The Crazyness is Over...For Now

The past two weeks has brought long hours at both work and school, followed by a mostly successful Western Veterinary Conference, followed by a retreat to Colorado for Esther and Brandon's wedding. Got all that? Well, here's how it all went.
The fiasco that has been my life for two weeks started off with a couple of days of class. Monday was our usual schedule of lectured. Tuesday followed with an extended lab at Doc Henderson's that would cover what we are learning in Emergency Medicine and our Surgery/Anethesia classes. As a class we helped to spay/neuter over thirty feral cats. We had the opportunity to set IV catheters, induce anesthesia, intubate, and observe Doc in action. Fun was had by all and we learned a ton.

The Wednesday following the feral cat lab started the crazy final preparation for the Western Veterinary Conference. I had until Sunday to make a brand new barn a functional and safe environment for housing horses, cows, goats, and sheep. In addition to housing animals I had to be ready to assist some very big names in veterinary medicine execute labs for WVC attendees that had payed a good amount of money to attend these labs. I was slightly nervous to say the least. The barn was fully set up by Thursday but we still had no stall mats for the horse stalls. Luckily, the mats were delivered on Friday morning. I learned the hard way that it takes at least two people about 45 minutes to install the six piece stall mat kit. After about 30 minutes of pushing and pulling the 100 lb mats around, Dr. Crane went to Lowes to hire some help. 4 Mexicans, 3 hours, a McDonalds lunch, and 8 stalls later, I was ready for horses. Six horses arrived on Friday afternoon and the endless mucking of stalls and feeding began. At one time during the week we had 11 horses at the Oquendo Center (the WVC facility). The only hiccup that we had was Alleghany, a rescue horse, had fatal bout of colic. Desert Pines (the Las Vegas equine veterinarians) was there within 45 minutes of the first signs of her discomfort. Unfortunately she was unable to recover from a transverse colon displacement. She was humanely euthanized at Desert Pines. Rest in peace Allegheny.
The actual week of the conference went pretty well, without too many problems anyway. There were a lot of fun labs. The doctors that were teaching the equine dental lab let Tosh and I play with the Powerfloat equipment and try to float teeth. Real vets make that look so easy. I would have had one very unhappy horse had we been floating the teeth of live horses. The equine lameness lab was taught by Dr. Moyer from College Station, TX. He taught a very down-to-earth way to perform a lameness exam. Tuesday morning was a little rocky because I was somewhat unprepared for the mare reproductive lab. On top of being unprepared, I later found out that one of the mares that the rescue provided us with was not who we thought she was. The mare that we thought we had was still at the rescue. The mare that we had was a very good girl but it could have been a recipe for disaster. Wednesday was a very cool lab taught by Dr. Holt from Colorado State University about equine acupuncture and manual therapy. The lab was extremely interesting and I hope to spend some time with him at CSU in March. The last couple of labs went well but I was in Colorado for Esther's wedding.
I flew out to Denver on Wednesday night after a 13 hour day at Western Veterinary Conference. My flight was delayed 45 minutes and I didn't arrive at my hotel room in Greenwood Village until 2:30 AM on Thursday morning. Luckily I didn't have to be at Esther's parent's house until noon that day so I got to sleep a little. Everyone got ready at the house and then we headed over to the church about 1:30. The ceremony was at 2 and was beautiful. Esther was a gorgeous bride and Brandon is the perfect guy for her. I wish them all the best in marriage. The reception was awesome too. Some of the people I know from when I was at CSU came down for the reception and it was great to be able to catch up on everyone's lives. Erin and I helped decorate the car and added a few special touches to the inside. After the reception I headed back to the hotel for sleep (which I hadn't had in over a week).

The remainder of my time in Colorado was spent visiting friends. I rented a car (a Cadillac CTS in fact) and was able to go wherever my little heart desired. I spent a good portion of Friday with Shannon and her new baby Travis Cody. I have to admit he is pretty cute. I had a good time catching up with Shannon and we realized we hadn't seen each other since I left Colorado a year and a half ago. Friday night I drove back up to Littleton and spent the night with Erin. We went to dinner at Mimi's and then were too lazy to go out so we watched WALL-E on on-demand. The two of use, being the partiers that we are, were asleep by 10:30. Sad, eh? Saturday was great too! I had lunch with Dr. Vail from Littleton Large Animal Clinic. LLAC is an equine practice that I hope to spend my spring break at so I can learn more about equine health care and hopefully see a surgery or five. After lunch I headed up to Berthoud to see Brittany Burgess. She returned home from a mission on Temple Square about six weeks ago. It was great to see her and it seemed like she never left. We spent the evening with some of her friends in Greeley. Sunday morning I had to get up at a decent time, return my rental car, and hop a flight back to reality. Somewhere along the way I got a nasty stomach bug and spent Monday in bed instead of at school reviewing for the midterms that I have on Tuesday. Overall the past few weeks were crazy but fun. I'm just glad they are over and life can return to a somewhat normal state.