world's largest

Stop #4: The Ionia Free Fair - The World's Largest Free Fair (although parking will run you six bucks). Boy did this fair live up to its reputation too! For starters, we were located right next to the elephants (yes, real elephants - the world's largest land mammal!). These elephants might also have been the world's cleanest, as they were bathed via power-washer every morning just as the coordinators set up the HPSS tent and prepared the specimens for display!

The student coordinators were, admittedly, a bit nervous before the Free Fair. We weren't sure how we were going to handle a fair of such magnitude. However, local veterinarians from the Ionia area turned out for the fair and offered a helping hand to the HPSS - and they were great! Dr. Darcy Sobel arrived just as the extreme heat and humidity was starting to get to Ryan and Christina on Tuesday afternoon (a day on which no amount of lemonade could keep you cool). Dr. Sobel rejuvenated our enthusiasm and she even brought her own collection of specimens! The arrival of new radiographs, the world's largest (sensing a theme here?) bladder stone, tiny kitten embryos, and the ever-famous eyeball provided Ryan and Christina with shiny new items to share with the Ionia fair-goers!

Then on Wednesday, Dr. Jane Kapalczynski came by for the afternoon. Dr. K spent most of the afternoon taking fair-goers into the surgical suite to go through the surgical process with them - something they definitely enjoyed and the coordinators appreciated her doing! On Wednesday evening, Dr. Sobel returned to once again lend her expertise to the HPSS. So needless to say, the student coordinators had plenty of help! Why were we so worried?

With our extra real-vet helpers, we were able to talk to record numbers of you on Tuesday. The fair just grew more and more crowded as the night went on. We took advantage of the booming night life and showed off our radiograph view-boxes! Something about those bright lights really gathers attention.

On Wednesday and Thursday we had to deal with rain drops. We tried to keep our microscopes dry and held an umbrella over them as if they were our little children. A few times we actually moved the table inside the tent to keep everything else dry. Erin simply slid everything into the drawers of the bowie-unit - very handy. The drizzle let up though, and the crowds certainly didn't so we kept at it! The rain didn't damper the mood, and once again we heard from you, "This is the best thing I've seen at the fair" ! Although our favorite quote had to be, "I think I'm going to be sick . . . and I thought the rides were bad . . ."!

Thank you Ionia for another excellent fair! We hope we lived up to the greatness that is the Free Fair, as we aspire to be the World's Greatest Healthy Pet Surgical Suite!

how many stomachs does a cow have?

The Eaton County Fair - our biggest production thus far! Each of our (Ryan, Christina, and Erin) clickers passed the big 400 mark (we pulled out the camera for the magic moment), only to pass over 500 people before we were packed up on day one!

Between the thunderous roars of the tractor pull and the grinding of the woodcarver's chainsaw, we kept up with a very steady crowd of fair-goers. Everyone had a story to tell (you all had such great things to say about your vets!) and a lot of interest in the veterinary profession. More than any other fair, we found ourselves hitting the books to reference some of your very intriguing questions and comments!

Of course we had our own little disasters here and there, but that's what keeps it interesting right? We arrived on Thursday about an hour ahead of schedule, and it turned out to be a good thing because we found ourselves table-less! After Christina tried unsuccessfully to borrow a table from the hot dog stand, Bingo tent, and firefighter pavilion . . . Ryan made a quick trip to Walmart to pick up a table for the HPSS to call its own.

Then on Friday, just about everything that could break, did break. Our famous equine mandible with the abscessed tooth was clearly split in two when we pulled it from its box on Friday morning. The now unbalanced bone was stabilized by a jar of roundworms (Parascaris) for the remainder of the day (since our display simply wouldn't be the same without it). Then, since things always seem to "happen in threes", the light bulb on our microscope finally died and our cat skeleton lost a limb. Fortunately, friends of Christina (Linda and Amy) came by with crazy glue and our specimens looked good as new. And not to worry Ionia fair-goers - we have a replacement bulb for the microscope as well!


On Friday we dealt with our first rainy afternoon, but it certainly didn't damper the mood at all. Erin decided to fill the large animal plasma bags with Verners for effect, and she provided a good laugh for Ryan and Christina as she struggled to syringe the very fizzy and bubbly solution. After giving it her all though, the bags were filled and looking very much like plasma bags (although still with a few bubbles). Meanwhile, Ryan fell in love with the baby donkey in the petting barn next door. Her sweet little eyes really were pretty irresistible.

And through it all, the fair-goers of Eaton were great! When parents asked, "Are you ready to go?", we loved hearing you yell back "No way!". Then you showed your parents and friends everything you had learned, and they didn't want to leave either. One of you even exclaimed, "Well I guess I learned something during the summer, and it was cool!". The question on the sign that read "How many stomachs does a cow have?" was an especially big hit, and Erin was overloaded with interest in the rumen, reticulum, abomasum, and omasum!

The Eaton County Fair came to a close amid our spectacular radiograph lightshow (an excellent send off in our opinion). Many thanks to Eaton for making it another great one. See you at the Ionia Free Fair tomorrow morning!

almost famous

Well we could not wait to roll into the Montcalm County 4H Fair in Greenville because we had a shiny new exhibit to set up and show off. Our large animal veterinarian bowie-unit came complete with another great and knowledgeable veterinary student coordinator - Erin! Erin had spent the better part of June power-washing, painting, and stocking the bowie-unit so that she could better display a very vital part of veterinary medicine - large animal medicine! And boy did the fair-goers of Greenville eat it up. You guys kept us all busy with your interest and enthusiasm, particularly in your 4H animals.


