Last post....

Im sad to say that today was my last day of field work. It wasn't even that eventful we only dewormed some sheep and we didn't even get to catch them which is half the fun. It only took like 45 min so we had the rest of the day to do as we pleased. Some of the girls and I decided to go to town and finish up our souvenir shopping and get lunch. During lunch we had the great idea of going tubing down the river again, but this time to a part that had more rapids! The river had risen about a foot since we last tubed down the river and the current was much stronger. This time the rapids were more intense but not terrifying. The ride was a zillion times better than any water park I've been to and I got a nice tan.

I'll spent the rest of the evening studying for my final exam and working on a powerpoint.
Tomorrow I have my exam and then I have to pack up as I leave bright and early Saturday morning.

I'm kinda sad to be leaving Belize, I've had tons of fun and I've gotten to do so many cool things. But I am ready to go home. I miss everyone and I'm really tired of being sweaty. Plus I've been craving a burger from In-n-Out.

Thanks for following.
-Samo

Sick :[

I have become the host to a colony of amebas! Late last night I started to feel bloated and then it just got worse from there. I spent most of my night curled up on the bathroom floor.

Entamoeba histolytica

In the morning Cynthia our program director/mom brought me some meds. They helped a lot but I wasn't in any condition to go to class so I sat in my room and watched some movies.
I'm not sure where exactly I picked them up at, it could have been anywhere really. They can be transmitted via contaminated food, water, or infected people who don't wash their hands and then touch other things. I just really hope they go away soon, I don't want to spend my last week in Belize sick with these amebas.

Spay/Neuter Clinic

On Saturday we helped out at a spay/neuter clinic in Bullet Tree Falls. It wasn't actually in a clinic but it looked like an empty community center building. It wasn't your typical place to do surgeries, I thought the house in Sarteneja was pushing it but this place made the last house look fabulous. There were huge piles of rat poop in the corners and it was kinda dirty. Random wooden tables were used for surgery and there was very little organization. There were ceiling fans which was probably the only good thing about the place.

In addition to the spay/neutering we also offered injections of two different types of dewormers and some vitamin B injections. I was station at the injection station first. It was always really busy and there was a constant flow of dogs and puppies.

There was never really a line just a group

It seemed like all the dogs in the village had recently had puppies because EVERYONE had puppies. A lot of the puppies looked really bad though, most had mange, fleas, and a belly full of worms.  A few were severely emaciated and really needed a lot more than B vitamins and dewormer.

sad mangy puppy

After injecting about 50 dogs with dewormer, I went to help out the surgeries. I started with helping out with a spay and then I helped with a neuter. I got to suture both of them up. As if mangy puppies weren't sad enough I also helped out with an abortion. It was kind of intense because the puppies were hard to pull out the incision. The mom was about 3-4 weeks along and she would have had two puppies. You could already see their markings and their tiny claws. 

you can see the lovely tables we were operating on

The clinic ended around 2pm, there were still people trying to bring in dogs for surgeries but we had been going non stop since 8 and we all needed food. After that we went back home I showered and took a nap. Later on we went to a sheep BBQ. I had never eaten sheep before and I found it to be extremely delicious. 

Today was the first day all month that I've been able to sleep in. I got up at 11:30 and it was awesome! I plan to spend the rest of the day reading Harry Potter in the hammock on the porch. 

We went over to Hanna's Stables this morning to practice once again our physical exams on horses. On the way we got stuck behind this guy. I just kept waiting for a tire to bounce off the back.

When we arrived at the stables there were a bunch of horses tied up and waiting for us. We began our exams with asking the owner general questions and then doing the distance observation part of the exam. You're suppose to observe them at a distance so you can get a better judge of behavior and posture without alarming or stressing them. After that was the physical exam, I checked heart rate, resp. rate, and aged the horse by his teeth. Then it was time to float three of the horses teeth. So normally when floating a horses teeth they are sedated and wear a harness thing that keeps their mouth open. Since I'm in Belize, we didn't do it that way. The horse was awake, and semi restrained and there was no mouth opener. Being that it was really hard to see what you were doing, the horse was moving, its mouth was dark, and it was difficult to know how to position the rasp so you get the right angle.

Once we were done floating teeth we took the horses out on a trail ride. It was pretty sweet, we went though jungle and then though some grassy hills. I really wanted to gallop through the fields but that didn't get to happen. 

