On Furry Angel Wings

I got a nice message from my dad after our dog was put to sleep:

"Toby is at rest. it is difficult to let him go. it was more difficult for him to stay. it really struck me when the vet gave him the first meds to relax him and put him in a deep sleep. We hadn't heard him with a fully relaxed snore in months and months. His body and breathing had been so tight and labored that he hadn't been able to have that deeply relaxed breathing/snoring. He is at peace like he hasn't been for some time. He was a good dog and I wish you could have been here to see and feel how good it was to see him released from his racking cough and his bodliy struggle."

 and  The was an outpouring of love and memories of Toby on facebook from his human friends.

Farewell Sweet Doggie

My dog is in his last hour.

I didn't expect the first animal death in my veterinary quest to be my own dog, but so it goes. Our family Shih Tzu, Toby, is 13 and has been suffering from congestive heart failure, arthritis and cataracts. He has been cough and stuggling more and can no longer leave the house. The time has come to let him go.

I was about 13 when we got him, and he is 13 now so he's been with us for half my life and He was like a little brother to me. my mother's 4th child.

Today she took him through the drive through and bough him is very own cheeseburger. she served him a steak dinner which he devored. I called my sister moments ago so i could say goodbye. i told him i loved him very much and that he'd feel better soon. told him to tell the new puppy LeLe to take care of mommy as well as he always did.

Our kind vet makes house calls and it probably waiting in our living room in washington this very moment. waiting for mom to give her last tearful kisses to our fuzzy friend. He loved mom so much and followed her every minute of the day. He had so much personality it is hard to believe that he never spoke a word of english. It's hard to believe that he wont be there at the backdoor to greet me next time i go home.

i wish i could be there for him and my family. As a vet student, i am curious about the procedure, but in a way I dont want to see the death of my own dog. i worry that if i did, every later euthanization would remind me of him. it probably will anyway. I'll wonder if he looked the same way when he died. I thought about it today, and realized i've never seen an animal die, beyond bugs and fish. I worry about how much death and sadness i may be welcoming into my life my starting on this career path.


23 minutes after the vet should have arrived....at this moment he is my schrodinger's dog. She she do it yet?  Is he still with us?  Is he gone?

walking and coughing one minute, and forever asleep in the next.

Rest in Peace Toby. Love you Always.

pwned!

i just took my first quiz. i figured , since you get unlimited tries to take the quiz, i'd just scan over my reading notes and then take the quiz the 1st time.  We are given a 45 minute time limit, but i only used 3 minutes and didn't miss any questions! so i guess there is no need for me to retake it this week.

in other good news, my Vet Office Practices book came today. It is brand new and came packaged in an odd way. like encased in cardstock.

It's a miracle!

My book arrived! the one that I sorely needed before last week.  this morning i emailed the seller AGAIN and said "look, the tracking info says the book never made it out of michigan. either send me a new book or give me a refund." but then I planned to wait until after work to order a book from somewhere else. but then lo, and behold, it was in the mailbox when i got home. So by waiting 7 more hours, i stopped myself from having to order and then cancel a replacement. i never heard back from the seller, so i guess i should email them a sheepish message "oh, it did get here, sorry about my fuss."

i'm glad that out of the 4 books that COULD have arrived today, it was the crucial one. ah the relief. i flipped through the book and it was disgusting. lots of pictures of lice and ticks and instruction for making a microscope slide from a poo sample. Clinical Pathology is a very intimidating place to start my vet education. I would have recommended a different starter course, but here i am.

Why all this? Part 1

So why do I want to be a vet tech and why did I choose to do the online program through San Juan College? Like most people who get into the veterinary profession, i could be called a life long "animal lover" that's practically an requirement for the job. A love and compassion for animals is essential for the field. otherwise why would you feel the need to help them?

 Anyway, i had many animals growing up. Cats, dog, goldfish, beta fish, hamster, gerbil, guinea pig, rabbit, parakeet, degus... i guess that's it. a modest menagerie. For most of my life I'd say "I want to be a marine biologist when I grow up!" I'm sure i didn't really know what that entailed exactly, but I knew I like dolphins and whales.

In college I followed the path of Environmental science. I feel that greater care and understanding of our planet is sorely needed. I didn't go into biology because i have a bad track record with chemistry, among other reasons. Environmentalism just fit better with who I am. I thought a little about going to graduate school, but i didn't want to add to my pile of student loans and i felt like i didn't know what degree i would want to get, what specific field was right for me. i just planned to land a nice environmental job doing research or something.

