your dog from day one, you will never have fleas."

48. "Can you cut the toenail to get a blood sample to tell how old he is?"

49. "I'm deathly afraid of dogs. The only way I can deal with my own dog is to pretend he's a cat."

50. "My dog is vomiting. Does that mean she's pregnant?"

51. "He's not really that sick. He's just vomiting 3 - 5 times a day."

52. "I want my dog tested for rabies."

53. "My dog keeps spitting out the Frontline."

54. "Can I give my dog breast milk?"

55. "I only want to buy a half a can."

56. "My dog is 1/2 English Setter, 1/2 Boxer, 1/8 Pitbull, and 1/8 Bulldog."

57. "My cat has been sneezing and having goopy eyes. I didn't bring him in because I know you can't give him antibiotics when they still have retained baby teeth."

58. Breeder about his latest female dog: "Well, I know she's pregnant because I helped."

59. "I think I need to bring my dogs in. She was in heat and they've been stuck together for three weeks now."

60. Written on a note for what the owner wants done to their pet: Shots, check poop, nudder.

61. "I only want my dog to be given 1/2 cc of the rabies vaccine because he's smaller."

62. "We don't trim the hair back that covers his eyes because if we do the light will be too bright and blind him."

63. "We keep him muzzled because it keeps him from peeing and pooping in the house."

64. "My dog, Abby, is dead, but I have a prescription for her for prednisone where I can get 5 refills. My son's dog has a skin problem, so I want to refill Abby's prednisone for him."

65. "My kitten was born in May and is now seven months old. She was spayed in February."

66. "Well, he's not a morning dog."

67. "My dog's kneecap fell off over the weekend and won't go back on."

68. "The mother has never had fleas, but her puppies were born with them."

69. "My friend told me to take crushed up seashells and sprinkle it throughout my yard. When the fleas walk on them their own shells break and they'll all die.........................It didn't work."

70. "I was afraid to take away food because if it kept trying to poop without having eaten I was afraid it would poop out its intestines instead."

71. "After I bathe the dog, I sit on the floor naked, and lay the dog across my private parts. If the hair dryer is too warm on my leg then I know it's too hot to use on him."

72. Dog with inguinal hernias: "The steroid injections make those lumps go away."

73. Conversation between clients when being instructed on giving insulin: Husband: "Well, can we reuse the syringes?" Wife: "No, you idiot! You want him to get AIDS?!"

74. "I'm building a safe room in my house and I want to get tranquilizers for my dog so that if we have to use the safe room he won't use up all the oxygen." 

75. "Can dogs use tampons?"

76. "I'm not consistent with the heartworm prevention. But, I don't have to be because I live on the eleventh floor."

77. "When you board cats, how do they go to the bathroom?"

78. "I think my cat has diabetes, because it has a fungal infection around his anus."

79. "My neighbor gave her dog a shot of the distemper/parvo and three days later he was foaming at the mouth and died. I think he already had parvo, so when she gave him the shot, he got double-parvo."

80. "If I refer people to your clinic do I get something?"

81. "If my little dog eats my other dog's large breed food, will it hurt him?"

82. "I don't need any heartworm prevention because I have a fenced yard."

83. "We add bleach to the water when we bathe our Westie so he stays white."

84. "You need to give me a handicapped permit for my car since my dog had knee surgery." 

85. The owner referring to their own German Shepherd: "Well, of course he bites. They know when you are doing silly things. They're very smart dogs and they're just correcting silly behaviors. We get corrected all the time!"

86. "Well, I sleep a lot, so I don't know whether he's eatin' or drinkin'."

87. "I want one of them there GPS tracking devices for dogs. I don't want it for my dog, though. I have a bunch of rental properties and I want to put those things in the refrigerator, so when people steal 'em I can track 'em down."

