First Day at East Holmes

I have survived my first day at a mobile clinic.  I am completely tired (mind and body) but I loved every minute of it.  I saw a lot of first today: first herd check, first jerry-rigged cow restraint, sadly my first horse euthanasia and my first visit to a commercial dog breeder.

To bring you back a day... Natalie and I left Columbus around 1pm and began the drive to Holmes County. My phone decided to spaz out so we were down one cell phone and left with a phone that went from roaming to not a single bar.  So of course we made a couple wrong turns.  Traveled through some original towns of Ohio and slowly made our way through back country roads to find US-62.  We also found Ohio's Longest Covered Bridge.  Soon after we noticed an increase in horse manure on the side of the road and we were finally in Amish Country and close to our final destination.  Upon arriving and unpacking, we realized that we passed civilization and the source of food about 20 minutes ago on the road; hopped back into the car and headed to Wally World.  We spent the night at the "Intern" house next to the clinic with Amanda, one of the employees at the clinic.

This morning started at 7:45 with a speed tour and introduction at the clinic before Natalie and I split up to go with different vets on farm calls.  It was one blur of a farm call after another.  We saw a couple cows with teat injuries, a cow with a fever of unknown origin along with checking cows for pregnancy.  One of the interesting checks was at an organic dairy farm.  The farmer had a couple of cows with hoof problems that couldn't be treated with conventional antibiotics so a different treatment plan had to be created. Also at this farm there wasn't a tilt table or squeeze shoot.  We worked with the cow in a head lock and the foot elevated by a rope looped over a rafter and around a pole (I feel  like physics was involved in how I could hold up this animals foot, but I have blocked the physics out of my mind). During this visit, Dr. Aaron used an ultrasound to help determine if the cow was pregnant and I was able to see the screen.  I feel like I kinda new what I was looking out (OSU radiology professors would be proud) but I wasn't sure.  He pointed me to look at the drostproject.org to help me understand what I was seeing and it was amazing.

I forgot to take my phone out to take pictures, but I will try again tomorrow, but now it's 8:55pm and storming outside and I will try to brave the 20 feet from work to home.