The 1st wet lab was 2 days of equine dentistry. That Friday night I sat through a lecture about equine dentistry and on Saturday I spent the day in lectures and doing hands-on floating! For those of you who don't know what floating is, it is filing down the rough edges on a horse's teeth. Horses' teeth continuously grow unlike human teeth, so they must be filed down to prevent them from injuring the inside of the cheeks or tongue, etc. I never knew how much energy it takes to kneel down (since I am so tall) to be able to see in a horse's mouth and work on it! Although it was fun and a great experience, it did confirm that I want to be a small animal veterinarian rather than a large animal vet. I love horses so much, but I still feel it is safer to work on small animals and it is a bit easier on the back. Either way, it was awesome I could gets my hands in there and work on the horse myself.
This is an adorable baby donkey at the SGU farm:
... and an adorable goat:
Here I am floating Alamo's teeth! My friend, Chris, was the "head-stand" since we didn't have an actual head-stand with us. That is Dr. Schilling to the left:
On Monday there was a wet lab in canine acupuncture. Dr. May came into to our anatomy lab to teach us for a little bit and told us to bring any friendly dogs to the wet lab that night so we could stick them with needles. I knew it'd be challenging to control 2 dogs with my dear husband staying home (not wanting to see needles), so I volunteered Felicity. Of course I didn't tell Felicity what I was about to do to her, along with several other eager vet students! Once at the wet lab, Dr. May went around the room and showed each group of students how to do acupuncture on the volunteer dogs. When he got to me, I told him of Felicity's past pancreatitis issues. He showed me where to start with the needles and how to put them in. Each of us in the group were able to put a needle in poor Felicity's back. It was so cool! She barely noticed the needles because they were tiny. Some students poked themselves, but I am way too chicken to do that! Felicity loved all the attention and treats from mom.
Here is Felicity before we poked her - I don't have any shots from after we poked her:
On Tuesday there was a wet lab in canine chiropractic. This time I volunteered Jasper & Felicity and was able to get Kris to join me. Chiropractic work seemed more difficult mainly because both dogs were tense and stiff the whole time - being terriers, it makes sense. They both were especially stiff in their pelvic areas - probably from jumping up and down furniture. Despite them being nervous, I was able to learn a few valuable chiropractic moves. Below, my friend Melissa is about to perform the "cervical scoop" on Jasper:
On Wednesday there was a wet lab in equine endoscopy. This was super exciting to me because I had never seen endoscopy performed on any animal. In Santa Barbara it was always challenging to find a small animal vet with an endoscope due to the cost of the equipment. I hope to have one in my future clinic because I now see how valuable it can be in diagnosing stomach ulcers, etc. This sweet horse named Alamo (looks just like Sierra) always seems to volunteer herself for these wet labs! So we proceeded to sedate Alamo and stick an endoscope down. Each of us got to play around with the knobs that control if the endoscope moves up/down or back and forth. It was so cool to see the inside of the stomach on the computer monitor! Sad for the horse, but exciting for us, we actually did find a stomach ulcer in Alamo. I unfortunately don't have any pictures from this wet lab.
There was a final wet lab on Thursday, but I came down with a cold, so I decided to skip it since I had a physiology exam the next day. That wet lab was on equine acupuncture & chiropractic. Luckily I have seen these performed on Sierra many times by Dr. Greg Ugarte. I also was able to see amazing results with Sierra.
The wet labs were a great experience and it made me so happy to see that SGU was open to the students being exposed to more holistic types of medicine. I definitely plan on incorporating all these things, along with nutrition, in my future practice.
http://www.veterinaryoptions.com/
http://ecvvh.com/default.aspx
http://allequinedentistry.com/index.php
http://www.docmarx.com/
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