88. After explaining what can be expected with the owner's dog giving birth: "You mean there's going to be a mess?"

89. "I think her back is broken." (Cat was found to be in heat)

90. After being told the client will need to speak to the doctor: "I don't see the point in talking with her again since she won't agree with me!"

91. "When our declawed cat has it's kittens, will the kittens have claws?" 

92. "I knew something was wrong with my dog when I came home and he did not hump my leg as hard as he normally does." 

93. "It says here he got the D..A...P..P...C....somethin' but it also says it was killed, so whatever he had they killed it, so that's good."

94. "Well, I don't want to spend anything. That's why I'm on the phone, so you can just tell me what I need to do."

95. "I'm not worried about the seizures he's having because he's inbred."

96. "Can I get parvo if my dog bites me?"

97. Condensed conversation (actually took about 20 minutes on the phone): "I want to get those yeast pills! I know my dog has yeast because he's peeing everywhere! I think he got the yeast problem because he eats so much damn bread! He loves that damn bread! You want me to get urine? How am I supposed to get urine out of him?!"

98. Concerning a spay: "Is that procedure reversible?"

99. On the phone: "I want to know if you'll take Medicaid for my dog?"

100. "Can she sleep after she has the subQ fluids?"

101. "Can you give bleach internal for a dog with Parvo?"

102. "What can I use from home to deworm my kitten?"

103. "Can you do surgery to bring a dog's breasts up after giving birth?"

104. "If my dog died of Parvo, can my kitten get it?"

105. "If your dog gets the mange, he'll go crazy!"

106. "What's that flea control stuff that goes straight to a dog's brain and kills 'em?"

107. "Does my Rotti have Parvo again?"

108. "Can I do anything for my dog when he's sick instead of bringing him to the vet?"

109. On the phone: "I really don't have any money right now, but my cat has something wrong with it's leg. Can I just email you a picture of it instead so you can tell me what's wrong and how to fix it?"

110. "Our dog died sometime yesterday and we were wondering if you could tell us how to perform our own autopsy at home? We were unable to find any directions on the internet."

111. After telling the owner that their Boxer has a heart murmur: "Oh, no! Not one of those Generic things!" 

112. "The label says to put one drop in both eyes. And I've really tried! But no matter what I try I can't do just half-a-drop!"

113. On the answering machine: "I'm pissed off! I tried to pick up my dog after you closed and no one was there to help me!"

114. On the phone: "I need to reschedule my appointment. I don't know what I'm coming in for. You'd have to talk to that lady I made the appointment with the first time. She'd know why I'm coming in!"

115. "My dog ate cat poop. How do I adjust his insulin dosage to account for that?"

116. "She craps all over the place and her butt smells. I guess she's preparing me to have a husband."

117. "Does dewormer make a dog's butt smell?"

118. "The Omega Fatty Acid pills you gave me don't work because I haven't been able to give them to him."

119. "Wow! You're quick! He bit the crap out of the last vet we saw."

120. "Why are my cats gay?" 

121. "You can smell that it's mange."

122. "We know he doesn't have fleas because he drinks out of the pool."

123. "Will my Red Bone Hound become a Lab if she nurses her part-Lab puppies?"

124. "After you cut my dog's nails, can you put them into a plastic bag for me to keep?" 

125. "Why is my dog vomiting after eating horse manure?"

126. "Heartworms are just something vets made up to make money."

127. "Corn in the dog food makes your dog go crazy!"

128. "I have a pedophile to do my dog's nails."

129. "She's an indoor dog, but I keep her outside."

130. In regards to an extremely rotund Australian Shepherd: "Everyone keeps telling us she's fat, but the way we figure it, she's the right weight for her breed, but she just has a smaller frame."

131. "We feed him peanuts in the shell to keep his anal glands under control."

132. "I only want a partial dental."

133. Upon calling a client who was late to their appointment, the client replied: "We cancelled our appointment, but forgot to call and tell you."

134. "I don't believe in rabies."

