Slow days last weekend

Hola! Friday was a weird day. It started out kind of slow, but we had a large amount of dogs and a few cats. If there was a dog to a cage in the dog ward, each cage would have been filled, probably! So, when they were all getting picked up, it got crazy as each pet was being called to the front. That made it more exciting. Later....

Iso It needed to be cleaned from some giardia (intestinal bacteria) dogs who had gone home. There was dried-up poo firmly attached to the kennel grip thingies, and it was treacherous! It is not such an exciting story, but I sometimes like cleaning isolation, because it makes me feel important. : )

Some of my buddies These are dogs, by the way. I just want to tell about some of the wonderful ones I really enjoyed over the two days. There were two golden retrievers, sweet old girls, who I liked. They were nice and quiet, but wagged their tails whenever I walked by. They also weren't very pushy when I took them outside to potty, which is somewhat rare. I made them sit before giving them dinner, and they did so willingly, which most dogs would do, probably, haha. There was also a beagle who made exactly the sound beagles are known for, and I just thought it was funny, because I could tell right away who was baying. It was a hoarse "Ah WOOOOO". Also, a sweet older puppy (I think some kind of pit bull mix, but a handsome one) was laying sadly in a huge kennel (the big one-- which was funny, because she was almost lost in the huge area), so when I got her a blanket to lay on, I knelt to her level and she was so excited, her entire body was wagging. Then, she was climbing over and under me, and it was really funny.

Eyes--they're watching you..... Despite the strange subtitle, this story isn't that creepy. There were a lot of eye issues on Friday, though. Many corneal abrasions (scratches on the eye's surface), and other things. I think eyes are very interesting, because they have lots of diagnostic tests for it. There is a tear test, in which they stick a piece of paper with special chemicals and markings on it into the animals' eye, close the eyelid, and watch the time. After a certain amount of seconds, they take it out and look at how far the wetness of the tears have travelled up the paper. This tests for dry-eye (which pets can get as well as humans). The corneal abrasion test is interesting-- they put a pre-chemicalized paper into the animal's eye again, and it stains the eye with a special orange color that shows up under ultraviolet light as green. When they use the ultraviolet lamp to look, they can see any ulcers or scratches, and it's very nifty. This is called the "eye dye" test. We had a cat with a scratch on her eye that was bleeding, and we were worried, because it could be resulting in blindness. So I was holding the kitty while the doctor did her work. She numbed the eye, and then she looked around the eye, and only a piece of tissue was hanging off, sliced a bit. It was from around the eye, so she just cut it off. I think she was a new doctor, because then she got the eye stain strip for her eye to check for other damage, and was a bit frazzled about what came next. She tried to use a regular eye lamp, and didn't see anything, of course, so I reminded her about the ultraviolet light. I had seen it performed on many animals, so that's why I knew. However, this cat was super lucky... not an eye scratch in sight, if you'll pardon the pun. It was good, and we just sent her home with meds, I think.

Crazy There are a lot of stories like this, but the end of Friday was absolute madness. Always, the emergencies and busy-ness comes when I am about to leave! I had been rationing my chores a bit, to save me something to do if it was still slow when I left, and then I was bombed with tasks the nurses needed me to do! It was odd, but I love it. As I was cleaning a kennel, a nurse wearily called me over to help her with giving charcoal to a dog who may have been poisoned. Now, this dog was not a little dog-- he was a 90 lb mix. Therefore, he needed a LOT of charcoal-- two bottles of Toxiban, to be exact! He was being pretty good, all things considering, but he had been marked an extreme caution in the past for being very aggressive on the last visit. So, we were cautious, because the nurse had to pretty much put her fingers in his mouth. We have to force-feed the liquid charcoal, because most of the time they don't eat it willingly. I had to sit on him in order to keep him in one place for it, and it took a long time. We started about 5 minutes before I was scheduled to leave. I don't mind staying late, but I felt bad for making my parents wait for me (my mom was picking me up). I was getting anxious, but we finally finished, almost half an hour later. What a day! I think he was just fine, though, so it was a good thing.