Sunday, October 30, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Denglish
Last week I got to visit a friend from Germany. He's doing an internship at Fossil Gate Farms outside of Dallas, TX. I felt that a 5 hour drive was worth it, since I'd normally have a 13 hour plane ride to endure to see him. It was a great visit! He worked on Tuesday so I went to Dallas and spent time at the Botanical Gardens. They were gorgeous and full of... not flowers. It was about 65 degrees and really windy, so most of the gardens were in autumn mode. There were pumpkins lining all the paths and there were colorful hastas galore. I've put up my favorite picture, and of course, it involves an animal! I then was really lazy and ordered pizza to my hotel room while watching a Big Bang Theory and Law and Order SVU marathon. I got to talk to my friend Allison for almost an hour which was amazing seeing as she's in China and our internet on both ends have been so spotty.
The next day, I picked up Clemens at his ranch and we went into Dallas for the day. Apparently Texas does rodeos best because the State Fair we went to was not packed, not very big, and only had the basic foods fried and they were not all on a stick. Sigh. Not the same as the Minnesota State Fair at all. Oh well. It was awesome to spend time with Clemens and speak Denglish. He tried to speak English the whole time and I tried to speak German the entire time. If we forgot a word or two, we'd switch into our home languages. It involved a lot of miming, laughing, and staring from other people.
Baby season is finally starting to slow down. At one point I think I calculated we had over 200 baby raccoons and someone just told me we have 8. 8! We're not getting in any new babies, almost all our new arrivals are injured raptors coming in from their migrations. Most of my days have been spent in surgeries now. It's been pretty good practice. Well, I'm off for a fun day of shopping for Halloween! A bunch of us are going to Austin (the southern version of Madison for Halloween) and we're dressing up as Miss America contestants. We're from all over the country, and I'm going to represent as Miss Minnesota. It'll be great fun. Hope your Halloweens are going to be fun-filled! Miss and love you all.
Sara
The next day, I picked up Clemens at his ranch and we went into Dallas for the day. Apparently Texas does rodeos best because the State Fair we went to was not packed, not very big, and only had the basic foods fried and they were not all on a stick. Sigh. Not the same as the Minnesota State Fair at all. Oh well. It was awesome to spend time with Clemens and speak Denglish. He tried to speak English the whole time and I tried to speak German the entire time. If we forgot a word or two, we'd switch into our home languages. It involved a lot of miming, laughing, and staring from other people.
Baby season is finally starting to slow down. At one point I think I calculated we had over 200 baby raccoons and someone just told me we have 8. 8! We're not getting in any new babies, almost all our new arrivals are injured raptors coming in from their migrations. Most of my days have been spent in surgeries now. It's been pretty good practice. Well, I'm off for a fun day of shopping for Halloween! A bunch of us are going to Austin (the southern version of Madison for Halloween) and we're dressing up as Miss America contestants. We're from all over the country, and I'm going to represent as Miss Minnesota. It'll be great fun. Hope your Halloweens are going to be fun-filled! Miss and love you all.
Sara
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Companion Animals and Unusual Intake
Wow, it has been a very long time since my last blog update. I'm horrible! Well, this one should be quite long, so brace yourselves.
I've officially completed my application to the University of Minnesota Veterinary Program. I don't hear back from them until December if I get an interview, but cross your fingers I do! I had 3 great references, so I should have a decent chance of making an interview. Let's hope.
A few weeks ago I had a whirlwind of a week. I worked almost 70 hours in one week, but it was super fun. We were getting ready for an open house at the sanctuary for all our members. The members could come to the center, get tours of the clinic where we rehabilitate animals, as well as tour our sanctuary where we have many unusual permanent residents such as large cats, primates, and wolves. It was a race to get everything spotless before people came, and we had no vet staff. I was alone all weekend and had to look after all the critical animals myself. Not only that, but I was in charge of the adoption table at the open house. And I got one of our dogs adopted! He's a catahoula/heeler mix and very sweet. We just neutered him 2 days ago, and he's going home this weekend! I'm so excited for him.