135. "When dogs get their butts stuck together, does that mean they're 100% pregnant?"

136. Reason given for visit: "My cat is ungrateful."

137. "I read that dogs eat dirt if they're anemic.  So, if he's anemic should I feed him dirt?"

138. Client on phone with dog with obvious ear hematoma: "My dog's ear is swollen and he needs antibiotics.  I don't have any money to bring him in for something so simple since I can lance it myself to let the pus out."

139. "Will Lasix make things work better when it wrings the fluid out of the lungs?"

140. Question of if their dog is having any problems is answered by client: "He steals broccoli."

141. "My dog fell off the bed and his tumor got bigger."

142. In regards to a technician's comment when checking a patient in: "Don't say "surgery" around him because he'll be devastated."

143. "She has bad teeth because she had babies."

144. "I don't give them shots because I don't breed them anymore."

145. "Anesthesia just ruined my dog's coat."

146. "If I feed him the large breed food, will he get bigger?"

147. "My dog just got hit by a car.  Can I make an appointment for Saturday at 10 AM?"

148. "I can't believe you put sutures in that my dog could get out!"

149. Problem a cat is brought in for: "He's sleeping a lot."

150. First time Boston Terrier puppy owners: "We're concerned because he seems to have a hard time breathing!"

151. "The flea prevention you sold me gave my dog fleas!"

152. Owner phone call, having bought an Early Pregnancy Test (EPT) for her dog; her question did not relay to the appropriateness of using the test but rather: "I can't figure out how to get her to pee on the stick!"

153. "I cannot believe you sent me a welcome card!  I am not a new client there and my dog is not a new patient!  I simply brought him there for a second opinion and I want all of my and his information deleted from your system!"

154. "I don't need one of those self-cleaning cat litterboxes.  I have a dog that takes care of that." 

155. "Papillions are not susceptible to getting fleas."

156. "I'm not able to pay my bill.  I have a thyroid problem and when it flares up I get memory loss."

157. Client on the phone with a very important question:  "Is it okay to bathe my dog after he's been run over?"

158.  The answer by a client on the phone when asked what problem their dog was having: "He can't exhale."

courtesy of  Funny Vet

Vet School Round 2

It’s hard to believe that I’m already starting my fourth week of my second year of vet school. I feel like time has already been flying- at the end of this week I’ll be a quarter of the way through the semester. It’s crazy.

I definitely feel better prepared this semester. I’ve learned how to study and juggle all my classes, so despite have more complicated classes and more class hours I feel much more on top of everything than I was last year. And actually being able to take some electives and enjoying certain classes does help time move along faster, but so does being proportionally more busy this year.

This semester I get to take clinical anatomy, bacteriology and mycology, pharmacology, clinical parasitology, and clinical pathology. I also get to take three elective- Signs and Symptoms, International Veterinary Medicine, and Equine Theriogenology. The electives finally give us the chance to specialize a bit in medicine that we’re interested in practicing, so they’re pretty much by default my favorite classes. That and the fact that they’re not as much work as the regular classes really gives them an unfair advantage. But overall, now that all of the basics are behind me all of the classes are more interesting, although some will always be better than others.

My two favorite classes are two of my electives, signs & symptoms and equine therio. What I love about the signs & symptoms elective is that for the first time it feels like I’m being trained to think like a vet. And what I mean by that is that instead of being taught specific diseases or parasites or bacteria and being told to memorize that this disease leads to theses symptoms and you do this treatment of this bacteria causes this disease that displays those symptoms (which is important, don’t get me wrong) we’re finally learning to think backwards. You’re not going to have a client come in and say “My dog has renal failure and that’s why he’s always thirsty and peeing a lot” and whatever else is wrong. That would be really nice, but it’s never going to happen. What you’re going to get is “my dog is anorexic and lethargic and I want to know what’s wrong.” And the fun part is that any kind of sickness is going to make an animal lethargic and anorexic, just like people get when we don’t feel good.

