Last weekend, Iain and I took it easy- sort of the calm before the storm, I guess. We spent Sunday in Fremantle (Freo, to the locals), which is a beautiful little port town on the Indian Ocean. It’s only about a 20-minute bus ride for us from our neighborhood, so we tend to spend a fair bit of time there. Freo has great shopping, restaurants, and beaches (I can’t wait until Chester gets a taste of the dog beach!). It’s quite a trip to be down at South Beach and watch the shark-spotting helicopters cruise up and down…a little disconcerting, but I’m grateful nonetheless! We have also taken to visiting the weekend markets (kind of like a cheesier, more lurid Granville Island) to buy our fruits and vegetables. We left on Sunday afternoon laden with a bounty of fragrant passion fruits, watermelon, mangos, nectarines, and peaches, among many others. We also try to get in a good sunset-viewing from Bathers Beach at least once a week. Last weekend, while the sun dipped below the horizon and the sky turned a brilliant orange, we watched bottlenose dolphins frolic about no more than 50m offshore. It was magical.
One of the best pieces of news that we could receive, the night before I started school at that, was that we were offered our first (and only, by that point) choice in houses to rent! We are completely over the moon about it. It’s clean, comfortable, and our landlords are wonderful people. We signed the lease on Tuesday evening and we move in next Saturday. Next weekend will be a big one- moving day on Saturday, and picking up the dogs on Sunday!! We are going to have a “welcome home” celebration for the dogs Sunday night. It will be such a relief and a joy to have our little family back together again.
OK, now for the school stuff! Monday heralded my first day of official vet school classes at Murdoch, and it has been full steam ahead since then. The semester begins with physiology/histology, anatomy, biochemistry, and an interesting course called veterinary professional life (VPL), which focuses mainly on the “soft skills” that are so essential to being an excellent veterinarian. Our VPL lecture series brings in a new vet speaker each week from a variety of areas, so I will really enjoy that. Having classes all day is definitely something to get used to all over again! I am so excited and thrilled to finally be here. I have met a whole bunch of wonderful people, and really feel the sense of camaraderie that comes with embarking together on an intensely challenging program for the next 5 years of our lives. There was a membership drive for the special interest groups on Thursday, and I have officially joined the wildlife, bovine, surgery, and animal welfare groups. The wildlife group is very active, and some of the activities on the horizon include a raptor handling workshop in Margaret River, and wildlife post mortem workshops, where a local rehab facility brings in animals which have not survived to be examined and dissected by students.
Of course, one of the other things I want to do is hook up with a group here in Western Australia whose mandate is similar to my favorite group back home, the Canadian Animal Assistance Team. Sure enough, one of my classmates told me about Animal Management in Rural and Remote Indigenous Communities (AMRRIC). I will admit to getting a little excessively excited that this group exists! Vets Beyond Borders is active here too, and they appear to work primarily in India. India is also on my list of places to visit, to get a sense of and to hopefully be involved with the extremely successful Animal Birth Control (ABC) projects that have been in place in parts of the country for many years. These groups focus on sterilization of street dogs, as well as vaccination and parasite control. Dog rabies, in particular, kills more people in India each year than anywhere else in the world.
First things first, though. At the moment, my priorities have to be the distal forelimb of the dog, enzyme kinetics, and nerve conduction velocity. Still, I love that we are getting right into clinical material as well, right from the start. My anatomy lab last week focused on radiography, and I felt grateful for the very patient vets that I have worked with in the past who have explained images to me and allowed me to have a crack at sorting out what I’m looking at. We were also assigned our group term projects in physiology, and my group will be researching acute pancreatitis in a dog. After seeing so much of that at Vancouver Animal Emergency Clinic, it will be really fascinating to dive into the physiological basis of this disease. One of my friends’ group was assigned GDV, commonly termed “bloat”, in a dog- as a member of the number one breed affected, Dixie Dane was promptly offered up as an examination subject!
This weekend, I will be studying to ensure that I am caught up before we start some heavier topics and practicals next week. Sunday evening though, Iain and I are going into the city to meet up with some friends, so that will be a nice break. Next week is also Iain’s birthday, so we have planned something nice to do on Wednesday evening. I have been a little homesick this past week, and it seems to go in waves. My family and some good friends were really there for me this week, so I really appreciate that. I had a one-liner, “just thinking of you” message that arrived exactly at the right moment, on one of my harder days. I know I also need to catch up a bit on sleep...the past few nights have been really hot and we don't have air conditioning in our room. We sleep, instead, with frozen bottles of water. Thursday night, there was an incident across the street from us whereby there was screaming, shouting of death threats, and car windows being smashed. Iain called the police, and they arrived shortly after that. Later on that night, another incident occurred in the street, and it was my turn to phone the police. The emergency number in Australia is not 911, but 000. It's interesting because you have to say what suburb and state you are in prior to being connected, whereas in Vancouver 911 gets you a Vancouver dispatcher. Ah, cultural differences!
Occasional homesickness, anxiety, and police incidents aside, Iain and I are really, really happy to be here. It was the right decision, and I think that will only become more apparent as we settle into our new life.
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