February 23, 2005

Where else?

Where else but vet school will you have signs posted in the lounge that read, "Please dust the shavings off yourself before sleeping on the futon"?
Where else would a guest lecturer wonder "and what other animals can't make vitamin C?" to which you can proudly pipe up and rattle the strange list off with certainty "songbirds! primates! fruit bats! trout! guinea pigs!"?
I can be sure if I hadn't gone to vet school, I would never have correllated rabbits and horses--both, strangely, animals that I have raised--as essentially the same animals (due to their similar GI tracts with the only major difference being their size and the fact that you can amputate a rabbit's leg but you can't amputate horses').

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok, I'll bite. So you can amputate a rabbit's leg, this much we know. Why can't you do the same to a horse?
Are there laws against this sort of thing?

Unknown said...

No, no. No laws. Just the fact that 60% of the horse's weight is on the front, so if you amputated one of the front legs, the single leg would have to hold too much weight and this would cause lameness and more problems. Amputation of a hind leg presents similar problems. Basically it's just such a huge animal that balancing on the other three is going to cause lameness. Also, they have special "stay apparati" to help them stand without having to use muscle energy. So with one less leg to stand on, they get tire easier too. So no one amputates because the horse's quality of life is shot. Although I did just read about a horse that had a prosthesis put on its foot--the first ever.

Anonymous said...

weirdo

Anonymous said...

Wow - great minds eh????

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