Day 5

May 28, 2010

Today, I went on house-calls with Dr. Dan! We visited a nursing home and a rehabilitation center. At the rehab center, we did annual check ups on a conure and a cockatoo. Dr. Dan taught me how to do an entire physical exam, blood draw, and fecal without the help of an assistant. By the end of it, I could do everything one-handed, while restraining the bird with my left hand. Pretty cool, I thought, since Dr. Dan started out as a traveling veterinarian with no assistant, and began his practice solely out of his van! I was thoroughly impressed, and happy to learn some valuable techniques! At the nursing home, we encountered a cage full of canaries, a grassland tortoise, and a parrot. The canaries were fairly easy to handle. We caught them in a fishnet and carefully examined each one for mites. They have been medicated for a mite infestation, and now seem to be mite-free! We trimmed each toenail, and examined their feet and beaks, and freed them into the other side of their divided cage.

Next came the tortoise. This was a serious case because the lady in charge of all the animals had taken the advice of the pet shop owner, and was feeding and housing her tortoise all wrong! A grassland tortoise needs grass to eat, grass or cotton bedding, and a UV/ heat lamp. This tortoise had fruit to eat, cedar shavings for bedding, and only a heat lamp for lighting. It was a quarter of the size it should be at four years old, and its shell was flexible and concave in shape! Luckily, all of these things can be remedied and partially corrected with the correct husbandry practices. The lady was devastated that she had caused her tortoise to be in such poor shape. We informed her that not every pet shop keeper, or Petco/PetSmart employee, knows the correct information about their animals, and we gave her some good resources to study up about her animals. Her parrot was in pretty good shape, aside from a few attitude problems, but Dr. Dan had her sitting on his hand in a few short moments. He’s kind-of the bird whisperer! We drew blood and clipped her nails, gave her a bath, weighed her, and trimmed her wings. Dr. Dan restrained her while I did all the dirty work! It was nice to start practicing the things they have been teaching me all week!

When we returned to the clinic, it was already fairly late in the day, so I did the fawn’s pm treatments before heading home.