Vet On The Edge

Pushing Limits

2010-01-03T07:49:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm like everyone else: Being outside my comfort zone is... well, uncomfortable. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, I figure. In fact, maybe you should go there a lot, so you can see what it's like, and maybe next time it won't be so scary. At least, that's my theory. Case in point: yesterday I married Jill.

To a man, I mean. (Why are you looking at me like that? What did you think I meant? Not that there's anything wrong with that....!)

Jill, good friend and technician extraordinaire, got engaged in the fall. Very touchingly, she asked me immediately if I would do the ceremony: Of course I will, I told her. I'd be honored.

The next thought in my head is: How the hell am I going to pull THAT off? Because, as I am not a minister nor the captain of a ship, this is something that not only have I never done before, it's something I've never even thought about doing. Never in one million years did I think that I'd be called upon to perform a wedding. And - maybe this is just me - it seems like it might be, I don't know, kind of important to get it right, since this is a day she'll remember for the rest of her life, AND she'll only get to do it once. Oh, yeah, and I believe there is some kind of legal impact to it. Just guessing, here.

So I did what any normal, reasonably competent and self-respecting person would do: I panicked.

Luckily, I have backup in all things ministerial: My mother, praise be, is a minister. So, first thing, I scuttled home and called my mommy. You know, like any normal coward would do.

Luckily for me, my mother has performed over 600 weddings. Not only does she know what parts are required for the wedding to be legal, she has a lovely ceremony that's already written out and can be tweaked easily as needed to suit the couple in question. There. That's half my work done for me. And, as a handy fringe benefit, she's full of useful tips, like: Never let them memorize their vows. Make them repeat after you. Even if they're professional actors, they probably won't be able to repeat their lines correctly under the stress of the moment; and even if they could, their job is to be fully engaged in the ceremony, which they can't be if they're trying to remember their lines. They should be looking into each other's eyes and making binding, lifelong and life-altering vows, not trying to remember their script. It's also best to keep the ceremony within a certain time limit so as not to lose people's attention. Additionally, when the part with the rings comes in, the man gets the woman's ring, and the woman gets the man's ring; they have to give them to each other, so they have to take the one that is NOT theirs. Oh, and while having children and dogs involved is adorable, it is also fraught with peril, as the behavior of dogs and children is not always predictable. Children may lay down in the aisle to play with the pretty flower petals, throw tantrums, swallow one or more of the rings, wander off into the congregation, wet themselves (or others), or otherwise fail to cooperate. Dogs may do much the same, although urinating on parishioners is slightly more likely than them wetting themselves. Include children and dogs in the ceremony at your own risk.

Ur. Jill's a musher. She has 19 dogs. Her dogs are a huuuuuuuuge part of her life. They're family. She's putting together a second team so she and her soon-to-be husband can go on overnight winter camping trips. And she wants one of them to be the ring-bearer.

Okay. We'll deal with that part later. First things first: get your mother's wedding ceremony copied out and familiarize yourself with the essential parts, the ones required in order to make the marriage legal. Next, give it to the bride for approval. Next, find out that the bride wants a hand-fasting ceremony. Okay, cool, we can do that - but that's not the part that makes the marriage legal. Hand-fasting was actually done in days of yore (whenever "yore" was) when there were no resident clergy in most towns and villages, and roads were often impassable in the winter to the degree that made it impossible for them to get to their constituents. The hand- fasting was done as a temporary measure until the clergy could make their rounds again (often in June, hence that being the traditional month for weddings). Even back in yore, hand-fasting was legal only for a year and a day, and after that the marriage was no longer valid, unless it had been formalized by taking church-sanctioned vows. Nowadays, of course, you can get your average veterinarian to do the ceremony, but there are still parts that have to be done properly in order for it to be legal.

Okay, then. We'll fold the hand-fasting into the rest of the ceremony. It'll be like a two-fer.

