Back again..

I know. I keep saying I will post more, but it never happens. But the last weeks were just so stressful. Haha. I'm happy to be on break and once I'm back in the US, I will try to post more. If interesting things happen, that is.. Let's hope so!

I got to Germany last Thursday. School got out Tuesday and I boarded my plane Wednesday afternoon. I still haven't gotten over the jet lag. I don't know why it's taking me so long. It's been almost a week now. Maybe because I always have something to do here, too, and never really rest like I need to. But it's been fun here so far! I got to see a good friend, go horseback riding whenever I want (I absolutely love that horse. He's wonderful out on the trails. It's beautiful here and I really missed the fields and woods!), get to read..

I started a practicum with our veterinarian here on Monday. He works with both small and large animal, which is exactly what I want to do - only that I want to do mainly large and a little bit of small on the side. I don't really get to do much but watch, but I don't really mind. On Monday, I really just watched. There were a lot of animals coming in, much different than the vet school patients, where most of them stay there and don't leave right after the examination. There were dogs, cats, rabbits, canaries, doves... I also got to see my first dog euthanasia. I didn't get very upset like some other people have said, but it's definitely a bit unsettling. I don't think the dog was feeling very well anymore, so it might have been a good thing. He's in a better place now if such exists. Yesterday, I helped with cleaning a bit, and greeting and calling in clients. It's really not much, but I want to show that I am motivated and willing to help when needed. Today we only has a few appointments. The regular vet wasn't here and there was someone else covering for him. When we were done at the office, we went to a barn to look at a sick foal. I helped with the treatment a little bit and then we sat there, trying to keep it warm. I hope it gets better soon! It looked better than before apparently though, so that's good. Tomorrow is a holiday, and then I'm back in on Friday. I want to ask if they can show me how to properly restrain the different kinds of animals. I doubt they'll let me do it, but an explanation would still be awesome. It's the first time I'm working with small animals with a vet.

My advisor said I might be able to get one or two hours of credit for the practicum. That'd be awesome. I definitely need some good grades. Haha :P He also said if I help him with some research in the fall, we'd combine those hours with the ones where I helped him last semester and I'd get credit for that, too. I'm so happy I changed advisors from my old one to him. He's the one I had for summer orientation. I wouldn't say my old one was bad, but he wasn't very helpful either. But this one? He's awesome! He alway tries to help everyone succeed and tries to find great opportunities, like this one. I really want to do research, so that'd be a great start!

We found a house and had inspections for it the day before I left the US. I should be moving in around June 20th. I'm super excited to be living together with my wonderful boyfriend again! How I miss seeing him all the time. I know he'll still be gone for work a lot, but at least I get to see him at night or even just sleep next to him. Much better than not seeing him for weeks at a time. :)

I so so so love that I get to ride however much I want when I'm in Germany. It's my friend's horse that I broke in before I moved to the US. He's gotten to be a wonderful trail horse. I don't have to worry at all about going out by myself. I think he loves to get out, too. He doesn't get ridden too much anymore and while he loves to eat out on the pasture (and during trail rides which caused us to almost fall down a hill...), I think he really enjoys the rides. We have really relaxed rides, but always gallop a little bit. He puts his ears forward and just takes of at high speed. He really looks like he loves it and I do, too! I really miss riding and this is the only way to really be able to relax. Especially when it's along beautiful fields and through the pretty woods here..

Well, I'm tired. More later (yea, right.. haha). I still want to read a bit and then I'm going to sleep. It's midnight here. I borrowed a book about BSE and one about Mastitis from the vet and I want to be done by Friday. I know I won't get through the whole books, but at least read a big part of them.

Hello there..

I really need to get better at posting here. What happened? hahaha

Yesterday was Open House at the vet school here. So many things to see! I had a guide dog in training with me, which was awesome! She's my favorite and I loved spending the whole day with her. She was probably petted by at least 50 children and she loved the attention. And I enjoyed talking to people about The Guide Dog Foundation. :)

We got to see a zebra, a camel, falcons and lots of other animals. I took a tour of the teaching hospital and watched a herding demo. I also bought a shirt for my bf. I hope he likes it. I'll see him later today, so we'll see.

I've been shadowing at the large animal teaching hospital and it's been great! I am with the third vet now, but sadly her rotation ends tomorrow. I learned a lot of things with her, but I am also excited to be back with my first vet here. She is awesome, too. She wrote me a recommendation letter for the vet school guarantee program and I am very thankful for that! I should hear soon if I will have an interview for this program. I really hope so, because I think it is a wonderful program!

I've been doing some research on the internet about different topics related to food animals and right now I am focusing on holistic medicine. I like the idea of alternative medicine used on food animals instead of using certain types of medicine that can leave residue in the meat, milk, etc.

