Stupid things I've done:

Veterinary Science Graduate Certificate from UofI
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I was giving a cat SQ fluids by myself and reached over to stop the line while trying to hold onto the wiggly cat at the same time. Took the cat back up to its owner and went on with other work. A few hours later I was mopping the floors for closing time when I realized the floor in the treatment area was wet... turns out I hadn't shut off the fluid line all the way and it had dripped ~500cc worth of fluids onto the floor. I mopped it up and thought about how to tell the doctor while I finished mopping the clinic. Well, he beat me to it when he came up from the basement and said that the ceiling was leaking! I fessed up and he laughed when he saw how bad I felt, but told me to (obviously) be more mindful next time.

Two minutes later I was pushing the wheeled mop bucket in front of me rather quickly, in a hurry, when a wheel got caught on a crack in the floor tiles. My momentum carried me sailing up and over the mop bucket, which tipped over. I landed on my hip on the other side and ALL the dirty water came splashing out onto me and the clinic floor. Doctor just shook his head and told me to stop flooding his clinic already.
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GrizzlyMaya3 said:
Two minutes later I was pushing the wheeled mop bucket in front of me rather quickly, in a hurry, when a wheel got caught on a crack in the floor tiles. My momentum carried me sailing up and over the mop bucket, which tipped over. I landed on my hip on the other side and ALL the dirty water came splashing out onto me and the clinic floor. Doctor just shook his head and told me to stop flooding his clinic already.
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I've knocked over almost an entire mop bucket full of water before too! The wheels tend to stick on our mop buckets, so sometimes you have to give them a little push to get them going, and, well... Luckily the water didn't get on the computer modem and power strip a few feet away.
 
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LyraGardenia said:
I've knocked over almost an entire mop bucket full of water before too! The wheels tend to stick on our mop buckets, so sometimes you have to give them a little push to get them going, and, well... Luckily the water didn't get on the computer modem and power strip a few feet away.
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I think it's like a law of physics that every mop bucket or grocery cart must have a faulty wheel. Because what's life without inconvenience? ;)
 
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StartingoverVet said:
nice?
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Love this!

1. Yesterday marked the second bite my boss has sustained while I was helping her restrain. The thing is, she has a bad habit for wanting to hold the head of a cat herself while doing a jug stick, so she told me to just keep the cat from backing up. I did that, and the cat nailed her thumb. The doctor let go, so I had to let go because the cat turned on me and I was in no position to grab the head without also getting bit. The doctor has a bad reaction to cat bites, too. Lesson learned: Gently insist on holding the head myself, even though she doesn't want me to...

2. The other day, a dog tore its cruciate while trying to get out of our bathtub. I felt terrible...this dog is so sweet and so is the owner. I told the doctor what happened and she talked to the owner. I feel a bit better knowing that the doctor was kind of waiting for the tear to happen since the dog is pretty weak in the other leg, but still. "If it didn't happen here, it would have happened at home."

3. This hasn't happened yet, but I read the whole thread and laughed at the posts about being too short for the vet's tables. I'm the opposite. I'm the tallest one in the clinic, and I can feel it in my back at the end of every day. Holding dogs on our exam tables sucks....any dog under 50 pounds gets put on the table. I'm waiting for me to be trying to get a better look into a surgery only to realize I've broken sterility...
 
I just hit two guys in first class in the face with my tennis shoes while boarding my plane to SAVMA symposium so there's that.
 
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pinkpuppy9 said:
3. This hasn't happened yet, but I read the whole thread and laughed at the posts about being too short for the vet's tables. I'm the opposite. I'm the tallest one in the clinic, and I can feel it in my back at the end of every day. Holding dogs on our exam tables sucks....any dog under 50 pounds gets put on the table. I'm waiting for me to be trying to get a better look into a surgery only to realize I've broken sterility...
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Lol. We had the same thing at the clinic where I worked. Except I'm super short. So the taller, but still under 50 pound dogs were nearly impossible to restrain. And I got a lovely faceful of fur every time.
 
