Drawing Blood & SNAP Tests

Drawing blood on an animal is not only important but also one of my favorite things to do at the shelter. It is probably the most invasive thing that I get to take part in with lab work so I take it very seriously. I must admit, I wasn't very good at drawing blood at first. It seemed like if it wasn't one thing, it was another. For example, my first problem was not being able to find the right vein. I would confuse a tendon with a vein pretty easily. One way that I learned to tell the difference is to just feel what I think might be the vein. If you push down on it ever so slightly, it should "bounce" if it is indeed the vein. If it feels mroe hard and not so elastic, then it is most likely a tendon. I also learned to use alcohol to swab the entrance area in order to make the skin more visible. If the skin is more visible than I can actually see the blue color underneath it leading me to the correct vein. Up until today, I've only ever drawn blood on cats and kittens. On felines, I have learned to draw blood from the medial saphenous vein which is on the inside of their back leg. The person restraining the cat will "karate chop" the leg above the knee in order to make the vein stick out more. Whoever is drawing blood then has a better chance of finding the vein! Kittens are probably the hardest for me because their veins are so tiny! After doing a few though, I have them down pretty good. I found it easiest to hold my left thumb alongside the vein so it doesn't roll around (kitten veins have a bad habit of doing this!) and use my right hand to line up the needle with the vein in a parallel fashion. From there it is just skill to keep your hands steady and having a good eye.

SNAP FIV/FeLV Combo Test

So what do we do with the blood now that we have it? On cats we can check for FeLV (Feline Leukemia Virus) and FIV (Feline Immunodeficiency Virus) by reading the results. First, though, we have to set it up! We need about three drops of blood sample and about four drops of a conjugate including in the kit to run the test. After we have mixed these two together briefly, we then pour the entire contents of the mixture into the sample portion of the SNAP test. Then we wait for a while and read our results! As seen in the picture, the dots on the side indicate if the cat has either FeLV or FIV. If the cat is healthy and has neither, then the only dot that should appear is the one closest to the sample. I enjoy doing lab work like this as a student because I get a feel for what types of things a veterinarian does all day. Being a vet isn't only about working directly with the animal, but it's about working in the lab too. This can mean doing bloodwork, ear cytologys, urinalyses, fecal floats and microscope work. I love being able to get my feet wet in all these fields whie I'm still an undergraduate!