I am very excited about getting new books also. I now have the Veterinary Clinical Advisor: The Horse and I also bought Saunder's Veterinary Anatomy Coloring Book. I learn very well by drawing the different structures and am hoping that this book will help. There are more than 300 drawings about horses, cows, chickens, dogs and cats. I love it. I absolutely love making my collection of books bigger!

It looks like I will be officer for the Dairy Science Club next semester. I am trying to come up with different activities to do for the club and hope the members will like them. I am also wanting to talk to the new class over the summer when they have their orientation sessions. I was thinking about bringing in a vet to talk to us about medical care regarding dairy cows, a farm manager, doing a hands-on lab with calves, etc. I hope these things will all work out!

I'm also hoping to become an officer for the Horsemen's Association. Elections are soon and I would love to be on the officer team for the upcoming year!

I am getting my first guide dog puppy this summer! Hopefully it'll be a Poodle or German Shepherd, but any puppy will be welcomed with lots of love!

I'm taking summer classes, am looking for a vet/animal related job and am hoping to do research at the vet school. This will be a busy summer!

We are currently looking at houses to buy. Hopefully I will be here for at least seven more years and it's be a waste of money to rent this entire time. We found a house today that is wonderful. The location isn't the best (it's a bit far from campus), but it's not too bad. Also, the vet school is moving to a different place, which will be much closer to that house then. If we can bring the price down a bit, we are taking it! It's beautiful and has a backyard for my boyfriend's work and the new dog. I really want to get it soon, so I can have it ready when I get back from Germany this summer and start summer classes.

I am going to Germany this summer to visit family and work with a veterinarian over there. I am very excited to do so and hope to learn many new things with him!

I think this is enough updating for now and I will try to post more in the near future. It's been exciting in the last few weeks and there are more great things to come!

This is the beautiful girl I had with me for the open house! I've had her for a whole weekend before and fell in love with her.

Reproduction

I'm learning about the reproductive system in farm animals right now. All about the sex organs, the hormones, etc. I've been drawing the reproductive system of the male pig, because it's much easier to remember what the different parts do when I know where in the body they are. The cow is next.

I really like this stuff, but I just can't focus right now. I'm taking a class just about repro next semester, so it'd be really helpful to already know some stuff about it, but today is just awful. Hopefully tomorrow will be better..

Vet School Guarantee Program

I applied to a guarantee program for the UGA Vet School and will hopefully find out on Monday (2 days!!) if I get an interview for it. If I get accepted in June, I would already know that I will be going to vet school in three years!

I'm getting a bit nervous..

If you are in high school and going to attend UGA and want to be a vet, make sure you apply to this program in your freshman year! If you are interested in food animal medicine, that is..

I get to play with foals and yearlings soon today and then will be having a guide dog puppy for the rest of the day. I'm scheduled to finally get my own in June!

I'm back!

I'm sorry I have been so terribly quiet! But I have been so busy and if I did have time, I tried spending it with my boyfriend or a book. I will try to come on later tonight and talk a little bit about what I have been doing. I also want to post a few times this week to talk about certain things in the last few months.

October is here..

..which means half the semester is already over. Including this terrible English class I'm sitting in. It's so pointless. We read useless poems and if you dint write about them exactly in her point of view, then you're getting a failing grade. Which I did. I'm really just hoping for a passing grade in this class. I'd hate to have to take this again. A multicultural English c,ass taught by a lady whose specialty is southern white women. Seriously?! Ughhhh..

Tomorrow is my second calculus test. I did so much better on my last one than I expected, but it was so close to an A that it also made me kinda mad. I am not very sure about to stuff we need to know for tomorrow but with a little more studying I think I'll be able to do it. Somehow the pressure of taking it helps me think and remember different problems we've done in class. So I'm hoping for that again this time and that I can pull my grade up to an A. I got a 100 on my last quiz! :)

My next chem test is on Thursday. I am terrified of this one. I am not sure about anything that will be covered in this one.. Hopefully the next few days will clear things up. I really don't want to ruin my grade. If I keep it up like it is now I will have an A. Not a low A that would give me an A-, no, a solid A. Which would Give me UG GPA a great foundation. Besides, you know, that English class.. Ughh......

We got to play with foals last Thursday in my animal science class. The foal my group had, only had one eye, but it couldn't be any more social. We expected it to be a little shy, but now, it was all over us. Especially when I kneeled down in its stall in the end to take pictures. Which didn't really happen because having her nose right in front of the camera, touching it, doesn't make for good pictures. Hahaha.

