Today was my second time volunteering at the Mercer clinic for the homeless in Sacramento. It was a bit rough at first, because I didn't go with Krissy this time and had to step out of my comfort zone even more than usual. It seems like I get stretched on a daily basis up here in Davis.
I stole these photos from Facebook, taken at last month's clinic. I am not in any of them because I was in a room most of the day with patients, but I found photos of the two vet students that I worked with today. Liz is a second year, and is thinking about specializing in pathology next year. Michael is a first year, and I actually met him for the first time at the speed dating event. It was a fun event put on by the Pre Vet Students Supporting Diversity club, and hosted by the veterinary school (my first time inside a vet school lecture hall, so fun!) a couple weeks ago where vet students and undergrad students came together to pair up, mentor and mentee. Michael is probably going to go small animal, but he's keeping his options open. That's the great part about veterinary school, you get some time to figure out what you would really like to do before you need to specialize. Even after vet school, there's the option of residency... anyway, back to Mercer.
We saw two clients today, the first had two kitties and the second had three dogs. The cats were neat, one of them was obese, scored an 8 for body condition. The other had had stomatitis and to combat it, one of the vets had to pull all of her teeth except her canines. My little sister Brittany's cat Hairy had stomatitis when he was younger, but almost all of his teeth fell out on his own. Poor Hairy.
The dogs were another story. One was so aggressive, we couldn't even get near her. We tried; the owner put a muzzle on her, but when we tried to touch her, she became extremely violent. We just gave the flea meds to the owner to administer herself. The other large dog was nice at first, then realized that we were trying to examine him and started biting. We worked with him for a while, but were never able to even get his TPR (temperature, pressure, respiration). Same deal with him, gave the owner the meds. The final pup was tiny, and extremely sweet. I snuggled with him a lot.
There were a ton of puppies and kittens today, an unusual amount according to the vet students and vet aids who have been doing Mercer for a long time. It's strange, too, because spring time is usually when there's a surplus of babies, not November. The general theory was that the clinic's generosity might be being abused. The methods they were using to check to see if the clients were truly homeless are no longer available, so they just take everyone now. They're going to be working to improve the system, it's constantly changing so we constantly have to adapt.
A fun perk of helping out with Mercer is the food. It's not nearly as good as the Solano feral cat clinic (that one is the bomb diggity, the best by far), or even the Sac feral cat clinic (which is good), but I will always have fond memories of those delicious little mini cinnamon rolls. :)
Liz
Michael
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