I examined/rode this guy, his name was Joshua 

After lunch we took a trip to Xunantunich another Maya archeological site. It rained while we hiked up to the top, but after being in the hot sun it felt so refreshing. I was only afraid my camera was going to get wet. 

Starting to climb up the tallest ruin

Almost there

Made it to the top

The view from the top

In the distance you can see Guatemala 

After dinner we walked into town to party!

Jim I have a question for you, what kind of saddle is this and what are the side thingys used for. It looks like a western saddle but it had english stirrups 

MOOO

We took a trip out to the vacca plateau next to the little village of Arenal. It's a little south west of San Ignacio very close to Guatemala. We had two different cattle ranches that needed our services. The first was a herd of about 50 cattle that needed to be dewormed (we do a lot of deworming). We injected them with ivermectin and vitamins. It's kind of hard to jab a needle though the skin and muscle of a cow. It's really thick and of course the cows dont like to cooperate. Also, when in the chute, the cows end up piling on top of one another. This makes it especially difficult to get to them. 

lots and lots of cows!

When we arrived at the second cattle ranch, there were no cattle in the pasture. They were down by the river so we got a nice little break waiting for the 'cowboy's' to bring the cattle back.

trying out the lasso

This time there were wayyy more cattle than at the first ranch and some of them needed to be castrated! The coybows weren't very good at handling their cattle so it took forever to herd them into the chute and the cattle kept breaking through the opening. It was very chaotic at times and very inefficient. There was 14 bull calfs that needed to be castrated. When one would enter the chute the cowboys would rope him and pull him out. As I mentioned earlier they weren't real cowboys so the bulls would often escape and come running and bucking all around the corral we were in. Eventually they would manage to wrangle them down and we would get to work. I got to castrate 1.5 bulls, the first one went really well but on the second one I lost one of the testicle and it was bleeding a lot so Dr. Emma had to come help me out. 

Sorry for the big gap...

I don't know how to make it go away with out messing up the layout. Oh well anyway today started out with another necropsy. This time it was a young ram apparently it had gotten in a fight with another ram. Anyhow it was kicked so hard that a hole was torn between the body cavity and the muscle. Since you can't see the hole from the outside the owner didn't notice it until the ram had this massive hernia on its side where some of the small intestine had fallen between the skin and muscle. That ultimately resulted in cause of death. 



See all those dark intestines, well normally they would be where the pink intestines are. All of those were stuck under the skin. 

  After that was over there were some sheep to be dewormed.  We didn't get to help catch the sheep so it wasn't terribly exciting. Although at the next farm there were a lot of sheep to deworm, and this time we were able to wrangle some sheep! So I jumped right in and caught/wrestled about 7 sheep. Letting them go was the best part because more often than not they would leap into the air to get away.

We went back to Dr. Ts farm to castrate some rams. Rams and bulls don't get any sort of anesthesia or painkillers before the procedure. They are just held down while we go to work. It was actually pretty easy, just a few snips, zip ties and a clamp with the emasculator and he's good to go. 

Dr. Kristin helped hold the testicle while I used the emasculator to crush and cut the spermatic cord. 

Our next task was to deworm so cows. I never thought I would think that cows in mud are cute however this particular breed proved me wrong. They have such adorable long floppy ears, it makes them almost look puppy dog like. 

After that Ruban, Dr. T's brother, took us for a short little trail ride, he said if we came back on sunday he'd take us on a trail ride to a sink hole. 

I rode this little girl

In this not so comfy saddle 

While we were out riding Justin (our driver) called one of his friends who owns a resort and worked out a deal to go tubing down the Mopan river for only $2.50! We started at the resort and floated downstream until we got to this GIANT rope swing. It was slightly terrifying. You were able to swing so far out and you were pretty high up. The second time I swung out I ended up with a small rope burn on my arm :[ 

me on the rope swing

We floated further down the river and soon got out and walked a ways somehow ending up back upstream further than where we started. It wasn't too long of a walk, but we had to walk on the road several times and we were barefoot so our feet we're very burt/sore by the time we got back to the river. We got in right upstream of bullet tree falls which should have been named bullet tree rapids. There were two sides of the river that had little rapids on them so we played there for a while. You could tube down the rapids, walk back up upstream and do it again. They we're a lot of fun but I really wish I had a water proof camera. Not much further past the rapids was our final stop at the resort.