  But upon leaving college i found that an "environmental job" was elusive. well, because of the tanking economy, ALL jobs were elusive. but the job postings i saw labelled "environmental" were either fundraising/canvasing/awareness campaigns or highly technical/hydrology/forestry/engineering/watershed management jobs. both were problematic. I have always been shy and non-confrontational and was not at all comfortable with the idea of knocking on strangers' doors or asking them for money, even for a good cause. plus a lot of these positions are for volunteers who won't be paid or internships only available to current students. The other jobs seemed to require experience I didn't have, such as a masters in forestry engineering, plus 5 years of on the job experience, plus metalshop certification level 3 or some such. My school was liberal arts based, so my degree was more of a varied overview of the various areas of environmental study(geology, waterscience, biogeography, sustainablity..) but not the in depth specifics that many employers were seeking. i nearly got a job with Americorps compiling data on Oregon wildfires. i was their second choice and was offered a consolation job in the upper east armpit of Oregon, but i turned it down. (I do wonder the path my life would have taken if I'd accepted it)

 After that I was unemployed for longer than I'd like to remember and took whatever cashier job i could get. my man and I moved from Oregon to Washington for a few years and then made the leap to Hawaii in March of 2011. Fearing a lengthy unemployment again, I took the first job I could get and I've stuck there ever since. Of course, one gets the feeling, "I should be doing something better", which got me curious about grad school.

 Basically, Hawaii has two main higher learning options. Either the University of Hawaii system (and its network of community colleges) or Hawaii Pacific University. I checked out what both had to offer and was immediately intimidated. There were a few masters degrees that interested me, like oceanography for example. but none of them really grabbed me like "Yes, this is what I am meant to do!" Also they had steep requirements for getting in. From what I gathered, you had to contact a professor and plan out your interests and goals and area of study before you even began the degree. You must also study, pay for and pass the GRE test. And then there was the $$$$ tuition price tag. The very high price of living here, combined with the very low wages has insured that I have stayed well below the poverty line. On top of all that it seemed like by applying in February i would already be too late for the fall semester 2012?? So I concluded that grad school was not in the cards for me at that time in this place.

 What actually spurred me in this direction was a combination of things plus a career wake up call of sorts. I had been researching a lot of animal care because one Christmas gift to me from my boyfriend was that i could pick out a pet. we'd been without a pet for almost year because it would have been illegal for us to bring our hamster to Hawaii with us. So i was considering the types of pets available and what it would take to take for them. i very nearly got a pet chameleon but the lifespan coupled with the food requirements and other care needs just wasn't feasible. I ended up getting two female rats, an animal I hadn't personally owned before. The older of the two turned out to be pregnant and after watching her give birth, I was the owner of 11 rats! (i didn't keep them all, and eventually sold 8 of them) Of course i had already researched rat care and checked out library books about it and such. actually, I've often borrowed books in the past few years about animals I don't even own, sheep care, goat care, chicken keeping, bee keeping. i find all of it interesting. I've also read James Herriot's stories about being a vet, memoirs by parrot keepers such as Irene Pepperberg who worked with Alex the African Grey, and Gerald Durrell's stories about his fascination with wildlife. besides that, one of my personal goals has been to have a house with land so I can grow many plants and animals.

It was around this time my aunt mentioned that she had always thought I'd make a great veterinarian. I think other people have said this to me before. I guess I had always thought of it as out of reach for some reason, more like "Wow, that would be great to be an astronaut, how cool!" I have one highschool classmate who went into the profession, and I'd feel a tinge of jealousy when i saw facebook photos of her treating exotic animals (especially the sloth!)
ALso my mom found a new vet to care for our animals. this nice young woman makes house visits and the pets adore her. mom said she could see me doing that type of work.

The career wake up call had nothing to do with animals. For some time my boyfriend has pushed me to get a better job. I know he feels I am not using my full potential. We have the same degree and both feel frustrated that we haven't been able to put it to use. I have felt I could be more a career worthy job. I want to be proud of the work I do and I've been stuck in the customer service world for years.

 Let me preface this by saying that I was the only employee at my job for a nearly a year. But in February, I'd noticed a lot of girls bringing in applications. I became suspicious and checked craigslist and found that my boss had posted a want ad and for whatever reason didn't chose to tell me he was looking to hire someone. I had no idea if he was preparing to replace me, or simply add another worker which would lower my work hours. The point is, I suddenly felt very insecure about my position and that forced me to think about what my next job would be and what direction my life was heading in. I had previously applied for a job in this town as a vet assistant but never got a call back. But the seed was planted and somehow I came to this conclusion. "Vet Assistant! how cool would that be?"

