Day 3, Wednesday:
Milk maid
Again, most of this day was spent milking the mare. However today, unlike yesterday, I became the
idiot in the barn. The interns (Coco,
Leanne, and Jen) asked me to do lots of things in which I was incapable, either
because I’ve never done it before or because I had no idea where the things
were that they wanted me to fetch. Their
frustration prevailed and there was a lot of yelling and eye-rolling. I spent a lot of time trying to do things I
thought they would appreciate with little gratitude. Even the tech, Rhianna, was getting tired of
me by the end of the day. It didn’t help
that they use all sorts of words I’m not used to (head collar= halter,
crush=stalks, trolley= anything with wheels, wombaroo=milk replacer, nappy=pee
pad, etc), speak very softly, and the accent actually really throws me
off. Jim was friendly enough with me
during surgery (another bone marrow transplant) and then sent me off to
radiograph two horses with Coco. She
wasn’t excited about it, but tolerated my existence. I came home feeling exhausted and
unliked. I sat on the couch watching
American TV shows while Jen, Coco, and Leanne ate dinner together at the table
and chatted about the day. Leanne was
the only one who made an effort to talk to me, and that was only to tell me
that there was a big hairy spider the size of the palm of my hand crawling on
the wall and not to kill him. She said
he was a huntsman spider and she’d never heard of them biting anyone. Great, the spider was more liked than
me. Now I’m feeling lonely as ever and not
looking forward to tomorrow. I hope it
goes better or it is going to be a really long two weeks.
Day 4, Thursday:
Foals are a freaking ton of work
I was startled to hear Leanne knocking on my door at
3:30am. She said there was an emergency
call for a premature foal that was to be arriving within the next 45minutes and
she needed help. We got in the car and
rushed to the hospital to prepare a stall (aka “box”) and crash cart. The foal soon arrived and we proceeded with
its care. It was only 34kg and looked
really weak. The mare was excited, but
manageable. Leanne explained to me that
at her old farm, they said “40kg makes a horse,” meaning that even if this foal survived, it
would have no athletic career and its joints would not likely mature
appropriately. It was only 11 days
early, but when we radiographed the joints, the bones were still quite round
and immature. The foal was placed on IV
catheter and a feeding tube and we waited to receive word on what to do
next. Around 2 in the afternoon we were
told to euthanize the foal and my heart was broken. I don’t know how or why I felt so connected
to this animal, but it was all I could do repress the tears. The rest of the day I spent helping hold
animals for lameness exams and running back and forth at a trot. I was completely exhausted and my feet hurt,
but Leanne and I had finally bonded and I’m feeling that she may eventually
enjoy my company.
Day 5, Friday:
Finally things are starting to get easier
Today started out more normally than any of the others and I
started to feel as if I’d fallen into a routine. We went through rounds this morning and
though Coco still didn’t want my help, I felt a little more love than I had
been feeling. Rhi and Leanne asked a lot
of me and I finally could assist a little more than I had been able to. Plus, I think Leanne must have spoken to the
girls and let them know how little experience I really do have and they’ve
finally given me a bit of a break.
Leanne also promised to let me get a little more experience doing
treatments over the weekend and let me give a few injections, so things are
finally starting to look brighter. I got
to see my first arthroscopic surgery on a standardbred mare with torn cartilage
in her right fetlock. It was a really cool
surgery and I was allowed to watch the entire thing instead of being called out
to do more meaningless tasks. Rhi was
definitely more friendly today and I look forward to spending a bit more time
with the girls. I still haven’t been
invited to the pub with them yet (Jen and Leanne headed there this evening),
but I am hopeful that it may occur before I leave.
Day 6, Saturday:
Treatments
Today started off well.
Leanne and I went to work at 7:30am as usual, but she allowed me to do
some of the morning’s treatments and spent time teaching me about why we were
doing certain things. She was quickly
becoming a friend and I was grateful for her help. We finished all of the morning’s treatments
and then let the reproduction mares out into the back paddock. We then scoped a horse which had previously
had roaring surgery and it was now abscessed.
A tracheotomy tube was placed and the horse seemed to be instantly
relieved as he could now breathe again.