Next, read the ceremony out loud (remembering to pause for the expected "repeat after me" parts and responses like "I will" and so on) so you can see how long the ceremony will be - because you're doing it outside on January the second in Alaska, and it might be a teeeensy bit cold outside. I'm only guessing here, of course. And there will be people from the lower 48 who are not used to the cold and will be suffering, despite the handy bonfire. Also, if the ceremony is longer than about 20 minutes, you tend to lose people's attention even if they're NOT freezing half to death, so being reasonable about your timing is a good idea. Shorter is definitely better. This, of course, is an exceptionally good time to discover that the combined ceremony is too long, and an ever better time to place a frantic call for help to your MinisterMom, who will help you line it out mainly by letting you panic until you run out of steam (so that you can listen again), agreeing that it needs tweaking, and calmly reiterating the necessary inclusions and limitations. She will also most kindly express complete confidence in your ability to manage this task, and overlook the fact that your voice is so high and squeaky with stress that soon only bats will be able to hear it.

This, by the way, is also an excellent time to begin having serious stage fright, as well as noticing that everyone cries at weddings, and you are no exception. Hmm. Might be good to get a handle on that so you are not all sniffly while you read the vows - which, by the nature of them, are kind of tear-jerkers, and may cause your throat to close up entirely.

Oh, goodie. I didn't have enough to worry about here, so thank heavens I've got a new terror on the horizon: Being unable to actually SPEAK the vows, let alone complete the ceremony.

Okay. Worry about that later. Right now you have to coax the bride (gently, as her head is on the verge of supernova) to give you a venue, so that you can apply for your certification and get the paperwork lined out. Do this delicately every few days for at least two weeks, while her fiancee` takes care of several things on the "to do" list but forgets daily to formalise an appropriate venue for the ceremony and reception (although he is duly addressing other matters). Rejoice silently when the date and venue are finalized. Next, contact the State of Alaska court system and get your marriage commissioner's licence, which means you have to gather certain bits of information, such as the full names of the participants (properly spelled, which can be a bit of a challenge in this case), the date and location at which the wedding will occur (and, hallelujah, you now have this information), and your own name (which, if all goes as planned, you will be having trouble remembering right about now.)

A few days after this is a good time to receive your wedding commissioner's licence in the mail and promptly panic over visions of losing it before the wedding. Stuff it in the over-sized manila envelope that has your mother's wedding ceremony in it, the hand-fasting ceremony, the combined ceremony, and all remaining traces of your sanity. Emblazon both sides of the envelope with "WEDDING" in large red letters. Note at this time that there are lots of attached pages, examples of paperwork which must be filled out and duly witnessed in order for things to be legal. Also note that - luckily for you - there is yet another version of a wedding ceremony attached. Because God knows the three you already have can't possibly be enough. Prop the envelope on your desk in a prominent area so that you always know where it is, but also so that it is conveniently to hand so that you can have a massive adrenaline surge every time your eye falls on it.

Right about now, two weeks before the wedding, is when it's best to discover that the bride's dress - being made by her sister - is not finished, the rings are not ordered yet, and the bride herself is thinking longingly and sometimes tearfully of elopement. It's also a good time to learn that the bride is so overwhelmed that when you ask her what things you can take over for her to lighten the load, she can't even tell you if she needs chocolate, dinner, or alcohol to take her stress level down one notch. Realistically, the best choice is to provide all three in a handy, carry-out sort of fashion, and then to back away slowly. It's probably wisest at this juncture, when discovering that the marriage licence has not yet been obtained, not to make any stern remarks about how we have to have that for the legalities to be observed. Just say "Oh, okay" and exit the room quietly. Remind yourself that this is a capable, responsible adult and you have absolute faith in her - and besides, YOU'RE the one who can't read the wedding ceremony out loud yet, so maybe you should be focusing on that. This would be a good time to begin living on Alka-Seltzer, if you're in any doubt about the timing on that.

The following week is the best time to discover that the dog intended to be the ring bearer has gestational diabetes, by the way, and needs to be spayed less than a week before the ceremony.

