Random things

Its been a toughish week with xmas parties and things, especially the things as I had my second post op bleed of my career (so far) following a speying operation this week. Though she went home perfectly well after a day or two. I was still cursing a lot! Started when a ligature slipped and went downhill from there really.
Anyway this is Scooby at home which is fairly unusual for Scooby as he appears at the Clinic regularly. He isn't sick he just runs away from home and comes to visit. A wet nose in the back of the Knee while you are doing something else around the clinic lets you know he's arrived. We put him in a Kennel outside and the owners wander over when they have a minute to reclaim him. As I was going to the stables at his home last time I gave him a lift back. I suspect he would go anywhere in the car and be very happy about it.


In case you thought I escaped lab work, this is proof that I was doing ELISA. In this case a snake venom detection kit. One of the nurses dogs decided to eat a snake and we tested the blood, the second test where we read the instructions detected Brown snake venom.; Just don't ask what the dog was bitten by according to the first! Still we had no clinical signs so I think he must have been immune. Its not the first time he's done this!

Anyway Gary has been making friends again and this is Sarah Crosby with him. He looks quite content there.

Gary is with me in the flat for the weekend so he will likely be "helping" me as I write today.

We have aquired a Clinic bird. This is Gary the Galah supervising Sarah at my Desk. He was handed in on Monday and we are thinking of keeping him around.

He's not to bright and fairly uncoordinated so we have to avoid the cats but he has cured Nat of her dislike of birds

Clinic Characters

I was going to show you pictures of Sarah who is a body double in films, Jake a clinic Nurse and the new Clinic Gallah but blogger won't let me do what I did last night so I will try again tomorrow!
Goodnight all

My office

For those of you in my old office back in the moredun institute I thought I would let you look at the office I run around in these days. Its pretty bloody dry out here. There has been a drought for the last 4 years and it literally hasn't rained in that time. The ground is all like this with no cover at all so that if it does come it will wash away all the top soil in a very short period. I might see this as they are predicting high rainfall in the next few weeks.
Farmers are investing in high tech means to get the best out of the water. I was shown around a maize farm where they run pipes under the plant lines to water the soil from below. Tissue and soil sampling allows control of rates and fertiliser application through the same system. Those farmers that aren't will probably have no crop to sell.
Cattle farmers don't have the same options in water control and feed is very scarce so prices are down and farmers are reluctant to get the vet out (the same story as home really). However soil appears to make up a lot of the faecal content here as grazing is right down to the soil. Even the horses are grazing bare paddocks and sand colic is a real possibility.

irresistable force vs immovable object

This is a pony I was called to treat a couple of days ago, Lesson number 1 in the horse care manual is don't run into it with your pick up and a addendum to lesson one is if you do call the vet asap. Leaving it 24 hours is a very bad idea. (probably not as bad as idea number 1 but still not good) If you do both of those things the hind leg will look something like this. The black bit is I believe bone!

Fortunately this horse is not showing pain at the moment but I don't know why, it should be in agony.
I was able to pass a finger into the joint space and a fairway up the tendons from the wound. You can see from the pictures how swollen it is around the joint.
On xray there appears to be whole bits of bone gone. The calcaneus has been sheared and pulled up the leg by the tendon I think and joint involvement is a distinct possibility
We decided to euthanase this horse on welfare grounds. However we had to wait for the owner to get back from hospital as he had broken his leg after falling off a motorbike that day.

Poor bloody horse!

Construction in Aus

The clinic in Narromine has had a rearrangement of the stables. Though instead of say taking them down in pieces and moving the pieces they decided to pick them up as a single building


So if you were in Narromine you might have been held up by a moving building.



It arrived in the practice garden with only minor damage from say trees roads fences, in fact anything that couldn't move really. Don, the Boss is desperately trying to keep it uptight but too late.


But its now finally at its new site and all we need to do is tie it down in case there is a strong breeze.