It's Been Awhile...

Dear Readers (however few or many, however regular or infrequent),

I know that it has been more than 6 months since my last blog post. I could give explanations that kept me from blogging like finishing finals in May; having one hell of an adventure getting home by bus, plane, train, bus and automobile (never again flying stand-by or taking a Greyhound bus); commuting to my 10 week Banfield Pet Hospital internship in Parma 5 days a week, disliking the corporate nature but loving the staff and being exhausted by the end of the day spent doing physical exams, read fecals and other lab tests and wrangling everything from chihuahuas to pit bulls to ferrets; spending time with the elephant keepers at the Cleveland zoo and making connections with the Head Veterinarian; traveling to New Jersey to work with the dairy cows and pigs at Rutgers University; or flying back to Dublin to be an orientation leader for the new graduate entry class and then being bombarded with enough microbes, parasites, drug therapies and pathology to make my head spin.... Actually that about covers it: my last 6 months in about 6 lines.

The proverbial "they" say that 3rd year is the hardest year in the veterinary medicine program here at UCD. "They" weren't kidding. Most my days, I'm at the college from 8-4 either in lab or in classroom 115. This year my class has joined up with the Irish undergraduate class to form THE UCD Vet Med Class of 2014. There is no distinction between the two groups anymore (other than where we sit in the lecture hall in the last 3 rows and off to the right) and we continue together through final year. So I'm a 3rd year now (despite this only being my 2nd year in the program) and have 2 more years to go. This year is the real "meat and potatoes" of vet school. I'm learning important microorganisms that cause infection and disease in animals as well as the parasites that adversely affect their animal hosts. I'm learning about the classes of drugs used in therapies and treatments. And I'm learning the entirely new language of pathology (though this does mean that I'm finally putting my 6 years of Latin to good use!). To put it bluntly there is a lot of STUFF to learn.

The Queens of the Court on Halloween

I'm renting a house with 3 other vet students: 2 Canadian girls and 1 girl from New Jersey. We live in a small apartment/gated community called Donnybrook Castle. It's nice to have a real house, because it makes being here feel more like home.

14 The Court

I've also been dating a tall, dark and handsome British lad who is in the year above me in vet med at UCD. I'm really enjoying spending time with him even when it's library dates between classes (yes, in case you didn't know by now, I'm a nerd). I'm going with him to London in a week to tour around and meet his mum and sister and friends. He'll also be coming back to Ohio with me in May to go to my friends' wedding and hopefully do some our clinical EMS together. If there is one indication of his slightly sappy but sweet side this is it: on my birthday, we were walking along Grafton St (main pedestrian shopping street in Dublin) after dinner, he had the saxophone troubadour play "happy birthday" for me. This does mean that I'll be home again for part of this summer.... more details to come on summer plans as they emerge. Life is an adventure afterall.

That should bring you up to date on my life here across the pond. This is now my concerted effort to post here every Friday. Even it means 2 sentences about coming to school before the sun rises and leaving after the sunsets.

Cheers and thanks for reading,

Jamie

Coming In Like a Lamb

Lambing takes BABY SEASON *crazy hands* to a whole new level.  If any of you read my blog (http://armadillowhisperer.wordpress.com/) from this time last year, you'll notice I had a similar post about BABY SEASON at WRR. I'd much prefer this kind of baby season.  At WRR, we were telling people on the phone to leave the baby animal alone because the mom was most likely coming back for him and he was better off with his mother than with us. On Willie Fox's sheep farm, however, we were making sure that each ewe had a pair of lambs to rear, whether they were 2 of her own lambs, 1 of her own and a foster lamb, or 2 foster lambs (and once these lambs are grown to 19kg, they're shipped of to market... not exactly what WRR would like to see).

giving the ewe a hand getting the little lamb out.

I was on Willie's farm for 12 days during my spring break in March. (Yes, I realize that it is the end of April and I'm just now posting this, but such is the life of a vet student who lacked motivation to do much more than was necessary by the end of the semester. But now it is an excuse to take a break from studying for final exams... anyway). He and his father run the farm and 2 of his 3 sisters also still live on the 440 acre property west of Dublin in County Meath. They have a flock of close to 900 sheep: mostly ewes with a handful of rams. Willie promised that we (Katrina and I went together) would learn more on his farm in the 2 weeks we were there than 2 weeks worth of lectures, and he certainly delivered on that promise and then some. We had several lectures on sheep production prior to coming to his farm and some on sheep nutrition, but you can't really appreciate the work and timing that goes into the production of the little lambs until you see it in action. I have a whole new appreciation for fresh spring grass because it means less work to feed all the sheep when you can just put them out in the rolling green fields. In the time we were there, we saw and had a hand in the birth of 1330 lambs from 800 ewes. And when I say had a hand in, I really do mean a hand.

