Thanksgiving BREAK

I feel like I have been waiting months for today. Oh wait... I have! Today marks the beginning of a lovely 10 days of break. Class and all the extra things we do at school has kept me super busy. Exams, surgery, more exams, more surgery...

My first official surgery was a couple of weeks ago, and it was awesome. Each week, the surgery lab switches between spays and neuters. Although the powers that be try to provide females for spay labs and males for neuter labs, there aren't always enough animals, so you never really know what you are getting until the day before. Which is fine, I was ready for either - but I did end up with a neuter. And after two weeks of spays, it was nice to have a neuter for our group and get done a little earlier. The first two Tuesdays of surgery (surgery is done every Tuesday), we barely had time for lunch before class in the afternoon! That is not to say our surgeons were slow (they were great!) but it takes time for the animal to be pre-medded, clipped, induced, prepped, etc. And then the animals are required to be at a certain temperature after surgery before we are able to leave them in a cage... so if it takes 2 hours for your animal to raise its temperature a sufficient amount... then that can really prolong your surgery day :)

My surgery day turned out really well. My group had had two relatively stress-less weeks because the dogs were pretty healthy. Switch to week 3 and we received a maniac. Really very sweet boy (loved to give hugs), but a maniac nonetheless. He was a cage biter and often looked like his jaws were stuck on the cage door (he was "rescued" by many other classmates). He had really diffuse alopecia (hairloss) all over this body, severe otitis externa (basic ear infection), and interestingly colored teeth. I say that because his teeth were silver. From chewing on cage doors. He had a pretty amazing grill if I do say so myself :)

Surgery was completed, no complications. I was stressed going into surgery, but once I was standing at the table and the dog was prepped and ready to go, it all just clicked into place. I knew what I had to do and although I don't have the muscle memory yet and my hands were a little shaky, I was able to neuter our pup with no problem.

Fast forward to Thursday morning, the day that the animals go back to the shelter. His incision looks awesome and is healing well. He has left it alone - which is good, because he successfully chewed through 2 e-collars during the week (within 30 minutes of having it on). The powers that be decided a second go at the e-collar would be okay... but it wasn't. He is a little Houdini. It was on tight, it was the right size... yet, he was able to rip it to shreds. I don't know... We also moved him to another kennel with different doors, because we were getting worried about his jaws actually getting stuck on the door when no one was around to save him. This dog was super brilliant. Plus, he was aptly named "Ace", and halfway through the week, we actually had to Ace him due to his anxiety. Anyway, Thursday morning. We arrive to find that he had been moved back to his regular run (by the powers that be) and had ripped off about an inch and a half of skin/tissue off the top of his nose - presumably from getting stuck in the run door. It was as deep as it could be without damaging bone, so we clipped and cleaned the area after calling a resident to check him out. Luckily, an hour later the dogs went home and my stress level was able to go down.

At least there were no surgical complications!

Today we are headed to Chicago (after a few hours of work) for the Illini v. Northwestern game - at WRIGLEY FIELD. Free tickets, free unlimited food and drinks... HEAVEN! I am so excited. Happy Thanksgiving break everyone!