WildZoo said:
Lol. We had the same thing at the clinic where I worked. Except I'm super short. So the taller, but still under 50 pound dogs were nearly impossible to restrain. And I got a lovely faceful of fur every time.
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I cringe a little when the doctor wants the dog laterally.....I must look like I'm bent at a 90 degree angle! Or at least that's what it feels like haha. The taller dogs and I are friends...I can usually hold them standing just find. Chihuahuas? :arghh:
 
pinkpuppy9 said:
I cringe a little when the doctor wants the dog laterally.....I must look like I'm bent at a 90 degree angle! Or at least that's what it feels like haha. The taller dogs and I are friends...I can usually hold them standing just find. Chihuahuas? :arghh:
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Haha. I guess for my issues I could always get a stool to stand on or something, not sure what you would do to correct being too tall ;)
 
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I love this thread :D
I've done so many dumb things. Recently: we had a rabbit surrendered to the animal shelter and I was doing its intake exam. I was getting handsy (i.e., sexing the rabbit) and thought I felt some testicles. I flipped the rabbit over just to make sure and thought, gee, I must have been mistaken because there are no bunny testicles here. I declared the bunny a female and finished "her" exam and made up a kennel for "her." Later, during my break, my coworker walks up to the window in the break room holding the "female" bunny with bunny testicles veeerrrry apparent. Yeah, apparently bunnies can retract that business at will.
 
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Love this thread!

Recently I was a room tech and we saw a dog that had a couple seizures over night (O had waited at the ER for 3 hours and wasn't seen). The owner was this super nice woman and the dog reminded me a lot of one of my dogs. During a full work-up the dog had another seizure and I was told to tell the owner. I pulled the owner into a room and when I told her I suddenly felt emotional (no idea why, I'm not one to get emotionally involved). So what did I do? I gave her a hug. It pains me to think about how awkward it was (at least from my perspective)
 
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EngrSC said:
Love this thread!

Recently I was a room tech and we saw a dog that had a couple seizures over night (O had waited at the ER for 3 hours and wasn't seen). The owner was this super nice woman and the dog reminded me a lot of one of my dogs. During a full work-up the dog had another seizure and I was told to tell the owner. I pulled the owner into a room and when I told her I suddenly felt emotional (no idea why, I'm not one to get emotionally involved). So what did I do? I gave her a hug. It pains me to think about how awkward it was (at least from my perspective)
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It might not have been awkward for her and might have been what she needed at that moment. I can see your side though as sometimes it can seem awkward but in the moment you probably read the client and what they needed.
 
I've hugged quite a few clients. Each time it felt like the right thing to do at that moment, with that particular client.

Like many others, I've also put microhematocrit tubes in the centrifuge without securing the lid. My stomach sank as soon as I heard the *pings* of the tubes shattering.

One of my co-workers recently filled a boarding dog's lasix rx with acepromazine instead. The dog got overdosed on ace twice before another tech noticed. Luckily the dog was ok, but the Dr was pissed.
 
Honestly, hugging someone doesn't even crack the top ten of stupid things people could do. Sure, maybe it's a little awkward, but I generally assume that most people will see a hug for what it is - an attempt to comfort. I'm not a huggy person, and I'm really bad at reading people, so I usually don't hug clients. I did offer a shoulder pat to one particularly distraught client and she hugged me, and that's fine. Another client hugged me on discharge of her terminally ill dog, though she did warn me ahead of time. Of course, I say this coming out of a fairly congenial part of the world where everyone is related to everyone else somehow and people can be pretty touchy-feely, so maybe I'm just desensitized to hugs.
 
I would say I'm ok at reading people but I'm not a huggy person in the slightest. Initiating a hug with a basically stranger is very uncharacteristic of me. I felt stupid at the time, though I hope only I perceived it that way.
 
I had a client jump up and down and hug me because we confirmed her cat had ovarian remnant syndrome. I'm not a touchy feely person so it was awkward for me, but I don't think the client noticed she was just very happy.
 
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I think I'm okay at reading people and generally I have no problem with hugs or anything, but I personally get awkward when people get upset. I've teared up at some euthanasias before (usually if it's a client i've known for a while or some guy starts losing it completely), but then for others I just feel awkward because I can't fix what is hurting them and then I don't know how to act. For example, I'm personally one where if I'm trying to hold it together, you can't acknowledge it or hug me or I'll completely break down.
 
orca2011 said:
For example, I'm personally one where if I'm trying to hold it together, you can't acknowledge it or hug me or I'll completely break down.
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Same. On the one hand the hug is a good thing and will ultimately help me feel better, but if it's a situation where I need to keep it together, it's entirely counterproductive.
 
Idk what it is, but I get more emotional over people happy-crying than sad-crying. Today, my boss found out she's getting an excellent check from her insurance to repair our clinics entire sewage system, when we've been thinking we weren't going to get a dime. Like, we can't even do laundry right now and our baths end up flooding our clinic every day. We can now stop sending all veterinary related waste out into a local creek (we found out that's where all of our pipes were leading...the building is very, very old and not up to code). She broke down into tears, then the practice manager started to cry, and then I had to leave the room haha

Or seeing an owner tear up when we walk their dogs out to them and the dog came in on stretcher unable to walk a few days earlier....we've had a lot of back injuries lately.
 
