A quick nod to the vet-thing, today I learnt how to listen to a horse's heart (not a moment too soon!) and managed to identify systolic and diastolic murmurs (hooray for vet-school horses)

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Hearts and Vodka

A quick nod to the vet-thing, today I learnt how to listen to a horse's heart (not a moment too soon!) and managed to identify systolic and diastolic murmurs (hooray for vet-school horses). The lady who runs the stable was surrounded by one gynaecology rotation, and our cardiology rotation, which lead to the phrase "are you here for hearts or bums?" Eurgggh.

In other non-vetty news, Alex and I are planning on creating chocolate vodka. It is a simple recipe involving cocoa nibs and vodka. Instructions as follows. 1) Mix nibs and vodka 2) Wait 3) Drink vodka. My sort of cooking (though I did make a champion Teviotdale Pie this evening if I may say so myself)!

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p.s. It was Alex's birthday on Tuesday, which means it's shout-out time. Happy birthday Alex!

My Photo in the Telegraph Online

Dear Blog,

Today I got a photograph put on the Telegraph online website. Huzzah!

Click here.

They may have got the location wrong, but my name is still there!

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Autumn

We're having an absolutely beautiful autumn at the moment. It's appeared all of a sudden, but all of the trees look absolutely beautiful. I'm taking my camera out with me whenever I leave the house to take some snaps before they all drop!

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New Monkey Pose!

As you may have noticed, there is a new monkey picture - the first one for... well, over a year! I hope you enjoy it and fingers crossed there might be a few more on the way if I can get my creative juices flowing!

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Discoveries this week...

Things that I have discovered this week:

• A "demonym" is the word which describes the inhabitants of a country. I.e. "English" is the demonym for England.
• Some snails have "love darts", which are non-projectile organs which stab other snails during the passage of sperm, though they are not related directly with impregnation. Of course, snails are hermaphroditic.
• Whoopi Goldberg has no eyebrows.
• If you threaten a car with the garage, it fixes itself.
• In the congo, brickettes are a convenient environmental fuel for burning, as an alternative to charcoal. They are made from old paper and sawdust, and are made by mixing these ingredients with water, and then compressing them in a tube to form a doughnut shape. And very effective they are too (by all accounts).
  

More to follow... probably.

I went out yesterday to take advantage of the autumn sunlight in our garden and took some snaps. Some artsy (I especially like the one of the garden glove in the plant pot - it was like that when we arrived at the house, and none of us have moved it), some gruesomely green (our pond looks like the Amazon... crocodiles anyone?), and others just general garden snaps - you can see how gorgeous it is. All photos are on my flickr account, recognisetheview.

Rectalling a box - Update

An update to my earlier post about learning rectal exams using PM uteruses in a box, here's how Glasgow do it.

Despite all the wires, it's still not a patch on using real life (well, dead) material and the joys and japes of a plastic box-cow.

Rectalling a box

Have just enjoyed a morning's rectalling. It was a fantastically laid back, yet hugely useful rotation. We started off looking at post-mortem reproductive tracts (as a crash revision course), and had a go at some bovine rectal examination through plastic boxes with holes in! This was surprisingly useful - you could lift the top off to check you were doing it right, and they even had plastic pipe vulvas! Nothing was left out... except animation I suppose. Apparently Glasgow have virtual reality rectalling systems, but I'm not sure I believe this [I later discovered this to be true - see above]. Mary's brother has just started there though, so I shall get her to enquire about this. Rich took great pleasure in reaching inside the top of the boxes and grabbing James' hand when he least expected it - "It's the fetus!" I helpfully added.

Then we had coffee, and advanced to real horses, which I rectalled (and tail bandaged sucessfully - oh yeah, I rock the horsey world now I've passed my basic horse-handling exam!), and managed to find all the useful bits that lady-horses have.

Yes, it may look like a home-for blue-tits, but this is, infact, a schematic drawing of our cow-boxes. Hand goes in top hole.

Morning

Good morning! Am up bright and early for a lecture on Cattle medicine. Our last lecture was really good and today we begin displaced abomasums(?, abomasi?) so should be interesting if I manage to stay awake. Am currently chugging tea to wake myself up. This time last year I'd have left already but in our new closer-to-the-vet-school house, I don't have to leave for another 5 minutes. Eeeexcellent.

Unvetty?

Having bounced round the internet a little this evening I've realised that of the vetty blogs out there (for example, or try this one)mine is distinctly un-vetty. Partly this is because I am excited by things other than vetting, and don't want to bore people with the boring details of "today in lectures I learnt...", but maybe it's a shame. I don't know really.

Interestingly, have discovered a new fun way of learning diseases. It's a game called "I have a cow...", and essentially you think of a disease and someone has to work out what is wrong with your cow in a 20 questions yes/no style. It's a bit sad, but very useful. So far this evening Alex and I have covered RDAs, Milk Fever, Pulmonary adenomatosis, caseous lymphadenitis (yes, we branched out into sheep), white line disease and coccidiosis. Huzzah!

Freecycle

I have recently discovered the wonders of "freecycle". The basic premise is that people have loads of stuff that isn't saleable, but would probably be useful to someone somewhere, so why throw it away? There are loads of local groups, based on yahoo, and all you have to do is post a message offering something, and it gets sent out to the list. The Cambridge one has over 14000 members, and yesterday I picked up a new mattress for my room, to replace the TINY bed I had before. I drove out to a little place called Whaddon, and, using some new £4 bungee cord and Alex's help, rolled it up into a tube, and squeezed it onto the back seat. And so now, I have a double mattress that can be put on the bed-frame that I am assured is somewhere in the vicinity of the house - just to find it!

Plus, since I got a new bike last term, my old bike has been sitting around gathering dust (and rust). It's not really worth anything, so I popped it on freecycle last night, and I've had 10 replies already! Crazy! I'll have to choose someone by apparent-deservedness. Blimey!