Bulldogs, Buddy, and Bree!

So a few days ago I got to help with my first C Section!

It was on a bulldog because bulldogs almost always give birth by Cesarean section because they cannot give birth normally. I think if you can't be born naturally then maybe you weren't supposed to exist. Bulldogs can't breathe, have horrible skin, get fungus in their wrinkles, can't give birth, general badness, and I really don't think there should be more of them. I think this in theory course.

Now in actuality, I think this little bulldog has a fantastic personality and the 8 (can you believe it? 8!) little pups that she gave birth to were precious. And since there were 8 of them, it was all hands on deck for the puppy shaking. Yes you heard me right. In order to get the fluid out of their little noses, we rubbed them hard with towels and - with their heads facing away from our bodies - lifted them up a little ways and then down towards the ground. This uses gravity to get the fluid out. But it really really looks like you are trying to shake a baby.

There is nothing quite like waiting for a little pup to take a breath and once it starts breathing? You feel so proud that you got that started! And she was such a good momma! She was falling asleep sitting up but she never stepped on a puppy or kept them from nursing. Imagine waking up from surgery to 8 puppies. Ack!

That's her falling asleep with the hungry little monsters!

***

In addition to the births, we have had a lot of dogs coming in late in the evening with possible heat stroke. One of them, a dog we'll call Buddy, could barely move his back legs. So you run the cold water over them, in the case of a really over heated dog you even put ice packs on them, and then just give them fluids and support. The reason Buddy was special is because he couldn't move his back legs and there was nothing wrong with him that we could find. But with 3 days of feeding him canned food and cleaning up after him every time he peed GALLONS in his kennel, and being available when he needed his temp taken because he growled at other people and liked me, he was starting to move a little better and got to go home. What sucks is that while I babied him all day long and got kisses and happy tail wags for my trouble, there is no way of knowing how well his owners will keep up. So you send them off with what support you can, and hope that they keep up and he gets going again!

****

In news with me, I am going to FLORIDA!!! With the family and what is even better is instead of going
Sat - Wedding
Sun - Drive 9 hrs to KC
Mon - drive 15 hrs to Florida

Now I get to fly to KC and then fly back and help Mike set up his apartment! This is gonna work out perfectly because I get family time and time to pack up my room at home and then I get to hang out with Mike and Harv for a few days before Addie and I trek the 9 hrs to KC. Oh and my girls Kira (our golden) and Ivy (our Bernese puppy) are gonna be there too :-)

And Mike and I got to play with a kitten I'm helping a co-worker socialize. Nothing is quite as nice and a kitten snuggling up to you with her little purring motor going full speed :-)
Not too shabby :-)

Have Tablet, Will Post

I am so very very very ready to start vet school stuff.....or at least move...or do any of the other exciting things that are coming up!
But I also don't want the summer to be over, so I'm obviously hard to please.
Things done for vet school:
- Read "How to Study in Med School" book they sent all of the class of 2015....okay read it twice
- Sent in all the info they needed for our VET retreat (time for all of us to get to know each other at Lake of the Ozarks while being fed and housed and entertained with things like zip lines and water sports for free!)
- Figured out when I'm moving - Aug 6th
- Thought and read about vet school, animals, and vets allll summer
- Made as much money as possible to supplement my negative money
- Prepared cat verbally for 9 hr drive and resigned myself to 9 hrs of Addie bitching about having to be in a car
- Bought badass android tablet for notetaking, am downloading fun apps until summer is over and it has to become a working tablet :-(

I am really going to miss Oxford though. I wasn't sad when I graduated, I think because I wasn't leaving but now that I am, I'm really nostalgic about my favorite places and foods and hikes. Oh and I'm leaving Mike and Harvey which is also really sad. Luckily I'll have no time to miss them in vet school. And one of my three new roomies has a dog who is very much like Harvey, so I can get my dog fix.
Now I'm off to watch some Netflix before bed. Two more weeks of work at Agri-pet! And of course now that I'm leaving Dr. k decides to do surgery on and try to rehab a barred owl! At least I got to watch the surgery!

