Christmas around the corner...

Done with finals!!!

For everyone who has been wondering...

Whew! I'm finally done with finals! Yipee!! I had my A&P and Animal Husbandry finals on Monday and then Hematology & Medical Techniques finals on Tuesday. Wow!! And the results are......

I PASSED ALL FOUR CLASSES! YAY!!! :oD I made an "A" in A&P and Hematology & "B's" in the other two classes. Phew!

Next quarter starts on 1/5/09 so I can sit back & relax for awhile...not really. LOL!!! I am taking advantage of my spare time and working extra hours.

Well, I have to get ready for work now. Hope everyone has a wonderful week!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. I am looking forward to the good food. We are going to go to Tim's grandparents. It will be nice to see everyone.
Well, today I have a test in Animal Husbandry & then we are off until next Monday. Even though I have to work the day after Thanksgiving it will be nice to have off Thursday & Saturday. Yay!!!
Final exams are in less than two weeks. Gulp!! It's hard to believe this quarter is almost over. We have learned so much this fall. We have done so many things...techniques that I assumed we wouldn't do until next quarter or even spring quarter. We've already learned how to put in IV catheters & to intubate a dog (while monitoring the dog under anesthesia). On Monday we get to put in a urinary catheter!!! Yesterday we had our breeds talks. Everyone had to pick a dog or cat breed at the beginning of the quarter. Then we had to write a paper on that particular breed about all the common health problems seen in that breed. Then yesterday we did a Power Point presentation on it. It was my first ever Power Point presentation. Needless to say I actually like it because everyone is looking at the big screen instead of me. LOL!! I picked the Italian Greyhound (since Greyhound was already picked). Anyways...I better stop writing & get back to studying & getting ready...I have to take my test in an hour!!!

2 new additions to our home.

Here they are...the rodents finally made it home!! They arrived yesterday & Sassy is captivated with them. I'm still trying to figure out what to name them. They are housed in a 10 gallon for now until I get a permanent cage for them. At least the 10 gal is bigger then what they were housed in at school.

Free Store Food Bank

On Sunday afternoon some of us students volunteered at the Free Store Food Bank on Liberty Street downtown Cincinnati. Some of the area veterinarians were giving free physical exams & vaccinations, etc to the pets of low income families. I was at a table with one of our professors, Dr. Goecke. It was a wonderful learning experience. The last person to show up at our table was actually someone I know, Jerusha & some of her family members. It was great to see her since it had been quite some time... :o) They brought in a couple of calico kittens. Here are a few pictures. :o)

Wanted: Loving Homes

Well it's almost time for our rats, mice & bunnies to find new homes. They will be ready to go the first week of November. Please let me know if you want to adopt one or two or five! LOL! Rats actually make great pets...I don't know about the mice. The one stipulation is that they are all adopted as pets & not as feeders for snakes or whatever. Tim is actually letting me adopt a couple of rats. :oD

Some exciting news...we got our dogs in this past week!! YAY! We were finally able to see them on Thursday after a 48 hour quarantine. They are all sooooo cute. I was assigned a female (i'm still working on coming up with a name for her). She can't be anymore than 30 lbs & is a blond color. Which makes me bring up the whole adoption thing again...its not to early to be thinking about adopting one of our class dogs. They will be available by the end of May this coming year. Please, please let me know if you are interested. We need to find homes for all 22 dogs. They are all mutts, which in my opinion, is the best kind of dog. If you are interested I can give you some specific descriptions.

This afternoon I will be volunteering at the Free Store Food Bank downtown Cincy on Liberty St. Local vets will be giving free physicals & vaccinations for pets of low income families. I will be sure to post all about it later today. (if I'm not studying)

Well, I gotta go get ready for church.

Another field trip.

