Guinea Pig

Novel was named very accurately, for he truly is a novel dog of many titles. You heard about his kangaroo thing right? Well he is also a Guinea Pig. (...and he loves to snuggle with horses and likes to suck on cat heads, but that's a whole nother story.)

Striking resemblance is it not?

Really though, I'm pretty sure Novel gets the Guinea Pig from me. ...ok that sounded weird. No I am NOT a Guinea Pig, or even part Guinea pig (I hope!)  I'm just a bit of a mad scientist.  ....Ok scrap that. That sounded even worse.

Lets put it this way, I work at an animal hospital that just hired some brand new techs. Brand new techs need training. Training involves taking x-rays and  drawing blood and draining anal glands and...well we'll just stop there before this gets too graphic. All that training requires practice. Practice requires subjects to practice on....like guinea pigs.

Enter Novel the happy guinea pig.

Treats? Oh you want to stick a needle in my neck first? Sure that sounds great! Where are the treats?

Today, Novel "volunteered" for the works. Restraining techniques, blood drawing in multiple locations, anal glands...you name it. He was awesome, and I was thrilled because it was really good practice for him, and we had all the time in the world to take it slow and make it as pleasant as possible for everyone involved.

Only part he had trouble with was getting his temperature taken in his ear. Funny, considering that is the least invasive and most commonly accepted thing we practiced doing on him. Looks like I need to work on messing with his ears a little more.