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Saturday, January 30, 2010

A quick day in medical

Today is my weekly dose of helping out the medical staff. As I said yesterday, when I was at the front desk, it has been nice getting the different aspects of the shelter under my belt and of course learning new things daily.

The morning started off with dishing out the morning meds to the animals. Since there were three of us we were able to knock it out pretty quickly and get on with the rest of the day. But before we could do that a report of some bloody diarrhea came in. This could mean lots of things, none of them good but some certainly worse than the others. A giardia snap test was performed and came back positive. Now all we have to do is quarantine that dog off, feed them full of panacur for for five days and start them on some metro that will help with the loose stool. Now it is just a matter of making sure that no one else comes down with it.

Once that was done it was on to draining an ear of a dog that had a hematoma this past week. This was my first experience with this and I have to say the smell wasn't that great if you catch my drift. To me it seemed an incredible amount of liquid but apparently that's normal. It took a few minutes to finish up than a hot compress was put on the poor little pups ear. I have to say he was quite a trooper and it actually didn't seem to bother him that much.

After the smell cleared the room it was time for a few dog intakes. It was two little terrier mixes that had been relinquished yesterday that were hopefully going to go up for adoption this Saturday. At first we were a little hesitant just because the poor little guys were still very stressed about their new environment. Good thing the staff knows how to deal with this and handled the situation very well. After a few treats, some shots, and a little advantage it was all done. I'm just glad we had all the rest of their previous medical history because I think if we had had to do any more poking and prodding the little guys would have gotten too freaked out.

There was one last intake left, a sweet little five month old kitten. Long story short, an elderly woman passed and the cat was her property. The individual that had power of attorney was relinquishing the animal to us if everything checked out medically and behaviorally. The cat was a doll, I was really amazed at how calm and easy her intake was. The only thing I didn't like is that the woman wanted to call her "Kitten". Well, since the past animal with that name didn't make it we decided on something a little different. I actually got to name it after my grandmother, Mima. That's not her real name, but when you're five it was a lot easier to say than anything else. Here is a picture of Mima below.

That was about it for the day, it was kind of slow with a little bit of data entry but all in all I still learned a thing or two. Thanks for reading everyone and I look forward to your comments.

2 comments:

  1. Mima is a little doll :) It always worries me when seniors adopt kittens. We always ask, "Do you have a Plan B?"

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  2. I hear you, it's a touch subject, but if you take the right approach most people are understanding when you bring up the topic. Thanks for the comment and of course thanks for reading :)
    Nick

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