On the plus side, the marriage licence is in hand and the groom's doublet, shirt and pants have all arrived. On the minus side, the rings have not - and the wedding dress is still under construction. But back on the plus side, the seamstress sister is now in Alaska, so work is proceeding.

Two days before the wedding is the best time to find out that, if you want to go over the completed wedding ceremony with the bride and groom, your best shot is to do it the night before the wedding, when you will be helping decorate the reception venue. Since this is all the rehearsal you're going to get, you should go for it. Besides, the reception is being held in a charming log-cabin chalet on a military base, and not only is it quaint and adorable, it's a lot of fun decorating it with candles and tiny white Christmas lights and pine boughs and flowers. Plus the pizza is good, and you could really use that about now.

After putting up the decorations and being dropped off at the clinic (which will be approximately 10:30 p.m.) is an excellent time to cut out the fabric for the polar fleece tunic you plan to make for the ceremony. Since the theme is sort of Lord of the Rings meets Renaissance Festival, something that suits that genre is a good idea, and since the bride could not care less what you wear so long as you wear SOMETHING, it's perfectly fine if you don't have a pattern and are making it up as you go along. You've seen Lord of the Rings, right? Twice, even. So this should be no problem, right? Even if you DON'T have a serger on your sewing machine.

The morning of the wedding is when you should stitch the tunic together. The best background noise for this would be one of the Lord of the Rings movies, naturally. This is when you'll discover that a Ford's interlocking suture pattern works really well on polar fleece - and since it's your favorite suture pattern anyway, this should bring down your stress level to the point that only two Alka-Seltzers are necessary to keep your stomach from burning to the ground. You should also get up at 6 a.m. the day of the (afternoon) wedding so that besides suturing up your polar fleece, you also have time to practice the ceremony at least 5 more times, in the frail hope that you will be able to get all the way through it if you practice it several times in a row. This will be the best time to discover that the key to this is to stand up strait, speak loudly (so that everyone can hear you) and support with your diaphragm. If you do this, suddenly you are the one leading the ceremony, not merely a participant, and some magic of grace comes to you so that you can, at last, do it without either ignoring the import of the words, or else being so touched by them that you can't talk above a choked murmur. It seems that if you can control your breathing, you can control the rest of it. Your voice now sounds confident and assured, instead of rushed and breathless and hitching.

Ah. Suddenly this is coming together. Something just clicked.

Trundle off to the clinic, where the bride is picking you up to go to the ceremony (since your "check engine" light is on in your truck, and it would be a faux pas if you broke down on the highway en route to the wedding and were never heard from again.) Call to check in. Discover that the bridal party is running about 45 minutes behind, because the dress is still under construction. Consider this excellent news, as you are not 100% sure you turned off your curling iron and would rather run home to check it than worry about it til the end of the reception.

Return to the clinic to await the bridal party. This is a good time to be flipping through radio stations and randomly come across your all-time favorite song (Unchained Melody, the Righteous Brothers - you know, the good version.) However - even with all the planning and preparations done, even dressed in your many layers of clothing (topped with your new tunic), even with your beaver mitts and your ceremony cheat-sheet and the knowledge that you CAN, in fact, speak every word of it, and with all your wedding paraphernalia beside you, ready to go - you will not have the 3 minutes' peace it takes to enjoy the song.... because your tech Jessica is waving a frantic semaphore at you from the back of the clinic. This can't be good. I am suddenly 100% certain that whatever she is about to tell me, I don't want to hear it.

Le sigh.

"What's up?" I ask her, having rolled my window down.

"Jill's van won't start and she needs you to call her right away!" Jessica exclaims. I imagine she does. Sorry, Righteous Brothers. Wait, what's that distant pooom! I just heard? Oh, that would be Jill's head exploding.

I trot upstairs to the main floor of the clinic and call Jill.

"So, the van won't start?" I say. "Is it your battery?" I ask. I have cables; I can go out and jump it for her.

"I don't think so. When I turn the key nothing happens."

