Some random stories

With my trying to learn all these extra species as well as sitting in the clinic waiting for things to happen I’ve been reading a lot and listening trying to understand WHAT they are saying, while learning all the new medicines and products. Some examples in no particular order:

G’day: general welcome of the day, honestly they do say this.

Good on ya, eh?: A phrase to say when someone has done well, and that you may be somewhat surprised by said achievement. They say this to me a lot.

Oi!: Yell this at anyone or any animal when its not following the directions, or just trying to get its attention.

Hoggets: are young ewe lambs that are being kept for replacements. To me Farmer Hogget was a character in a children’s movie growing up.

A shout: when it is your birthday you are supposed to shout out, in other words let someone know. “Why did you bring in those cakes Garth?” “Oh it was my shout, today’s my birthday.”

A Cuppa: a hot drink of the tea or coffee variety. Which you are asked if you would like a cuppa about 12 times a day, and you have to think if there are facilities en route to use if you have that 8^th cup of tea or coffee.

‘wee this’ and ‘wee that’: wee, as in small, in injected into a lot of descriptions. It used to make me giggle but I’m getting over it. I actually used it the other day without thinking about it.

Incoherent mumbling: what I hear a lot and have a habit of nodding, or said, yup sure. Not really knowing what I’ve agreed to. I’m getting better everyday but after awhile my brain gets tired of converting and it turns to mumble again.

I have always respected those people that find themselves faced with working in a language that is not their native tongue but I have a new found respect for them. I know its only an accent but sometimes I swear what I’m speaking and what their speaking cannot be English. I’ve been asked if I’m from Canada about 10 times, England, South Africa once, Auckland once, and the newest has been Dutch. !? Where could they possibly get Dutch from me! I find myself over enunciating and speaking slowly trying to get the right words out so they understand, but I do throw a few Canadian flairs out there, I think thanks to the Guelph students that I worked with last summer and sometimes a Southern drawl comes out….no idea why. The general consensus is that I don’t seem to have all those hard R’s like other American’s they’ve heard.

As soon as I arrived the first week I was immediately recruited to play touch rugby with the Vetlife team. They explained the game to me on Wednesday, and I had to play on Thursday. I’m very glad I had previously been in shape because I would have just died with all the running. “oh its easy, its gotta be similar to American football right?” After hearing the explanation, it definitely is NOT like football. There is no ball to foot contact at all. It’s all tossing the ball behind you and running. The game is pretty much awesome though. The moves very fast and then it’s over in 30min. This last week we went for a beer prior to the game for my birthday and then played. There’s a whole lot more laughing when you’ve had a drink first, and a lot of giving up when the other team has a huge running lead. Eh, why waste the energy going after him. I’ll stay here.

I’ve also found the city pool and have been going with Amy, one of the British locums and soon Barbara, my flat owner wants to start going as well. New Zealanders in general are extremely sporty, and put most of the rest of us to shame. The cool thing is that no one looks at me like I’m crazy for triathlon training. They are usually keen to join in.

One day while holding the fort as the only one in the clinic, one of the technicians came in and said, “Right, off we go. There’s a dog stuck in a fence or something and it’s trying to bite the owners and kids. You are the only vet here, so I’ve got a muzzle and some Torb to knock it out.” No choice in the matter, so off I went to to my first small animal ambulatory emergency call imagining the worst. Vicious, snarling, wild dog caught in a fence, tearing its limb off, small children with bite wounds crying, adults with bite wounds cursing… On the scene, it was a 8mo old black lab with its lower forlimb stuck in a decorative loop in a park bench sitting on the porch. No bite wounds, no degloving, just a leg stuck and a very painful overgrown puppy with a jacket over its head. I thought to myself, well with some good special reasoning I should be able to maneuver this right? A few yelps and poor thing was free. I palpated for breaks and normal function (yes, I remembered what normal was in a dog all you small animal vets out there) and besides some inflammation and a small cut, he was fine. Then in my best farm animal practitioner voice, I suggested running cold water over it with the hose to decrease the swelling. Hydrotherapy! I really must get some practical experience in a small animal hospital. I think they make drugs to take the place of a cold water hose. We didn’t even charge it out, it being more of a public service than anything and no drugs used. Better than sitting around the clinic staring at the clock.