1. On my very first shadowing, an emergency case came through the hospital that had been bitten severely by another dog. I was handing items and taking them, and somehow ended up jabbing myself with a used needle.
2. Had a dog on the floor with me while I was cleaning out his cage, I look up and his head was in the cleaning bucket. I have a panic attack and look at his tongue and it's blue. Course the color of the cleaner is blue too. So I told the boss and oh yeah, chows tongues are usually blue derp. Anyhow monitored him just in case but he did fine.
3. Spilled a mop bucket by trying to move it over a carpeted area and spilled it everywhere. Then tried to do the same thing a second time that day and spilled it all again. The staff were all great though and said that's probably a good cleaning I gave the carpet.
4. Had a really high energy pit-bull 1 yr old (sweetheart but really she's stronger than anything). Pull me over on a walk so hard that I fell over all my length and she went bounding off towards another dog. This dogs owner was holding not only the dog but also a baby in a carrier. I felt like such a terrible person. (nothing happened, no one was hurt, the pit bull just licked the dog, but really)
 
I'm a big sympathy crier too. It's going to be one of my challenges in the future, I think... I'm fine at staying calm in sad/traumatic situations on my own, but when someone else starts crying, I choke up.

One stupid thing I've done: Flooded the doorway to a barn by tipping over a 50ish-gal tub of water. Of course it was during freezing weather, so I had to use a bunch of salt to avoid creating an ice rink. And of course all the water hit me before it hit the floor, so my sweatshirt then froze on me. :lame: They sent me home early so I could thaw.
 
WillowLeaf said:
I'm a big sympathy crier too. It's going to be one of my challenges in the future, I think... I'm fine at staying calm in sad/traumatic situations on my own, but when someone else starts crying, I choke up.
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Oh don't worry, just give it a little time. Your soul will be crushed enough that emotion just kinda leaves you after a while.

Sorta kidding, but after enough exposure where you are the person in charge, you'll probably find yourself more and more distant. Your body learns real fast that you can't emotionally invest every time others are upset, when you have people crying in front of you everyday.
 
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Something stupid I seem to do on a regular basis: Not have snacks in my cubby at work. I get the dropsies when I'm overdue for food and things usually end up flying out of my hands, literally. Like, I don't know how that stool sample ended up on the wall. Sorry, guys.
 
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This is the best thread ever. I've done countless stupid things but here are two that stand out. I fell backwards off my chair when there was a lobby full of clients. I dropped an entire week worth of heart meds down the drain when I worked in the kennel(partially the owners fault for putting pills in a small box that had a broken bottom.)

Here are three stories that my kennel co-workers did that are worth sharing.
One person shattered a $200 bottle of insulin.
Another person accidentally gave them self insulin rather than the dog.
And another person put ear medication in the dog's eye.
 
Oh! I should also share the time the groomer forgot to turn the bath tub off over night and left the drain plug in! The entire grooming room was flooded!!!
 
Once, I was supervising a young golden retriever after his neuter, and he was on IV fluids. Well, at some point the line got bumped or something, and I didn't notice, but the drip rate increased without my seeing. We spotted it in time, but the poor pup got a bunch of extra fluid! He was perfectly fine (had to pee something awful when he woke up) but it scared me pretty bad.
 
An embarrassing, non-life threatening blunder: I was a receptionist in the lobby, and I was trying to get the flow of people going. We had quite a few clients and some pups in the lobby. I handed a prescription to a client, and zipped around to run back to the treatment area to ask a question for a different client. However, The moment I 360'd I felt a small creature on top of my foot. I quickly remembered there were 2 dachshunds in the lobby on those cursed retractable leashes. I jumped and the forward momentum I had from the spin carried me over the dog, and I landed on my elbow/face. The dog was unharmed! I, however, was wounded in multiple ways. Lesson learned: speed walk only when necessary and constantly keep a mental note of patients/potential obstacles.

I have made other mistakes, but this is the one I felt like sharing tonight :)
 
pinkpuppy9 said:
I cringe a little when the doctor wants the dog laterally.....I must look like I'm bent at a 90 degree angle! Or at least that's what it feels like haha. The taller dogs and I are friends...I can usually hold them standing just find. Chihuahuas? :arghh:
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OMG this! I'm 5'11'' and I swear our exam tables were made for some who's at least 6 inches shorter. The only time I'm comfortable when I restrain is when it's a bigger dog. Too, I'm taller than all but 1 of our vets (out of 5) and at some point the shorter ones have all yelled at me to get out of their light. I'm like, "Ok, let me hold my head at this insanely awkward angle while still restraining this animal and I'll just be over here." It's gotten to the point where I automatically apologize for being in their light.

