Well, here I am a month after my last entry! It has been much too long since I have given my snarky view on life. With that said, midterms came and went as painlessly as possible. So far, so good! Our car has been amazingly dependable (Knock on wood!) and only stalls on us occasionally. Everything has been going pretty smoothly for us.
The weekend after midterms we went to a party at a house to celebrate being done. We were all having a good time and were chatting about what we were going to do on our weekend when we didn't have to study. Suddenly, a classmate who had been, shall we say, celebrating a little bit harder than the rest of us and was sitting on the railing of the third story balcony fell off!!!!! Nick and Mike were near him when it happened and reached over to try to grab him, but it just wasn't soon enough. Luckily, Nick goes into autopilot when emergencies happen and he was already running for the stairs to get to him. I called the ambulance from the school and followed Nick. He found that he was unconscious but breathing and had a pulse, thank goodness. Nick did some neurological tests on him and miraculously he seemed to be fine. I called to get the status on the ambulance and was informed it could take up to an HOUR for it to arrive because they were waiting for a driver to get there. Crystal and I jumped into our car and drove the mile from the house to school, ran into the health clinic, and started demanding an ambulance. They couldn't even find the keys to it at first! When they did find them, we demanded that instead of waiting for a "driver" that a security guard drive it for us. He said that one of us had to ride with him to give him directions to the house, so I jumped in the ambulance and Crystal drove our car. We had to go pick up the nurse on the way there, which delayed our trip by a few minutes. We finally arrived probably close to half an hour after the fall and there was another ambulance that wasn't related to the school pulling away. Nick said that the ambulance had taken him with a soft collar and a scoop backboard, so they didn't support his spine at all. Thank goodness he didn't wind up breaking his back or he would've been paralyzed! After a few days in the hospital, (which isn't air conditioned, you have to bring your own bedding, food, TOILET PAPER, soap, towels, clothes, and completely reminds you you're in a third world country) and a set of x-rays, he was cleared and released from the hospital. He is still sore two weeks later, but seems to be on the mend. Everyone was so thankful for Nick because he took charge of the situation and made sure everything went as it should until he was taken away in the ambulance. He did a good job.
Last weekend was Sandblast, our end of midterms party that the school throws us every term. It's a huge beach party and they supply the drinks and music and everyone is happy midterms are over. We had a good time. That day we noticed Maverick had developed a hot spot on his cheek and neck area. Nick and I clipped him the best we could with Nick's beard trimmer and scissors. Maverick is not what you would call a good patient and acted like we were performing surgery on him without anesthesia whenever we even looked at his sore. We've been scrubbing it and treating it every day and it's getting better, but the poor dog is so itchy and uncomfortable. He knows he's not allowed to scratch because I tell him not to, but that just causes him to pace. He paces while I'm trying to sleep and I'll just get to sleep when I feel a wet dog nose on me. I open my eyes to see his silly face an inch away from my face looking at me and just pet him and try to calm him down. Today I finally found some Benadryl (which was surprisingly hard to find down here) and drugged him and he's so much happier. Looks like I'll keep him drugged until he's better. I'd love to give him a cone of shame, too, but the hot spot is in such a place that a cone would irritate it rather than help it. Oh well. He has been glued to my side while he's sick so it makes getting ready for school interesting. My poor baby!
Tomorrow I'm going to take him to school so that we can practice different techniques on him. As vet students, we often supply our own dogs and cats to practice doing exams on them for different things. Hopefully he behaves himself without being too big of a baby. We got to go into the simulation lab last week and listen to different patterns of heart murmurs and respiratory problems and try to predict what was causing them. The sim lab only has one dog which can be set to give a variety of ailments, so we have to use the med school's human mannequins and pretend they're dogs. Learning to be flexible I suppose.
This weekend is Easter so I get Good Friday and Easter Monday off of school because they're both national holidays, seeing that most of the island is Catholic. The sad part about being in vet school is that I'm excited for the four day weekend, but mainly because it means I can have four days that I don't have to go to school to learn my stuff that I will have to study and I can get some good solid studying in. But we will go to the beach and probably go out at night to relax and celebrate. The kids down here fly kites for Easter and there are different kite flying contests they can enter. They've been getting their kites ready and been practicing down on quarantine point where we take Maverick to play. Side note, it's called quarantine point because there used to be a leaper colony down there and the foundation can still be seen in some places on the field. The kites down here are all the same; hexagons about two feet across with a tail. They vary in colors and tail length but that's it. When they fly and catch the wind right they buzz and vibrate and I incorrectly thought they had small motors on them based on the sound. Nick made fun of me. We've seen some kites get stuck in trees and while spear fishing, Nick has seen some kites at the bottom of the ocean. Some of them get so high in the sky they can hardly be seen! But the other day we were watching a guy try to help his kid fly his kite and for some reason, the tail on it was at least 100 feet long; no exaggeration! It was windy, but not nearly windy enough for that little kite to drag that monstrous tail. The guy just couldn't seem to understand why their kite kept crashing. Nick and I can't decide if we'd rather bring down one of those trick kites we see on the beaches back home that do fancy flips and turns, or a huge one with different tiers like a pirate ship or something. We definitely want to bring a fancy kite for next Easter to show the Grenadian kids what they're missing!
Whenever I walk Maverick, the Grenadians are always fascinated by him. They always ask if he's a fox or a wolf. Another woman stopped me the other day and begged for a picture of him because she'd only ever seen a dog like him in the movies. She took a whole bunch so that she could get a good one with his blue eyes because she'd never seen a dog with blue eyes. No matter how intrigued the locals are by him, no one will pet him because they think he is going to bite them. That's alright with me because he's a good guard dog for our apartment and for me if I ever walk without Nick. Little do they know he loves pats and would probably just kiss them. A man the other day asked me, "What brand is that dog?" I almost told him Reebok, because recently he chewed the tongue off of a pair of my Reebok running shoes. When he pooped the next day, I noticed his poop had a word in it! I know that it is completely weird to be inspecting your pet's poop, but as a vet student, I have learned that you can learn many things from an animal's poop, so it's important to look at it! I grabbed a stick and poked at it and realized that it said Reebok. I should've taken a picture and sent it to the company, because let's face it: Nike definitely makes a better shoe. We have been dealing with Maverick's separation anxiety and sometimes it seems to be getting better and then other times it seems a whole lot worse. He has chewed the edges off the cutting board, all of my Gladware, a bra, four and a half pairs of my shoes, the edge of the Kindle cover, a couple pairs of Nick's shorts, his hat, both of our water bottles, our hamper, my alarm clock, my lotion bottle, he's spread panko, pancake mix, popcorn, flour, pasta, two and a half dozen eggs, and rice all over the apartment, AND he somehow poured about a gallon of water all over, including out bed. We've figured out how to be smarter than him and put everything up high where he can't reach it (Although he is very tall!), close things in the bathroom and then we tie our closet doors shut. Our closet doors are like French doors and so we just have been tying the handles closed. The smarty pants dog figured out he could chew through that rope to get to my tasty shoes, so we had to figure out a different way to tie it. Luckily he hasn't figured out how to get that open yet! Rotten old dog! But we're working on it every day and hopefully by the time we get home he'll be better. When he has other dogs around he doesn't become destructive, so at home it's not an issue.
Well, Nick just made some popcorn and it's calling my name. Until next time.
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