We then waited until ~1pm for a man to come and shoot a mare and take
her remains. Apparently, in Australia,
shooting an animal and hauling off the remains for meat is a common
occurrence. The horse was being
euthanized due to a fence vs. leg injury that had been let go entirely too
long. The poor girl was no longer weight
bearing and it looked like the most painful thing I had ever seen. Later, Leanne and I left to go get some
breakfast and have a chat. We dropped
back in on the barn in the afternoon to check on the foal and make sure he was
doing ok. He seemed to have dropped
quickly downhill, so we placed a new IV catheter, bolused more fluids, and
hoped for the best. We grabbed KFC for
dinner and headed home for the night.
Day 7, Sunday:
Foreigners arrive
Today we got to the barn a bit late for the morning’s
chores. We completed the treatments and
then received word that a pony was coming in on emergency and were told we
needed to wait for it. The pony showed
up with a lacerated cornea, out of which the iris was protruding. There was no way to save vision or the globe,
so enucleation was recommended and the pony was kept overnight for surgery the
next morning. We finally came home
around noon for some lunch and I pretty much napped the rest of the day while
Leanne went back to the barn to deal with 30 kids from pony club. Later in the evening, I was made aware that
two new students had shown up today.
Tilde from Denmark and Candy from Hong Kong, both of whom only had 1
semester of vet school left.
Day 8, Monday
Today turned out to be ridiculously busy. There were lameness exams and radiographs
being taken all morning. We started the
day off with the enucleation surgery, then did a laceration repair on a mare
and a pedal bone repair on a weanling filly.
I got to feel a fractured tooth on a mare that Tom was pulling and the
girls used me a lot more today to help them get their jobs accomplished. I finally feel like I’m beginning to pull a
little weight around here. Candy and
Tilde are nice, but Candy has very little horse experience and seems quite uncomfortable
with the work. Tilde has quite a bit of
horse experience and is very knowledgeable, but I somehow wonder if she’s not
overconfident. Perhaps I’m wrong on
this, but that’s the vibe I get. It will
be interesting to see what the rest of the week shows.
Day 9, Tuesday: AM
treatments are a bitch
I awoke this morning at 3:43am, 17minutes early for the 4am
foal treatment I was scheduled to give with my new roommate, Tilde. 4am finally rolled around and without any
noise from Tilde’s room, I decided to wake her up. She was to drive us to the hospital and
back. This turned out to be a bad idea,
as she woke up in a horrendous mood and treated me extremely poorly. There was ice on the windshield and she
pulled out onto the wrong side of the road, all the while slamming on the
brakes and telling me she can’t see because she wasn’t willing to wait the 30
seconds it would take for the windshield to defrost. Thank god it was 4am with no traffic or you
wouldn’t be reading this right now.
Anyhow, we arrived at the hospital unscathed and she immediately went in
and basically threw the foal on his face and complained about how he is wasting
too much energy trying to stand. I had
started to milk the mare, but she decided I was doing a poor job at this and
ripped the jug from my hands so that she could finish the job in a more timely
fashion. So, I went back to standing the
foal and she scoffed the entire time. 10
minutes later we were back at the house and she was back in bed and I couldn’t
sleep due to my recently angered attitude.
I take back anything nice I’ve said about this girl and now I’m just
left with the feeling that we will not be friends. She lacks the patience and humility of a good
veterinarian. The rest of the day went
slowly, and I was amazed to see Tilde treat the others as she had treated me
earlier in the morning. The only surgery
today was a transphyseal bridge performed for a valgus front limb deformity on
an 11month old thoroughbred filly. At
noon, Leanne left for the day and took me to the post office so that I could
mail out Amanda’s baby blanket. We then
grabbed lunch at Hungry Jack’s (aka Burger King) and headed back to the
house. The only thing different about
burger king here is that they put ham on my double cheeseburger… just in case
you’re ever wondering. Later in the
afternoon, a couple of lameness workups were done and I was asked to assist
Angus and his assistant Tarni to help microchip and vaccinate some yearlings. I also got to watch Coco collect semen from
two stallions and watched as Angus assessed and froze the sperm. I’m pretty sure that Angus is considered to
be a repro God, so I am feeling very fortunate that he would take his time to
teach me some things. He’s also quite a
nice man to chat with, so if you met him on the street you would never guess
that he’s the guy that has written your textbook. I didn’t get home until 7:15pm and I am
pretty excited to get a bit of sleep and am sad to say that I will be returning
to the hospital again at 4am tomorrow morning for another treatment, this time
at least it is with Candy.
