Something You Don't Know...

I have said many a time that I never would want to practice as a veterinarian in a small animal practice because, hey, how interesting could routine vaccines and spay/neuter surgeries be for the rest of my life? Don't get me wrong, I still want to do large animal orthopedics, but the past couple of weeks have given me new insight to the wiles of the smalll animal world.

Anyone who was around me when I had the epiphany to become a veterinarian can recall that my inspiration came from the Discovery Channel show "Dirty Jobs". The host was visiting a dairy farm and in one scene, he was helping a cow give birth. That was such a cool thing! But the scene that hooked me for life was one where the host had his entire arm up a cows rear end preparing to artificially inseminate her. I was like,"Yes! I have to do that!" So, here I am on my way to being able to...

Oddly enough, a couple of weeks ago, I got to participate in this type of procedure, but on a much smaller and more "ghetto" scale. Dr. Sharp's patient, Tuppence, is a brown tick Dachshund whose "boyfriend's" legs were too short to....gain access in order to reproduce. So they came in for artificial insemination! I had thoughts of fancy machinery and chemical reactions, but when it came down to it, all we needed was strong hands and a container to collect the semen... Nasssst! Then, it was just a matter of getting the sperm into the right place to find an egg:

I guess that this is what you call doing it doggie style...

But the craziest thing ever happened the other day. One of the doctors came back and called me over to the treatment table immediately. I hustled over and to my surprise, the doctor had a ferret in his hands. He started to rhythmically squeeze the ferret's chest and said to me, "Start doing some mouth-to-nose breathing on this guy". Well, all I could do was gawk. "You mean just put his nose in my mouth and start to breathe for him?" I said. You guessed it: we were doing ferret CPR! If anyone has ever been around a ferret, you'll know that they smell like dirty sweaty underwear filled with feta cheese. Let me be the first to tell you that they taste a thousand times worse.


As I was breathing for the poor little dead ferret, I saw one of the technicians holding back what I imagine to be hysterical laughter. Unfortunately, we didn't save the ferret, which was disappointing, given the nastiness of the situation. But I came away with a greater appreciation for how much I really love veterinary medicine, but most of all, an answer to a commonly un-answerable question:

Should ANYONE ever say to me, "Tell me something I don't know" then I can swiftly reply,"I have open-mouth kissed a ferret."