Not only did we run around looking like our heads were cut off, the fates decided on top of the open house we had to have a storm hit us the night before. A tree fell over onto our neighbor's llama in the night and she wasn't found until morning. For the past 3 weeks we've been manually lifting her in a sling to get circulation to her legs. We hoped every day she would finally stand on her own. She was making such good progress and trying to put weight on her legs. 2 days ago she tried a bit too hard. We now suspect she had a hairline fracture, but the extra weight at a weird angle snapped her back right leg (femur) in half. Unless her owner decides to send her to Texas A&M for surgery and 2 months of rehabilitation, she's going to have to be put down. I'm devastated and haven't had a good day since. It seems like we've had too many death days recently, and I really didn't want her to be on our list as well. She's so sweet and I've invested so much of my own time and energy into her. Whatever is decided, I hope she was happy her last few weeks with us.
On a happier note, I'm to be published in the journal of Physical Chemistry!! My research professor and advisor from UMD submitted a paper that I helped with the initial research. Along with my friend Kelsey, we are all to be co-authors of a paper on Entropy Production in Lattice Gas Networks. I'm so stoked you can google my name in a month and have my paper pop up!
I hope you are all doing well and enjoying your autumn. It's finally starting to cool down here, and by that I mean not in the 90s for the majority of our week. We still get the occasional warm day, but most of our days are quite nice in the 80s and sometimes even the low 70s! It gets in the 50s at night which is awesome for sleeping. I'm going to be such a wimp when I go home in December and it's freezing. Miss you all and as always, I love hearing what's going on in your lives.
Love always.
I've officially completed my application to the University of Minnesota Veterinary Program. I don't hear back from them until December if I get an interview, but cross your fingers I do! I had 3 great references, so I should have a decent chance of making an interview. Let's hope.
A few weeks ago I had a whirlwind of a week. I worked almost 70 hours in one week, but it was super fun. We were getting ready for an open house at the sanctuary for all our members. The members could come to the center, get tours of the clinic where we rehabilitate animals, as well as tour our sanctuary where we have many unusual permanent residents such as large cats, primates, and wolves. It was a race to get everything spotless before people came, and we had no vet staff. I was alone all weekend and had to look after all the critical animals myself. Not only that, but I was in charge of the adoption table at the open house. And I got one of our dogs adopted! He's a catahoula/heeler mix and very sweet. We just neutered him 2 days ago, and he's going home this weekend! I'm so excited for him.
Not only did we run around looking like our heads were cut off, the fates decided on top of the open house we had to have a storm hit us the night before. A tree fell over onto our neighbor's llama in the night and she wasn't found until morning. For the past 3 weeks we've been manually lifting her in a sling to get circulation to her legs. We hoped every day she would finally stand on her own. She was making such good progress and trying to put weight on her legs. 2 days ago she tried a bit too hard. We now suspect she had a hairline fracture, but the extra weight at a weird angle snapped her back right leg (femur) in half. Unless her owner decides to send her to Texas A&M for surgery and 2 months of rehabilitation, she's going to have to be put down. I'm devastated and haven't had a good day since. It seems like we've had too many death days recently, and I really didn't want her to be on our list as well. She's so sweet and I've invested so much of my own time and energy into her. Whatever is decided, I hope she was happy her last few weeks with us.
On a happier note, I'm to be published in the journal of Physical Chemistry!! My research professor and advisor from UMD submitted a paper that I helped with the initial research. Along with my friend Kelsey, we are all to be co-authors of a paper on Entropy Production in Lattice Gas Networks. I'm so stoked you can google my name in a month and have my paper pop up!
I hope you are all doing well and enjoying your autumn. It's finally starting to cool down here, and by that I mean not in the 90s for the majority of our week. We still get the occasional warm day, but most of our days are quite nice in the 80s and sometimes even the low 70s! It gets in the 50s at night which is awesome for sleeping. I'm going to be such a wimp when I go home in December and it's freezing. Miss you all and as always, I love hearing what's going on in your lives.
Love always.
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