So the who point of this class is teaching you to think in a problem oriented approach. You have a dog that’s drinking a lot (which can be hard to tell anyway) and is peeing a lot. What diagnostic tests would you run to try and narrow down your differential? How do you interpret those results? Is it a thyroid problem or a kidney problem? What part of the organ is being affected? What diseases or infections could create that problem? How do I fix it? That’s how clinical practice is going to be, so it’s important to train your brain to think like that.

Equine Therio isn’t a lecture class, it’s a lab down at the vet med ranch, and it only lasts for five weeks. But I think I’ll actually learn more from this class than most of the others because its a practical class. For two hours once a week I go down to the vet med ranch and palpate mares. That’s all we do. Today was my first class, and I palpated about ten different mares until my arm felt like it was ready to fall off and was tingling every time I had it inside the mare. The professor of the class stresses that the only way to get good at it is by palpating thousands of mares, and after today’s class I definitely believe him. No one can tell you where anything is or what you’re feeling, all they can give you is a general idea of where things might be. On my first mare I felt like I couldn’t tell what anything was. After my fifth mare I could always find at least the right ovary, but about the seventh or eighth I could always find both, and I even found the ovulation fossa on one. By the ninth and tenth I thought I might have felt follicles, but I wasn’t sure. If I could make that progression over just two hours with ten mares, I can only imagine how good I’ll get after ten hours and fifty mares. And then I get to play with the ultrasound, something I’ve been wanting to learn to use for years. And this is all practical knowledge that I will use for my entire career. And the truth that every vet will tell you is that once you get out into clinical practice you forget everything that’s not directly relevant to your day to day job.

I think the other benefit to second year is the Introduction to Clinics course. For clinics we go over to the teaching hospital once a week a shadow a different rotation. So far I’ve had anesthesiology, where we practiced inserting catheters and taking blood from the jugular, and small animal surgery, which was really just a tour of the physical therapy ward and intensive care unit. I don’t know how informative this class is going to be, but we get to scrub in on surgeries to observe if there are any going on while we’re in the hospital, and I got to use the stim in the physical therapy ward on my neck for nearly forty-five minutes, which felt amazing.

I can already tell this year is going to be amazing and so much more interesting than last year.

Summertime...

It's ironic to me that after counting down for 16 straight weeks to get to my summer vacation I'm bored. I knew this would happen, so it's not too surprising, but it is annoying. Don't get me wrong, the first couple days of being able to sleep in until noon and spending the entire day in my pajamas was awesome. But now I'm itching to do something again. It's the same problem I had over winter break. After going non-stop for so long it's hard to just stop cold turkey. And in my boredom I've resorted to some very interesting past times... like buying leashes to take my lizards on walks and make a dress for Sydney to wear in my wedding. And no, I'm not joking. I have pictures to prove it.

And it doesn't help that I have too much time to spend on Facebook now, where I see posts from all the third years posting about their rotations. Well, they're fourth years now technically, which is insane. And they've already finished their first out of 16 rotations. Granted, a lot of their posts are about being tired and wanting to sleep, but they're also about awesome surgeries and cases and I cannot wait to get my hands on that. Sitting on the couch is definitely dull in comparison. I've considered buying some of my textbooks early to start reading them, just for fun, but I think that would make me just a little too much of a dork. But it's also dorky of me to do a happy dance at getting into the equine therio elective I wanted, so maybe it would actually work for me. Plus boredom and a laptop is a recipe for disaster, and by that I mean the temptation for online shopping. I've also been doing a lot of cooking, and as soon as I get some cupcake baking pans I'm going to work on nailing crazy decorated cupcakes shaped like penguins, horses, and spaghetti and meatballs.

If I'm sounding a little crazy, you wouldn't be the first to suggest that, so I won't be offended. I am just not meant to have a lot of free time on my hands. That's why I need the crazy schedule of vet school. Their craziness overrides mine.

