Learnings from the clinical examinations exam. Which is quite frustrating as we only had 3 hours to practice on each species this entire semester. Not including an extra 1 1/2 hours we requested for.

Rule of thumb 1. Get enough sleep. Everything seems to move much slower after only 4 hours of sleep.

Rule of thumb 2. Get there on time. I think I was. On time that is. I think I need to re-synchronise all my time-telling devices in the house. My handphones, the clock and the microwave.

Pick a nice slightly 2-minded cow like mine. O wait! You can't pick her! Not like match.com for cows. Heh. At first I thought she was a darling, she let me see how old she was through the mouth.

Open your ears, sometimes the examiner will refer to YOUR cow for conditon score. How much meat can my cow give...hmm...

I was asked to see if my underaged cow was producing milk. Duh.

Breed is important too! All blacks are Angus or Angus crosses.

My dear darling Angus decided to not let me put a mouth gag in and oesophageal tube. Bring in the nose grips!

The tube is so fun. It goes down into the rumen and you BLOW down it to hear bubbles. Brings be back to my drink bubble blowing days.

My dear darling cow decided to be nice again and lift her leg while I pulled it up. A lot of things that normally go wrong for me went right and a lot of things that normally go right went wrong. I normally don't have enough strength to pull up the leg but I did. Cow co-operated as well. Examiner was standing right there when I was tying the knot (wrongly) and he immediately showed me the correct knot on the spot. I could have got the quick-release clove hitch right if I had the chance to test it. A lot of things seem confusing after too little sleep and not enough teaching. I should have asked frequently unavailable teacher to check my knots. I thought I was correct.

I was asked to do a "virtual" v-sling technique. It went ok I guess.

Dear darling cow decided to do a full "let's release it all!" (about 5 litres...) pee on me while I was taking her temperature from the behind. Teacher thought I was from Singapore based on the thermomether I bought from Perth 0_o

I got the heart rate because I was listening to the wrong area. Again not enough teaching, too high a student:teacher ratio, me asking other confused students instead of the teacher straight. At least now I know where the heart is. Under the elbow pushed forward!

And that was it! Elin in the next crush seemed to have more questions than me. Phew.