When we practice at these classes we use animals who have easily visible anatomy. That means we use greyhounds in dog lab since we can count their ribs easily. It gets hard then when I go home and my patients are all fat labs who don’t have ribs.
In horse class we use mostly Arabs who are doing endurance so they are very fit. I go home and look at fat horses who have none of the landmarks. Yesterday I was waiting for lab to start and saw a demo horse walking over to another group far across a field. It was a little pinto pony. I love ponies. I want to hug them until they squish. Ponies don’t share my enthusiasm for this activity but too bad. That would have been enough to make me happy if she was our demo horse but there was more.
She had a baby with her.
I believe I made vague choking sounds and pointed. The rest of my group looked and melted. They were most very cute and we would have learned nothing if they had been our demo horses because we would have been saying, “So cute!” over and over.
We started working on our Arab when the horse for the group next to us walked up. He was a Gypsy Drum Horse who are large pinto draft-type horses. This one was also fat. He may have had ribs but that’s just an assumption. That’s what my patients look like. To make it better his name was Pop Tart.Â
