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!!!!

Brac trip - visual random impressions

This would be the official address...and that was the sign posted on the door . There is
only one room designated for us in the very small building of the D0A in Cayman Brac. Everybody knocked;) !

And this is the official Agriculture Department in Cayman Brac...
These are a few aerian views of the island. Taken from the twin otter that brought us there, you can appreciate for yourself the clarity of the Tropical Atlantic around the Cayman Islands. Visibility is in excess of 100 feet....aaaahhm, I mean 30 meters:)






These are the boats of the dive operators that run their business in
the sister islands. Allegedly, the reef
is more intact then onto the main island due to a smaller amounts of divers going down daily. One can also see, in the bottom line of the picture, the main road that goes around the island.

The landing is done onto a small grass strip with a bit of asphalt in the middle.It still looks better then a regular romanian road;)

Sister islands

There seems to be a trend amongst us, with working on various little islands. Mihnea is in Palau, Irina and Ricky just returned from their little Greek island, Alina is onto the big British island.

Well, I left my normal island and set out to one of the Cayman sister islands, called the Brac. I had been already there for climbing, but this time we were onto work! It is a small island, about half an hour flight away from the mother island. A small, second world war plane, takes one there, with the pilot flying the plane with an open door...and so close, in arm length distance!
He says "How'dy folks" and then flies off:)

Once there, the typical small far away tropical island. 1200 people, few cars, churches, many post offices, and animals needing veterinary attention! Our clinic makes a monthly 2 day trip there, one day of surgeries and one day of appointments. Believe it or not, all the way out there, we had iso anesthesia, which to me is pretty amazing.

All else was pretty normal. a small traditional caymanian house that belongs to the Department of Agriculture, and we fitted nicely in one of their rooms. The feeling of far away into an exotic place was right at home! Some spays and neuters, lots of appointments, a few very interesting skin cases....

2 days of work, few Coronas with lime and salt later, another plane trip back and I was back to the mother Island!

Pictures to come soon!