Wow… it’s almost been a month!

2006-09-23

So… I’m typing this from home – my email is FINALLY hooked up!!! 🙂 I am again part of the real world – Thank God. And I batted my eyes at the installation guy and he hooked up my wireless router for me too – even though he’s not supposed to. I could have done it, but this way was much faster – and I got my laundry done too! 😉

It’s amazing what we consider to be necessary these days. But I have to admit that spending 14+ hours at school so that I could have access to all of the stuff the profs put on the school computers or on line, or getting stuff from the library, not to mention classes, plus another 3 or 4 at home studying was starting to wear thin. Now at least I can get a large portion of my work done from home.

Of course that means that I have to spend longer in my house with a very smelly turtle tank. I have become a model turtle keeper in recent weeks because for some reason standing water here in Saskatoon really smells. So while he is normally supposed to get a 25% water change every week (he used to be lucky to get it done once a month!) – it’s more like every 4 days because then I can’t stand the pervasive odour any more! I’m wondering if there is some special bacteria that I’m supposed to be adding to the water here that we didn’t have to at home. Hey! Now that I have internet I can research it! 😉

My tenant is driving me crazy. This being a landlord business kind of sucks. For example, in the last 20 minutes she has gone in and out 3 times. I am on the other side of the house – but I know because she is slamming the door so loud. Given I was told that she was ‘quiet’ and ‘the best tenant’ that the last owner ever had I think that the last owner had really bad taste in tenants! I’ve also had to remind her that closing and locking the back door is a good idea, and that her dog can’t go to the bathroom on my plants in writing. Sigh… 
I may be looking for another tenant pretty soon… anybody have any great advice?

We had a crazy frost this week where I had to chip the bits and pieces of ice off of the windshield. So I’ve started practising parking in the garage. I have to practise because I only have 2″ of clearance on either side when there isn’t snow…. I’m just waiting for winter when I end up with only 1/2″! I’m going to pay my next door neighbour in rye – apparently he has a snowblower… and I have a loooong driveway.

Other than milking (in which I did NOT wind up with manure in my ear this time! 🙂 ) I only had a couple of hands-on labs this week. Our equine lab was again awesome – even in the rain… we had a mare who was rather gender biased – she allowed me to do whatever I needed to, including a rectal temp (we were practising TPR’s = temp/pulse/respirations) but when my partner Mike tried to listen to bowel sounds (he hadn’t even gotten to the temperature taking stage!) he got kicked… even when I held a foreleg! Then the TA tried to help and he got kicked… so the prof came over and he got kicked! 🙂 She just liked me 
best… that gentle touch you know – that and maybe she couldn’t see where to kick given that I am at least a foot shorter than all three of them. ;P

Then we had a cattle lab yesterday – and yet again the same guy who always manhandles the animals tried to ‘mix it up’. We do a section where we halter and tie the cow and then ‘drop’ them. He happens to be one of the few of us in our lab group who has NO cattle experience, so he decided that he should be the one to drop her. But instead of applying steady, gentle traction, he decided that he needed to engage a sawing action… until I told him that he wouldn’t get her dropped because the technique was releasing the pressure off of the nerve every time he moved (it needs to stay compressed for about 30s so that their legs buckle). Not only that but he managed with all of his jerking the rope around to get an udder caught under the rope and it got cut up too. So we learned some minor surgery (of course kneeling in 3 inches of mud and manure – yay!). By the time he was done I wanted to smack him upside the head. I’m hoping that when we go and work with the bulls that one of them puts the squeeze on him so that he learns it doesn’t have to be about brute force.

Of course he might be rebelling against our behaviour class – our prof’s PhD student came in and did a lecture on animal welfare – man was she opinionated. To the point where she really offended some of the class. It’s one thing to have an opinion. It’s another to offer the opportunity to consider lots of different schools of thought. It’s another altogether to come in and say that everything in veterinary medicine and especially with large animals is done is wrong but have no alternatives – for example the branding of cattle is apparently inhumane (which if you’re selling across the border is currently mandatory – and she didn’t have any other options). But for someone who is totally about animal welfare she cares little about the environment – her handouts will only print single sided and 3 to a page, and she refuses to save them in another format so they come to 14 pages per student every lecture – where we could make them 3 pages each otherwise.

We have all been roped in to being a representative of something or other, or else being on our executive. This way all the work gets shared I guess. So I am somehow on the fundraising committee. I figured that it would be easiest since I have some past experience. We have to raise $20,000 by the time we graduate – some goes towards paying for our graduation and some goes to paying for our licensing fees (it’s $1,000 each to write our exams). Our first big fundraiser is going to be a silent auction in March. So if any of you have anything that you’re willing to donate, or any contacts who are willing to donate something – obviously we will be doing lots of promotional stuff for sponsors, etc. I’ll make sure that they’re appropriately recognised! 🙂

I guess I should think about calling it a night – it’s been a long week and I have furniture being delivered bright and early in the morning!!!

lots of love j ox