Back to Work

Thursday, two days off and back to work. This week will feel weird. No surgeries so I didn't have anything to do there. However, I had to meet with our new intern. Mike neglected to tell me before he left for Montana that he had agreed to have a vet tech intern from Rochester School come for 4 weeks. And he told Holly I was in charge. Well, that's all fine and good, but it would have been nice for him to tell ME!
Anyway, I met with Kim today for the first time. I let her stay for a couple of hours and observe. Next week she will be with me for 3 full days and on Saturday. This will go on the rest of July. I will gradually have her do more things as she gets more comfortable with how we do things. This girl is older and has 3 children - 2 of which are old enough to drive. She is going back to school to do what she really loves.
There's a lot of people out there who just want to work with animals. Unfortunately they often aren't  good with people and you HAVE to be good with people. They are the clients, they are the ones you have to talk to, inform, convince to do things for the good of their pets. They pay your wages. I think Kim will do ok in this respect.
She had a rough beginning today. With the high temperature (90's) plus super high humidity, heat stroke is a real possibility. We had a golden retriever come in with heat stroke while Kim was with me. The owners had simply taken him for a walk around the block. I guess they realized he was too hot and started cooling him down, but then he went into seizures. Oh boy. They brought him in and Pam and Jen soaked him down. His temperature gradually came down but Jen had to give phenobarbital to stop the seizures. When I left to come home, he was awake but twitching and Jen is afraid he had brain damage from the high body temp.
This past weekend, my Bryn had overheated while I was out with the ponies. I immediately hosed her down for a while, then set her in front of the fan inside the house. I was lucky. Pam had the same thing happen last week with one of her labs. It doesn't take any time at all.
Then we had a cat come in 'bleeding from the mouth'. Dennis decided to keep the cat and he sedated her to look in her mouth. She started vomiting and vomited up a huge amount of blood. We didn't know if she would make it or not. Dennis gave her Vitamin K to clot the blood and she looked ok when I left.
That was Kim's first couple of hours with us!


Anna had some friends over tonight. Would you believe they decided to have a bonfire? One of her friends, Heather, is spending the summer working at a llama backpacking outfit in Wyoming. What a cool job!!!! I love the pictures she posts on facebook. Jacky and I are wondering about the wisdom of our daughter - to have a hot bonfire when the temperature outside is 91 degrees and the RH is  76%. Here they are...

Anna, Heather, and Emily had to make smores, roasting marshmallows over the flames. As you can see by this picture, it was a little tricky getting close to the fire -

Time spent filling up all the water buckets and troughs. Anna and I are leaving right after work tomorrow to take the horses to Forrestville State Park where we will camp for a couple of nights. The forecast for tomorrow is 95 degrees and muggy.

On that note, I leave you with this picture. Enjoy.