I've been thinking a lot about calling up the Iowa tribes eagle rehabilitation center to volunteer, because I think that would be awesome. But after the wedding I need to concentrate on finding a paying job first. And then hopefully I'll be able to do that. And then maybe with a hectic job schedule and volunteering I'll feel normal again. But until then I guess I'm going to continue all my little side projects.

And just in case you didn't believe me... Sydney in her dress and going for a walk in the park.

1/4 DVM

I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I’ve finished my first full year of veterinary school.

It feels so weird... I’m not really sure what to do with myself now. Yesterday I woke up at about one in the afternoon and started panicking, thinking that I’d overslept and lost half a day’s worth of studying before I remembered that I didn’t have anything left to study for. I’ve also been feeling guilty as I’ve been lazing around the house, feeling like I should be doing something productive and I’m going to regret it later. But aside from cleaning that I’ve been putting off and some wedding details to finalize, I really don’t have anything to do. I guess my mind just can’t wrap itself around that fact. 

But now that I’m getting more used to doing nothing I am enjoying it. But I’m also getting bored already. I’ll be good for a couple more days while I work my way through all of the Harry Potter books again, but then I’m going to need something else to do. Because I don’t think I’ll be able to do nothing for an entire semester. 

Hopefully I can find a summer job with one of the veterinarians out here for over the summer. At first I resisted that, thinking I’d had enough of vet school during the year and the last thing I wanted to do during my summer vacation was surround myself with vets. But I don’t know how to do anything else now. And I guess that’s a good thing- otherwise I’d be in the wrong profession.




And thank you to the second (now third) years, who were kind enough to decorate my car while I was taking my immunology final =]

On to the Next Step...

It’s been a while since my last update, so now that the semester is over I’ve decided it’s time for another one. This year feels like it has gone by so fast; I only have one week of finals left and I will be done my first year of vet school and officially 1/4 of a vet. Unbelievable, isn’t it?

I don’t know that anything really exciting has happened. Especially at the end of a semester you mark time by exams, by what you have to study and when you have to study. A social life is pretty nonexistent. Just in the last 2 weeks of class I had 4 exams one week, 2 lab finals plus 2 quizzes in my official last week, all to be followed by 5 finals the next week. It begins to take over your life.

One nice break was the foal watching team I was a part of. Basically you are on call two weekdays and one weekend day a month, and if any mares or foals come into the hospital for any reason you get called in for a couple of hours to watch them. I only got called in once this semester, but I went in a couple times on my own to help. The foals are just so cute and irresistible! Some come in because they won't nurse and need blood/antibody transfusions, some were in because of difficult births, and some came in just in case. Our hospital is one of the only ones in the area, so we get to see a wide variety of cases. Foal watching really just involves a lot of watching, but I enjoy it all the same. Mostly we note times of nursing, if that's the problem, or help collect blood or urine for tests. Sometimes all we had to do was make sure the foal didn't get tangled up with its IVs. I thought about applying as an emergency tech at the hospital, but in the end I decided I'm too exhausted as it is to get called in at 2 in the morning or have to work overnight shifts. Maybe when I get these studying habits under my feet a little bit better. 