Saturday was amazing! I've been thinking about starting cross country for a while,but after that horse club trip, hahaha, I am certain! We got to meet Lucinda Green! One of the best cross country riders in Britain! She's been in the Olympics I think three times, won the Badminton Horse Trials six times, the Tony Collins Trophy seven times and and and... She's amazing and we got to watch one of her clinics for 8 hours! It started out with green horses who have barely ever jumped and went to intermediate horses and grand Leix jumpers. It was pretty awesome! She's an amazing trainer!

This week is gonna be pretty stressful, but hopefully I can see my wonderful bf tomorrow! I finally got a parking pass, so we don't have to struggle about finding a parking spot anymore, but can park right next to my dorm. Bliss. Hahaha. But after Thursday, I will relax a bit. I have a lot of studying to do cause I was really lazy this weekend, but it'll be relaxed studying. Lol.

I also want to write letters to my family in Germany next weekend. And I got a great idea for a present for my bf for either christmas or when he wants to go back to Mexico. I want to get started with that soon also.

Hehehe.. Hey..

Sorry, I've been so quiet lately. I just was so very busy with school and work, that in my free time, I didn't feel like spending even more time on the computer than I absolutely had to for my classes... But I have so much to tell!

I wanna start with my animal practicum class.. So many things I got to do! Last time I told you I would work with pigs next, and I did. We learned about reading their ear notches, got to put in ear tags and how to move them in the best way possible. And we got to cuddle with the new piglets! Oh my! So adorable! The next week, we went to the dairy farm for the first time. I love them. I enjoy them much more than beef cattle. Those are unpredictable as compared to dairy cattle, who are so used to people being around them all the time. They are much calmer during their handling. They sent us in pairs into the pen with a ton of dairy cows, but it was no problem at all. We found our assigned cow and herded her into a nearby pen, where we had to feather and palpate her. I love them, but sticking my whole arm into a cows butt is definitely not one of my favorite past times.. I came back to the farm pretty soon after for an independent milking lab. I helped milking about seventy cows and that was pretty cool. I actually got some milk with my hands. Hhaha I've always heard that it was pretty hard.

Horses were on the schedule for the next two weeks. I loved it. Although the first lab seemed pretty pointless to me. I know there are people in my class that have never touched a horse ( SAD I know!), but all I did there that was new to me is use a measuring tape to figure out a horses weight and listen to the heart and intestines. Pretty cool, but still. It would have been day without class if not for that. One thinpretty barn manager is pretty good at though: making horses sound like the most unpredictable and dangerous animals, and putting on a halter like rocket science. Lol.. The next week was pretty cool though. We learned how to vaccinate horses and promptly did it on the UGA Equestrian team horses. Awesome!

This week we worked with the beef cattle again. But this time with the young ones. They were so cute. We freeze branded them and put in ear tattoos. The one I did the tattoo for had a mark on its head that looked like a cow. Hahaha pictures later. It was an interesting lab. I may end up showing that cake at out livestock show in three weeks. It's hard with my work schedule, but I'm trying really hard to work something out for the practices. I've never done a livestock show and I really wanna try. Next week we have weanling handling with horses! :D

The Guide Dog Foundation has finally called and e-mailed me and I have a puppy workshop in three weeks. If everything goes right, I will be getting a puppy next summer to take care of for a year. :)

Work is really stressing me out, but it's nice to make some extra money. It helps a lot. I just don't appreciate being stuck in the dish room all the time when other people never have to do it. It's supposed to be a rotating schedule. Pshh, whatever!

Classes have been going pretty great! My grades are much better yet than expected. Two As on calc quizzes and an 89 on the test. I studied really hard for it and just wanted to pass, so that was a pleasant surprise. My chem quizzes are so so with some 100s in between, but I get perfect scores on all my homeworks, so that makes up for it. I also got a 96 on the test! Bam! Pretty good average in that class so far. My animal classes are good and great hahaha with the hater class having the higher grade.. Lol English sucks though. I hate that class. So much. If you don't write exactly about her opinion, then you're out. Which it seems like I am. Ughh. I have to write a completely new paper because apparently my last one sucked..

It's going wonderful with Juan. We had some ups and downs, but it's really getting much better. He's hopefully getting his car (fixed this time! Gasp!) back today which means I will get to spend the weekend with him at a horse show in Conyers! :) He's making better money now and selling more and more grooming and tack boxes. So next time the car breaks or something like that happens, it hopefully won't be as stressful as this time. And I get to see him more than just once every few weeks. That's been really hard. I'm so stresses out and just a few minutes to cuddle every week will make it so much easier to handle :)

I've been riding. It's so hard to get back into it. Especially on that huge draft horse I am riding. Lol he can be a bit stubborn and it's hard to get him to do something if he doesn't want to because he is so much stronger than I am. But it feels awesome to sit on a horse again. :)

Ps: he's thinking about getting an engagement ring.. ;)