WVS India; Take 2

Last summer I had the most awesome time at the WVS India ITC and after becoming more involved with the charity and becoming the first International Student Rep I signed up twelve students from my vet school to attend the surgical training course this summer.

Eight of us flew from Heathrow to Ooty while the other four headed to Goa. The transfer from Bangalore to Ooty takes about 6 hours but when we reached the hairpin bends back to Ooty the excitement hit me and I was so glad to be back!

It was prety quite when we got to the ITC as the vets have a day off so we found our rooms and chilled out ready to start the surgical training course tomorrow.

Avian Veterinary Services; Week 2

Back up to AVS for a second week seeing avian practice and another great week!
I'm so used to being rushed at the PDSA that this week has been completely different, as they're so specialist they have fewer clients but have really long consults and spend a lot of time with each case.
During the breaks Richard gave me a series of lectures and practicals which have been really useful.

We saw a young Gyr falcon last week who had changed vocalisations and generally 'off' - falconers spend a lot of time with their birds, especially young imprints like this, so notice clinical signs really early. She came back in this week for an endoscopy as she still wasn't quite right and it was like a military procedure.
Richard and Carli have so much experience that everything is ready and basically read each others minds! She was induced with inhalant anaesthesia, a doppler placed, positioned onto a plate and a series of x-rays taken.

After the x-rays they did an endoscopy which confirmed she was a female and also found some aspergillus fungi in her respiratory system. Luckily as it was found so early it can be quickly treated and got under control.

Later in the week I got to practice endoscopy on a few cadavers which was great to practice as it looks so much easier that it is, especially with different scope angles where you're looking up 15 degrees rather than straight forwards!



I think my favourite specimen in the building is this one, Dave the Buzzard...

...Richard uses him in nearly all his consults to explain cases to owners and it works really well to help them understand. I'm quite a visual learner as well and I love skeletons so all round win for me!

Avian Veterinary Services

Having always been interested in birds and wanting to specialise in avian medicine for a few years, I've been aware of Avian Veterinary Services for a few years. We follow each other on Twitter and (I now know) after a few outspoken tweets by me, they invited me to see practice with them.

Richard and Carli are based up in Cheshire and are an awesome bird vet team!

I booked myself into the local Travelodge and spent the week seeing practice with them, having a great time.

I know quite a lot about chickens and a fair bit about raptors but have learnt so much already, and started getting to grips with parrots and other birds!

As birds are generally pretty small and surgeries pretty intricate, Richard uses surgical loupes for magnification and microsurgery tools for precision surgery. I was given the honour of having a go (play!) with them as they cost a few thousand pounds!

First up I practiced writing as small as I could to get used to the focus and slight feelings of seasick-ness

Once I'd mastered writing I moved on to suturing witha high tech practice pad (examination glove) which was kinda tricky being so small so I'm quite happy with how I got on!

I think I'm going to have to get a cheap pair of loupes and some microsurgery instruments to practice suturing and doing surgery on grapes!

Consults are half an hour as exotics need quite a thorough history taking. We usually take the birds out the back to examine them as parrots especially can be quite bonded to their owners, and vice versa, so it's best for everyone that they're out of sight and if examined in theatre we have everything to hand should it be needed.

I never really appreciated behavioural problems in parrots and the problems imprinting them can cause so have learn loads about that this week and seen the real impacts it can cause!