"Hmm, well if you have juice, you should at least hear something when you hit the ignition," I say doubtfully; I'm no mechanic, but in times when I've had a car fail to start but the battery is not dead, it seems like I can hear some kind of noise, even with the radio off; the fuel pump, or that solenoid click, or something.

"I don't know, but I don't have time to think about it," Jill says, which shuts me up at once. She's right; she doesn't have time to think about it. "Tom is coming by the clinic to get you, and then he's coming out to get my sisters. Do you want him to come by and get you first, or get them first and then get you?"

"Whatever's the easiest for them," I say.

"Okay, you first," Jill decides, and hangs up. Meanwhile my boss - who is covering for me, as it is Saturday and normally I work the Saturdays alone - hands me a chart, asks me to call the owners, and says, "If only Jill had had the common courtesy to tell you that her van was going to break down, YOU could have worked this Saturday." I laugh, but I also think about getting up at six to make the tunic, and the fact that, until that very morning, I didn't think I'd actually be able to DO the ceremony, and I'm thinking: Yeah, I could've worked today. Not. Meanwhile Tom shows up and informs you that now Chris is bringing Jill and Wayne is bringing the sisters, so we're able to head right on in. Good thing people are flexible. Plans are now changing by the minute.

Still... I am at the wedding venue in good time - by which I mean, before the wedding party. It's very cold - the site is in the shadow of a mountain as well as down in a hollow, so all the coldest air within 10 miles is gathered there. I also note that (unsurprisingly, given that Jill and I work together) a reasonable number of attendees at the wedding ceremony are clients of ours. Excellent, I think. This means if I screw it up I'll never be able to live it down! Peachy! Right about now I start having visions of me having a seizure in the middle of the vows, or perhaps having an episode of Tourette's syndrome or possibly pitching headlong into the bonfire. Ah, a little more adrenaline hits my bloodstream. JUST what I needed.

However... it is very pretty here now, and that in itself is soothing. Because it's so cold, all available moisture has precipitated out onto the trees, frosting every twig and branch gorgeously. There is a stream running only a few yards from the bonfire; its quiet murmur seems to erode the spiky edges of my anxiety, smoothing them off. There are two sleighs, with black Percherons teamed up in front, in black harness trimmed in red and laden with jingle bells. There are red feather spikes jauntily crowning the horses, who look suitably renaissance-y and who are waiting patiently for something to happen. One of them turns his big, dark eyes on me for a few moments, calm and relaxed and endlessly patient. This is a particular specialty of the cold-bloods, it seems, who are long on patience and short on fractious, by and large. Especially large.

The groom shows up, looking spiff in doublet, fur jacket and mukluks. Shortly thereafter Jill arrives, and she is looking beautiful. I know they say all brides are beautiful, and maybe it's so, but I have to say: Beautiful. She is wearing a long burgundy velvet cloak and her dress is gorgeous. And glory be, here are the bride's sisters, one of them with a last minute addition to the dress.

Ah. Now that the bride is fully kitted out, it's time for our sleigh ride.

Accordingly, we all pile into the two sleighs (one of which has a "just married" sign on the back) and tuck ourselves in amongst the lap blankets. We go over the river and through the woods - well, through the woods, THEN over the river, then back over the river and back through the woods again. The trees tend to bow over with the weight of the frost on their branches; looking up at them as we go underneath, it is as if we are passing under a wintry bower, a latticed arch of crystalline white. The clop of the horses' heavy hooves on the road is both soothing and enlivening, a sound thick with happy memory for me, and for a little while I forget that the opportunity to really make a hash of things still lies just ahead.

Soon we are back at the bonfire, which smells divine in the cold air. We gather around the bonfire. One of my clients helpfully stashes my beaver mitts in his capacious pockets so that I don't trail them in the fire. Jill is at the edge of her ability to cope with all the attention, congratulations, queries and compliments, not to mention a blizzard of flashes from various cameras that makes it look like she is at a red-carpet premiere. We decide between us where she and Karl are going to stand. Aaaaand... I'm up to bat.