This past week has been the busiest week so far this school year. We had 3 tests, one each in Medical Techniques, Animal Husbandry & Hematology, 1 Hematology Lab Practical, and 2 A&P quizzes. Two of my tests I didn't do so well (Husbandry & Med Techniques), but I will make sure to revamped my study habits for those classes. We have to have a C average in each class. Anything under a C and we have to take that class over!!
We went on another field trip on Friday. This time we got to work with goats, sheep, horses, mules & cows. It was a really neat experience. My group mainly worked on goats & sheep. We dewormed them, gave rabies vaccines & trimmed hooves. Trimming hooves can be quite difficult...especially when the blades are dull. :o) Getting the sheep to sit on its butt was quite an experience. LOL!!!
The goats were great! Our goat was very patient with us. (most of the time)

...& more field trip pictures.

Here are a couple more pictures from last weeks field trip.


Dr. Wells demonstrating restraint techniques.

Field Trip

Friday our class went on a field trip to vaccinate some horses at two different stables! Yay! It was a lot of fun! I gave one horse an IM injection in the butt. First, I cleaned the area with some alcohol, then I removed the needle from the syringe & stuck it in the butt muscle (talk about a horse jumping out of it's skin!)...then while the horse was kicking I had to attach the syringe, aspirate then inject. My heart was pounding furiously!! I've been around horses plenty enough, but this was a new experience. :o)
We were all doing this in groups of about 4 or 5 people. I got to teach the other ladies in my group how to halter a horse & to pick out the hooves. It was fun! It made me feel good to show them & watch their faces light up. We all got to do different things (injections in the butt, neck, nose, listen to gut sounds & heart). I also got to give in IN. Of course the horse didn't like the long plastic flexible straw-like needle going up it's nose. (I wouldn't like it either) Two of the ladies in my group got to draw blood. They were so happy to be able to do that. (as you can see Tammy in the picture below with her syringe of horse blood) :P
I think by the end we were all excited for our next field trip this coming Friday. There will be goats & other farm animals besides horses at the next field trip.
Here are two pictures that I took...Laura & Tammy also took some pictures (with me actually in the picture)...so hopefully I will get them this week & will post them.
Well, it's back to studying for two tests tomorrow & one on Wed.


Laura, Katie, Christy & Tammy


Tammy with her "souvenir"

School

Well, I can't believe the 3rd week of school is almost over with. I am taking 4 classes for a total of 16 hours. Animal Husbandry & Disease, A&P, Hematology & Medical Techniques. Medical Techniques is basically what it says...we are learning how to perform medical techniques on live animals. (i.e. SQs, IMs, IPs & bio feed needles so far) Yay!! So far we have been working with mice & rats. Next week we get to work on bunnies. (our dogs are coming in sometime towards the end of the month.) :o) The two labs this week have been a little nerve racking because all the teachers come around & one will grade each of us on a certain technique for that particular lab. (we were graded in restraining a mouse & then a rat during an IP injection.)
A&P probably has the most homework out of all the classes. We have a quiz every lab in A&P. It makes it nice though to have a quiz that often. It really helps me to stay disciplined & study. One of our teachers has us look up a drug for every lecture packet she hands out. I actually like it because it is helping me to become familiar with different drugs.
I'm also Secretary of our SCNAVTA organization. It is our Student Chapter of National Association of Vet Techs in America. We are going to do fundraisers to go towards an animal charity.
It's really keeping me busy with everything combined with working. I'm in school Mon through Friday & work Mon, Wed. Fri. & Sat. & anything extra I can get in. It's going to be tight financially, but it will be worth it.
Tomorrow morning we go on a field trip to a couple of horse farms to vaccinate, etc... I'm excited. I will try to remember to take my camera to get some pictures. :D

Well, gotta go stick my head in some books. :o)

Cat in the bag.

While I was doing homework the other day, Sassy decided to crawl in my bookbag...

The "running breed".

Someone at the dog park was referring to Rocky & said "he's some kind of running breed". What do you think? :o)



I think the other dogs gave up chasing him.

We're still here...

