How do you spend your Friday nights......

I bet I have a new one for most of you.....

I spent last night(Friday) at a Mennonite farm with Doug. He got a call that he needed to come out and look at this cow that had a possible right side twist. Layman's terms means part of the "stomach" (rumon) area had flipped and he would need to go in and fix it.

So we pull up to the farm and there are several buggies around and it's your average Mennonite farm. I still get excited about these people, mostly because they live so differently from me. The nice thing about Mennonite's is that some of them have electricity. This is great when you are talking about surgery on a cow. Imagine doing that by candle light since it was already dark out. So we go in and talk with the guy and Doug decides that we do in fact have to do surgery. The farmer asked if he needed to stay, because if not, he needed to ride up the road and would be back in about 15 minutes. Obviously, he wasn't going far in his buggy. Doug tells him that we can handle it and so he heads out. Let me back up for a moment. There are a few things that you need to know about this setting; a) we are in a tie stale barn(basically there are lots of cows in a long row of stales tied to bar so they can't get out and not much space between them) b) there are two dogs trying to get into all our stuff and c) the guys wife is there watching with her 6 month old baby in a stroller in between the two rows of cows. So back to the story. So the guy leaves and his wife and two dogs are still there, and Doug starts doing his thing. I am there hanging out and trying to help Doug draw up meds and do anything I can to help. The next thing I know, the farmers wife is gone and there sits the 6 month old in the stroller with the dogs licking all over her.

Now two things are going through my mind at the same time. The first of which is when he said "we need to run up the road and will be back in 15 minutes", I hope this did not mean his wife too, because if so, they FORGOT THE BABY! And the other thought is the two dogs, that obviously spend their time in with the cows, are licking this child's face. Now I am sure that when we have kids that our dogs are going to lick them, it happens all the time, but these dogs have been playing in manure. This can not be a good thing for the kid. Well, after what felt like forever, the woman finally comes back and then leaves and then comes back, repeat, repeat. Finally when we started the actually surgery, she decided to stick around. I guess she was just interested to see what was going on.

Overall, it was a very interesting experience! Got to help Doug out, which I actually find fun to do. Even when that means holding a cows tail straight up in the air so that it can't kick Doug while he cuts a huge whole in it's side. Large animal surgery is an interesting thing, we did it right there in the barn, with the cow stand up, and no way to keep it "sterile". Not something that would ever flying in human medicine, which I am used too. And I did talk with the lady for a bit, when Doug didn't need me, which I find intriguing.

I am sure as time goes on, there will be plenty more of these stories, so stay tuned.....