Somehow I manage to speak all the words in the correct order in a clear voice that, I am told later, was audible and intelligible to everyone. Both bride and groom are able to speak clearly and reply where indicated. As we go along Jill goes from looking a little stressed and frazzled... to glowing. She looks as if someone has lit a candle inside her. There is a big, genuine smile on her face and her eyes shine. The cold has put roses in her cheeks and she looks, at that moment, like she is about 18, full to brimming over with the flush of young love.

Ah. It must be working for her the way she wants it to. And isn't that a pretty sight.

Raven delivers the rings on cue, neither of which are dropped in the snow. They exchange rings and vows. I pronounce them husband and wife. I speak the blessing over them and close the ceremony. We have hot cider and cocoa by the fire. A wave of relief washes over me: I did not pass out, have a seizure, pitch headlong into the fire, nor torch up my beaver mitts. I did all the legal parts in the correct order, and there was no inappropriate swearing. Whew. I think I scraped out a win. In the spirit of celebration and sacrifice to the gods, I give my ceremony cheat-sheet to the fire, and let the smoke carry the invocation to whatever deities are watching over our small, semi-pagan wedding, thinking: May your days together be good and long upon this earth. This is the last part of the blessing, extracted from my mother's ceremony, and it's lovely, and simple, and right to the point. Just the thing as I watch sparks spiral up in the smoke, flying away amongst the frost-silvered trees and into the rising tide of evening.

I notice I can't feel my fingertips; I can't decide if it's cold or nerves. "Hey... where's the hip flask?" I ask, joking; but a shout goes up: "Yo! Someone over here needs cough medicine!" and lo and behold: rum to go in my cider.

Now we saddle up and head onto the base for the reception (which will be more heavily attended than the wedding, at which only 30 or so people were present). I am feeling a vague unreality which, upon arriving at the chalet, is immediately eclipsed by being waylaid by every person I see, half of whom compliment me on how pretty the ceremony was (not that I had much to do with that, apart from helping tweak the passages written by others into a reasonable order); the other half buttonhole me and ask how it went. I eat, I socialise, I run occasional errands between guests, DJ, caterers, and the marital couple. I get the paperwork signed so that it's all official, keeping the appropriate copy for my records. I eat excellent food and have two glasses of wine. At the end I stay to help strike the decorations - by no means a requirement, but it's a short task, and it seemed like the right thing to do - and at last I am headed home.

It was a 19-hour day, and a good many things that were supposed to get done a day (or seven) before the wedding got done on the morning of - but in the end, I think it was okay. Everything got done, and at the end, depsite the many monkeywrenches that appeared at the last minute, it seemed suddenly to come together in an amazingly seamless fashion. Everyone switched horses in midstream rather flawlessly, when it came right down to it, cheerfully altering their plans to accomodate vehicular failures and what have you, and everything that might have been a problem... ultimately wasn't.

I don't know if I would do it again (certainly not for anyone but a good friend, someone like Jill, for whom I would willingly walk through that particular fire again) - although presumably, as with many skills, the first one is the scariest and the hardest; the process of doing something like this teaches you a few things. So I may never push this particular limit again... But at least I know I can.

Saving The World

2009-12-25T10:08:00.000-08:00

Ahh, the Holidays. As usual, not enough time to get everything done, but - also as usual - kind of fun anyway, what with it being all festive and stuff. And I hope you are all having a Merry Christmas, by the way.

To no one's surprise, we are having a white Christmas up here. It has, however, been quite warm (34 to 38 degrees); if not for the fact of a heavy snowfall last week we might NOT be having a white Christmas up here. However: the year has turned. The days are getting longer (by about 26 seconds a day right now, but hey - you take what you can get). I'd say the majority of Alaskans are observant of the solstices (and to a lesser degree the equinoxes) because the seasonal changes up here are so extreme. Hence for many of us, the winter holiday cluster starts on December 21st - my father's birthday, incidentally, and happy birthday to him - and ends on January second. I personally like to extend that to my own birthday, in late January, but while you're all welcome to join me in that, I don't insist that others collude with me in my celebratory delusions. Mostly.