My next success was a gut surgery on a cow. They don’t really do that many surgeries here as the cows are small Jersey crosses or small Friesians. The older vets don’t really like doing surgery since they don’t get that many, and the younger ones don’t have a lot of experience with them. I, on the other hand, was jumping up and down excited to jump in and test my cutting skills in a new country! She’d had ‘something bad in abdomen’ for 4 days when I found myself out in the middle of the paddock, with a cow attached to the tractor via hip-lifts just on enough to keep her from running away and the head tied to the front of my truck. I pulled off the surgery (emptied her cecum for those interested), dumped some penicillin in her belly, drenched her with some water and electrolytes and prescribed some yogurt orally. I thought she was dead for sure because she’d been down and gased up for 5 days but the owner called and she’s eating and starting to milk again. That’s why I love cows, they are so humbling. You can predict their death and they’ll live to spite you, or you can predict their survival and they’ll die to spite you.

Ashburton: The town I live in is about 25,000 strong and in the center of the Canterbury plains on the South Island. Its FLAT. Lord of the Rings countryside it is not. BUT the mountain range is visible to the west on a good day, and driving along the back country roads if you are aiming in that direction you can see them looming with small snow caps even in the height of summer. The city has grown out of the rapid increase of farms in the area so most of the city is quite understanding of the countryside and its farming needs but also having a flavor or fashion, restaurants, and juvenile delinquents running amuck. This was traditionally a cropping area and sheep grazing but about 10years ago they perfected irrigation and water routes so all the sheep farms have been being converted to large dairies. It is indeed summer here but they’ve been having quite a cold, wet summer. I’m quite happy with the cold mornings and 75 degree afternoons myself. It is exciting for the dairymen because lots of grass growth, but unhappy tourists. I have a lot of plans for hiking and exploring but I can’t go too far until I have a vehicle. That should hopefully be remedied this next week or two.

Settling in...

I’ve survived three weeks now and heading into the 4^th. My first weekend, Chris, his wife Gilly and daughter Sally had me stay at their place for the weekend near Christchurch. He used to be the vet in Little River for 20 years, which is the main ‘town’ on a peninsula near Christchurch. In the states we have 4-H for kids to show animals they have raised, here they have the A&P shows, the Agricultural and Pastoral Association. Little River was having their show that weekend and since Chris and his family took me to join the local party. It was just like the community fairs at home, we couldn’t walk 20 yards without someone talking to us and telling stories about their kids, families, and farms. BUT we were in the middle of some beautiful mountains on a wet and foggy day. They kept apologizing for the weather, but misty mountains have always kept my attention. PLUS I had my ‘Dry as a Bone’ coat to keep me dry. Its what we would call an oil slicker. Mostly on western folks, riding horses on the range. But here, everyone wears them. Its normal. The one I was borrowing was about 6 sizes too big but hey.

The best part of the day was walking around with beers from the boot of the car, telling jokes and stories with the locals. We walked over to the sheep judging, 15 or so breeds of sheep, a white board with lots of lines and tally marks and some very serious and tense looking farmers. The results came in and there was cheering and congratulations and then it was off to the beer tent. We grabbed another beer, bought some fudge and some lollies (gummy candy) and went to watch the speed shearing contest. I can honestly say I didn’t think it was possible for an entire sheep to be

shorn in 33 seconds. The rest of the afternoon was drinking the Kiwi beer of choice, Speights, and watching the shearing and the Team Shearing. The team shearing involved 4 people. The first person had to chug a beer that someone else was pouring in their mouth while tapping his head and rubbing his tummy, when the beer was empty the beer pourer had to eat a raw potato. When the potato was gone, the next person had to turn the hand crank on the motor that ran the shears that the fourth person was using the shear the sheep. Lots and lots of laughs!! I was being propositioned all day to get on a team but I was able to stay out of it.

The next day Gilly and Sally took me to Christchurch and showed me the art center. Downtown whenever the weather is good there are booths of crafters and international foods galore. We walked around the shops and sampled some cuisine. The International Buskers Festival was on so every major corner and square had a different street act or musician showing their talents. The

weather was still a bit damp and threatening more so after a few coffees and our fill of art we went into a restaurant for a drink. I had an alcoholic gingerbeer, quite tastey. Gilly and Sally then presented me with a pounamu stone. Pounamu stone, also known as jade, but if found in New Zealand its pounamu. The indigenous people here, the Maori people, have stone and bone carvers that make pendants and art. You should not purchase yourself a pounamu stone, it brings very bad luck. Now when most people tell me this its an ok, whatever. But this was different; it was a very serious matter. You are GIVEN a pounamu stone, and usually the carver is asked to pick out the

piece for the wearer. If you find one, you do NOT wear it. Maybe I just like superstitious stories but for some reason it seemed real. They have different and special meanings depending on if you are of Maori heritage or not. During a walk through a Maori carvers shop, Gilly had decided to go back and ask the carver to pick out a stone for me. It is called roimata (tear drop) and means infinity and friendship. Gilly told him of my travels and my work as a vet and picked it out to protect me on my travels and to make good and lasting friendships. I felt very honored by the gift. I had only known these people a week but they were already becoming fast friends.

