Most of my first week has been spent re-familiarizing myself with the layout and flow of the clinic. It has been a great week! There are two of us doing our externships at Dundas Animal Hospital for these eight weeks, myself and a classmate named Kelsey. We have decided to split up, with one of us on large animal for a week and one of us on small. This week, Kelsey has been on large animal and I have been hanging out on the small animal side of things. I will be honest that I am not as passionate about small animal medicine as I am about equine medicine, but I still find it quite interesting and this has been a great week with lots of learning!

The vast majority of appointments this week have been wellness visits, with a lot of vaccines and heartworm tests, as is expected for this time of year. The veterinarians and technicians have been fantastic with letting me improve my venipuncture skills and I have had lots of opportunity to practice this week; I am now able to find a cephalic and jugular vein reliably and with confidence! I have also had the opportunity to help with surgeries and dentistries, including preparing the patient as well as monitoring throughout the procedure and recovering the patient afterwards. This will be good preparation for our first student surgery taking place next Tuesday, a farm dog spay, which Kelsey and I are both very excited about! Tune in next week to hear about how the student surgery goes, as well as what I get up to on the road with the large animal veterinarians!