My First Work Experience Week

I spent my first week of work experience at Shires Veterinary Practice in Eccleshall, I spent the week mostly with a very experience vet named John Treanor (http://www.shiresvets.com/vets.php#Treanor), he retired the year after I worked with him so he knew A LOT! With him I saw mostly large animal work, he was interested in equine medicine so I saw a lot of horses and donkeys too! We also visited many dairy farms where I got to see pregnancy diagnosis and TB testing in the cattle.

On my first day I got quite a shock, straight into PDing on a herd of 200+ cattle! I was stood up in the cow shed watching for around 2.5 hours and for a 15 year old I was NOT used to that, however I was allowed to fill up the syringes with the drugs needed for stimulating ovulation in the cows so that passed the time a bit but I sure was glad to be sat back in the car after that! As the week went on I got a bit more stamina up and got used to the long hours!



After lunch we drove out to another farm where there was a cow that was down and the farmer couldn't get it up, John didn't think there was anything wrong with the cow and after a few stomach flicks he grabbed hold of the cows back leg and pulled it forwards from under it and immediately the cow stood up, I was awestruck! It seemed so crazy that he just knew its leg was in the wrong place!

That afternoon we went to see a few ponies with dental problems and they needed a few teeth rasping down as they were preventing them from eating properly, I thought it was a bit scary that he had his hand in the horses mouth even with the gag on, I guess it's just trust in the gag! This is when I first saw a twitch in use too which I had never seen before so I was a bit shocked at that, there were so many new things to take in in this first day alone! I was fascinated!

Throughout the week there were a lot more TB checks and PDing, for the TB check my job was to herd the young bulls into the cages and write down the two number measurements of the lumps on the side of the bulls necks where they had been exposed to the TB. I also got to see some ultrasound images of the cow foetuses inside some of the pregnant heffas.

   Some of the most interesting cases I saw during the week included:

• A horse with hayfever! The horse had runny eyes and nose and after checking for grass seeds or any other foreign bodies in the eyes John decided it was hayfever and prescribed some antihistamines and that was job done!
• A donkey with 'housewives knees' the old donkey had swollen knee joints a John described it to the owner as housewives knees as it is like the thing housewives used to get from kneeling and cleaning and he said there was some sort of ointment that could be put on them but he had to research what it was to get back to her, there's a lot of 'getting back to people' in veterinary!
• A horse with an open wound on its leg, John explained to me that leg wounds on a horse take AGES to heal so it was just a case of keeping it clean and regularly replacing the dressings, which the owners hadn't done and it had gotten infected and man, it stank! he had to peel the dressing off and inject local anaesthetic in order to flush the wound out, the horse didn't like this at all and had to be sedated. Once the horse was sedated John had to cut away the dead flesh and it was so deep he hit a small artery so that was fun dodging the blood spray whilst handing him the needles so he could stitch it back up! All this going on in a tiny stable, mad! In the end he got it all cleaned out nicely and gave the horse an antibiotic injection and the owners some instructions of how to keep the wound clean and dry and we were off again.
• I saw a horse be microchipped, the needle is a tad bigger than the ones for dogs and cats to say the least, and John managed to stab himself with it, ouch! I was shown the form that has to be filled out to go with the chip, all markings had to be marked on an outline of a horse and colours noted, a lot more detail that the ones for smaller animals. This horse was also given vaccinations for tetanus and strangle.
• One other horse we saw was lame on its front right leg and John decided to Xray, this was really interesting for me as I got to help set the Xray machine up and I was also in charge of stopping the sedated horse from eating and moving! He was sedated on a new drug that was a blue gel under the tongue, it literally needed 1ml under the tongue to sedate a huge horse! All clad in our lead vests we set up the Xray machine to line up in the right places for the images that we needed and whilst John held the plates in place I got to take the image! Practically a radiographer! After all that we found a small piece of bone had chipped off and it would get better on its own!
• Another lame horse, this one had an ultrasound scan on the tendons in its leg as they were swollen, John suggested injury and that the horse should be rested until lameness goes away, simple for once!
• John also took me to see a deer farm which was really interesting and I got to feed one of the hand reared deer a slice of bread, simple things! I'd never been that close to a deer and now I was feeding one bread, what!?
• When we were driving between farms John would quiz me on agricultural knowledge, what grain is that?, is that poisonous?, which side of a gate should you climb over? I had no idea... makes you realise how much you need to know! Scary...

On John's day off I went round with a couple of other vets, in the morning it was PDing a herd of cows that had been artificially inseminated and the farmer had been on a course and done it himself, it was good to see that they had been successful. The afternoon for me however wasn't so successful....I was with two vets and they were going to do an operation on a cow who's stomach had flipped, this involved opening the cow up from both sides whilst it was still standing.. I was so excited getting to see my first major surgery and such an interesting one! It was just before lunch and I was pretty hungry but watching the surgery was taking my mind off it or so I thought, just as the surgery was finishing and they were starting to stitch up I was holding the catgut for suturing and handing it to the vets I began to feel a bit sick, then very sick...then light headed, then I had to stick my head between my knees before I passed out... not a great start to seeing my first surgery! At least I got to see the main part of the surgery... The vets were good about it and said it's different when you're actually doing it, so far so good I've seen a lot more surgery and only felt queasy on one dental for some reason?

I spent one day in the Stone practice and it was a pretty quiet day so I helped out round reception for quite a lot of the day and learnt what the receptionists had to do and more of the business side of the veterinary practice. However there was a 'special' consult.. this one was human, a man had acquired a tick! his GP had told him he couldn't do anything and he should go to the ER, the man obviously couldn't be bothered waiting 2 hours in the ER for a tick removal so asked the vet to do it! She charged him the price of a canine tick removal and all was done, the things you see...

I loved my week spent with Shires, the vets and vet nurses were all brilliant they showed me round the lab and showed me what did what and when and how. It was probably my favourite work placement so far and has really influenced me to want to go into large animal practice.