I'm sorry, yet again, for the lack of posts. I've had the most stressful and amazing 2 weeks and it's only going to get better (or worse, but hopefully better!). I'm trying to remember all that had happened. My Aunt Kristin has been reminding me constantly that I need to update my pictures, and I will! Unfortunately, the white peacock pictures that were taken after we took radiographs of him, were taken on Dee's camera and alas, I shall have to wait for her to give them to me.
I've been given a lot of responsibility lately, good that they trust me, but very draining. Because Cheryl is still recovering from her car crash, she's seeing fewer patients and trying to focus on surgeries since she's the only one legally allowed to do them. That means I've been handling a lot more the critical patients, re-evals, and upgrades. Awesome news does accompany this though. We have officially released over 60 of our baby raccoons from this baby season, with another 60 or so to follow in a few short weeks. They are some of the most time consuming, messiest, and hungriest babies we have here. We are all glad to see them go, especially those of us who have to completely gown up in booties, plastic gowns, latex gloves, and welding gloves to deal with them in the incredible heat down here. We released about half our skunks and the other half are all outdoors in daycages. I just upgraded most of our doves outside, and half our opossums are finally outside and are going to be released this week! Our clinic has gone from almost 1000 babies to roughly 300 or so. It's been so exciting to see them all leave happy and healthy.
There have been downfalls this week though. William, a cat who lived in the Nutrition Center, passed away finally, after almost 25 years of age. It was very hard on me to be there when he passed, but he was comfortable and well cared for til the end. We will all miss him. Another of our cats, Destiny, had a traumatic experience a few days ago. We have no idea what happened but she has suddenly gone downhill and was non-responsive when I left her last night at 8pm after being by her side the whole day.
I have had some awesome time off recently, and really fun nights. My friends dragged me to the river last week and we spent over 3 hours swimming in the very shallow and slow running Guadelupe River. I got a royal sunburn even after applying sunscreen twice. What should I have expected being from Minnesota and the weather being sunny and in the 100s for over 50 days straight. Charlie, the accountant here has talked to me about her horses almost every time I visit her, and spontaneously asked me to come over the ride one of her horses! She owns a gray Andalusian who hasn't been ridden in over 4 years due to some lameness issues. He is healthy now, and I get to bring him back to shape! She also owns a young, black, Fresian/Andalusian/Thoroughbred cross who is gorgeous, taller than me (shock!) and amazing. I think I have to brush up on my riding skills before I attempt to ride her though. She can be quite fiesty. I've included a pic of me on Benito, her Andalusian. It's been the best thing for my soul to be back with horses, but exhausting work since I haven't ridden in almost a year.
To top it all off, we're trimming hooves on a lot of our farm animals this week. I've chased 2 goats across a large pasture, and after trapping one and grabbing one mid run (my animal catching skills amaze me), I trimmed their hooves myself. The next day we sedated a donkey for his hoof trim, and another donkey took me for a ride when he decided he wanted to buck around me when the farrier came near. We got him trimmed but I was sore to say the least the next day.
And finally, as my title denotes, I get to go home!! I have a week of vacation that I'm using on Saturday and I will be going to, yes, somewhere NORTH! I'm going back to Minnesota and convinced my parents if they wanted to take me camping on my vacation, it was going to be, oh yes, NORTH! We're going to be just north of Duluth, but it's going to be heaven on earth to me. I've already looked up the weather and they're predicting sunny and 75 degrees. Fahrenheit! It's going to be cool, even cold at night, and I'm so excited I'm going to burst! I love my job, but the weather is so wearing on me, my vacation is going to do me a world of good. So, if you don't hear from me in a while, well too bad! I'm going to be enjoying every single second I can get to be outside in weather that I'm not going to sweat, burn, and become parched in less than 5 minutes. I hope you are all having a lovely rest of your summer, because I'm going to go start mine! Miss you all, and I can't wait to see some of you Saturday!! Love always!!
