Life's surprises

It was a very busy practice with 4 vets on duty. Then one of us takes a 3 week holiday break. Just days after, another vet, which also happends to be a very nice boss, is taken to intensive care due to a lung clot. So now we are 2, and the days (and evenings on call) have suddently became longer, and 3 weekends in a row spent at work will become history.
I'll make it thou...but it won't be easy:)
On a positive note thou, a brief of latest events:
1) i did my first bladder-urethral-tomy in a female dog. there were lots of small stones and grit in the the bladder of a 15 year old dog. After the cystotomy i still couldn't pass the catheter and so i decided to cut up the urethra as well, about 3 cm away from the origin. good decision, the urethral walls were impregnated with loads of grit. ah, the feeling when i finally passed the catheter and left an indwelling patent urinary catheter.... the dog is ancient, but holding on strong really well. it's been 2 days already. she even ate today. still waiting for the report on the stone analysis. she has had them 2 years ago, had been on a urinary diet...interesting.
2) i have a week to go till my third overall but first large canine FHO. i don't look forward.... but we have to get it done.
3) finally acquired my first SLR camera YES!, a brand spanking new EOS 450D. still saving up for a lens, so for the time being the body-only stays quiet in one corner of my room.
4) and finally, as one dear friend would say, "we can live from holiday to holiday". I have a small one coming my way, in about 3 weeks, a few days spent in Costa Rica. It's quite close to this corner of the world, and my new camera will have volcanoes, rain forests and loads of other great stuff to shoot.
Thou I must confess I am already freaking out at the prospect of the many snakes any decent rain forest shelters:)))
I am off to sleep now... zzzzz

Talking about wild life...

One sits quietly at home, and... does mundane things, such as for instance, writing emails... all of a sudden, quite an ordinary thing for Cayman standards happens. Not for the Romanian in me!!

A massive iguana crawls quietly in the sunshine, onto the front deck, about 30 meters from where i sit quietly onto the couch, writing my stuff. They are pretty much everywhere, and I am sure by now one as let's say Ovidu, would have 3 pet iguanas around...well, not me:) I respect them, and I am happy to see them in their environment, but i do like to keep my distance. We do get them in the clinic at times thou, with road injuries, or attacked by dogs, but mainly they thrive well, and actually have completely managed to push aside the indigenous species, the blue iguana, that is currently on the brim of extinction.

There is a breeding programme for the blue iguanas, but sadly an ugly incident has shaken the caymanian community recently, as somebody broke in and killed a few of the main breeders one night. They did not yet identified the guilty party, but at least it has raised the awareness onto the blue iguanas ... and here it is, the famous one, only to be found here...























Living on a small island, there is so much one can do inland...but there is plenty o life in the waters around. This is a view from the famous Stingray City, a place where loads of stingrays of all sizes gather up, in very shallow waters, and currently wait for tourists to bring them some delicious squid.
Traditionally it started as a place where fisherman came to clean out their fish, and stingrays quickly learned they can have the rests.

Nowadays, one can come and move about surrounded by 30 some friendly stingrays,....keep those thumbs down thou if squid is to be offered:)

Small animal clinic and others

It has been 7 months since i opened together with my brother and partner my clinic in Craiova Romania.It has been 7 months of struggle and hard work.
We tryed to find a technician but the persons we wanted to hire sincerely gave up after several hours .."I am to tired for another penicillin shot..."
In the end we are still alone only with a couple of volunteers that come and go.

The number of clients increased from one month to another and now we are happy to say that we have a share of the local veterinary care market.I am hoping that we can extend our contract with the owner of the house and that we can buy our fist x ray mashine which has become vital for our daily rutine .almost every day we have a case of possible metastasis or a brcken bone ...If we manage to buy the Xray mashine this would be the first in town and i do not think that anyone of the counterparts would afford to buy a similar unit.
The papers for such mashine is close to 4000 $ which is a lot of money in Romania but in order to make our work easyer and more professional we need this mashine.WE also could use a New grad to be our intern.I believe in this clinic and of course it is an alternative for all you out there if you think you wondered enough through the world.
In the next posts i will show you some of our most interesting cases and of course we can discuss about them.
Great hug to everyone,
Ricky

some Leipzig pics

One of the presentations

Coffee break

The guys at Leipzig Zoo had a whole department and a huge 3 story building only for preparing food for the animals.

Chimpanzee enclosure

The round aquarium for sharks.

...and this is how we spent 4 days in Lepzig PART 2

Leipzig…a quiet, little German town where campings are ridiculously expensive and young lads walk around in the middle of the night, day, morning, (or through the whole day for that matter) drinking their brains out on the streets. Yeah, I know, it was some sort of a holiday, but nevertheless, it was interesting to see so many totally wasted people on the streets.

For tight-student budget reasons we stayed in a camping, in tents. In times like these, you get to appreciate the quality of your tent and sleeping bags. After 4 nights in the tent, at 5ºC, you start to feel your true age :)

The venue of the conference was Westin Hotel, 5 minutes walk from the wonderful Leipzig Zoo. I have to admit I was really impressed by the organization and I was also extremely happy the presentations were very interesting and some of them opened my eyes on some issues.

