Animal Aiders

Yesterday I attended a canine first aid course, set up by Animal Aiders, who run courses covering emergency aid for different kinds of animals. My very 'capable with canines' friend Naomi felt it would be good for us both. She rescues Bull Terriers  and has always got between 3 - 6 dogs at home. I learned a great deal and certainly came away feeling much more confident, especially about anatomy and wound dressings. We had cuddly toy dogs to practice bandaging on, well I say dogs, those of us who got there in time did, others had to make do with cows.

Our patient was not well, he had a number of imaginary injuries and we had to bandage his paw, ear and tail, which is the hardest of all if you have skinny tailed lurchers, but as I'll be working with huskies we picked a very well behaved, but rather tatty Collie. We had been shown how you can use their hair to keep the bandage on by teasing bits out and laying them over the bandage, one student misunderstood when the Veterinary Nurse told us to pull the hair out from under the bandage...

He doesn't look very happy, but he didn't complain.

This is Sophie, who runs the courses

In other news:
We heard from Gaynor that the sled-dog World Championships in Norway in the 400km and 600km distances have just been won by two women. There is more information here: www.femundlopet.no As Gaynor says "I can't think of any other sport in the world where women compete equally alongside men and come out on top!!"

Anna clearly felt inspired and harnessed up the local Lurcher team for a burn across the common.