Later on that evening my roomie found a scorpion in our bathroom! It's still there since it wedged itself between the ceiling and a piece of wood. :/  Hopefully we'll kill it before it gets one of us.

I really could get used to days like this.... except maybe not the scorpion part.

Beginning of the Large Animal Course

Monday was just an intro to the large animal course. There were a few lectures on the different breeds of livestock here in Belize and we watched a video on floating horses teeth. Horses grind their teeth while eating so overtime they can develop sharp edges on their teeth that dig into the tongue or gums and can become infected. So every once in a while you have to get your horses teeth floated, which is basically filing down their teeth. Anyway the movie was interesting until it got technical and started talking about calculating the tangent line of a horses tooth, that's about when I stopped listening. We had lunch in town at some tiny no named restaurant I had some amazing curry chicken. Our new van driver Justin, who is the husband of my previous instructor Dr. Isabelle, really likes to eat and he knows all the little hole in the wall places in town. Rumor is that on days we finish early he takes us to cool swimming spots.

Tuesday started out with lecture as normal. We went over how to do physical exams and the different castrations techniques. For lunch I had some delicious street tacos, and then headed over to Whistling Duck Farms to practice our new physical exam skills on some horses. There were three mares and their foals waiting to be examined. Roxanne, another girl in my class, and I partnered up and got to work on these guys.

Dusty and her colt Dark & Sweet 

We went over everything from heart rate and respiratory rate to listening to both their stomach and lungs. I learned how you use a horses teeth to estimate their age and how to figure out where their chest cavity is. I would have loved every second of it but the heat index was 103˚ and wearing jeans when its that hot is miserable. 

Weekend in Sarteneja

Sarteneja is a little coastal town in northern Belize, it's a 14 churches and one bar kinda place. It took us about 5 hours to get there and the last hour and a half was on an EXTREMELY long bumpy road. We're heading to this lady Manissa's house. She is a peace corps volunteer working with local families trying to help them lessen their dependence on the fishing industry. Since the town doesn't have easy access to veterinary care, Manissa gets vets to come out every once in a while and turns her house into a makeshift clinic. We had three operating tables set up one: in the kitchen, on in the dining room, and one in a spare bedroom. It was a little hectic having dogs and cats everywhere and surgeries going on left and right but it was a lot of fun. In the end we had spayed 6 dogs and neutered 8, and dealt with some minor infections. I was able to assist with some of the surgeries which mostly included holding ovaries or testicles while a Dr. made all the incisions. I did get to stitch up a dog, tie off a fallopian tube, and pull some testicles out of the scrotum also I administered antibiotics and fluids.                                                                                           

Here is one of the operating tables

And our exam/prep for surgery room

Stitching him up!

  

 We were placed in pairs to stay with a host family. Tania and I stayed with Carmella. It was a little challenging because she didn't speak much english and I can't speak much spanish so there wasn't a whole lot of talking going on. I did manage to get that she had two daughters that were married, and an 18 year old son and that her husband is a fisherman who was currently out at sea. She was really sweet and made delicious food. One of her daughters was there the first night and she had an interesting pet. It's a baby coatimundi and I guess would be the equivalent of us keeping a baby raccoon as a pet.  

 Saturday after all the surgeries we went to the beach to play in the water. A few of the girls and I decided it would be fun to swim/wade to the pier a little further down. The water was warm and somewhat shallow, It ended up being about 3/4 of a mile across rocks that you couldn't see and really goopy sand/clay stuff. Afterwards we had dinner with our host families and then all met back up for drinks at the one bar in town. We sat out on the pier and saw a manatee float by!

Another beautiful sunset on the beach

Sunday we went to visit Wildtracks, a manatee rehab center. There wasn't anything for us to do since the manatee Twiggy was in the pre release stage, which means she has to have limited human interaction. However she did pop up to say hello. 

Twiggy 

The people at the manatee place are also starting a howler monkey rehab program and both the husband and wife really love to talk so we got an hour long shpeel about the manatees and then another hour long talk about the logistics of keeping spider monkeys vs. howler monkeys. They talked so much we didn't have enough time to see the monkeys. Oh well, the fat manatee was cute. 

Tomorrow is the first day of the large animal course!

Today was the last day of the wildlife section of the program. We had our final which was a lot harder than I expected it to be. There was a lot of technical questions and unfortunately a whole page with a skeleton and directions to name the bones. That was the most difficult part for me because I haven't taken anatomy and I don't know the names of the bones in my toes.