Revamping the blog

So I am gonna keep using this blog in vet school.

Figure this will be a good way to keep everyone in loop as far as my life goes and hopefully vet school will be interesting enough that I have a lot to write about :-)

And winding dooooown

Traveling overnight is so incredibly efficient. It's ridiculous, you'd be sleeping anyways, and while you do, you get where you wanna go. So jealous of the public transportation here.

So I left Hampi at 8:30pm on Wed and got to Fort Cochin at 4:30am on Friday. Thursday I was SO bored in Bangalore because I arrived at 6:30am and had no where to go until 5:15pm. Lame. So what did I do? Well I wandered until I found a restaurant that opened at 7 and they let me sit there for a loooooooooong time reading until the first movie started at a theater near there at 10:30. It was Salt with Angelina Jolie which was just as distracting as I hoped it would be. But then it was over and I was bored again, so I finally figured out where there was a theater that showed more than one movie and got there in time to miss the very beginning but saw the rest of Inception. More actiony movies than I prefer, but I'll watch anything and it kept me occupied until it was time for my train. And even including really expensive rickshaws it still cost less than seeing one movie at home. So yay me!

The I slept on the train and got to Fort Cochin at 4:30am, but had to sit in the waiting room until around 6:30 because that's when the ferry runs. It was nice to be up and about early but I am a little knackered tonight. Got through 4 books since Wed because of all the waiting. I am well read in silly romance novels, rereading Eragon, another fantasy book, and The Host. So pretty much being lazy, but I like it.

Today the power was out. Like literally all day long. For a real reason this time though, a branch fell on a power line. Well done India, a legit reason for a lack of power. So suckage. I really miss Laura and Becca, I was telling my mom about how excited Becca is to get back to her "squidgy duvet" and I just laughed and missed how excited she gets and then I wanted to talk to someone about the Host which Laura recommended I read and she isn't here! Gotta make time to go to Europe so I can see those girls again!

Alright, I know the posts have not been all that interesting, but I am gonna focus my internet energies on giving y'all some pics so you have that to look forward to!
Me?
I got one plan for the near future: shop till I drop

I haven't bought enough.

The title of this post is the feeling you get when you pack everything into the black and yellow backpack that your little brother gave to you when he was done - Dillon has to have a new backpack every year and what's not cool enough for a 12 year old still is cool to me - and realize that even with what you thought was a lot of purchases, it all still fits...barely.

Thus when I arrive in Cochin (quite a process) on Friday, I will probably nap, be lazy, and eventually pack my big duffel and see exactly how much room I can exploit and buy more things! I mean I will never say "Gee I wish I had bought less in India" let's be real.

Yesterday we did lazy Hampi things again, and also spent a few hours arranging the rest of Laura's time in India so that no time is wasted because trains are overbooked etc...
This may seem like a waste of time for me because I was not going on any of the aforementioned trains because they are going North - although we recently realized that my flight is out of Delhi and if I hadn't left most of my stuff in Cochin I could have lugged my big bag and flown out of there ah well - but I got to play with the owners daughter who he proclaims is a cheeky monkey.
And she is :-) we made faces at each other, she sat in my lap, she opened my wallet and made surprised faces at the money, she tried to take off my watch, I gave her a 5 rupee bracelet I had bought, and we haggled over the fact that she could not keep the $50 traveler check that I was cashing. She was so cute and funny and everything we did made her giggle. It was tons of fun and I felt especially cool because she was so taken with my pink nail polish. Thus I am way awesomer than Becca or Laura, just sayin.

I had to cash my traveler's check, because, if I haven't mentioned, there is only 1 ATM here and it does not take Mastercard. The bank is always open and has men in it, but does not actually function except during business hours...which seem to be from sometime until 2pm. But found a place to cash my check and am back in business! cost me 800 rupees for 6 nights in this hotel, it is nice to share the expenses with some buddies.