Cow and farm stuff is ahead if you feel the need to skip ahead.

Now comes the quick explanation of the dairy industry in New Zealand, of which I’m still learning a great deal every day so bear with me. Dairying here is seasonal meaning they generally calve once a year in the spring, August 1^st to the end of September. Which means everything else happens seasonally, calvings, fresh cow problems, mating(breeding), pregnancy testing, then dry off. The farms here are between 250-1500 cows, the average being about 800. So fairly large and pretty much all pasture fed, with little supplementation except for vitamins, minerals, and selenium that

goes through the water system or long acting boluses. Currently we’re in the preg testing phase. So every morning around 3:30-5:30am the scanners (ultrasounders) and armers (manual palpators) get up and head to the dairy sheds to preg test in the rotary parlors during milking. Now, for the non dairy farm oriented people, this means you have about 15sec to determine if a cow is pregnant or not. Thankfully we don’t fully arm every cow, (ouch!) the scanners have a long plastic piece that fits over the probe and that goes in the cow. The cows are generally 4 to 12 weeks pregnant so as long as they are over 6 weeks pregnant they are put into the early calvings group the rest are the late calvers or inductions. They usually AI breed for 4-8 weeks then stick the bulls in to get everything else. Other then that the sick cow work is pretty minimal, so we sit in the office for most of the late morning and early afternoon. About 2pm the vets that were up early scanning go home since they’ve put in the ‘full day’ and there’s nothing going on. I’ve jumped in to help with other calls to sheep and deer farms so that I can learn about them. I helped de-velvet some deer (basically knock them out and saw the horns off), and brucella test and palpate some rams for breeding soundess. I’ve been pretty happy to be part of the early leaving crowd since sitting around doing NOTHING kills me. It gives me a chance to explore the town and soak up some of the sun that wasn’t in Michigan for our summer or winter.

Ok kids we’re back to the non-cow stuff…

The next weekend found me itching to explore some more. I was looking into a bus to Christchurch since our vehicles are not to be used for personal use, but Jenny who I was staying with offered me her car!! YES! I drove up to Christchurch and booked a hostel for the night and found some free parking for the night. I was determined to find a pub with a session to join. I toured the art center again and watched some more buskers. And since I have a habit of finding them, I met some Irishmen at the hostel I was staying in and we made plans to get dinner and drinks post nap. They had gotten off an 8hr bus journey from Queenstown and were pretty bushed. Well they never woke up so I headed out for dinner on my own and found the pub, ordered the New Zealand variety of fish and chips, and washed it down with a Guinness and a cider for good measure. Alas, the sessions are on Tuesday nights. So until I find myself some wheels, I won’t be attending.

On Sunday, after finding an awesome Swiss café that made a mean omelet with the best cheese I’ve had in a long time, I was determined to find a beach and check out the ocean that’s surrounding my new country. Instead I ended up driving out to the peninsula I had been to the weekend before but from the other side. To quote CW McCall, “…It was hairpin county an' switchback city,” all the way around the peninsula. I stopped at one of the picturesque harbors and had a coffee and read my book for a bit enjoying the amazing sunshine, and getting burnt as a result. I headed further out onto the peninsula, and found a dirt road that headed over to the other side to Little River, the town I had been to the week before and knew how to get home from. Well the dirt road quickly turned into a dirt track with weeds growing in the middle and became narrow enough that the tiny car I was driving felt too big for the road. Up over the mountains I went, saying little prayers every couple of hundred meters at each bend in the road hoping that another car wasn’t coming the other direction because there was nowhere to go but down the cliff. At the top of the mountains I stopped off in an empty lot and took in the scenery, helped some horse trekkers shut a gate they opened, and watched some sheep zig-zag their way down a hill after I gave them a fright. I want to go back and hike those mountains and since Chris knows all the farms I’m sure I’ll find somewhere to stay.