We then finished up our final presentations and packed up the van to go to Sarteneja a town in northern Belize. We'll be spending the weekend there doing a community spay/neuter day.

While we're there we'll also be visiting a manatee reserve and another howler monkey sanctuary.

So there won't be any new posts till Sunday night.




Can't believe I'm halfway done!

The Belize Zoo

This is a tapir. They are the national animal of Belize
and are related to rhinos and horses.

Mondays class was on bones. We went over some of the main bones and then had to piece together different skeletons. Since I haven't taken anatomy I didn't really know how to identify more than vertebra, ribs and of corse the skull. So this task was kinda difficult for me. I hope there Aren't too many questions on the final.

Tuesday we spent ALL day at the zoo. We got to do a lot of "behind the scenes" stuff like go into enclosures to hand feed some of the animals and see a lot off animals that are off limits to the general public. They were hit by a big hurricane last fall so part of the zoo is closed for repairs. After a quick tour around the zoo we got to spend some time with the main attractions.

Baby tapir. 

We started with feeding the tapirs and got to pet the baby tapir.
Next we got to meet the jaguar Fear Master and he was 'trained' to roll over and give high fives. He of course was in an enclosure but we were able to go up to him and give him the signal to roll over and give us a high five. After we rewarded him with pieces of chicken. Yes, I fed a jaguar a piece of chicken through a fence but he was still super close.

Roll over. 

Now High Five!

 And if that wasn't cool enough we got to have the ultimate jaguar experience with a jaguar named Junior. The set up is kind of weird to explain so here is what we got to do

View from outside the jag enclosure

My view from inside the little cage. 

They bribed him with treats to jump on top of the cage so we could rub his belly and feel his paws. It was so unbelievably awesome! After jaguars it was time to do a necropsy on a fawn that had died the night before. We determined that he was beat up by the alpha male. Then it was time for lunch. When we got back we went on rounds with some keepers to feed the animals. I followed one who was in charge of feeding the birds of prey. It was kind of sad because they feed them baby chicks. You know the cute yellow fluffy ones you see every Easter.

This is an albino coatimundi who also eats chicks

And all the birds rip them to shreds. I tried to feed a harpy eagle, but I guess he wasn't too fond of people in scrubs.






When rounds were done we went to the zoos education center across the street where we stayed in little cute cabanas for the night.

After dinner we went back to the zoo for a night tour. I got to hold a boa and see a lot of the animals that weren't up during the day like the peccary a type of wild pig, kinkajous, the puma, and we got to bring out the boa.

As if we didn't spend enough time at the zoo we went back for morning rounds on Wednesday. This time we got to help prepare the meals. I had to chop up lots of fruit for the tapirs and deer.

Also I got to play vet and give a tapir some eye drops for an eye infection. 

After lunch we drove on over to Belize Bird Rescue to do check ups on some parrots and transfer them from a small enclosure to a larger pre release aviary. We had to catch them which was a challenging task and I quickly learned that parrot bites hurt bad. 

Amberguise Caye

This weekend was awesome to say the least. It started early Saturday morning, we had to get up to wash iguanas. There were roughly 35 iguanas that had to be captured and then bathed. We started early in the morning so the iguanas would still be sluggish. We rounded them all up and got to work scrubbing all the dirt, ticks, and mites off of them. Some seemed to enjoy it while others wanted nothing to do it. That whole process took a little over three hours , we then had to move more baby iguanas from the nursery into a large enclosure. We were all getting antsy by then because it was almost 11 o’clock and we were suppose to be on our way to Belize City to catch a water taxi. When we were finally done with iguanas we booked it home as fast as we could, grabbed our bags and jumped in the van. Cynthia, one of the program coordinators, offered to drive us to the city so that was nice not having to deal with taxi’s or busses. Since we were running a little late, Cynthia drove like a madman to get us to the taxi on time, fortunately we made it there with a few minutes to spare. It took about an hour and a half by water taxi to get from Belize City to San Pedro on Amberguise Caye. It’s a small touristy town offering lots of snorkeling and dive trips. Since it’s off season we got great prices on everything. We were told to stay at this hotel called Rudy’s. It was right on the beach and the rooms were only $30 a night, they weren’t anything special. We immediate set out to book a diving trip for me and a snorkel trip for the girls. I had done my research earlier and I had come across this place called Ecologic Divers. For two dives, all my gear, a hot towel after the dive and refreshments I paid only $75. Yay for visiting during the off season! After all that and the girls trip was squared away for the following morning we went to explore the town.