On a stupid stuff note: This has nothing to do with a mistake with an animal but it was dumb and did get me chewed out. We just painted our clinic and I was carrying a large dog kennel and scraped it against a door and a wall while one of the practice owners was walking right behind me! I got death glares and then a stern talking to about the cost of the paint. Luckily the guy wasn't entirely done painting yet and was able to fix my mistake.

Also, I haven't had any life or death "mistakes" myself yet but I know all too easily how it happens. We had a boxer come in with some disc issues. We referred them down to Purdue for further diagnostics. The owners declined so we gave a cortisone injection. The dog had received cortisone before with no issues. This time the dog made it into the lobby and then dropped. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, the dog passed away. That was a tough day all around.
 
My biggest stupid to date:

Two dogs were boarding in one kennel at the clinic I worked and I need to pill just one, the shar pei, with phenobarb. Obviously while doing that the pill dropped on the ground, which the other dog, the hyperactive italian greyhound, gobbled up right away. I panicked since I had no idea about toxic dosages and called the on-call vet almost in tears thinking I had just killed the italian greyhound. Thankfully it was not lethal. Lesson of the day, separate dogs when pilling!! :bang:
 
I love this idea.

Once I told someone that I thought a cat had parvo.

When you're drawing a vaccine and you break the needle :scared:

When you poke yourself with said needle

When you feed/water a dog that is set for surgery that day...

I'll think of more soon!
 
rockatiel said:
I love this idea.

Once I told someone that I thought a cat had parvo.

When you're drawing a vaccine and you break the needle :scared:

When you poke yourself with said needle

When you feed/water a dog that is set for surgery that day...

I'll think of more soon!
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I had a classmate this year who in an exhausted state of mind kept forgetting and feeding patients prior to anesthesia. We liked to tease him, but 5am treatments on autopilot day after long 4th year day will do that to you!
 
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Not exactly about vet med, but on Monday I got to school and must've zoned out as I was parking because one of my classmates called my name and said my car wasn't parked. It had rolled into the middle of the parking lot. Stupid me forgot to put it in first and forgot the emergency brake. Wow, first time for everything; I'm always pretty paranoid about that, too. Great way to start off the week. (Luckily it didn't hit anything)
 
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Rainheart said:
Not exactly about vet med, but on Monday I got to school and must've zoned out as I was parking because one of my classmates called my name and said my car wasn't parked. It had rolled into the middle of the parking lot. Stupid me forgot to put it in first and forgot the emergency brake. Wow, first time for everything; I'm always pretty paranoid about that, too. Great way to start off the week. (Luckily it didn't hit anything)
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The other day I pulled into a spot and turned off my car, took my foot of the brake, etc. I was playing around with my phone and looked up to see the car next to me moving. Turns out my car was just rolling backwards because I forgot to put it in first and put the parking break on.
 
LullaBelle said:
The other day I pulled into a spot and turned off my car, took my foot of the brake, etc. I was playing around with my phone and looked up to see the car next to me moving. Turns out my car was just rolling backwards because I forgot to put it in first and put the parking break on.
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#stickshiftproblems Omg, seriously, I am always worried about hitting cars when on hills and stuff. Now I am going to be extra careful, I guess.
 
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Years ago, I rescued a street cat when I was living overseas and brought her back to the States with me. When I took her to the vet I noticed they put "domestic shorthair" as the breed so I corrected them that she was actually an "international shorthair."
 
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rockatiel said:
I love this idea.

Once I told someone that I thought a cat had parvo.

When you're drawing a vaccine and you break the needle :scared:

When you poke yourself with said needle

When you feed/water a dog that is set for surgery that day...

I'll think of more soon!
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Hey, FPV is a parvovirus in cats, so it's not that stupid to suggest such a thing.
 
Doktor Timo said:
Hey, FPV is a parvovirus in cats, so it's not that stupid to suggest such a thing.
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Guess not, but FPV is extremely rare in my area so it's not really thought of as being a thing!
 
Stupid things i've done----Been an equine vet in the spring time.
 
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GoldenGirl28 said:
Years ago, I rescued a street cat when I was living overseas and brought her back to the States with me. When I took her to the vet I noticed they put "domestic shorthair" as the breed so I corrected them that she was actually an "international shorthair."
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This reminds me of the time I was working as an assistant in a small animal hospital and two young-20's girls brought in their dog for a PE. They were filling out the paperwork when one of them asked the receptionist "our dog is a lab-mix, so what species should we write down?"

.......
 
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