This year for Christmas, two of my sisters got me a gift certificate to Global Giving, an organization which oversees about 800 charities. I get a little email notification and I think: Hmm, what's this? So I open it up and there is a little pile of money that I can give to any of the charities they oversee. All of a sudden I'm aaaall perky. Ooooh. It's winter solstice, a perfect time to start feeling festive and holiday-ish. I'm SO not waiting til Christmas. And moreover, I am shamelessly stealing this idea for my Christmas present to the Wildwood quartet.

Naturally - and here, put on your surprised faces - when spending my gift certificate I went to the section on charities involving animals. I know - who can believe that? Me, interested in animal things! Go figure. Still, odd as it is - or not - for me to be interested in things related to animals, I had SO much fun shopping for pet projects there (so to speak). I can't even tell you. In the end I divided my gift certificate up, trying to focus mainly on things that would provide a sustainable improvement. For instance, I gave money to a livestock guardian dog project in Africa, which provides dogs, puppy vaccines and training for the native farmers so that they can use dogs to protect their livestock (mainly from cheetahs, I understand). This benefits the livestock, obviously, since they're protected from predation. It also obviously benefits the farmers. But in addition it benefits the cheetahs, since the farmers will shoot any cheetah they see on their land, out of fear of predation on their livestock. If the cheetahs stay away, they stay alive.... and there aren't so many of them that we can afford to waste them.

There were lots of other projects that tempted me: ones where you can purchase or help purchase a goat for a family who can then breed the goat and sell or rear the offspring for future income, and dairy off the goat for food; ones where you can help bring sheep flocks up to dairy standard for income and food for the community; ones where you can invest in habitat recovery and education for local people so that they can encourage wildlife recovery and the economic benefit of the eco-tourism that comes with it. Lots of choices. And of course there are tons and tons of other, non-animal-related projects as well. But I'm happy with my little animal projects, because they dovetail nicely with my personal philosophy. My theory is that animals will save the world.

Chief Seattle said that if all the beasts were gone, man would die of a great loneliness of the spirit. This is, in my opinion, unquestionably true. But there's more to it: If all the humans on the earth suddenly died, the world would go on. But if only we remained and all the animals died, the entire world would die. We are not so necessary to the ecology of the world. But without animals to pollinate, to sew seeds, to graze and fertilize the grasslands, entire ecosystems would die. We can't do these things for ourselves. We need them way more than they need us. And for all our intelligence and ability to manipulate the world around us, in the end I think it will be the simplicity of animals that is our salvation.

So it is somehow very satisfying to me to add my little financial nudges to projects that dovetail with my personal philosophy. I love the idea that somewhere out there a family is given a goat who will, by virtue of nothing more than being a goat, will give them a sustainable income. I love it that people are training guardian dogs who will - typically without direct contact - run predators away from livestock, preventing harm to both. I love that wild animals provide income to poor areas by their presence, rather than their absence. I love that these animals, just out there doing no more than being what they are.... one little piece at a time, they're out there, changing things. Saving the world.

So What, I'm Still A Rock Star

2009-12-07T16:35:00.000-08:00

One day recently I am with a client in an exam room. As I am bent over his dog's ears, peering into their mysterious depths, he says, "Hey, I saw you in the grocery store the other day, but I was afraid to come say hi."

I look up at him in surprise.

"Afraid to?" I ask. "Was I looking excessively cranky or homicidal?"

"Well, no," he says. "It's just that I figure people probably come up to you and bug you all the time about their pets when you're out and about, and I didn't want to take advantage."

Well. What a thoughtful man.

