Author: Annemarie Loyd

Monday-It wasn’t very busy today. There were some appointments, but nothing super exciting. Stoney came back! Stoney is a yellow lab who was here my first surgery day to get an enormous tumor removed. He came back because he ripped out his stitches, reopening the wound severely. It’s worrisome because the wound should have started healing already so it shouldn’t have reopened so much. Dr. Leonard decided that Stoney would come back every day to make sure it healed.

Tuesday-Surgery day! Today we had three dentals, which almost killed me. She yanked fourteen teeth from a King Charles Spaniel named Molly. We also had a lump removal from a golden retriever named Lady. Aside from those, we had Stoney, and we cleaned his wound, and we had a yellow lab named Tucker who wasn’t eating at home, so we tried to figure out why. Lastly, we had an adorable five month old black lab named Grace who came in for a Happy visit all day. She was very nervous and we brought her in to try and make her more comfortable there so that she doesn’t try to bite when getting her vaccines. So part of my job today was to just load her up with treats and play with her.

Wednesday- Today was very busy. Lots of appointments which split the vet Techs in half, so I got to help out a lot more than usual, helping to hold the more hostile animals while they got blood drawn or vaccinations. Had a dog who couldn’t  really use his back legs and his eyes darted horizontally constantly, which meant either Old Dog’s Disease, or, less likely, a brain tumor.

Thursday-Today was less busy but just all day appointments. Had an adorable puppy ten weeks old who needed a lepto vaccine. She had just taken a nap so she was very tired. Her name is Ella Rose, and I got to hold her while she got her shot. She left, and then an hour later, she came back because she had a reaction to the shot: hives on her belly and a fever. My job, thankfully, was to hold the puppy until her fever and hives went down. She fell asleep in my arms and I was happy as a clam.

Saturday-Today was very very busy-similar to Wednesday. We had a lot of new patients, and once again, they let me hold the dogs while they drew blood. We had an owner with three dogs who just moved from California: a bijon frise named Tinkerbell, a yellow lab, and a severely under-groomed husky named Seiko. They all needed lots of lab work and vaccines, so it was all hands on deck.

Yesterday-Lots of appointments. Just kind of a normal day. There were lots of vaccinations, including rabies, lepto, flu, and others. We had quite a bit of unwilling patients so it was my job to hold and distract them while they got their shots.

Today-Surgery day! And thankfully, I didn’t pass out this time. We had four patients today: Pixel-Spay, two patients had Dental, and Mittens-Declaw. We started with Pixel, who was the hardest one, because she was a fighter. She didn’t want to come out of her kennel, first of all, and she was even harder to sedate, so we had to put her in a cat box and distribute the anesthesia in the box. When we thought she was asleep, we took her out and it appeared that she was pretending because she shot right up after we took her out. We had to put her back in the box three times to get her to sleep. After she finally fell asleep, everything went smoothly. Everyone felt very bad for Mittens because of the declawing. They try to talk the owners out of declawing cats because it’s basically like amputating part of their fingers. That went smoothly though, but after the cat woke up, she shook off her bandages every time, so we just let her be. To avoid possible fainting, I skipped the two dentals, and spent the rest of my time with the recovering animals. I made sure they didn’t vomit while their tube was still in, then after their tube was taken out, I made sure that they were breathing right. Mittens and Pixel were fine, but Maggie wasn’t after she got out of surgery. Maggie is a pug, who have breathing troubles in general, but after they took the tube out, she couldn’t breathe. Dr. Leonard put another tube back in and hooked up a monitor so we could watch her and make sure she’s breathing normally as she came out of the anesthesia.

Wednesday-Lots of patients came in. I have the duty to clean the exam rooms after appointments. I’m also now holding some of the dogs when they need injections or blood drawn. We even saw a chocolate lab named Elsa whose mom was a parent of a guy who played on Crosspoint’s soccer team, so while Dr. Leonard was examining the dog, I had a nice conversation with the mom about Crosspoint, and how she was considering sending her two younger kids to our school.

Today-Again, lots of patients. Elsa was brought in again today to get an x-ray of her back legs, because she presented with pain in her left hind leg. She wouldn’t put any weight on it, and while looking at the x-rays, Dr. Leonard concluded that she had an ACL tear. Later, Mrs. Rawlins came in! I held onto Rosie and Lucy while they had their exams. So far, I’m having so much fun here. I get to do a whole lot more here than I did at the architecture firms, which is the opposite of what I thought would happen. Also I like the hours a lot better. I only have to get up early every other day. Mondays and Wednesdays I get to sleep in until noon, while Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays I get there at 9.

