Happy animals, sad feet: good trade

[cjsmith]

I felt genuinely helpful and useful at the clinic today. That's always a plus. I'm getting better at checkins, stayed ahead on laundry and room/kennel cleaning, did a little of the phone work ("how is Fluffy doing after her surgery?"), even helped explain (simple) medications to one client.

Theme for the day: dogs who had eaten nonfood items and were getting their surgery incisions re-checked.

- If a dog with a big oozy belly incision is allergic to bandage adhesive, he'll basically need a handcrafted little gauze-and-cloth sweater. This is time-consuming. You might imagine how calming and relaxing the whole process is.

- On the other hand, if a dog with a big mostly-healed belly incision is a highly excitable supremely cheerful little Boston terrier, the biggest challenge will be getting all the staples out before his sheer joy overcomes him and he pees all over everything. We didn't win that race. At least we aimed him away from his own incision. Twice.

- If there's any creature who holds the world record for sheer irritability, it has got to be a constipated kitty. Amazing how calm and friendly they can suddenly be after the problem is cleared up!

- I got to force-feed a cat twice today. It's a messy process when a cat is unwilling, but fortunately this one was reasonably cooperative.

- Some dogs are terrified of having their nails trimmed. Some dogs pass gas when they're terrified. We were pretty sure we had one of those. We were wrong.

- On the other hand, I got to kiss a lot of cute soft chihuaua ears and foreheads during nail trims today. (It's better to be the one holding the dog than the one trimming the nails. Holder gets kissing privileges.)

- I switched Sundays with someone and am now caring for the boarded/hospitalized animals tomorrow. Cats require two "treatment" times, morning and evening; dogs require three. We currently have one cat and that's it. Sure, he needs to be force-fed, but still: SCORE. This means I can do the bio lab report group and the chem study group and still get the clinic stuff done.

So now my feet are sore and sad, but a couple dogs and a few kitties are a lot happier, and that seems to me like a pretty good trade.

Comments

[rampling.livejournal.com]

So now my feet are sore and sad, but a couple dogs and a few kitties are a lot happier, and that seems to me like a pretty good trade.

Ahhhh, that must be what it's like when you've found the right work to do. I envy you!!!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Well, at least this is what it's like when I've been doing one kind of work for a very short time. If ten years from now I decide I'm burnt out on it, just as I was with computers ten years after I started those, then I'm in some deep trouble.

[rampling.livejournal.com]

Well, this is what it's like for you when you don't even get to do the really interesting parts yet. It sounds like a fine auspicious start to me. :)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh, true. Although that's balanced by the concept that the cats and dogs are happier mainly because of what other people did. Eh well. Time to stop musing about What If I Hate It Someday and go do my chem already. :-)

[rampling.livejournal.com]

Is the chem interesting, or just another task to grind out?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Grind, definitely. Some of the labs are fun, but... blegh.

[ken_r]

I'm glad it's going so well. Sounds like it's pretty rewarding, at least so far.

BTW, are you doing something funny when posting these recent messages? I've gotten some notifications but my friends page hasn't shown any of your postings since about Thursday. I asked the support folks and they said you probably posted with a "date out of order" option enabled, which apparently prevents messages from showing up in 'friends' pages at all. So if I didn't have notifications on I wouldn't have seen any of this. :-(

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

You're absolutely right: date out of order. I had created an entry with some reminders for myself, and I'd postdated it with the notation that the date was out of order. However, LJ then wouldn't let me post anything current without selecting "date out of order" on all new posts as well. (The error message always helpfully told me to go check "date out of order" on the post from the future. Er, yes, well, already done....) I had no idea that this meant those entries wouldn't show up in friends pages.

Thank you!

I deleted my future entry. I'll figure out some other simple way of reminding myself what's coming up. :-)