But even with the lack of sleep, I am so glad that I’m here, and so excited for next year! I got to pick out some electives this time, so in addition to my core classes (clinical pathology, clinical parisitology, infectious diseases, and clinical anatomy) I get to take a class called signs and symptoms, which is all about case studies and learning how to piece together a diagnosis, and a class called international veterinary medicine, which is about cultural differences in the work that veterinarians perform. I also get to take intro to clinics, which will be my first regular time in the teaching hospital! I’ll get to spend one afternoon a week moving around to the different wards and rotations and seeing exactly what we’ll be doing in our fourth year. This is probably the class I am most excited for, because it will be one of the first times we actually get to act like a practicing veterinarian. I mean, it will probably be a lot like all the shadowing I did to get all my hours in the first place, but I’m sure I’ll still get to see a lot of really interesting cases! I’m still hoping to get into an equine therio class too, which would be ultrasounding mares and all that fun stuff for a couple of weeks. Next year with these electives is really the first time we’ve been able to pick out classes that suit our particular interests, so I am really looking forward to these classes. There are a ton of equine ones I want to take, as well as some wildlife and exotics classes. And then you can take advanced surgery electives, internal medicine, animal shelter medicine, and so on. The list is pretty much never ending. Right now my problem is deciding what I want to take most without completely killing myself with the amount of credit hours I'll have. I am also debating a trip to Africa for a month to work during the summer for some credit. I think that would be an amazing experience, to be able to work with different people and some real wild and different animals. We'll see how the financial situation is looking, but there are always externships in my final year, too.

Next year will also be the start of our student chapter of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association Club! It’s looking like I’m going to be the fundraising chair, and I am so excited to be a part of this club! Alternative medicine, specifically acupuncture and chiropractic work, is what I have always wanted to specialize in, so I cannot wait for the opportunity to listen to practitioners and researchers in this field talk to us next year. It’s going to be awesome.

I thought my first year of vet school was amazing, with all my new experience working with baby animals, castrating goats, dissecting ponies, and all the traveling I got to do. But I can see that each successive year is going to get better and better. These electives already make next semester look better, and listening to the second years talk is getting me so excited for my surgery class in third year. And then of course there was the white coat ceremony for the third years who are entering the hospital next week for clinical rotations, which is a huge milestone. There is so much to look forward to! If I wasn’t counting on this break from studying so much I would be ready to start immediately. But summer vacation will probably go by faster than I want it too, and then it’ll be back to the grindstone and one step closer to being a veterinarian!

This was one of the foals I watched =]

Behind the Scenes at the OKC Zoo

I think my favorite club right now is the ZEW club. Overall, I think they have a lot of very interesting meetings and they offer a lot of unique opportunities. A couple days ago, one of those opportunities was to go to the Oklahoma City Zoo for a background tour of the veterinary hospital. I had been looking forward to this trip since the idea was first brought up a couple of months ago, so of course I was one of the first to sign up and I had been counting down the days since then.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect on this trip because we weren’t really given that much information about it, but it ended up being incredibly interesting and a lot of fun. One of the things that makes zoo medicine so challenging is that there just isn’t a lot of research out there about it, so a lot of things are still trial and error. And the other issue is that a lot of wild animals will never show clinical signs until the disease is very advanced, because in the wild those weaker diseased animals are the ones who are eaten. So a lot of the time the vets can’t catch something until it’s already too late. I was very interested to hear how zoo veterinarians deal with these issues, as well as the obvious you can’t just go into the tigers pen and give them a vaccination like you could a house cat.

The tour started with a demonstration of the darting methods used. Darting is using either a blow gun or a pressurized version to shoot a tranquilizer dart into an animal to sedate it long enough to work on it. The Oklahoma City zoo had a regular blow gun, for close range, a pistol version powered by pressurized CO2 for longer range and more force, and an assault rifle version also powered by CO2, that had a night scope and everything. The assault rifle is used pretty much exclusively long range on animals that you can’t get anywhere near to or for escaping animals. And the pistol is used for a more intermediate range or on animals like elephants and giraffes with especially thick skin, where a dart from a blow gun would just bounce off. The darts contain a sedative in a pressurized container, and the force of impact from hitting the animal released that pressure and pushes the sedative into the animal. It’s actually a pretty ingenious system. When it works, that is. And our tour guide, the director of the veterinarians at the zoo, was the first to tell us that it doesn’t always work. Sometime the animal has too much adrenaline pumping through its system, which cancels out the tranquilizer. Or sometimes the dart is faulty and the animal doesn’t get the whole injection. And then there is just the whole issue of not always knowing what type of medication would work best for a given species. The rule of thumb given to us was always use something reversible with a wide therapeutic range when you can. Reversible simply means that there is another drug available that will create the opposite effect of a given medicine, like if one drug drops blood pressure there is another that can be given to bring it back up. Not every drug is reversible though, and then you’re left with either trying to find some other way of creating the effects you need or you might lose the animal. And therapeutic range is the dose range of how much to give an animal based on their weight. Since most animals in a zoo are not exactly willing to step on a scale to let you get their weight, drugs with a higher therapeutic range means there is a lesser chance of overdosing that animal. Again, that is not always possible.