Suddenly I had the feeling that I knew what I wanted to do! This had eluded me for years, what did I want to do with my life? Then out of nowhere, I felt vet assistant was the tentative answer to that question. I don't know if it was my aunt's comment, seeing a former class blaze a trail, the rat birth, the endless string of library books, but i realized that i really enjoy learning about animals and taking care of them so why not make it my job and get paid for it. it now occurs to me that when I used to say I wanted to be a marine biologist, it wasn't as if I wanted to study phytoplankton and do lab tests on seawater composition, I had wanted to care for and interact with the dolphins. And as for my undergraduate studies, I've been thinking about what drove me in that area. Trees and watersheds and toxic rain studies are very important, but what I really wanted to do was preserve natural spaces for the benefit of their inhabitants. I wanted to help species that are struggling against habitat loss and dwindling numbers. The animals were the reason. .....


you'll notice I said vet assistant, I am now pursuing "vet tech". read what happened next in part two!

First day of school worries.

well, i have been waiting on the book for my first class to arrive. i checked the tracking number and it says my book was delivered to somewhere in Michigan two weeks ago. WTF?! this is not helpful because i live in Hawaii. i emailed the seller but i might have to bite the bullet and just buy another book and pay more for speedy shipping to get it here by next week and hope to get a refund from the screw-up people. luck for me, the first week's readings are all online. the teachers must have heard all sorts of sob stories in the past from students who can't get their books in time. so i am still up in the air about this.

 So anyway, it's my first day. so i logged on to my class page. (in my pajamas, of course. i think it's a rule for online schooling) and i downloaded my assignment lists and readings into the brand new 1.5 TB harddrive my boyfriend got me for our anniversary. i could have just read the pdf online but i'd like to have all the info in one place when it comes to studying time. When i was peeking at student forums weeks ago i read someone saying they go through a lot of ink and paper printing things out. this was surprising/scary to me because i hadn't thought there would be a need to print out anything, much less a lot of things! plus i dont have have a printer and really can't afford anything right now. But after looking at the format of the assignments, i don't think i have reason to worry. most of the homework assignments are not even meant to be turned in, and those that you do turn in are emailed. sure, you could print out your reading review questions and write the answers on the paper, or you could just edit the document and type the answers in and leave it in your computer. i take notes by hand when reading, but i could also just type notes into a word document and have a completely paperless existence. (besides the ten pounds textbooks) So I'll just assume that the people wasting all that ink are the same technophobes that print out their emails. why??

 about those reading notes. in my first class, veterinary pathology 117, the first lesson is about safety, and for good reason. but any imagined worries i had about working in a vet practice are now compounded by taking pages of notes on the various ways i could be harmed in a vet office... animals catching your jewelry, hair caught in fans and machines, electrical circuit overloads, chemicals spilling in your eyes, poisonous fumes, fires, robberies, cancerous fluids, animal bites and scratches, large animals crushing you, going deaf from barking dogs, getting flea dip in your eyes, getting rabies, ticks, fungal infections, parasites in your organs, cancer from x-ray radiation, liver disease from anesthesia gas, exploding gas canisters, stabbed with needles, dangerous chemo drugs... It's a death trap, man. *freak out*

Educate Thyself- My past school experience in a nutshell

I come from a well-educated past. I went to private school for the majority of my schooling and did fairly well at it. I went to Willamette University, a small liberal arts college in Oregon. I majored in Environmental Science and minored in Geography. Graduated Manga Cum Laude back in 2008. After graduating, I was open to the idea of returning to student-dom to get another degree, just not immediately. I figured i would get a Masters next, not an associates degree. But unexpected things can happen. More on why i chose my current path and school coming soon. On different note, i order 4 text book 2 weeks ago and NONE of them have arrived. I realize that media mail to hawaii probably means that they are coming on 4 separate boats, but I am getting antsy waiting so long. especially considering i spent $218 on the lot of them. I thought i had ordered with enough time to spare, but my first class starts in 3 days...and still no textbooks.

What is blog about?

I am 26 year-old lady with a new dream. I want to become a Veterinary Technician. I am at the beginning of this journey, facing 2+ years of schooling and internships, plus a lot of trepidation and questions. Come along for the ride won't you?