Dairy Rotation- October 1, 2007

Picture: Sunrise at the Dairy.
I have been on my large animal dairy rotation in Los Banos California for over a week now. I have been waking up at 3am and been getting to the veterinary clinic around 4am every day. I spend most of the morning palpating cows for pregnancy. I spend the early afternoon doing miscellaneous stuff like vaccinating and removing supernumerary teats off of calves. I have been sharing/living in a hotel room with Dainna. Even though the hotel is nice, I have only been able to use the hot tub and gym once because I am so busy with work.
Today I humanely euthanized my first two animals ever. Both were down cows. The first one was in lateral recumbancy and was on its death bed. The second one was really sick but was still sternal and was staring at me as I injected the sodium pentabarbital into its jugular vein. I have restrained countless animals for the veterinarian to humanely euthanize as a veterinary technician, but nothing can really prepare you for the first time that you inject and kill the animal yourself. Both of the cows needed to die, and they passed on in a very calm and humane way. I don't regret euthanizing them but I still can't shake the feeling that I actually killed an animal. I can't imagine how difficult it is going to be when I have to euthanize my first companion animal.