Hannover (7/15/10)

On our last day in Hannover before we left to go back to Bonn we went to tour the new small animal clinic and the old large animal clinic. The small animal clinic was extremely modern and had facilities comparable to and exceeding the best human hospitals. There were a lot of dogs and cats there undergoing various procedures, and I learned that veterinary clinics use beagles as blood donor dogs for the animals undergoing surgery. I was impressed with the small animal clinic, but we did not get to do very much except for tour the facility. We then went to the horse clinic, and it was as sophisticated as any human hospital except of course for the size. I found it interesting that the horses were transported through the hospital suspended from the ceiling by their feet. At the cow clinic we got a tour from a veterinarian that was very engaging and knew lots of interesting things about cows. Although I have grown up in an area that has a large cattle industry, I have never really found cattle interesting until I toured this clinic. They are a very interesting group of animals with a fascinating physiology. The guide asked us many questions and allowed us to see and do basically whatever we wanted. We got to see Kavi try to give an epidural to a cow and true to form he didn't listen to any of the instructions and struck the cow's artery with the needle. Blood started squirting out, and the veterinarians said that the artery he hit was actually very hard to strike when doing an epidural. After the cow was numbed, we all got to try and do a rectal palpation, but after about 4 people you couldn't palpate anything anymore because of all the air that had entered the rectum.
After leaving Hannover we went back to Bonn and stayed the night and prepared to leave to go to Switzerland the next morning.