By the way…did you know that one of the easiest ways to draw blood samples from wild animals with minimum handling time is by using a certain SPF bred tick? Of course, you get limited amount of blood, but it’s enough, say, for a TBC on spot ELISA test.

I also learned some very cool tricks about handling and common procedures and surgery in amphibians. For example a simple way to inject a frog i.m. is catching the frog with the hand covered in a latex glove, than simply wrap the glove around the frog…Also some interesting points in using endoscopy on small exotic animals, from amphibians and reptiles to birds.…Or how to easily extract diseased molars in Malayan tapirs…

The examples could go on, but to sum it up the sessions were focused mainly on great apes, tuberculosis, and than free topics divided on amphibians & reptiles, birds, and even more free topics…So the amount of scientific information I got from these two days and a half was amazing.

Also fun was that we received a magic name tag that gave us access to some wonderful things, such as the hotel’s 4 star restaurant, and to the Leipzig Zoo, at any hour. Imagine taking a walk, in perfect silence, almost alone, at nighttime, in what is considered to be one of the best zoos in Europe (if not the best…). You will see no fences; only vegetation, water ditches and nicely hidden, high voltage electric fences keep the animals away from the visitors. I seriously don’t approve zoos, but this one stroke me as being the only one I’ve seen so far with no stereotypical behavior from the animals. Enclosure design and the enrichment variation were simply extraordinary.

Another thing I’m grateful for is having the opportunity to eat twice a day at the hotel…Ovidiu, I’m sure you approve! Considering the limited to inexistent cooking possibilities at the camping, this was a heaven sent. Actually, if I come to think about it, I would’ve eaten there no matter how much food I had with me :) Ahhhh….those were good days…

Anyway, coming back to reality, things couldn’t have gone better! At the end we were all invited to a farewell party at the zoo, were we got to get wild and “jiggy with it”. And everybody got so surprisingly wild and jiggy, that at the end, the lounge staff had to throw out (politely of course) the crazy party vets…

So, after all the lecture sessions were finished, the parties over, the last 4 star meal eaten, last contact exchange made, it was time to pack and go home…In my case in Vienna, in Ovidiu’s case, in Bucharest.

In the mean time we are looking forward for the next year congress in Holland : ) LET THE PARTY START!!

THE END

...and this is how we spent 4 days in Lepzig PART 1

Ovidiu was waiting for the EAZWV congress for months…he was almost too excited (even for him). I have to admit I wasn’t…Still under the influence of my “middle study crisis”, I guess…And the thought of spending 150 euros on 2 days and a half of boring lectures was quite appalling…But I’m glad I didn’t back out.

So the story begins…

We made the long journey to Leipzig with Ovidiu’s poor car…I’m saying “poor” because it was filled up to the extent that one more jar of pickles would’ve produced an implosion... To cut the costs we decided to take two friends of Ovidiu’s who were trying to make a cheap, short holiday, so their luggage added up…so we had 5 huge rucksacks (5 because a lady always carries a bit more attire…), 1 huge paraglider (took up half the trunk), tons of food, 2 tents, sleeping bags, mum’s cookies, home made “pasca”, veggie “drob”, etc etc etc…You can imagine…

So…we were happily driving along (actually I was happily driving along) the Olt river, just about to cross the bridge in Calimanesti, where I stopped. Because all the cars in front of me stopped, for one reason or another. It was enough reason for me to stop, but unfortunately for a chick in a Ford behind me it wasn’t…And that’s how all 4 of us, together with the 5 rucksacks, 1 paraglider and mum’s cookies were literally squashed between the Ford and an Italian-registered Mercedes…

(Oh, this is another reason for calling Ovidiu’s car poor)

And the fun part of the story begins…listen to the guy in the Mercedes screaming his lungs out at you; call daddy; go to the police; give declarations; call daddy again; blow in the alcoholmeter; call daddy once more; draw little cars on the police report; realize in total desperation that the trunk wouldn’t close and that it’s 2^nd day of Easter so no opened services; start to consider jumping in the Olt as a good option…Ovidiu was on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

Our salvation was to tie the trunk with boot laces, and drive back to Ocnele Mari, my country-side village, about 20 km from there. With a desperate puppy face I gathered some friends, neighbors, relatives, all great guys who somehow after 3 hours of beating the crap out of the hinges, breaking it into pieces and making a whole new one, managed to make the trunk properly close…Ok, maybe properly is not a good choice of words, but let’s say that now we could pass the border :) …

And we went on…passed the Hungarian border at about 2 a.m., all of us with abnormally huge, totally innocent looking eyes and smiles on our faces, and with the hearts pounding out of our chests…and FREEDOM!!

The rest of the road was thank God uneventful. We made a stop in Vienna for 2 nights, eat at Vegetasia, went to the Opera, and drove along into the unknown…

End of part 1…

<-C'mon, Ovidiu, it's gonna be ok! -Go away and let me be woman!!!!