No, we didn't get blown away by our "northern hurricane". LOL! I haven't had Internet access since Sunday around 2:30pm whenever our electric & cable went out. When we got home tonight from Bible Study, Tim noticed that the phone was finally working which meant that we also had cable & internet. Electricity finally came on Tuesday morning around 4:30am (not that it was as important as cable. LOL!!) :oP I spent the evening, Tuesday, cleaning out the fridge & freezer throwing out the food. Then we went and picked up some breakfast stuff & food for our lunches. Just enough to last us through the week.
Anyways, after Sunday, I don't think I will be moving south anytime soon. They said that the wind gusts were Category 1 wind gusts & it wasn't just a few minutes of wind...it was several hours. Mom wanted me to take some pictures, which I finally was able to today. I took the dog on a walk to get this one picture. If I can get a few more I will post them.

If you take a scenic drive through the tri-state area this is pretty much what you should expect to see. (& this is after they've cleaned it up a bit) NOTE: If you click on the picture it should enlarge it.

Silly pets

Sassy is fasinated with Rocky.





Garfield thinks I had a treat or something yummy.

Catching up...

Well, seeing that I haven't updated this since the beginning of July, I decided to do a quick catch up on things that are happening. Tim & I have been keeping pretty busy at work. (like normal)
I've been getting ready for school to start (orientation is 9/23 & school starts 9/24). It's been fun getting all the things that I need for classes. Shopping for scrubs was a blast. There are so many colors & prints... Textbook shopping is not so fun as they are very expensive. There is a discount store online at textbooks.com. They didn't have all the books I needed, but the majority of them. This week I received a letter from my Comparative Anatomy & Physiology professor stating that there was a book change...needless to say, after emailing my professor she told me I didn't have to purchase another lab manual since I already had the old one. Yay! I don't think I could have returned it anyway. :) Also, you may think I'm crazy, but I've already been reading some of my textbooks. LOL! They are so interesting. The Laboratory Procedures textbook is great!! Tim said that I have no excuse to not make A's if I'm already reading my books. Ha!
My supervisor at work has really been flexible with my work schedule for school. It has been a big answer to prayer!! So please pray for my mental & physical stability & financially since I will be going from full-time to part-time status at work.

~This definition was taken from the Ohio vet tech website:
What is a veterinary technician? ...a veterinary technician is a nurse, dental hygienist, surgical assistant, scrub nurse, radiology technician, lab technician, microbiologist, client service specialist, communications expert, transcriptionist, pharmacology technician, manager, nutritionist, animal trainer, behavior counselor, sanitation specialist and an exceptional person. ;)

Long weekend.

It was really nice to have a three day weekend. We didn't do much on the 4th because it rained almost the entire day. On Saturday, Bev came over with the kids and Max, the dog. My mother-in-law, Cindy came over also. It was a nice day for a grill-out. Rocky was happy to meet another dog friend. He really tried to get Max to run with him, but Max was happy to just lay on the ground. The girls had a lot of fun getting Rocky to jump. Here are some pictures from yesterday & then a few of some of my flowers and Rocky jumping. :o)

Catching up.

Wow! June is flying by fast!!! We went to two weddings this month. The first one was my cousin Stephen's wedding on June 14th up in New Philadelphia, Ohio. (At least his bride, Bri, knew ahead of time what kind of family she married in to. LOL!!) :o) It was a beautiful wedding. (gorgeous flowers by Elizabeth!) Unfortunately I don't have a good picture with both the bride & groom together...so I will be hunting one down from a sister or another relative. LOL! In the meantime I will post some other pictures from the wedding.
A co-worker of mine got married last Saturday here in Cincy. It was also a beautiful wedding.
Well, Tim & I have both been working overtime & can't wait till July 4th & the long weekend. It will be nice to have a break. I've also been gathering all my junk together to put in a yard sale. I just hope that my junk is someone else's treasure. :) I'm trying to earn some extra $ to pay for my school books & supplies for this fall. Hopefully we can have the sale in a couple of weeks.
Anyways, that is what has been going on the past few weeks.