The Adventures of a Wandering Vet Student: Shhhh.....we're hunting Wabbits.....

Today we took a field trip to a local nursery school called Little Trotters where the children are not the only animals around. The owner is an animal lover, and over the years has taken in a nice variety of farm-ish animals who have for some reason or another lost their homes on the island. They are:

Todd the Overweight Goat

Pepper the Spoiled-Rotten Pig

Panero the Miniature Horse

a few ducks

and maybe 6 or so rabbits.

Our purpose for visiting this place was to learn handling, restraint, and various other clinical skills of working with rabbits. Since we are a small class (I sense this will come in very handy over the next 2 years) we were able to hang out in the pen areas and practice our skills.

I’ve never really handled rabbits during my years working at the shelter or in clinics. There were some for adoption at the shelter, but I would always get someone else to handle them for me. While working at the E-Clinic a rescue worker went to pick up a baby wild rabbit out of a box and she failed to scoop the rabbit’s back legs before lifting. The baby kicked and snapped its spine. That’s a very easy/common injury to rabbits, especially when mishandled, so after that incident I basically planned to never hold one again. I can still hear that poor thing scream. (Medical Note: the most common location for the break in the spine is L7)

So you can imagine I was quite trepidacious going into this adventure. My classmate Kip has a rabbit of his own back home named Merlin. (They do magic together which is just too freakin cute.) When it came time to split into groups, I stuck to Kip like glue. I didn’t want to be the loser who snapped a rabbit’s spine. At the nursery school. With little kids running around barefoot and happy.

I can just see them all surrounding me, crying and sniffling and snot running down their faces and their little chubby fingers pointing out my guilt.

Side Note: Speaking of barefoot…this place didn’t seem to encourage shoes. For anyone. Including the instructors. Here, on an island where random diseases are rampant, where tetanus is apparently lurking around every blade of grass, where House would find his wet dream of cases….no one wears shoes. Which brings me to my next side note....this is a paraphrase of a sign posted all over the facility:

Warning
For a few weeks many children have been coming to school with extreme diarrhea and vomiting. Some children have been taken to the hospital for dehydration. All students with symptoms must wait 48 hours post-recovery before returning to school. Blah Blah Blah Barefoot.

Um, dysentery anyone?

Which, by the way, can be treated with consumption of fresh, warm camel feces according to my irrefutable source, Wikipedia. And apparently the Bedouins.

Okay, back to the story. Where was I? OH yes, Killing Wabbits.

Our professor Dr. Shields gave us a basic lecture about handling rabbits, drawing blood, getting vitals, and performing an overall physical exam. Then she basically set us free to torture these poor animals as best we could.

(I am quite convinced Dr. Shields is really an angel brought down from heaven just to provide us with a couple of hours per week of puppy and kitty play time as sort of a pat on the back for getting through the rest of the week’s ridiculously tedious classes [ahem, histo] without going some form of postal that may or may not include the use of our required scalpels and box of blades.)

Now, I’m not going to start talking shit about my classmates on this blog, because that would just not be my style nor would it be smart since one day they may take it upon themselves to read this stuff. But seriously folks: if you don’t know what you are doing and your professor has stressed multiple times the inherent dangers involved in rabbit handling, please quell that inner need to kiss ass/look good and don’t bolt to the rabbit cages to be the first in line to perform Rabbitcide. Thank you.

After a brief breath-holding period of watching a few classmates chase these adorable creatures (with the biggest eyes ever!) around their pen, we were finally successful in capturing three fluffy bunnies. Once they were caught I had no problem holding the cutest little chinchilla-looking thing you have ever seen.

Here I’m scruffing the neck like a cat and holding the back legs steady so the baby won’t try to jump away from me. The towel is covering her face so she can hide. Paul is examining the central and marginal ear veins, which are the most common place for blood draws on a rabbit.

After working with the rabbits for an hour or so, we decided to check out the other animals. Todd the Goat is ridiculously overweight and has to be tethered when the pig and horse are fed because otherwise he will buck them out of the way to eat their food. It was Pepper the Pig, however, who decided to get her revenge on all of those lost meals by stealing back from Todd. Pepper made the bad decision to try and sneak over the side of Todd’s trough (which is basically a plastic barrel cut in half lengthwise), got her arms stuck over the side with the trough cutting into her armpits, and when she squealed in surprise/unhappiness at being stuck was caught red-handed by Todd who then basically pinned her between his stubby head and the fence. I was pretty sure Pepper and maybe even Robin (who stepped in to save the day) were going to be seriously maimed by that goat. Never heard a pig squeal so loudly.

Stupid Pig.

With the field trip to the petting zoo over, we returned home for some serious studying. Our first two exams tomorrow: Anatomy (lab & lecture) and Histology (lab & lecture). Yay.

More pictures:

Travis showing off his super awesome "penlight". Which I'm pretty sure he could use for anesthesia on smaller animals in a cinch.

Kip listening to the heart and lungs.

Kip demonstrating how to hypnotize a rabbit. No joke. If you can successfully flip them over on their backs without snapping their spine, all you have to do is rub their belly a bit and they just fall asleep.