Kids vs Animals

What's better than getting called out to a farm to treat something you've never seen before? Getting called out to a farm to treat something you've never seen before and discovering that it's actually a high school running a small herd of cattle for the agricultural course and realising you're going to have an audience of teenagers watching you. All I can say is that I wish I had the opportunity to play with calves for 40 minutes a day when I was at school (though I probably would have been stuck doing Physics or Chemistry in order to get into vet school, go figure).

It was an 8 month old calf with a prolapsed rectum, which I've seen in small animals but not cattle but just decided to treat like a vaginal prolapse (which I have dealt with before). So I got to replace the prolapse, stick my arm up its bum and place a purse-string suture in the poor animal while 15 kids stood around staring and saying things like, "ew gross!" and "is it warm in there?" The funny thing was that their teacher used to be a vet, but is no longer practicing.

"Traded one type of animal for another?" I jokingly asked her.
She laughed and said, "Well, in this job I get thanked for what I do, there's no afterhours and I don't have to worry about the bills not being payed".

This almost sounded good, except that both my parents are teachers so I know about all the other stresses of the job (i.e. dealing with uninterested or worse, abusive, parents; discipline issues; marking homework and EXAMS).

So I think I'll stick with the animals I've got - at least I can sedate or muzzle them and stick them in a cage when they misbehave! Although I know of a few kids who could probably do with this treatment as well...