Since it is so much work to sedate these animals, zoo veterinarians typically only work on a specific animal about once a year, and while they have the animal under anesthesia they try to do everything that they need to do all at once time. This would include routine things like vaccinations and dentals as well as anything specific to that animal. But you still have to expect the unexpected. Apparently one monkey woke up while under anesthesia and bolted upright and ripped out its own intubation tube, and then went back to sleep. All because it didn’t like have that tube down its trachea. You just never know with zoo animals. I think that would have seriously scarred me for life though, and I’d probably be done working with monkeys.

We also got a look at the radiology department of the hospital, and we got to see some pretty cool radiographs from fish, frogs, birds, and a snake. I’m used to only seeing dogs, cats, and horses, so it was interesting to see the similarities and differences in some of the radiographs. And it was interesting to see how that knowledge from just dog and cat anatomy can be applied to other animals. And even if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking at- like I was completely lost with the fish- usually you can still see something that isn’t quite right, even if you don’t know exactly what it is. Like I could see a huge fuzzy blob that I was pretty sure shouldn’t be there, but I just didn’t know it meant all that fish’s internal organs and ruptured out of the body cavity. I think a lot of that knowledge has to come from experience.

I think that if I were to become a zoo vet, the part that I would find the most difficult is accepting that you will make a ton of mistakes. A lot of them are just unavoidable. The vet giving us the tour told us how she accidentally wiped out an entire colony of tree frogs because she gave them ivermectin, and apparently those tree frogs can’t have ivermectin even though other frogs can. Some things like that aren’t predictable, because there’s no available research to tell you you can or can’t give certain medications to certain animals. A lot of zoo vets won’t try any type of new medications, preferring to let other people try them first and see how they work. Or you have to try it on one animal- as opposed to the entire colony- and see how they react before treating the other animals. There is so much uncertainty in this field regarding certain issues, and no one is really willing to be the first to try something new. At the same point, some zoo vets have close to 2,000 animals under their care every day, so it’s not like they have to time to run studies on zoo animals and medications. You just do the best that you can with the knowledge that you have, and you get creative and hope that it works.

At Oklahoma City Zoo, the veterinarians also oversee the diet of all the animals, and supplements are becoming a big thing for certain animals. We were told one of the most common things the vets are needed to treat is actually arthritis, because the zoo animals are living to such old ages, much older than they would in the wild. Although some animals, especially the monkeys, will pick out every extra supplement and pill hidden away in their food that they don’t want, adding to the challenge. You just have to hope that they don’t get all of it out and get at least a little of the medications or supplements. The budget for food for the animals at OKC zoo is close to $500,000 a year, most of it in fresh produce. 2,000 animals is a lot of animals to feed. And I need to interject something very important- don’t feed the animals at the zoo, and don’t toss things into their cages. Those animals have their diets very carefully regulated, and they do tend to eat foreign objects, probably out of a combination of boredom, curiosity, and hunger. We heard about a sea lion who died from copper toxicity because people kept tossing pennies into the pool, and he ate them all. Or animals ingesting water bottles and getting blocked and ruptured intestines. Besides the python we saw being treated for pneumonia there was radiographs of a snake that had tried to eat several trash items, including a water bottle, and when it couldn’t digest them and pass them it died. So please, don’t put anything into the animals pens. The fences and ditches are there for a reason. /end rant.