Day 10,
Wednesday:
Today again began with a 4am foal feeding. This time I met Candy and she was eager to
learn and much too awake for 4 am. In
fact, she asked me to teach her to milk the mare. I felt bad saying no, so I gave her as long
as I could bear and then finished stripping the mare and finally fed the
foal. He gave very little effort this
morning and I’m now worried that he will soon be euthanized. There has been lots of talk of it. Thankfully, Coco allowed me to take her truck
to the barn, so I wasn’t forced to walk to and from the house at 4am. Two hours later and I was back up for 7:30
rounds. There wasn’t much planned for
the schedule, but we did have a suspected maxillary/sinus mass for exploratory
surgery and a bone marrow transplant in a race horse. The BMT hit the table first and almost
immediately had its heart stop beating regularly. He went into atrial fibrillation and we went
into emergency mode. Thankfully the
girls were really on top of it and he made it out alive. We hooked him up to the ECG machine and found
that he has an irregularly irregular heartbeat with 2-4 beats in a row and then
a large gap of time until the next set of beats. As far as I know this has not corrected yet
tonight, as he didn’t have this issue prior to surgery and it is anticipated to
return to normal within 48 hours. The
next surgery was a sinus flap surgery that was extremely bloody and took quite
a long time. The horse ended up having
an unidentified mass in the frontal and maxillary sinuses that caused swelling
and exopthalmos. It was a fairly slow
day today, but most of the work came at the end of the day when we were all tired
and looking forward to going home. We
had a couple of septic joints to look in on and scooped out an abscess around
the broken splint bone of a thoroughbred.
Finally got home around 6:30, ordered pizza with the girls, and went to
bed full. Incidentally, a supreme pizza
in Australia includes tomato, cheese, ham, peppers, mushrooms, pineapple,
prawns, onions, olives and anchovies.
You can imagine my surprise when I saw the “supreme” pizza we ordered…
Day 11, Thursday. The
foal dies.
Today I woke up late and tired and had a very difficult time
motivating myself to work today. Tilde
was in the kitchen when I came in and since she had the 4am foal duty, I asked
her how it went. She said it went well
and then proceeded to tell me that Candy’s presence was worthless and that Tilde
would have been much better off by herself.
She said Candy slowed her down and didn’t have the knowledge to be
feeding a foal anyway. I got the feeling
she was basically saying the same thing about me also, but I chose to put it out
of my mind and move on. Surgeries
started at 8am sharp with lots of arthroscopies and BAD weanlings. Most of the horses I handled today were
naughty and I have to admit I was scared by a great deal of them. However, I think I ended up handling all of
them, so I guess that is good for my handling skills. The arthroscopies took forever today, then we
did a crypt orchid and then another arthroscopy. In the middle of all of this, I was told that
it was finally time to euthanize the dummy foal with which I had spent so much
time. I couldn’t think about it or I
knew I would tear up. I’m so sad that
this had to happen, but he broke with diarrhea this morning and apparently that
was the last straw. At 6 we were finally
finishing the 6th straight surgery and we all were exhausted. Unfortunately, Tom caught me on the way out
of surgery and I ended up holding another horse for ultrasound and radiographs. Finally home around 8pm and all I want to do
is go to bed. I feel like I’ve learned a
ton, but have just a ton more to learn.
I’m a little concerned about my horse abilities, but I am excited to see
what the future holds.
