First of all… what in the world was I thinking when I signed up for a night shift, in between my regular shifts, on my long week. Sure, I had around 28 hours before the night shift and 20 hours after to recover but I am not a night person! I should know better!!

But, this shift was really a fun and interesting shift to work. Nights can be very unpredictable to work and this was a shift involving a lot of animal interaction and teamwork with law enforcement.

Our first call was just a simple call with chestpain. The patient decided to not go to the hospital. But this patient had a little thing whom decided that I was the best thing on this planet. She could probably smell Twix and BamBam on my pants. Meet Sugar, a 3 month old Chihuahua mix… isn’t she just adorable!!!

Later in the night we get a call where law enforcement was dispatched with us. When we came closer to the address the road became worse and worse and I decided that I didn’t want to take the risk in the dark so I parked the ambulance and we had to walk. A family member came and met us and I was glad for that because they had a lot of dogs. I’m not afraid of dogs as you know but it is in the middle of the night, and a pack of 10 huge dogs… some of them Great Danes actually can feel threatened and do things they usually wouldn’t do. They were actually really nice dogs, just a lot of them. When our part of the call was done the sheriff had came after us… don’t ask me why the entire county (3 deputies) came because that was not necessary but this is what we see… we are blocked in…

No biggie, it gave us a break. We let dispatch know that we were done but we couldn’t move until they came back. And it didn’t take long until two of them came back. But they didn’t have the key to the third car. So they go back (almost like a little hike on uneven gravel road) to ask the deputy about the car key. We could tell on their faces when they came back to the truck that something was not right. The first car, right behind the ambulance is brand new. It doesn’t even have license plates. She left the keys in the car and it locked itself. The only thing we can do is zig zag us around so we at least face the other way. The ground is too uneven and there is a step that is too high for the ambulance so we can’t squeeze on this side of the car even if the other two cars move. We measured and tried to figure out how we would get out of there. The risk to either get stuck with the ambulance or hit the brand new vehicle was too great. We called our dispatcher and told her the situation. In the same time the deputies called a tow truck to come and pop the door for them. And it didn’t take long for him to get there! And within minutes the door was open and we were set free!

It is certainly not every day you have to call the tow truck to pop a law enforcement vehicle… but today was the day.

Didn’t take long until we got our next call. Already in the notes it gave us instructions that the gate to the property would be close because they had miniature horses so we had to be thoroughly to close the gate after us. No problem, we have this all the time… and look what we found when we got on scene…

Miniature horses and donkeys! So adorable!!! The patient decided to not go to the hospital and the family followed us out to the ambulance. We talked a little about his animals, they were so friendly even with us coming with something bright and loud and I also got pictures with the donkey Theodore!

Two asses in one picture! Haha!

The night went by fast. It was a fun shift. We had a patient jumping off our stretcher when we got to the hospital… that happens now and then. We had calls that took us out on roads that was not really travelable with an ambulance and I had to turn around and go through a gate that I honestly didn’t think would work, but slowly I got through. So it turned out to be a little different from my normal early morning shifts which can be a lot of fun sometimes!

Now some hours of rest before heading back in the bright early morning!