In Greenville, we especially liked the way some of you spent awhile with us learning about anything and everything veterinary, and then you came back again later to teach your friends and family! You helped us save our voices, and did a great job teaching! I think there might be a few budding science teachers and professors scattered in with all of the future veterinarians we got to know so well.


Now the fair-goers of Greenville will have to forgive Christina, because she left her digital camera in East Lansing, and therefore the student coordinators were stuck with a disposable camera as they tried to capture the fair atmosphere via photographs. Fortunately, you were all good-looking enough that the pictures still turned out fairly well despite the poor quality!

On Wednesday, the coordinators all set personal records as we clicked our clickers counting the number of people we talked to. We each talked to over 350 of you! Wednesday was "Kids Day" and even though we were not one of the required stations to stop at on route to a new bicycle helmet, you all made sure you checked us out anyway! We were excited to hear that many of you thought we were the best thing at "Kid's Day", and even more excited to hear you tell everyone what learned from us on your way out of barn!

Last (but certainly not least!), the HPSS took another small step in the direction of international stardom. The Daily News featured a story on the exhibit and it appeared on the FRONT PAGE of the Tuesday newspaper (not that we were surprised though, right?)!

Thank you to all of our friends in Greenville for making our experience a memorable one! Tomorrow we steer toward the Eaton County Fair for our third stop on the HPSS 2009 summer adventure!

a sweet debut

I can't believe how fast those three days in Croswell flew by! I guess time flies when you are having fun, right? And that's exactly what we did at the HPSS's first fair of the summer - had a blast!

We pulled into Croswell, MI on Thursday July 9th and we were greeted by the Pioneer Sugar factory - How sweet is that? The towering "Pioneer" letters atop the factory looked out over the railroad tracks and fields upon fields of what Ryan and Christina had to assume were sugar beets. It was really quite fitting that we were pioneering the 2009 HPSS in Pioneer Town!

We quickly set up our tent upon arriving at the beautiful Croswell Fairgrounds, and we were really pleased with our location because we were right next to the dunk tank. Throughout our time at the fair, the dunk tank provided great entertainment, a cool splash every now and then, and worked as a great draw to fair-goers. Warning to future dunk-tank volunteers of Croswell: The girl's softball team can throw a very accurate hard ball!

There sure are a lot of future veterinarians in Croswell, and most of you already have a lot of great farm experience and are so knowledgable (we were really impressed)! You also have a great sense of humor. Some of our favorite quotes from Croswell include:

"That (the horse cyclops) looks like my uncle."

"The toy dinosaur inside the dog on that x-ray is definitely a Stegasaurus. I can tell, definitely."

"Wow, if he (my son) becomes a veterinarian then I will be the happiest mom in the world."

"I want to be a veterinarian when I grow up, and I am making a scrapbook page about this exhibit."

"This is, by far, the best thing at the fair!"

"It's really great to learn about this stuff, because people get so removed from their food source."

"The next time I show my chickens, I am going to tell the judge that chickens have nucleated red blood cells! That'll really blow him away!"

Our second day in Croswell was definitely the busiest. We talked to almost 250 of you! We had a feeling things were actually going a little TOO well . . . but the strong Croswell crosswinds of Lake Huron took care of that early Saturday morning. Our faithful tent simply could not handle the ferocity of the winds, and we found it in quite a mess and certainly not standing on Saturday.

Fortunately, Ryan and Christina are great repair people and had it standing again in no time (with the help of blue duct tape and a couple of zip ties). The fix probably isn't permanent but it made it through the rest of the very windy day . . . something our banners and very attractive signs (See a flea at 10 times normal size! Check out the horse cyclops! Heartworms! Count the puppies on a pregnant dog's x-ray!) couldn't manage to accomplish no matter how much we supported them.

All in all though, the debut of the HPSS 2009 in sugar town was certainly a sweet one! We hope to see a lot of you again at the Sanilac 4H Fair! Impress those judges with everything you learned about your animals!

Now it's time to get back on the road and ready for the Montcalm County Fair in Greenville! See you there tomorrow morning!

pack it up, pack it in!

Wow, we are getting so close and so excited/nervous now that we can't even sleep - feels like the first day of school! We only have a few last loose ends to tie up before we hit the road on Thursday and make our big debut in Croswell, MI!

Just before the 4th we got a couple of new microscopes that work GREAT! Dr. Stickle picked us up in her fun new car and together we traveled over to Fee Hall to see what we could find. You will certainly be in for a treat when you gaze into the eyepieces of these fabulous pieces of equipment! The fleas seem to come to life (careful)!

Dr. Stickle and Christina picking out the two best microscopes in Fee Hall

Your HPSS student coordinators finally made it over to the MVMA office today and cleared out the basement! After we got everything we needed together, we realized how much we had and we decided to go back and get the trailer! It turns out Ryan is an EXCELLENT trailer driver, and he even backed it into his garage! The only problem is that neither Ryan or Christina has mastered the very important skill of packing the trailer yet . . . and we had a few things topple over on our way back from the MVMA office today. No worries though, our goal tomorrow is to find a perfect packing method before we leave for the long drive on Thursday! We might even pack the fragile objects with some of everyone's favorite packing material - bubblewrap!

Take 1: The packing disaster (stay tuned for a picture of our second attempt).

We've got another long day ahead of us tomorrow, but we know we will be ready by Thursday. We CAN'T WAIT to hit the road and come meet all of you. We especially can't wait to show off all of these amazing veterinary tools and models we've been collecting over the past couple months. See you all on Thursday July 9th at the Croswell Fair!