It's been a long time...

...but I decided to revive my blog!

A lot has happened since I last posted (well it has been over a year!) so I don't quite know where to start.
After my RVC interview last year I was rejected at the end of March, so I applied again in October, had an interview this year in January and was rejected AGAIN in March. The RVC obviously don't want me, so I moved on to my back up plan; studying abroad.

I applied to the University of Veterinary Medicine in Košice, Slovakia, shortly after receiving my second rejection and... I have a place! So I'll be starting there this September. The main reason I'm restarting this blog is to help out anyone who is thinking of studying there. The course seems to be getting more popular but there's still not much information out there for potential applicants so hopefully I'll be able to rectify that a bit once I get started on the course.

In other news, I've been working in the retail department of a local zoo since March last year, and also volunteering on the Africa department which has been a lot of fun! Especially getting to hang out with newborns like this little guy.

The giraffes are probably my favourite. I think it's because I look a little bit like one!

That's all for now. I'll try to keep the updates regular from now on! Hopefully I'll post some pictures of the things I've been knitting over the past year in the next few days. I have vague plans to sell some of them off to raise funds for my studies but we'll see how it goes.

Bye!

Lucy

Vetty work experience

I have been at work experience at a lovely mixed vet practice this week which has been a nice break from shop work (especially the week before Christmas!). I think it has been my favourite vet placement so far, I have seen so much! 

The practice sees lots of exotics so I had the chance to meet a chameleon and some bearded dragons, and watch surgery on a snake. I have always thought that exotics is something I’d really like to specialise in if I ever get to be a vet, but I hadn’t had much experience in that area before this week. Now I know for definite that it’s an area I find really interesting.

I didn’t manage to see as much equine as I was hoping (it was kind of the reason I wanted to go to a mixed practice!), just a few visits for vaccinations. I’m sad I can’t spend a bit more time there but they’re closing early for Christmas so I have only done the four days this week. If I get into vet school I’d love to go back there for EMS. 

Now it’s back to normal work for a couple of days and then CHRISTMAS, which means a day of overeating and sleeping lots. I’m going to my Nan’s house for Christmas day and she makes reeeally good mince pies. Yummeh!

Hope everyone has a great Christmas and New Year. I will try not to leave it weeks before updating again. 

Lucy

St Tiggywinkles Ambulance Driver

I had an interview the other day to be an 'ambulance driver' for St Tiggywinkles the wildlife hospital. It involved driving out to collect injured animals to take them to the hospital. I'll be getting training in handling all sorts of animals which sounds really exciting. They gave me a massive list of equipment I'll need to fit into my car as well. Deer crates and gauntlets and nets and all sorts.
I also had a quick tour of the hospital which was really interesting. I'd love to work somewhere like that but I imagine jobs are pretty scarce! I saw a badger coming round from surgery which I was pretty excited about. I've never seen a badger in real life before! I also had a look in the nursery where there are lots and lots of baby hedgehogs at the moment. There was also a species I hadn't encountered before called a Glis glis which is a type of dormouse. They were very cute!
I didn't realise before how busy the hospital was. Apparently in summer they can get over 1000 cases per day :| My work as an ambulance driver will be pretty sporadic because they will only call me out for cases in my area, but it should still be really interesting.

Other than that, I finished my kennel work experience last week and then on Thursday I started at a temporary office job. I'm covering for a PA and I pretty much have no idea what I'm doing. I mostly just have to answer the phone and emails and make calls. It's very very boring. Makes me work harder at all my animal-y stuff so I don't get stuck in an office job forever.

On the vet front, I finished a draft of my personal statement today. It's over the character limit so I'll have to cut it down but I don't know which bits to cut and which to leave! It also seems really really cliche... I just hope I can get it so it will do the job. Only a month and a half till the deadline now!

That's all for now,

Lucy

Long time no type

Again, it’s been a long time since my last update! Sorry about that.

