Craziness

So I had a little bitty stress attack last night just because I started getting a little overwhelmed by the little errands and things like my car still dying on me every few weeks.

But I let myself chill out and watch dumb reality TV....
Which is what this post is actually about.
If you haven't seen it, TiVo it, find it online, but you have got to watch "I Cloned My Pet".
I am not kidding, these people are CRAZY!!!!
My roommate and I couldn't look away. These people love these pets more than their spouses, more than their kids, are more sad about their deaths than about those of significant others or parents. One lady has a huge picture of her dog on her comforter, pillows, and wall. She sleeps in bed next to his ashes tucked into a blanket (Trouble liked to curl up in blankets...), she saved the water that was in his bowl when he died....Craziness. A man from Korea has his dog buried but has all her toys sitting on her grave in a little picket fenced area. He has pictures of her everywhere.
This cloning process costs them $50,000-$100,000...

Yea, you read that right.

But they love their pet and they just want them back right? Funny story about cloning. Cloning does not equal duplication. Your dog might look the same (but might not, some colors and patterns change during growth in unpredictable ways), it may have some (I stress some) of the same preferences, but all of the life experiences that made it your beloved pet will not happen.

For example, all the quirky things I love about my animals come from the way they were raised before I ever met them. 
Harvey was on a chain outside all day. I guarantee that this had an effect on his attitude and his personality, maybe even his size!
Addie was on her own for four months...I have no clue what happened or where she was, but that is a big part of what made her Addie.
Ivy was raised by one of our very best family friends. Do you think that she would be the same if she had been raised entirely on her own instead of with a passel of  her siblings? If she had been raised by me and not her breeder?
No!
They would still be great pets (maybe), their health might be the same (but clones generally live shorter lives), and they might be the same color......

I just wonder if anyone went over this with them before the spent my student loan debt/the cost of a house/ a huge retirement fund on their new puppies.

Then again one lady took her new puppy to a psychic who said the puppy recalled the old dog's last moments meaning that he had the memories of the original.... so I could be wrong.


You gotta watch this show for yourself, it's on TLC and it is worth it for sheer shock value!

Have a good everyone, it snowed here so everything looks beautiful!

Good Morning School

I'm halfway up! Little work out every morning.

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Boom! There's a new semester!

So everything is going well. Just assume that is the general theme.
When the worst part of your life is that your cat has decided she can get on the counters after about a year and a half of life....well then you don't have much to complain about do you?

So this semester is all about large animal. Ok, it's not really all about them, but because we have anatomy lab so often the theme of anatomy lab is the theme of life.

Luckily, according to one of the main Large Animal (LA) docs in the clinic, the LA part of clinics is super laid back and fun and funny. Girlfriend has a green streak in her hair, so she knows what's up.

Anatomy lab is slow for many reasons. The first reason is that these animals are large, so everything takes awhile to clean out and find and manipulate. The second reason is that there are about 15 of us in every group, but there is only enough room for so many people to be working at one time. So I spend some time reading from the book and pointing things out. I really miss my old anatomy group. Believe me when I say my new group is a great group by far and there are many groups that are not nearly as easy to get along with. But still...my old group was so fun, I wouldn't mind everything taking so long because we have so much fun together. But I am getting to hang out with some new people so that is really good, change is just hard and last semester was so much fun. It is so neat to be learning about the LA side of things though. I am kind of a moron about that because my parents wouldn't buy me a farm. Rude.

We also start a really neat but not important at all to my grades type class. It's called Clinical Skills and it is essentially a pass/fail, laid back kind of class. It's to get everyone to a baseline of comfort with some basic animal handling skills and just a certain level of comfort around the animals. So for me, the small animal portion will be very easy and the large animal part will be a little trickier. Luckily it should be low key and fun. I think we will all learn a little something and it will be nice to have a more chill kind of class with so many practical applications. I'm so excited because I am in the second group which means that some groups went today and I get to go tomorrow and play with cows! We are all so stoked to touch live animals again that we can't handle ourselves.

Not gonna lie though, I am a little nervous. We are gonna be in groups, but there are somethings that you can only do one at a time. With animals everything is a little iffy and I already hate being the center of attention. What if I embarrass myself? I know it's ridiculous, and I am not even that worried, but these are the kinds of things I think about. We also get to practice different hitches and knots so I'm gonna feel like boy scout.

All in all I feel  rather caught up. Most of our classes are focusing on the GI tract, and it is really nice to have that kind of continuity. Nutrition is the most sinfully boring class so far, but as long as boring still = understandable I can just get over it. I am even watching a movie right now and have been reading a real book that is not about animals and their problems.

I really love  what I do. Like a lot. Like I am a little afraid to graduate and not have learning new things be my whole job. It is great to a be a student. Oh! And the fact that my housing complex is going bankrupt is having no effect on our lives because we get to sign a new lease this month and our cost is only going up $25 total! That is like $6 a person. Our whole house is ecstatic. The idea of finding a new place really sucked and we were willing to pay nearly anything to stay in the same place for more than a year, that has never happened since undergrad started 5 years ago.

And I'm on a bit of health kick and have been eating veggies and fruits and not subsisting on things you can microwave. This means more of an expense than I prefer, but my rent isn't really going up so I can kind of afford it maybe.

