the DVM life - Doctor of Veterinary Medicine

Go ahead, ask me. Where has my hand been today?

Up a cow's pooper. Yes, my friends, it is something I believe all veterinary students have to go through. Putting one's arm up the nether regions of a cow. At least they give you a huge up-to-your-armpits glove.

But wait, there's more! I also put my fingers up a cow's nose. And my both my hands were in its mouth. No gloves there. Just finger on mucous action. Fantastic.

As you may have guessed, today was bovine lab day. Hopefully the last time I'll have to work with cows for a long, long while. I'm small animals. That's where all of my training has been, that's what I'm probably going to end up doing. Perhaps exotics (I do love rabbits) and small ruminants. But that's it. No cows or horses for me.

So at this session we learned how to: pick up a cow's foot, examine a cervix via the rectum, put on a halter, use a nose ring thing, give a cow a pill, examine the mouth, and control a cow via the pressure point on the nose.

While it was a nice experience to have in my inventory I'm not looking to repeat it.

For those of you who want the details, here we go! For those of you who are grossed out by orifices, you should probably stop reading.

I started with the nose. The deal is you stick your index finger and thumb up the cow's nose holes. This is a natural pressure point and lets you control the head of the cow. It was warm and squishy and left lots of cow snotts all over my hand.

Then we used a nose ring sort of tool to do the same thing. After that we practiced untangling a halter and getting it on correctly. Next we had to stick our fists -- yes our entire fist - inside the cow's mouth and grab the tongue with the other hand. We had to pull the tongue to one side and examine the mouth and teeth (cows have 8 teeth on the bottom only!) Last but not least we did the same thing again, this time using a long special tube with a spring to insert a pill. That was hard, especially since the cow kept using her caudal tongue to push the piller the wrong way.

Ha! I felt accomplished after that and had my fill of cow. But the fun was just beginning. Time for ye olde butt exam glove. These gloves are thin plastic, a see-through pale blue, and extend up to one's shoulder. And that's how far my arm went in. All the way to my shoulder. Up a cow's arse. Great. At first it's hard to get in, but after the "vestibule" it's actually rather spacious. And warm. It was *almost* pleasant because I was cold from being outside. My first thought was "Hey, this is nice and warm!" Then I thought "NO. This is NOT nice."

To be nice to the cow, you use a very generous amount of lubrication. I'm used to dog/cat sized lubrication which can be anywhere from pea sized to several peas. This was a whole handful, poured from a gallon jug of lube. I thought it was great (as a girl myself) and was glad the cows have that common courtesy.

They said having a person's arm up a cow was like having a q-tip up a person. Not painful, but you can almost tell it's there. I disagree. Painful or not, I'd rather not have a Q-tip "up there". But if the cow was bothered by it, she didn't seem to show it.

The whole time you're palpating for the cervix you also have cow tail right next to your face. Contrary to your cute image of cows, real cows can have poo all around their tail. So there's a big, hairy poo tail in your face as you grope around for the cervix.

Finding the cervix is a feat in itself for a newbie like myself. It's not just a tunnel, it's quite vast in there. I could move my hand several inches in either direction. Vast! After a short wile I could feel 2-3 bumps that I thought were near the floor of the pelvis. Cervix land! Goal accomplished. Hand out of cow.

Then a very nice cow was out for us to practice picking up its feet. Given that my group was the last group at this station, and I was the last of the group, the cow was not very happy. So picking up the rear hoof proved to be somewhat of a challenge for me. And the lovey 1500 lb beast managed to somewhat step on my boot. I'm fine, but that certainly wasn't the highlight of my day. It was annoying though, since they freely admitted we wouldn't be picking up any cow feet at all in reality. Mostly cows will try and kick you, so to look at feet the cows are on their side and restrained.

And the grand finale - using ropes to get a cow to lay down. To me, this looked kind of mean. But I understand that it's a useful way to get a cow into a position that will allow helpful medical work to be done - especially if the proper chutes aren't available. But the marshmallow in me just didn't like to see the cow brought down. Large animal medicine can seem to be a "tougher" kind of medicine. But for any animal rights sorts out there, let me just say that the cows are treated very well with the most respect, and all students are very thankful for the opportunity to learn from them. We treat our animals very, very, very well.

All in all, I'm definitely not going into the dairy field and I'm certainly not going into large animal work. But I've had my arm up a cow's arse, up a cow's nose, cow poo all over my shoes, and now have a fuller appreciation of large animal medicine. Props to anyone going into it.