Day 12, Friday: Tilde
tries to burn down the house
Today I awoke to the thought that someone was smoking in the
house. As I left the room, I realized
that the entire house smelled horribly of smoke and that it wasn’t from
cigarettes. Soon, I found out that Tilde
had put dinner on the stove the night before and had forgotten about it
entirely. It apparently cooked overnight
and was only discovered at 5am when Coco got up to go to the gym. Not only were the girls mad about the smell,
but everyone had to launder their clothes to remove the smoke stench. What a great way to start the morning. I hitched a ride over to the hospital with
Coco and found out that we had a few more surgeries to do and that they were
starting early that morning. We had
received 3 new yearling colts for arthroscopy and chip removal from a racing
farm and they were all a pain in the ass.
None of them had been handled much and they all need a lot of work in
hand. Tom even had to help get one of
them into the padded room to get it knocked down, and that consisted of him
smacking it as hard as possible with a whip.
Thank God I’m on his good side.
The surgeries went uneventfully and the day was basically over by 2pm
with nothing left to do. I headed out to
take pictures, do laundry, and pack for my Sydney departure in the
morning.
Day 13, Saturday: Fun
travel commences
Leanne drove me to the Shep train station this morning at
6:30am. She politely said her good-byes
and no-doubt headed back to bed. Two and
a half hours later, I was in the Melbourne airport. Four hours of waiting in line at JetStar and
I was finally sitting in the terminal getting ready to depart for my sold-out
flight to Sydney. I departed the Sydney
flight to find Raye waiting at the gate.
Bill was downstairs at the baggage claim and it was great to see some
friendly and familiar faces. We got my
luggage and Dave was waiting in the car, so we headed back to Heathcote with
plenty of time for dinner. Dave &
Raye had a beautiful home and two German Shorthair Pointers, so we felt welcome
and happy to have such great hosts. They
made us a dinner of steaks, salad, and garlic bread and we drank plenty of
Dave’s homemade brew. I have to say this
is a nice change from the weeks prior.
We went to bed early with full stomachs and thoughts of what tomorrow
would entail.
Day 14, Sunday:
Sydney
Today we got up early thinking about hiking in Heathcote
National Forest and hoping to see some wallabies. However, when we actually walked outside, it
was pouring rain and we thought otherwise.
After some tea and cereal, we showered and then decided to all take the
train into Sydney. We didn’t know if the
weather would hold out, but luckily it did and we were able to walk all around
Sydney. We started at the city building
and walked down to the Opera House, through the gardens, across to the rocks
district, and then up onto & midway across the Sydney bridge. Sydney is a beautiful city and it was very
fun to spend some time wondering around and seeing the sites. I’m a little disappointed we didn’t get to
the beach, but the weather was windy, cold, and threatening rain, so we didn’t
cross the bridge to see the beaches as we had hoped. We returned home near dinner time and tonight
we had Dave’s version of burgers (I think some beef, lamb, lentils, and
carrots) with salad, garlic bread, and my personal favorite, Dave’s dark
homebrew.
Day 15, Monday:
Symbio and Heathcote National
Today we slept in a little bit and tried to figure out what
to do with the day. Dave suggested a
hike in Heathcote National, whale-watching, or the zoo. We decided on Heathcote and the zoo and
headed out. Unfortunately, we were too
early for the zoo’s opening at 9:30, so we headed off on a drive. We ended up on a cliff overlooking Sydney and
the beaches, and this ended up one of my very favorite views of the trip. Apparently it was a common area for
hang-glider departure also, but I’m told that’s not a very safe hobby. Anyhow, we took a short trip back through
Heathcote forest and ended up at Symbio, a little zoo outside of the suburb of
Heathcote. The zoo was actually pretty
cool, we got to see koalas (and babies), some voles, lots of kangaroos with
joeys (which we fed), many different species of birds, and Bill’s favorite, the
red panda. We also got to pet a dingo and learned that
the dingo has no dog-smell. This is apparently
what allows him to be such a voracious hunter.
Hmm, have to say I’m a bit skeptical about this, but that’s the word on
the street. After the zoo, we again
drove through Heathcote National, but this time we stopped to have an hour and
a half hike (where we saw a liar bird) and have a look at the flora. Dave went for a run while Bill & I walked
and enjoyed being out of the USA. We
then drove down to Botany Bay for a view of the ocean and oysters and over to
Caringbah for smoothies and organic groceries.
