13 September 2006
I have to apologize for taking so long to get out a summer update.  To my great relief, I passed all my classes with a good margin of safety and I'm enrolled in and registered for next year's classes of Combined Integrated Studies and Companion Animal Sciences.  CIS contains such topics as veterinary public health and cattle, pig, sheep, and poultry diseases.  CAS, in comparison, appears to use some problem based case studies and includes surgery, anaesthesia, diagnostic imaging, endocrinology, neurology, GI problems, reproduction, lameness, soft tissue trauma, and other companion animal related topics.

After finishing my exams in early June I quickly packed and left two days later to pick up my rental car and drive down to Lancaster.  I had arranged to see practice with the vet used by my laming family and thankfully the family allowed me to stay with them during my placement.  It was only about a 20 minutes drive to Dimples Lane Veterinary practice, although the British country roads were a bit stressful for the first few days.  The cheap rental cars in the UK are all manual and my experience with manual cars was very limited.  Thankfully I had driven an automatic around the UK for a few days earlier in the year (when I went to Badminton again) so there wasn't much screaming or mental breakdowns at the roundabouts.  Hill starts took me a few days to get without burning rubber and I wouldn't want to bet on the current condition of the clutch in that poor car after my driving.  There was one road in particular that took a bit of getting used to.  It was only one lane wide with six-foot hedges on both sides and at one point had to 'Z' between two houses.  It wasn't too bad until a car, a Land Rover, or a BUS came in the opposite direction.  I'm sure I must have left a few scratches in the paint of the side of the car.  Roads in the UK are so narrow they even make the drivers side mirrors so they fold in allowing cars to pass in narrower places.

Although the clinic wasn't terribly busy while I was seeing practice with them, I did have a chance to do many new things including de-horn a calf, help with a cow C-section, and use ultrasound for pregnancy diagnosis in dairy herds.  The weather was wonderful for almost the entire two weeks I was in Lancaster and several days it was way to hot to be working in waterproofs (we always wore waterproofs on the farms to stay clean and facilitate easy washing up between farms).  On my weekend off I drove through the Yorkshire Dales over to the eastern side of England and visited the James Herriot Museum.  It's quite a bit bigger than I expected and includes a short movie and a recreation of the sets used in the TV series.  The Museum is built around his actual surgery so you can wander through all the rooms.  They also have quite a nice museum of veterinary history and a large collection of old veterinary tools and medicines.  The museum is a definite must for any of you travelling to England in the future.

After finishing my two weeks of large animal clinical EMS, I returned to Glasgow for a few days to clean house before my friend Rachel arrived.  She flew over for three weeks and we did a grand tour of the UK.  Our first week was spent around Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Stirling.  We visited the castles, viewed several of Glasgow's excellent museums, and heard the Lord of the Ring Symphony at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.  For the second two weeks we hired a car and headed off into the highlands of Scotland.  We spent two nights on the Isle of Skye and then drove around the top of Scotland visiting the most northwesterly and most northeasterly points of Great Britain.  The scenery is awesome with rugged coastlines, highland mountains, heather, and ancient monuments galore (some back to 4000BC!).  The last week, we drove down to Wales, visiting Bath on the way down.  Having only two days in Wales definitely wasn't enough and I can't wait to go back.  The castles there are exactly what you think of when you imagine King Arthur.  Our final few days were spent in England (photos here) in the Peaks District, the Lake District, and the Yorkshire dales.  We toured several of the estate houses used in the filming of the last Pride and Prejudice, visited Beatrix Potter's cottage, read Woodsworth's poetry at his home at Dove cottage, and ate amazing Wenslydale cheese in Wenslydale.

Sadly, our world travels ended and I returned to the States for the summer.  Most of my time at home I've been working (getting small animal clinical EMS) at a Banfield veterinary clinic in Bellingham.  I learned so much this summer, but I have so much more to learn.  The fact that I'll soon be a vet with all the accompanying responsibilities and expectations is getting a bit daunting.  I have, however, passed the milestone of my first surgery as I did a dog neuter on my own this summer at Banfield :)  One other big step this summer is the purchase of my new pocket PC, on which I have installed several veterinary reference texts that I can refer to while in practice.  So far, I absolutely love it and think it will be very helpful over the next few years.

It's now just over a week till I fly back to Glasgow and I'm looking forward to getting back to the books.  Hope you are all doing well and have had a wonderful summer!