I don’t think I updated about my stable work experience! I was there for a week and it was slightly disappointing, but at least I have some horse experience now. I spent most of my time forking straw and poo onto the muckheap. Fun! I also groomed a few horses, learned how to tack up and muck out. It was very very tiring although I did get used to it by the end of the week. I think I probably built up some muscles too! :D

Yesterday I started at a smallholding with free-range chickens, turkey, sheep, pigs, ducks and geese. There aren’t that many animals so not an awful lot to do but I learned a lot about the diseases affecting the animals there. One of my favourites was blackhead disease in turkeys . It’s caused by a protozoan (single-celled) parasite called Histomonas meleagridis which is transmitted by a nematode (multi-cellular, worm-like parasite) called Heterakis gallinarum. The parasitology geek in me found this super interesting. The disease affects the liver and caecum and turns the head of a turkey a blue-ish colour. The only drug against the parasite was withdrawn a few years ago so it mostly has to be managed by practising good hygiene.

I also met a hen and her foster babies – two ducklings she had been given to hatch. They were just a couple of days old and only just starting to eat food. They were soooo cute! They love their mum too, she hasn’t worked out they’re not chickens yet!

Got to ear-tag some lambs as well. They have two blood vessels running through their ears so you have to make sure the tag is in between those. It was quite a challenge because lamb ears are small and they don’t appreciate being pinned down and prodded so they were pretty wriggly. Luckily I did it ok and there was no blood explosion!

Ooh, I also have an interview to be a volunteer rescuer/ambulance driver for a wildlife rescue! It sounds really exciting so I hope I get it. I will have to do a few training days in rescuing wildlife which should be fun, and a chance to learn about wild animals which I’m not super knowledgeable about.

In other news, I started knitting a sky scarf! The idea is to knit two rows of the scarf each day using the weather to decide what colours to use. I have a feeling mine is going to have lots and lots of grey in it given the wonderful weather in the UK.

I’ll try not to leave my updates so long this time!

Bye for now!

Lucy

Holiday, graduation, work experience

It’s been a long time since I last updated. I’m sorry! I’ve been quite busy.

The week before last I was on holiday with my family. We went on a cruise around the Mediterranean which was an experience. Cruising is not my favourite way to travel. I liked the places we stopped at, but we didn’t spend long enough in each place. I like time to explore! Also, being on the cruise ship reminded me of the space ship in Wall-E. Lots of people lounging around and eating and buying souvenirs and eating some more and So cruising is not for me but at least I have tried it!

The ship left from Venice (which I unfortunately didn’t get to see much of) and stopped in in Dubrovnik, Athens, Izmir and Split before going all the way back to Venice. My favourite place was probably Turkey. We went on a trip to Pergamon which was really interesting. I also liked the Acropolis museum in Athens. It’s built over an excavation site and the floor is glass so you can look down into it which was quite cool.

(The theatre at Pergamon)

Then last week I had a little temporary job in Next for the sale. It was pretty soul destroying. I spent most of the time picking clothes up off the floor. For the sale I was put on childrens wear. I’m not a huge fan of children, especially when they scream. There was a lot of screaming going on during the day of the sale and it was sooo busy. I have decided I much prefer shovelling animal poo for free to a paid job in retail.

Ooh, and also on Friday I had my graduation! It was quite nice, but the ceremony bit was rather boring. Also the robes and hat were a pain to wear. My hat kept slipping down!

Today I started a work experience placement at a stables. I’ll write a more detailed account of it at the end of the week. For now I will just say that I’m very sore. I can hardly move my arms, lol. I think I need to build up some muscle!

Bye for now!

Lucy

PS. Congratulations to Kirsty who graduated today! :D

Back home!

I left Nottingham for what is probably the last time on Thursday. It's quite strange!
It's nice being back home, although I am noticing the distinct lack of space. Particularly bed space. I have gone from having a double bed all to myself to sharing a small single bed with two cats. My room at home is about half the size of my uni room too, and I seem to have accumulated quite a lot of stuff over the past two years... I think it may be time for a clear out.

