Rolling in Trash with Glee

Today was probably the single most tiring day of my career so far (so far in the year I've done it, anyways). It was a good day, it was just tiring. I knew I was tired because I came silly, sore, stupid, and forgetful. It was quite a time! Anyways, back to the animals.....

Sad Bloody Pee Story : Yesterday we had a cat, a nice middle-aged tomcat whom I knew from previous visits, come in in distress. He appeared to be blocked, when they drew out his bloody urine. It was very red, poor guy. Hardly transclucent at all, almost opaque red. That's a lot of blood. They drew out several 20-mL syringes full of it, so it was concluded that he was probably blocked. They set a catheter under anesthesia, and as he was very slowly waking up the red urine was trickling into the catching bag, and it was a sad sight. Because it was getting close to night, they called a 24-hour hospital to transfer him. However, when I searched today to find out what was wrong, the records showed that he had died. They probably put him to sleep. The real cause which they found out there was that he had internal bleeding, in his bladder. The blood in the urine was caused by blood clots from that, not by any blockage or irritation. It was a sad story, and I was sorry to hear that.

Trash-Rollin'! : This is a happier story, kind of! It was the afternoon of today's tired workday, and one of the nurses asked me to do a favor for her and the doctor, Dr. E., who were together assigned to this particular dog. I said peppily, "sure!" as I always do, and then I was sorry... (haha). The dog announced was a pretty little white pit bull puppy, maybe 8 or so months old. She was cute! However, something marred her cuteness. She had bright pink spotty hives all over her body, and it was very visible because of her short pit bull hair. She was of course a lovable puppy, but we couldn't pet and coddle her because the rash was an allergic reaction caused by rolling in the trash, but the owners didn't know what was in the trash. It could have been anything from battery acid to some sort of contagious skin disease. So, they told me to find the most powerful pet shampoo we had (antiseptic) and give her a bath. They warned me, however, to wash myself with the antiseptic shampoo afterwards, which kind of worried me. So I set off. I tied her up, poor worried puppy, and set to washing her entire body with shampoo. It was hard, because I couldn't use a harsh shampoo on her face, so I had to satisfy myself with a tiny bit of hypoallergenic shampoo. She didn't let me rinse it very well, so I hope it is good enough! I had gloves on for this entire thing, and tried not to let any other part of me touch her. As it is, when we were happily skipping out of the wet bathing area, I shoved her into a kennel and set out to disinfect everything my gloves and the dog had come into contact with. It was tricky, trying to disinfect while not infecting anything or myself, or the just-cleaned items. But as we watched the pup slowly recover and turn more white and less pink, it was worth it. She felt better, and despite loneliness in isolation (she didn't have puppy shots and we didn't want to expose the other dogs to anything she might have), she looked happier. It was an adventure, anyways!