Now, if you look at their schedule, you will see that they're actually having shows in Kansas City right now, but a few selected individuals paid the University of Missouri Vet School a visit today!
We had 2 performing horses and 2 performing dogs here at the hospital today. I got to work with Arthos, a Fresian Stallion. I wasn't able to get any pictures (as I didn't know that they were coming), but he kinda looked like this:
He was GORGEOUS! And very well behaved (at least for a stallion). It was pretty neat, we did a lot of tests on him (turns out he has a condition that prevents him from sweating, so his body temperature increases a lot when it's hot out or he exercises a lot). But we had to finish early because he had to be back in KC by tonight to perform! Apparantly he does the "liberty" routine, which basically means he doesn't have anyone riding him, and does all sorts of tricks with 3 other horses like waltzing, and walking on their back legs, weaving in and out with eachother, etc.
Since he practices in the air conditioning, and perfoms in the air conditioning, he can still perform his show with his condition. They just need to be careful where they keep him when they're not performing, and make sure he doesn't overheat from that or too much practice. They said that the animals all still travel by train, but the cars they travel in are specially made for each species, and the horses have it made...it's also air conditioned in there too! What a life!
I also got to speak with the traveling vet who came with them. She is a 2004 graduate of Missouri!! How cool would that job be?!?!? She likes it a lot, but like me, started out as a small animal vet wannabe, so she had to learn a lot about some new species!! (they have elephants, llamas, tigers, dogs, horses, goats, etc, etc). I guess you really never know where life will take you!
So it was a pretty neat day. The other horse was in because he was lame (limping), so the surgery service saw him. They also had 2 dogs, one was seeing our Orthopedic surgeons (the dog does handsprings in the show...geee, I wonder what could be wrong!!), and one has cataracts, so they saw our ophthalmology service. The cataract dog is having surgery tomorrow and will hopefully be able to see again! (The surgery for dogs is very similar to what we do in humans).
There's been some talk of some free tickets to see the show when they come back to St. Louis in November...we'll have to wait and see!! =)
0 comments:
Post a Comment