Overall, I learned a lot from this trip. It’s such a challenge to work with the more unusual species and not have any idea if what you are going to try and do will actually work or not. I don’t know if I could personally deal with that type of stress, so I have to really admire those who do.

Some pictures from the zoo

elephants = awesome

Tiger Cubs

cute little frog

Love the Galapagos Tortoises =]

Feeding mama

this little guy was so doing this for attention. He was posing and everything.

Anatomy Round 2

What’s better than cat and dog anatomy? Horse anatomy. Except for the book, horse anatomy (aka comparative anatomy) is so much better. But the book is useless. It doesn’t tell you how to do anything. Luckily, we’ve all retained a little bit of information from last semester, so we’re not completely lost, but I don’t think we retained as much as the book assumes we did.

This course is moving ridiculously fast though... each week we do another body section. We started with the head, and by week two the head was removed (to preserve for us to study later I believe) and we were moving on to the thorax. By week three we were on the abdomen and by week four we were on to the pelvis and the rest of the horse had been sawed off. Besides being intimidated by the fast pace and the amount of information I need to take in each week, I am a little confused about how I’m supposed to go into the lab and study when the majority of my horse is missing.

The main point of comparative anatomy is to highlight the differences between species, and the lab is almost like a just for the hell of it class. The dissection guide has us cutting through muscles and nerves to find deeper structures without any kind of explanation about what we’re cutting through. The motto of our group became “just cut that shit”, especially with trying to get the heart and intestines out. Every point of our dissection is just to note the differences between the horse and what we studied last semester with the dog. And I had heard that the lab portion of this class was really just an “additional learning experience” compared with the mostly lab based class with had last semester with dog and cat anatomy, but this is really just ridiculous. The majority of our first quiz’s questions didn’t have anything to do with actually locating anything on a horse. 

And while I actually am really enjoying dissecting a horse because the nerd in me thinks it’s awesome, I’m also annoyed that I spend 10 hours a week looking at things that I probably won’t be tested on, so I have to go back into the lab on my own time and learn everything else that I actually will be tested on. I just don’t get the system.

Plus, these horses weren’t preserved with formaldehyde like the dogs and cats were, so the lab needs to be kept at freezing temperatures in an effort to slow decay. You try carefully cutting through muscle with a scalpel sharp enough to cut through your own muscles a hell of a lot easier than it goes through horse muscles (remember, I know this firsthand) with fingers that you can’t even feel. Not fun. 

But what is fun is pulling out a horse’s ascending colon (the first part of the large intestine) and realizing that one segment alone (the right dorsal colon) is thicker than my thigh. Yes, yes, I know I have chicken legs, but it is pretty freaking huge. And the amazing part is that there is almost nothing holding that huge piece of intestine in place inside the abdominal cavity. Horses actually have unique abdominal fascia just to help their abdominal muscles support all the extra weight. That’s also why colic is such a problem in horses though. Out of all of that large intestine the colon is only anchored down in two spots, with the entire left hand side swinging free wherever it wants. I love horses, but that was not the smartest body engineering that I’ve ever seen. 

In addition to the horse, we’re also looking at an ox for this comparative anatomy course. I say just looking at because the sides have already been dissected with a couple of ribs removed so you can see the internal organs. We don’t dissect an ox, we just have to know certain things about it. I don’t know what those are yet, but I will figure it out before Thursday’s exam. Hopefully.

I think overall I like this class a lot more than last semester’s dog and cat anatomy, mostly because I’m dissecting a horse, but also because the dissections themselves are a lot less stressful. But I really with that I could get a useful anatomy dissection guide for  a change. That would be great.

our pony's heart

the ox pro-section

all the abdominal organs in situ

the cecum and ascending colon- the really huge part on the left is the right dorsal colon

what's left of our pony now- the pelvis. It does let you see the ovaries really well though