Community Service

You probably know that I like being a veterinarian. You probably also know that I like to talk.
This makes for a poor combination when I am behind on appointments because I start talking. Somehow I figure since someone had to wait, everyone had to wait and they wait because I want to make sure everyone feels like they had their fair share of my time. The techs don't appreciate it when it makes them leave at 7:30 instead of 7...when they got off.
The two above things do provide a good combination of me liking to talk about being a veterinarian.
In addition, I like to teach. I like to teach clients about their animal's disease, about allergies, about pain management, etc. I like to type up handouts. I like to draw diagrams.
I also like kids.
So when you combine liking to talk, liking being a vet, liking to teach and liking kids...you're the one that gives clinic tours to boy scout groups.
Last year, I gave two tours to two different boy scout groups. One group was super excited-both kids and adults. The second group was not; the adults didn't tell me of their time constraints (baseball practice) beforehand and also seemed really creeped out about the various things we had as displays. Oh, and the adults were all men!

This year, I gave a private tour to a 5th grader that had written us a letter for her school project. She was amazing. Super smart and asked great questions. She had her mom take some really crazy pictures-us in our white coats, us looking scholarly looking at a book, us in lead aprons, us high-fiving while wearing lead gloves...It was pretty awesome. We had a good time.

My original group of boy scout wanted to come back which meant that I needed to come up with new things. I decided instead of just touring the clinic and talking about various things, we would focus on parasites and organs. I had some pig organs from some dead piglets. We had a 'pin the organs on the puppy' game, I printed radiographs and we identified the organs after going over radiographs and we discussed what organs did.
Then for the parasites! I had printed off a couple dozen copies of parasite eggs, cut them out, laminated them and cut them out again. Then I mixed them into chocolate pudding. The goal was for the boy scouts to dig them out of the pudding to replicate our looking under the microscope at a fecal sample. They had a blast and I was really glad that I made them all put on scrub tops!
And randomly, Kinder, the grumpy old man of clinic cats, decided that he wanted to be involved. He was petted and I hoisted him up on the table for a check.

So the next day, I had a talk to give to a girl guard group at the Salvation Army. I was sort of excited because these were 5th through 8th graders as apposed to the 2nd and 3rd graders that make up the Boy Scout group. Then I was less excited because I had some very specific things that I needed to cover. I started out making a presentation, then decided that it was too advanced and then went back to wanting to use it. Then ended up not using it.
I arrived a little late for my presentation due to some problems with parking...as there wasn't any. When I went in, I was in the chapel and unfortunately, I didn't get any time to set up. I wanted my presentation to be thoughtful as well as enjoyable. And maybe it was enjoyable for the girls but it wasn't really for me. These girls were insane. For as well behaved and intelligent as my Boy Scouts were, these girls weren't. I was actually, no joke, asked if I thought that Justin Bieber was rabid. I also was ask/told multiple things about various family pets. It was not exactly how I had it planned. Sadly, there was one girl that I really thought was enjoying herself and wanted to learn but was distracted by the pajama clad girl with the KoolAid mustache dancing in front of her.

While I still love the idea of talking and teaching kids about veterinary medicine, I might need to screen my groups a little more carefully.