Monday-Today was my first day at Cherry Hills Veterinary Clinic with Dr. Leonard. We saw some patients-a dog named Bozo with suspicious lumps, three dogs needing vaccines, and one mystery dog with pain in his lumbar spine and left hind leg. I helped take x-rays of the spine and chest. She still doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, but we’re hoping to find out soon.

Today-Surgery day! Today was kind of crazy. There were four surgeries on schedule. First, a dental surgery on a pitbull named Jake needing a few teeth pulled. Second, a yellow retriever named Stoney had a big possible benign tumor on his left back hip (about 5″ in diameter). Then, the last two were both historectomy-spays. Two six month old puppies named Zuzu and Oreo. In the first surgery, she asked me to hold Jake’s head so that she could push and drill in his gums without him moving. He was under anesthesia, of course, and heavily asleep, but this surgery made me feel lightheaded. Dr. Leonard told me to go to the break room, and when I sat down in the chair, I fainted! The surgeries after were completely fine, and I didn’t feel dizzy at all, but just the sight of that surgery just kind of freaked me out a bit.

Today, I’m doing mainly the same thing as yesterday. I’m making an imagination board for a client wanting interior design for his computer company-Elekta. I’m going to a meeting today with everyone about ‘Designing for Happiness.’ I’m not sure what that means yet but I’ll find out.

Tuesday- I mostly sat in meetings all day, which were interesting. Most were meetings with maybe clients. Pretty quiet day. I also tried designing part of the Verve building, but it wasn’t approved.

Yesterday-The first half of the day I spent with a guy in the office named Dan. He showed me his designs for the Ameren headquarters cafeteria. It was 110 pages. The rest of the day, I spent in a meeting with a woman showing new carpet samples to the interior designers.

Today-I got my own desk today, and was asked to make an interior design folder with ideas of things millennials would like in an office. They’re designing the interior of a computer company, mostly made up of younger people, so they wanted the inside to reflect that and make it comfortable with nap pods and bean bags, a gym and a video game room.

Today, I started my first day shadowing Zoe’s uncle, Kurt Krueger. He’s a commercial architect that I think will be a good comparison to Rhonda. He is the president and licensed architect of the firm Verve. His firm is made up of ten architects-all bringing different aspects to the table. Some are interior designers and some help with the business side.

We mostly stayed in his office all day while he talked to the other architects in the firm, and while he talked to clients. He showed me the designs for the new Wehrenberg movie theaters, which I thought was interesting. He also looked over one of the designers floor plans for a coffee shop and showed me the mistakes.

Wednesday-

Rhonda went out of town today, so she hooked me up with a studio class at Ranken Technical College. They had a Shadow-a-Tech program for high schoolers interested in Engineering or Architecture in the morning, when we walked around and they showed us what their students were working on and what it was like to be a student there. Then later, we sat in on a four hour studio class and built some models and tried to help the students with their projects.

Thursday-

Rhonda set me up with a girl named Katy who works at the GreenGuys Landscape Architecture firm. Rhonda works with them a lot and she’s very close with them, so I sat in with Katy. She mostly sits in an office and works, but sometimes she goes around and takes pictures of sites, and measuring. Since spring is just starting up, they weren’t super busy yet, so there wasn’t much for me to do except listen to her talking on the phone to clients.

Today-

Today I helped present the Chile trip slideshow in the morning, but after that I went back to GreenGuys and sat in with Katy again, doing pretty much the same thing as yesterday.

Next week I start with Zoe’s uncle, who works at a commercial firm down Manchester.

Yesterday we looked at a potential flip house for Rhonda and her contractor partner, Jeff. The house was absolutely disgusting: most of the ceiling had fallen, there was asbestos in the floor, and mold on the boards in the ceiling. She sees potential in it, so she might buy it. We also went to a client’s house to look at some cracks in the walls upstairs. We called a structural engineer to look at it and it turns out that the front of the house had sunk into the ground due to badly placed drains, causing the cracks. He thought it would cost about $45,000 to repair.

Today, we checked up on Rhonda’s current flip house which is close to being done. Now they’re just shining the floors, power washing the deck, and cleaning the windows for the inspector who was coming later that day. We then went back to her office and she worked on her designs while I went on AutoCAD and made a layout for the deck that she had me measure. I’m starting to get the hang of AutoCAD. I also read part of the book about architecture that she gave me.