I think Caringbah must be the yuppie/hippy portion of Sydney, as
everyone surfs, wears designer clothes, and drinks expensive beer. An hour later and we were home for steaks and
salad again, along with less beer than the night before. Off to Cairns tomorrow.
Day 16, Tuesday:
Cairns
After a good long morning hike through Heathcote National
Forest, we got prettied up and grabbed the train into Sydney for the
airport. This trip went relatively
easily and we ended up getting to Cairns on time. We took a taxi over to the Novotel Oasis
Hotel and then headed out to the esplanade for some exploring and dinner. We were told that we absolutely have to try
the Barramundi while we were in Australia, so we headed over to Barnacle Bill’s
for herb-encrusted barramundi, garlic prawns, garlic bread, and
chardonnay. I have to say dinner tasted
wonderful, but it didn’t stick and I ended up expulsing it only a couple hours
later back at the hotel. Needless to
say, I was a little concerned about diving the next morning, but I would wait
and see what tomorrow had in store.
Day 17, Wednesday:
Great Barrier Reef
The day started out a little slow. We didn’t get up as early as originally hoped
due to the state of my stomach and skipped breakfast for the same reason. We got to the dive boat at 7, only to be told
that we were a half hour early and that we’d have to wait. We picked Seastar Cruises because of their
small boat size (which means fewer people) and their reputation. We only had 31 traveling companions, compared
to the majority of other operations that take a minimum of 160 passengers. We were hoping that with our small passenger
list that we would have less likelihood of leaving someone behind. The morning was quite chilly as we got
underway and I was really hopeful that my scopolamine patch and ginger pills
would do their job and prevent my impending sea-sickness. They worked and I was afforded the ability to
dive the first spot on the outer reef, Michaelmas Cay. This dive was only ~10meters deep and was
mostly sand. We did get to see a sea
turtle, stingray, and a cuddle fish, all of which were pretty exciting for Bill
to see on his first ocean dive ever. I
had never seen a cuddle fish before and the color change is absolutely
amazing. We got out of the water quite
chilly, despite wearing 3/2mm wetsuits, and headed for the front deck to warm
up. After some drying we decided to
snorkel over to the beach at Michaelmas cay and sit in the sand. An hour or so later we were put in a dingy
back to the boat, fed lunch, and moved over to another dive site. This one was called “The Fish Bowl” and for
adequate reason. This site was more of a
wall dive setup and the coral here was much more amazing. We still only dove to ~15 meters deep, but
the tunnels and coral formations were very pretty. There is a point in this
dive where you swim up over a coral ledge and then drop down in to a
fish-filled coral area (the fish bowl).
I’ve never seen anything like this before and it was a really neat
experience to be surrounded entirely by coral, its fish, and the surface of the
water above. Oh, and I forgot to mention
that we saw another cuddle fish and were followed by a huge puffer fish for the
entire dive. He was really cool, but
liked to swim right at your mask so that when you turned around he scared the
crap out of you. Perhaps that’s his
daily entertainment? Anyhow, the dive
master was a young Aussie girl who was really cool and there were only 3 divers
total: Bill, me, and some random foreign
chick. The foreign girl was terrible and
was all over the place touching things and not paying attention to the
group. It really does make me realize
how easily people can get lost if they aren’t attentive to the dive master. In fact, a couple on the boat told a horrific
story of how ten years ago their son came on one of these dive trips and never
returned home. They said his body was
found washed up in one of the cays several days later. It was raining during our second dive, so I
was freezing by the time we left the water and happy to get back on board the
boat. We again returned to the front
deck and then took a cruise on the glass bottom boat to view the coral and fish
from above. This was cool, but it is
much better to dive and see it so much closer.
We then returned to the boat and started the journey back to the
coast. On the way, we were lucky enough
to see a whale blow its blowhole and then flap its tail into the water. Pretty cool.
Once back to the hotel, we cleaned up and headed out for a little light
shopping and a pizza dinner. At this
point, we were both starved for a little taste of American goodness. However, the pizza had an Aussie flare, with
sweeter tomato sauce and a different type of cheese. Still good, but much different than the pizza
here. We retired early to bed and still
had no idea what we were going to do with our last day in Cairns.
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