Day 3- Rooting for the Underdog

      Today was filled with many ups and downs. My feet were already hurting by 9 am, not a great start! Many of the mares are kept in pens 1/4 of a mile away and we travel back and forth "shagging" mares to bring them into the barn for treatments about 100 times a day. As I mentioned before, the other students in my rotation are far more advanced than I am right now. They are excellent palpaters and know the daily routine, so on Day 1 I knew I could shine with broze over brains, or so I thought. I THOUGHT that if I worked extra hard that my desire to learn  and hard work would make me an equal to the other students, NOT SO MUCH. These kids are fierce! They are just has hard working and twice as smart. BUT never fear, root for the underdog. Everytime I began to get discouraged which was about 1,000 times today, I would get to do something super cool and it would make me realize why I am here. After almost tearing up when I got in the truck to leave after a very exhausting 10 hour day I made a promise to myself that I would focus on all the amazing things I am getting to do and not my struggles to stay with the pack.
     So for the amazing things I got to do...One of my most frustrating moments was palpating a mare and I simply could NOT find the right ovary. But after LOTS of time I found her entire repro track and then found her fetus with the ultrasound machine. After many minutes of trying to get the perfect view of the 17 day old fetus with the U/S machine, there it was, the tiny flicker I had been searching for...the heartbeat!
     After lunch we got to bring up some cows! FINALLY something I knew how to do! But now for the BEST part, after palpation to confirm pregnacy we began to ultrasound their fetus's for fetal sexing. Yes you heard it right. At only 55 days bred we looked at the mouse sized fetus for signs of sexual orientation! You can actually see, if you look really REALLY hard, a tiny set of teets on the heifer, which are about the size of a pin point!
     After a trying day all I can really think of is sleep and a famous quote from Fred Waters better known as Daddy........"When things get tough, everyone else will pull up on the reins, we start SPURRING!"

PS- My one eyed mare's eye is getting much better and her foal is doing well walking on her cast!