Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Day 237 - Pig's Feet


When Tatjana, the vet from Croatia was visiting with us this past summer, one of the things we did with her was have a 'spay/neuter' day.  A local rescue organization brings in stray cats and we do the surgeries at a greatly reduced cost to allow our vet students/interns to get some hands-on surgical experience.  Because most of them are wild-ish cats, we place sutures IN their skin (as opposed to through it) that do not have to be removed (they just dissolve over time.)  They are called intra-dermal or subcuticular sutures. 

Tatjana had never learned such a suture pattern, so I felt it was important for her to practice before actually doing the surgery.  I had her practice the same way I did in vet school:  on pig's feet.

We actually had to visit several grocery stores and specifically ask the butcher for them before we could find them!  But find them we did.  And with some old, expired suture, we practiced suturing pig's feet on my dining room table.  I held a flashlight so she could see what she was doing! 

She did great on the pig's feet and she did ever better on the cats.  :)

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