Sheep shed

At the height of our time there, about 50-60 lambs would be born a day. A typical day was as follows:
7:15am- wake up
7:35am- breakfast
8am- down to the sheep shed. Check all the group pens for ewes that had lambed. Feed any pet lambs and top up those lambs in the individual pens that either need a suck off of mama or additional milk replacer (formula) if mama isn't producing enough. Feed all the ewes in the group and individual pens with silage, concentrates and water. Check for ewes showing signs of lambing. Begin loading up ewes and lambs to go out to pasture.

group pens (10) with pregnant ewes brought in from the field

10:30am- tea break
11:30am- back down to the shed. Check for ewes lambing. Continue loading sheep to leave the shed. There would usually be around 20-30 ewes each with 1-2 lambs going out to pasture each day and they would be loaded into a small trailer hooked up to either the quad bike or the tractor. Put down fresh hay in the individual pens of the sheep just taken out. Feed the pet lambs and top up the lambs in the individual pens with the mama ewes. Check for ewes lambing.
1pm- Lunch time
2pm- Back down to the shed. Check for ewes lambing. Feed and water all the ewes with concentrates and silage. Rehay the group pens as

teaching the slower lambs how to suckle

Bottle feeding one of the pet lambs before

fostering her off to another ewe

necessary. Feed and check on the lambs. Check the ewes. Give some extra silage and check water.
6pm- Dinner time
My day ended here. Katrina did the evening shifts from half 8 to around 10pm and her morning started at 10. It was a solid day of work. And I loved every minute of it. Yes, it was frustrating at times getting those little guys to suckle but once you got them going you just had to stop and think "Hey, I'm in Ireland on a sheep farm. How cool is this?" And I can't tell you how many times I thought to myself, This would never fly at WRR, but they're all happy and healthy animals, so they must be doing something right.

the miracle of birth (and lots of bodily fluids)

Mare and her 12-hour-old foal that we saw her give birth to on our first night on the farm... yay baby season!

counting sheep and making sure the lambs stay with their mama ewe

Katrina and I

The Lambing Crew complete with pet lambs and Kettle, the black lab.

This view never gets old. Any sheep farmers need a vet wife?

Still waiting for the "AH-HA" moment

I realize it has been 2 months since my last post, but I haven't had anything really "post-worthy." I guess I have to keep reminding myself that while going to lectures and dissections and farm practicals in a foreign country have become routine for me, they can still be new and exciting for the handful of you who read this or happen to check in from time to time.

This semester is focused on systems in the abdomenal and pelvic regions. I have classes in abdomen and pelvis anatomy, locomotion & exercise, digestive physiology, reproduction, animal nutrition and food animal systems & applied breeding. Each of those with lab and/or practical components. (Funny, as I think about it now, I've also been doing the P90X Insanity workout program with Katrina and Gina for 5 weeks... working those abs, among other muscle groups).  My favorite part about this semester by far, is getting to go to the farm every Thursday. While it may suck having to get up at 6:45am, get to the bus by 8, and have a 45 minute bus ride to and from the farm, it makes it all worth it when we actually get to interact with animals and have a practical/hands on sense of what we're learning in lectures and dissection. (Plus these 3 week old calves are just too adorable... cattle are my new favorites.)

Katrina and two of our Fresian dairy calf friends.

Dad's coveralls working out pretty well.

Besides classes, the semester has also had it's share of busy weekends... a welcome break from the classroom, coveralls and countless hours of studying. I went to the Masquerade Veterinary Ball, which was held at the Grand Marine Hotel in Dun Laoghaire (pronounced "Done Lerry"). I had a ball, literally. There was a wine reception with masked entrance, then dinner and dancing and the wine kept flowing.  The best part is that now I have an excuse to get a really fancy formal dress for next year's ball.

Lovely ladies at the Ball.

 

I don't know if I've mentioned it in any of my posts on here, but anyway I'm on the Division 1 Women's Club Volleyball team at UCD. This November, the team won the Ireland intervarsity tournament (against all the University club teams in Ireland). This win gave us the invitation to compete in the Volleyball England Student Cup two weeks ago in Norwich, England. It's been a blast being part of a sports team again; I've definitely missed the commraderie and it's nice to have a physical/social outlet outside of the vet program (even though 3 of my teammates are in the vet program but 2 are in the year above me). I didn't get to play as much as I would have liked, but the competition was pretty top notch over in England compared to Ireland and the team came in 12th anyway out of 16 teams. Not the best performance, but a solid one nonetheless and two of the teams in our initial pool made it to the semi-finals, so we were up against some of the best teams there.

UCD Volleyball Club D1W

So despite this already busy semester and it being nearly half way complete, I haven't had the "AH-HA" moment. The "AH-HA" moment is that moment when things click, when the fog lifts and you can see the road ahead, when all the ducks are in a row, and you're like "AH-HA! I get it. This makes sense. I'm on the right track." Since the career project in Mrs. Hamburg's 7th grade class, I've been working my butt off, slowly but surely, towards becoming a veterinarian. I went to a good--GREAT--university, took all the prerequisites, sought out a variety of veterinary experience, went to Kenya, was rejected from my first round of vet school applications, but then went and got more experience, took more classes and ended up here IN IRELAND, IN VET SCHOOL. That should be it, right? But it's not been that easy. UCD isn't Denison and there really isn't a comparison. It's been tough finding a support system on this side of the Atlantic. I do have a couple good friends, but there's no Kappa, no Sexy 6, no family. That by far, has been the hardest part about being over here. So with that, I have doubts about being over here and have been in search of that "AH-HA" moment to tell me that the money and the distance from all those people I love is really worth it. I said that I would give it a full year over here before I made any kind of decision to stay, leave, try something new or stick it out.