I was supposed to be starting work experience at a kennels tomorrow but they have moved it to next week which is kind of annoying. It's probably better though. It means I have more time to unpack and also means I have this Thursday free, which is when Josie puddy tat is having a toof out :( :( I know it's fairly routine but my pets going under GA always makes me nervous, lol. Jo is also a very stressy cat. She will not appreciate spending a day at the vets. It's the first time she's been away from home for that long since her spay nearly 10 years ago :(

Aaanyway, that's about it for now. The next update will probably be a continued account of my Panama/Costa Rica trip. Or maybe about some of my other work experience, we'll see.

Bye for now!

Lucy

Panama 2009

So while attempting to write my personal statement earlier and including a short sentence about my blog and how I am using it to “document my experiences on work placements” I realised I actually haven’t. So I’m going to write a few entries on work experience placements that I have carried out in the past and interesting things that happened on them.

This entry will be about my trip to Panama and Costa Rica, although it wasn’t strictly work experience!

The trip was amazing and probably the best experience of my life. The little shack we stayed in for the first two weeks felt and still does feel like a second home. I hope I get to go back some day!

The first night of patrol very nearly killed me. 10km doesn’t sound like that much, but when you’re walking on uneven sand in wellies that are a couple of sizes too big in the pitch darkness it gets slightly harder. After the first night I worked out to wear trainers rather than wellies and luckily the moon decided to come out on the following nights so it wasn’t quite as dark.

My patrolling days were cut short when my feet swelled up to elephant size because of the mosquito bites and I found myself unable to fit into shoes. One of the guys lent me some size 11 wellies and they still didn’t fit. I don’t have a picture of my elephant feet but here is a picture of my legs before the bug bites got too bad. I hope you appreciate the agony I was in for two weeks.

On the days I wasn’t patrolling I got to look after the hatchery which was possibly the best bit :D One night I was the first to come across a fully hatched nest. The baby turtles make a lovely sound when they are crawling out of the sand. It’s sort of a soft scraping sound but when they’re all moving together it sounds like running water. I couldn’t work out where the sound was coming from at first and nearly stepped on a hatchling D: Luckily I spotted them in time. They were all picked up and carried over to the sea to be set free!

Since I went on the trip I have written an essay on the navigational capabilities of sea turtles. It’s really very clever, the way they find the sea. The hatchlings use a mixture of information about the inclination of the beach and the light hitting the water to find their way to the water. They can get confused on tourist beaches where there is lots of bright light inland which results in lots of stranded hatchlings :(

Other jobs during the volunteer project involved digging out the unhatched eggs and opening them up to find out why they hatched. Mouldy sea turtle eggs do not smell very nice! A few of them were killed off by fungal or bacterial infection, some were eaten by crabs or broken by weeds. Information like this is used to determine where the best site is for the hatchery.

We also did some reforestation a little further down the river, and also monitored manatees on the river, though the manatee conservation project wasn’t completely up and running while I was there. We only managed to see a couple of manatees. They are very elusive! (So elusive I don’t have a picture, lol)

During the time we weren’t working there was lots of fighting over the two hammocks, card games and swimming in the river. I proved once and for all that I can’t dive by performing a spectacular belly flop into the river with everyone watching. Ooh, there was also a nut roasting dance/song and a lesson in how to make some yummy chickeny wrap things that I can’t remember the name of...

I haven’t even mentioned the days we went into town (Changuinola) or to the cocoa plantation (where I met my buddy Nuni and gained the reputation of crazy cat lady), but this entry is getting a bit long so I will leave it at that. I may make another entry about the rest of the things I did and about the Costa Rica part of the trip in the future.

Here is the banner we made on the last day at San San. Mine is the purple turtle! :D One of my Panamanian friends posted an updated picture of it on facebook a little while ago. It’s still looking good! (Yes I know the Jamaican flag is completely wrong. Andrey was pretty drunk at the time we made it and couldn't tell us what the flag looked like)

Ciao for now!

Lucy