School Visit to Braywood C of E First School

Simon and Lotte went on a visit to Braywood C of E First School this week.

We had great fun talking to the students in the Little Acorns class.

We took Lotte’s bulldog Yogi in to see them all and he was an absolute star. He is so relaxed around people and let the children all pet and hug him – at times they were inevitably crowding round him quite a lot but he took it all in his stride.

The children are learning about different types of job (I know, at 5 year’s old!) so we talked about what we do everyday – help animals. One of the things we do plenty of is bandage dogs and cats legs – so we got the students to practice on Yogi! As you can see in the photo they gave him a lovely set of rainbow bandages – and he barely moved an inch whilst they were doing it. Other students were practising their bandaging on teddy bears/rabbits and even Mog the cat! We also
took some stethoscopes with us and explained what we use them for. We got the children to have a go at listening to Yogi’s heart and lungs which they all seemed to really enjoy.

Afterwards we have time for questions which was brilliant. We were asked why we walk dogs, if we take them for a wee when they’re staying in the practice, why do we feed dogs and, my personal favourite, ‘Why don’t vets fly in helicopters?!!’ Unfortunately there’s not much justification to doing that at our Berkshire branch of Kelperland, but if we ever set up our satellite practice in the Australian bush then it could be looked in to…

I was really touched to hear two or three of the kids tell me that they want to be vets. Working in a busy practice one can forget how lucky we are to be working with animals every day. So many children want to work in vets, and so many adults tell me they wanted to be vets when they were little! It is a wonderful profession and I feel very lucky and privileged to be involved with it. It’s great to go on these sorts of visits to remind ourselves of that.