Baby Goats!

The best part of large animal skills was definitely NOT being at school at 7AM every weekday for 3 weeks (5PM for 1 week and both times for 1 weekend) to feed and walk a horse. Or, really, several horses. I get it that knowing the husbandry of the animals we treat is important, but if I wanted the responsibility of owning a horse, I would own a horse.

The ACTUAL best part of large animal skills was the labs themselves. We learned how to cast cattle, which is a fancy word for pull them onto the ground using a strategically placed rope and 1 (or maybe 2) person (people.) We anesthetized pigs. We drew cow blood. We trimmed goat feet. Even better, we went and examined the baby research goats! There were babies from a couple days old to a couple months. They were so very cute.

It's things like this that remind me why I'm here.

Auction Barn

Well, food animal medicine is definitely out. I have full, 100% eliminated that from my possible career choices! (Not that I was ever seriously considering it. I really am down to lab animal medicine or small animal practice, essentially depending on how much I want to put myself through more school when I finish my DVM.)

Today, I went to the Auction Barn for Correlates class. It was... horrifying, and kind of scary. I mean, I know they're trying to find the best/safest/most humane way to quickly move a lot of animals... but... still.

We were sitting in the back watching the cow/bull auction. And, it was just painful to watch them shock the cow up for bid multiple times. I understand that the buyers need to be able to see all sides of the animal (to look for things like bad eyes/limbs/teats/whatever)... but, it's sad to see an animal run into the chute looking terrified then see it get shocked 4 or 5 times to keep it spinning.

Then, in the back, it was even worse! There was 1 guy that I really couldn't tell what he was shocking the cows for, except maybe for fun. They were trying to get them into the chute kind of single file, but he was paying attention to this set of them that were in the back (pointing the wrong direction) and he'd shock their butts. This does not make them turn around... it just makes them try harder to go straight... The thing about animals is they run AWAY from pain, not towards it.

It was just... really sad.