Free Vet Tech Tales: The Early Years by Phoenix Sullivan Page B

bearing plastic gloves and tweezers. She scooped out a palmful of the larvae, revealing raw, pink tissue beneath. “He probably had a hot spot under that bushy tail and a fly laid her eggs in the wound.” She ran the tweezers just under the skin at the edge of the wound and fished out a couple more of the fat white beasts. “Use the spray head to flush out that wound real good. Then put some antibiotic cream on it after he’s been bathed. We’ll send him home with some of the cream, and he should be good to go.”
    Another lesson learned. Even a well-kept dog could have hot spots and maggots. The owner had been concerned enough to notice the dog acting strangely, but simply hadn’t been astute enough to diagnose the problem himself. It’s easy to fault the owner in such situations, but sometimes even the most diligent of us can overlook the obvious.
      “I’ll take care of him,” Charla told me. “Why don’t you start brushing out Sasha?”
    I picked up the Himalayan she pointed to. The big, gentle cat reminded me of a long-haired sealpoint Siamese. As I worked on getting Sasha’s fur detangled, I kept one eye on Charla , watching as she ran the water over the area where the maggots had been living off of Samson’s wound. Charla didn’t strike me as overly knowledgeable about medicine or as someone who even wanted to be, but she was industrious and kind, and certainly seemed competent in the back room. In fact, she reminded me a lot of how Kathy had been. Was this, then, the model of the veterinary assistant?
    I aspired to more. But was there anything more between helping in the kennel and being a veterinarian? Another stepping stone? At the time, I had no idea a new plan was brewing at the state level that would acknowledge the existence of that stepping-stone position. I only knew that while I was thrilled to be in the company of animals once again, one day soon I would wake up and resent having to clean another cage or dip another dog if something more challenging wasn’t waiting on the near horizon.
    In the meantime, there was Sasha to bathe and Max to clip.

     

Personality Cuts Both Ways
     
    Max was a 30-pound terrier mix who looked like he had a healthy dose of Lhasa Apso in him. He was a happy dog with a perpetual smile and a matted coat.
    “Personality cut for the summer,” Joan had said when she deposited him into a cage.
    A “personality cut” referred to the standard way all of Dr. Norris’ staff clipped any dog’s coat that needed extensive grooming. Dr. Norris certainly wasn’t going to pay to have a professional groomer on staff, but by the same token he wasn’t going turn away another source of profit. So, for those animals who didn’t have a regular groomer but were needing to be clipped down because of mats or fleas or just wanting to be kept cool in summer, we clipped them down close over their body between the base of the tail and the base of the ears. The tail we trimmed with scissors to avoid a nude, “rat tail” appearance. But the ears and head demanded some artistry. That’s where the “personality” part came into play. Fluffy eyebrows or that plucked appearance? A scraggle of beard or a clean-shaven chin? Mostly it was mutts needing our attention, so we looked at the dog’s face and tried to decide what breed it looked most like. Then we used scissors to trim their heads to match that image. I had given the personality cut to maybe a dozen dogs during my volunteer days, and I believed I had a flair for turning scraggly into cute. And sometimes even scruffy into classy.
    For a dog like Max who started out with a cute-as-a-button expression and a solid breed dominance, clipping was simply a matter of turning him into a shaved-down version of himself. Eyebrows? Definitely. And even a bit of extra overhang across his eye ridge. Where an elegant poodle might get a clean-shaven muzzle with a simple mustache, Max’s face demanded curly hair over his whole nose, a drooping