Snorkeling tiki man!

Sunday – Since I was the only one diving, I was on my own to find breakfast and make my way to the dive shop.  The people at the dive shop were really friendly, and they quickly got all my gear ready for me and loaded up in the boat. I was joining a dive master and two of his students that were finishing up their final dives to get certified. We drove a little ways off the shore to the reef, geared up and jumped in the water. I was super excited that it was warm enough to not have to wear a wetsuit. The water was also crystal clear, and I could see the bottom from the boat. On the first dive I saw a massive spotted eagle ray, some nurse sharks, an eel, a huge grouper and a zillion brightly colored fish. The coral was pretty cool too, there was brain coral and all sorts that I couldn’t identify. On the second dive I saw another shark, a lobster, and loads more coral and colorful fish. I really wish I knew the names of what I saw. I did take pictures but I’ll have to wait till I get home to get them developed. After my amazing dives, I met up with the girls had lunch and went shopping until 4:30 when the water taxi would take us back to the main land.  

Sunset on the island. 

POOP!!!

Today we had the oh so glamorous job of collecting fecal samples. You would think this would be easy in an area with a lot of stray/wandering dogs. It wasn't. Our goal was two different poop samples each for a total of 16 specimens. We started this task at around 11:00ish which by then it was like 98˚ and the heat index was 118˚. We had to walk around several different parks searching the grass for poop that hadn't yet become hard. At the same time we're carrying around pieces of chicken with a dewormer in it for some of the stray dogs. It was hot and sticky and just gross out. After spending an hour and half wandering around three different parks and the local market we managed to collect 10 samples and feed two dogs chicken with deworming meds. We then made our way over to the local college and after a really good washing, had lunch. Next we prepared our fecal floats which is essentially poop in a jar with some sort solution (we used sugar water) and you mix it really well, cover it with a glass slide cover and let it sit for 10-15 minutes.

It should look something like this

Mine had some sort of soil worms in it. Ewww.







The idea is to have the parasites eggs float up and get stuck on the glass. You then transfer the piece of glass onto a slide and examine it with a microscope. Fortunately for the dog there was no parasites in my fecal float. Out of the 10 samples, 7 had hook worms, 1 had hook worms and tapeworms, 1 was too dry to work, and mine didn't have any parasites.
On the way back to the lodge we tried to find more dogs so we could give them the chicken with dewormer in it. But of course as soon as you look for dogs there were none to be found. When we finally came across a dog, it was my job to roll down the window and throw a piece of the chicken at it. It was pretty funny driving around in a huge white van flinging chicken at random dogs. By the end I was covered in chicken juice and sweat. As much as I wanted to jump in the shower the second we got back I wasn't able to because some of the instructor people wanted our feedback on the course. Afterwards a bunch of us jumped in the pool to cool off, and somehow it got brought up that pizza sounded good so we ended up ordering 7 large pizzas for dinner.


I won't be posting any updates this weekend as I'll be on Ambergris Caye playing in the sun and scuba diving the worlds second largest reef :]

P.S. If you comment on a post please sign your name. Thanks :]

Blowguns & Chickens

Today we had class at Sacred Heard College/High school. As imagined it’s a relatively small campus nothing fancy. However the food from the cafeteria was so much better than the food at CSUMB. We started with a lecture on chemical capture and then learned how to fill blow darts with water (normally it would be filled with some sort of sedative or tranquilizer). After we pulled out the blow gun and set up a cardboard kitty for target practice.

Taking a shot at the cardboard kitty.

I didn't do to bad. The idea was to hit him on his gluteal muscles.

The green circles are where I had previously shot. As you can see it did take me a few times to get the hang of how to aim it.



I hit the kitty more than just that once only I couldn't remember which marks were mine.

Once we killed our cardboard kitty we went into one of the science labs there to learn how to suture. We we’re given pieces of raw chicken to practice on.

I was able to get two out of the three stitches we we’re taught. I couldn’t get the continuous mattress stitch.




By the end I was pretty confident my basic stitching ability,I’ll get to put that to the test next weekend when I get to suture up a REAL LIVE DOG!!!