Speaking of buddies....went to Durga again, where they play the live music, because Becca is absolutely obsessed and it is pretty cool. Chatted and laughed until like 11:30 with another English girl, her bf Steve, and another guy. I don't remember names haha. And it was great to laughing and joking though I wish we had met them earlier because they would have been fun to wander around Hampi with. Slipped even further into my faux-British accent which I have no control over and is mostly the rhythm of my words and the use of words like "bloody, lovely, proper (as in "should we have a proper lunch or just a nibble"), loo roll, etc.... good times

But my lovely English buds left today without me. It really does make me so sad, traveling with those two was so much fun and it was so nice to have comrades when India got crazy. We were so lucky to get on so well and to be so comfortable with one another and I am seriously so unbelievably sad to see them go. I felt crazy ill this morning which didn't help and then stupid Laura had to hug me and tell me how much she would miss me which, of course, made me burst into tears like a nancy. But I have accepted my nancy status and will just have to comfort myself with the idea that I can go and visit them both in their native land and Becca can cook me yummy food and they can show me all the places they talk about that mean absolutely nothing to me haha!

So I am back on my own for the next...36-40ish hours. Hopefully at least 20 of them will be spent sleeping and hopefully (fingers crossed) the times will line up and I will be able to see Toy Story 3 in Bangalore which would eat up some of the 12 hours I have to wait between trains and be awesome!

Oh and ALSO! Last night we were talking about things we miss from home and things you get in America but not the UK and apparently Laura was super excited when she found a Cinnabon in England and the English gal was excited to have found Mountain Dew. Then Steve, who worked in the US for a bit, started talking about Krispie Kremes straight from the oven. Yummmmm...

Becca is excited to be home, not for another month, and have pasta and curl up in her duvet. Myself? I don't miss the food too much (I'll be so excited to eat it when I get back though) except the idea of taking it out of the fridge whenever I want and not constantly eating in restaurants. Plus I know exactly how it'll go when I get home.

We will drive up and I will leave everything in the car so I can plop on the floor and Kira can flop into my lap. Then mom will say "Bree look at you, you're covered in dog hair already ugh!". Then I will take a quick shower and put on my fluffy sweatpants and a HUGE hoodie and watch Tivo with the boys and talk and make fun and eat ice cream with my laptop working off of wireless RIGHT on my LAP!

So pumped. I'll miss India, but living outta your bag for 2 months gets old and all...ok well now there are some more scattered but the majority of the people I love are in the USA.

Obviously some more shopping to do before I come back...I'm gonna be brokkkkkke.
But it's a once in a lifetime experience right? Can't put a price on that :-)

Quick Blog

So Hampi is turning out to be a great place to do nothing but read and take in the atmosphere. Sounds lame but is really awesome.

Rode in a circle boat made of bamboo, tar, and fiberglass and spun down the river taking in the views of the ruins and temples and rocks that look like someone was trying to build towers and then either got distracted or accidentally knocked them over. Great huge boulders. They are awesome. In fact if you took Colorado and mixed it with Florida, you would have somewhere eerily similar to Hampi.

And the mosquitoes here are way friendly. Overly friendly. I do not appreciate.

Oh and I forgot what took about an hour of our time yesterday: Laura and I decided to get our legs waxed. In case you were wondering, yes it hurt. And no, the lady did not, in fact, know what she was doing, despite having all the proper equipment. Laura has 2 blisters from overly hot wax and my legs are only half bare of hair despite repeated attempts. Needless to say I did not want to have to explain to her how to do this properly, so I gave up and refused to pay more than 50 rupees. That's a dollar. And my legs are less hairy...
Laura paid full price for her less hairy legs plus blisters. She is very nice. And also full price was about $3 so...

sidenote: a baby cow snuggled up to me and nursed on my finger this morning. It was adorable.
sidenote 2: a dalmatian puppy and I played today. She had no off button, loads of energy, and sharp teeth. It was adorable for about 1 minute and then I wanted put her in a kennel. I smiled cuz I love animals but I really wanted to tell them to teach her a few manners, she was yanking on my skirt and wouldn't let go! And she bit my hair. Good thing puppies are cute