National Vet Tech Week

This past week was National Vet Tech week. Or appreciation week or something.

Vet techs do so much more than people think they do. They help with nurse-type stuff when the cats come to the vet to get an exam. But they also take notes to the human has a nice care plan of what to do. They do the stuff that has several different specialties with human health care -- anesthesia, phlebotomy, radiology, filling prescriptions ....

They have to know the anatomy of not just cats, but sometimes even d*gs, rabbits, small animals like hamsters, and maybe even big ones like beef and horsies if they're that kind of a vet practice. They sometimes look up the diseases if the symptoms sound familiar.

They often do the office type things around the clinic, like scheduling appointments, keeping up the web page, answering the office telephone, hiding the vet from telemarketers, handling billing and payments, posting to social media, running to the office supply store, placing orders, accepting orders and giving them to the customers (like if the kitty needs a special kind of food) and that sort of thing.

This next one is one of my favorites. They feed the cats and other animals who are boarding or who live at the clinic. Sometimes they even play with us... even when they don't really want to. They sometimes give us boxes to sit or play in. (They handle fecal samples and sometimes collect urine samples). They do some grooming and bathing sessions sometimes too.

They clean our litter boxes and the rest of the office and rooms. Sometimes they even paint the walls -- either solid colors or nice designs, depending on how creative they are. They put up (and take down) holiday decorations as needed. Sometimes they even do yard work and gardening if there's a flower bed outside the clinic.

It can be a stressful job, especially when they see sick and dying animals that were well loved, or should have been. But the vet techs can do it, and they deserve at least our thanks.