Life at a vet hospital

I have one of the coolest jobs in existence: I work in client intake at a vet hospital. Seriously, my life at work is puppies and kitties ALL DAY. I say "hospital", because it's not a standard day clinic. We don't spay and neuter, we don't do shots, we don't give Fluffy his annual check up. We're pretty big, there's an opthomology dept, surgical, internal med, neurology, cardiology, and imaging (yes, we do CATscans! yes, I make endless jokes!). We are primarily an emergency room and intensive care unit. Admittedly, we see the sickest of the sick animals. On an average day, we see two to three animals "go to a better place". I print euthanasia forms on a daily basis, and have perfected the shoulder pat/tissue pass-off routine. I can recognize a DOA (which yes, we do get), and the close to dead conditions. So yea, my job could be pretty depressing. A lot of the girls have had issues with it. Working ER, we see victims of vehicles and of neglect, I've had blood on me, I've gently taken a dead dog out of a child's arms. This job could royaly suck...

But it doesn't, because I focus instead on the awesome. We'll start on the list of awesome with intake. I check patients in all day, so we'll start with the hilarity of that. For all the uncreative dolts in the world (our patient database has almost 200 Stella's, not to mention Brody, Marley, Gus, Spike, etc), I see some ridiculous pet names. And yes, this is coming from a woman who named her cat Smoosh. One of my favourite kitties is Socrates, a tabby who comes in weekly for chemotherapy. Optimus Prime had a broken foot last week (he was a persian, which made the name even more fantastic). There was a cat actually named Fluffhead in last week for dialysis. We have a King Charles Cavelier who's chart lists his full name as "Woody (the wonder dog)". I saw a pekinese a little while back named Lil Fart, and a cat named Booger. If you don't smile carrying a handful of charts with these names, something is wrong with you.

For all the death, we do a hell of a lot of saving, and of course the minor stuff, like mending wounds and fixing broken legs. Nothing is more adorable than watching a basset hound negotiate a corner with a cast on his front paw. There was a very irritated Devon Rex in last week who had bronchitis, so I got to scratch the top of her head for the 24 hours she was in an oxo-tank in our facility. She went home purring, but not before giving me a thorough lovin'. I have a feeling I will be blogging quite frequently of the random happy days for these fuzzy patients, because seeing them pull through makes every moment worthwhile.

And who does the saving? An amazing set of doctors. I've been to crappy vets before, they hardly listen to the owners, and they barely glance at your animal before racking up an insane amount of charges. You know, the ones who just seem to be in it for the money. Those aren't our doctors. Our doctors genuinely love animals, same with the techs in back. I handed a chart to an ER doc the other day, as she sat on the floor checking out a different patient (a very gentle little golden retreiver named Bobo). She leaned back to check the notes on the chart, one hand tenderly scratching the awaiting forhead of her little friend. The picture was precious. I also watched a technician casually walking about the patient banks with a cornish rex in her arms, giving her a bear hug (apparently he was quite the codependent little thing). I watched a doctor vehemently demand an owner relinquish a kitten they wanted to euthanize, and she is now the proud owner of a "neurologically damaged" little furball named Bonkers. He randomly jumps into walls and has no equilibrium, so will ocassionally tip sideways. Two weeks ago we had two little 3 month old pug puppies that were so damn cute I about lost my mind every time I walked by their cages (the naughty little things had eaten raisins, so we had to flush their systems).

My job is a happy place, most of the time, and I look forward to sharing tales of fuzzy awesome with you, my readers. I have linked each animal on this blog entry to a picture of their breed, because I know not all of you know what these are. But if you click, you can see the "patients" I get to work with every day, and you can see why I smile so much!!