I hope this 60 degree weather holds, because it puts everyone in a fabulous mood.
Or maybe it's just the movie that I am watching. No Strings Attached is hilarious so far.
I gots to get up bright and early to be productive and care about animals....life is hard.

Good Morning

So here I am at school getting ready for a new block, yay!
It will be nice to have a few more classes that aren't as time intensive (one day a week as opposed to 4-5 days a week) and to start some large animals. The large animal freaks me out a little because it is so completely brand new to me. However, I learn decently fast and we start clinical skills this block so I actually get to start working with live animals.

It was so nice getting to hang with my whole family this break. I got to spend nearly all of it with Mike and Harvey which was such a nice change. It was really nice getting to do the family rounds and to actually see each other for new years. New years at the Erwin house was pretty much a bring whoever you want, game playing, jello shot drinking, fun fest. It was pretty fantastic, this is not what you would expect from a party at your family's house. Well maybe you wouldn't, but I have a fun family, so I would.

I have my syllabuses all printed out and the sun was shining on the way here and my radio was blasting so all in all I was thinking I would feel super prepared today. However, last night my girlfriend was like "hey do we have class at 8am tomorrow?" and I was like "no, of course not". But the confusion lasted all the way until this morning so I still felt like my life was a little bit in shambles all the way until....well now.

Ps. we did not have class.

More about the new semester once it starts :-)

Good

Having technical difficulties

So I wrote a really long blog post right after school ended, but it got stuck in some sort of published, but not published limbo.

Because it was really long, I am not going to try and retype it, mostly because I have no clue what I wrote at this point. I'm just waiting on the blogspot fixers of things to figure out what is going on!

I'll just skip straight to break instead. I have had the most lazy but productive break ever. Having an unstructured day is beyond weird. I don't have to get up at anytime except for when my cat wants to be fed, and I don't really have anywhere I need to be. So I caught up on back episodes of Vampire Diaries and have been doing crafts like a bandit. Our house has so much ModgePodge, beads, papers, paints, everything one could ever need to make everything Pinterest has ever shown me.

I also got my grades back, and while I do have one that I am not insanely proud of, it was in a class that is difficult and where I felt like I learned the most. If I keep thinking about it in terms of learning to be a good veterinarian, it makes everything seem so much better. In general though, I passed everything! In V school, you have to get a C in everything to be considered passing and are only allowed 9credit hours of D level grades. That may seem like a lot of hours to get a D in, but our Physiology class is worth 6 credit hours, so if you struggle in that class and maybe had some issues adjusting to school and couldn't quite pull it up, you pretty much only have one more class you can get a D in before you are "let go". Sometimes they will give you the option to reapply and come in with next years class, but you have to prove that things will go differently this time. Plus you just spent a whole year's worth of living expenses and tuition for nothing.

We have already lost 5 of our classmates. Some of them were 3 and 1 students which means they were in Mizzou's program where you do 3 years of undergrad and then your first year of V school counts as your last year of undergrad. The 3 and 1 students actually dropped out right before finals because if they had not dropped out on their own, the grades would have affected getting their bachelors degree. While a lot of my classmates did not take 4 full years of undergrad, I believe those that did are sometimes more mature and seem more centered and able to deal with the stresses. Now that is a complete generalization because I have friends who did 3 years and are mature and kicking my booty as far as grades go, but I do think in general that the fourth year is important.

We hear a lot from our professors and administrators that as vet students we are ambassadors for our profession, so I am going to try and do a better job of being informative about issues that affect the public. If you don't care about these kinds of things or don't have a pet, feel free to skip the next paragraph.

For example, there is an act called the Fairness to Pet Owners Act which, as always, sounds like a great thing.
Fairness? We love it! Pet Owners? Hey that's us!
But this act is backed by Walmart and is a push to let corporations and random businesses dispense drugs instead of just veterinarians. It requires that for every single prescription that a vet doles out, that he write a written prescription that can be taken to a human pharmacy. Besides the issues that would face veterinarians (waste of time, loss of business) this method would also be unsafe. Most vets already write out prescriptions for medications that can safely be replaced with a human form such as insulin, but there is a reason that vets do not do it for every prescription. It is potentially dangerous.
The pharmacist at your local drug store has no clue if the human version is the same as the one formulated specially for canines.
Is it mixed with a different carrier? Is the coating on pill toxic to cats? What about that other medication your pet is on? How will it react with those? Does this pharmacist even know your pet is on heartworm medications?
This is simply a way for big businesses to encroach in area of science where they have no business being.
The AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association)  is opposed to this act and is fighting hard against it in congress. Don't let yourself be swayed by the pretty name, this act is not in your best interests.

Sorry for the brief political outburst, but these are things that don't always get talked about. If you ever have any questions regarding animal issues, the AVMA is one of the best sources for a well researched and informed opinion.

I'm off for a long shopping day with my dad and brothers. We always go before Christmas to get the last of mom's presents.  Dad is a little picky when it comes to what she will be getting, so it may take awhile.
Have a great holiday!

Pictures!

My spot, plus people pushing the car down the hill into our parking lot

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