Last week I found a flat to rent finally! Its dubbed a ‘sleep-out’, basically a large motel room on the back of the garage, with a bathroom and small kitchen. One of the dairy clients had just purchased the house, its 3K from the clinic, and the owners furnished it for me and everything! They are nicest people and keep finding excuses to feed me and offer me drinks. Ross milks cows and Barb works in town but is training for a bike race. So we’re already planning some bike rides together and she also wants to swim once it gets dark in the evenings. She used to do endurance horse riding so she’s in much better shape than she’s letting on I think. There’s a great big park in down with ponds and running trails that I’ve been using, the country roads are just flat and straight, may as well get some variety! They also have an extra bike they are letting me borrow. I laid low this weekend and got lost in a book, The Lovely Bones, which I managed to finish in 2 days. It was just one that sucks you in. It was good to just slum around and cook. I did however find the SHORE!! Finally! I live about 8Ks from a rocky beach on the east coast. I headed down on Saturday and Sunday, walked for about an hour and climbed up a cliff and ended up in a sheep paddock. My inner conservationist got the better of me though and I decided I was contributing to the erosion of the cliffs so I climbed back down and continued my walk on the beach. I love the ocean, something about the salty air and the crashing waves. The sound of it is thrilling and mysterious. Sometimes I think I must have been a sailor or fisherman in another life. I haven’t had much opportunity to be ON the ocean for very long but my brief moments were amazing, I’ll have to think of someway a vet can be useful on a boat. Hmm…dolphins, whales? Sea lion females are called cows aren’t they? Could be my next adventure!

So long for now!

A new adventure!

Its official, I’m no good at keep my feet planted so as most of you know I’m off on a new adventure in a new country. Instead of a few weeks vacation this time, I’ve moved to the south island of New Zealand for an undetermined amount of time.

So why New Zealand people keep asking me? Well since I’ve decided that this travel habit of mine needs to be continually funded as well as keep me finding new places to explore and have adventures, I had better combine the vet work with travel. Since I started out with dairy cows and its what I know, New Zealand seemed like a pretty good first stop on my adventures abroad. They have the added bonus of having a completely different dairy system than the US and many interesting places to see.

On January 16^th I left Detroit with a suitcase, a backpack, my fiddle and a small computer. I had at the last minute found people or trash cans to take all the stuff that I had accumulated over the last 10 years. It was a lot more work than I imagined. I flew to California, then boarded the 14 hour flight to Sydney. Uneventful, thank goodness and no accidental lay-overs in San Francisco. I finally landed in Christchurch, NZ on Monday, having completely lost a day when crossing the International Date Line. One of the vets, Chris, picked me up from the airport and I stayed at his home the first night. The next day I headed to Ashburton with him to start my new job with Vetlife. Vetlife, is a company that runs 14 clinics on the south island, and they are fitting me into their largest dairy clinic in Ashburton.

Jet lag never really hit me so why not start working right away! The first week was a bit of a blur. They had me set up to stay with one of the office staff until I found a flat to rent . I was also given a truck to drive…on the other side of the road!! That was a little nerve racking the first time. But all was well, and after a few days it started to feel normal instead of weird.

The clinic in Ashburton has about 10 vets and about 10 more vet nurses, technicians, and drug reps that sell products and consult for the farms. There is an endless supply of people to ask questions to, as long as I can think of all the questions. My first work to do was going with the Equine and small ruminant vet to castrate 10 llamas. 4 years of vet school and almost 3 in practice, and I had happily avoided doing any work on llamas or alpacas. Until that day. It was not that bad at all, apart from the vet being pretty darn unorganized and me trying to keep the owners and helpers happy, it was a beautiful outside, I figured out that they really aren’t that terrible of animals if you know how to handle them and most importantly they offered us lunch after the work. SCORE! I can now say that I’ve eaten alpaca sandwiches.

The rest of the week I joined some of the other vets on calls, just to get my feet wet and learn how their systems are different than ours. Chris does a lot of the sheep and deer work in the clinic so I picked his brain about those species trying to learn everything I can. That was another goal, I needed to start working on other species besides cows. I might even be venturing into the small animal arena. Don’t laugh! I won’t just be offering to give them a new dog or cat in lieu of fixing the broken one!

Keep looking for more! I’ll try to post new happenings and adventures!