PIGS... i love pigs!!!

i am so very happy to be in iowa!!!

today was cold. today was wet. today there were 40 mph winds and sleet hitting my face while i stood outside learning how to post a pig. today i did what i love. today i was filled with the enthusiasm of a 5 year old in a candy store. today was miserable. and yet, today was everything i could have dreamed of, and more!

kate and i rode to school together today - i'm certainly glad that we did bc iowa state's vet school campus is confusing. not to mention, it's currently under construction and therefore even more complicated than need be.

we had a BRIEF orientation and signed away our lives to voluntarily swab our nostrils before and after every farm visit so one of the researchers here can track whether or not humans are able to carry anything from the farm in their nostrils... without much further knowledge, i can't explain it any better.

next, we packed up and headed to the farm. upon arrival, each student was assigned a barn and we were to critically evaluate and record our findings. after our walk-throughs of the barns we met up with the group again. because not everyone had finished, a few of us were assigned a second barn. after finishing both of my barns it was time to learn how to post a pig. (posting a pig, by the way, means essentially cutting open a freshly dead pig to inspect it's organs and body systems to analyze a potential cause of disease - it's similar to an autopsy on a human, but done on the farm). after learning how to collect samples properly, the wind picked up to insane speeds and began throwing the rain and sleet in our faces. we moved indoors to snare and bleed pigs. (bleeding a pig, by the way, just means collecting blood from it). we each had to bleed 10 pigs and snare 10 pigs for one of our rotation-mates. i excelled. i love bleeding pigs. when i worked in the research lab, we used to collect hundreds samples from pigs. i can bleed pigs confidently, and i did. because our group finished first, we were given the task of teaching a shadowing 2nd year vet student how to bleed pigs. we did this quickly, and she was an expert bleeder in no time at all! after that, the weather began to clear up (by clear up i mean the sleet had stopped and the wind was probably down to 30mph). we were given the option of posting one pig per student. i jumped at the chance, and kate and i were the first students to post our pigs.

my pig died of congestive heart failure. the inside of the body was a fantastic sight. kate's pig likely died of a chronic infectious disease. that's all i'll say, without too many details. i will also refrain from posting any pictures from such events, though it's by far the coolest thing i have done since i started clinics.

tomorrow, we teach. we will have a group of 22 2nd and 3rd year vet students, and we will teach them how to post pigs (in small groups), snare and bleed pigs. i can't wait! two of my favorite things combined into one day... teaching and pigs. i couldn't ask for a better birthday present.