"Well, thanks," I tell him. "I appreciate your consideration about that... but you can come say 'Hi' anytime - well, unless I'm having a giant fight with my boyfriend or something," I add with a grin. "And to be honest, you aren't the kind of client who takes advantage anyway, so don't worry about it. I hardly ever go anywhere without running into at least one client, so I'm kind of used to it. Most of the time it's not even embarrassing," I say, cheerfully.

"Now I want to hear about the ones where it is embarrassing," he says with a chuckle.

"Oh, trust me - you don't," I assure him, laughing. "I've had more conversations in restaurants with people about their dog's - um - personal habits than you want to hear about. For some reason that subject puts some people off their appetites, but luckily even the most graphic coversation about 'discharge' isn't enough to put me off my dinner. Still," I add wistfully, "it would be nice to be able to actually finish my dinner while it's still hot."

"People bug you while you're eating?" he asks incredulously.

"Oh, yeah... eating, shopping, at the gas station, in the locker room at the gym - although there you can usually bring it to a conclusion by getting into the shower - at the movies, over coffee - you name it. It's a small town and I've been in practice here for 15 years, so I pretty much count on seeing at least one client anywhere I go, sometimes three or four."

He nods thoughtfully. "You're like a rock star," he says, musingly.

"Yeah, except for all the glamor and the money," I agree, laughing. "Plus I think if you're a rock star you proably aren't talking about pus, mucus and diarrhea over your bagel. Just a hunch."

At any rate, it amused me that he thought of me in rock star terms. Nothing could be further from the truth, really... if not for the fact that this IS a small town - and I am one of a very small number of vets in the area - I'd be as anonymous as anyone else. I'm not on TV or in the paper - well, not very often, anyway - and my only in-print publications to date have been in professional magazines, which of necessity have a limited audience. What little notoriety I have is limited to a very small population and a very small geographic area. Ninety-eight percent of the time I truly don't mind when people accost me to discuss their pets - past, present or future - and I sort of enjoy seeing some of my clients in a non-clinical setting. Occasionally, I will admit, it's a tiny bit tedious. It's rare, but every once in a while you do have someone who is injudicious about taking up my non-work time, or who seems to have no sense of social timing. Ah, well. These things happen, and to some degree it comes with the territory. It's not so bad for me, in my little corner of the world. Rock stars and movie stars, though - they have to endure much more intrusion, all over the world, and for less important reasons. After all, it's one thing for someone to come up to me and say "I just wanted to thank you so much for helping my pet" (or me, or my family, or for volunteering your time, or what have you); it's not even a problem if they ask, "Say, Doc, my rabbit has his neck all twisted to the side. What d'you think it is? Should I bring him in?" It's another thing entirely to have someone fling themselves panting at you, attempting to yank out a lock of your hair or asking if they can have your baby.

For me, though, it's mostly related to my work, and not so much to weird fantasies people might be having about who they imagine I am based on a character I played three years ago. And if I really WERE a rock star, I'd be recognizable all over the dang place, and nowhere would be sacred.

At least so I was telling myself this weekend, all complacent, whilst standing in the bathroom at Costco in Anchorage. At home, a store that busy would be virtually guaranteed to contain at least one client, but I'd been peacefully shopping with my friends, Yvonne and Jan, for an hour without the slightest interruption. See? Not like a rock star at all. I'm a mere 60 miles from home, and no one here knows me; it takes next to no distance to outrun my public-recognition factor.

"Aren't you Dr. H?" someone to my left says suddenly.
"Er, yes - oh, I recognize you," I add. "Aren't you one of my clients?"
"Yes; when are you working? I have to bring my dogs in for shots," she says. I give her my work schedule, and she nods happily, promising to see me there within the week, and goes on about her business. Huh. That's unusual, I think, drying my hands.

"Hi, Dr. H, how are you?" pipes up another voice. I look behind me and there's another client, smiling and full of holiday cheer.

"Great, thanks, and you? How are the dogs?" I ask her.
"Oh, we're all fine, thanks," she says happily, wishing me a merry Christmas as my friend Yvonne stares at me, eyebows raised.

"I can't take you anywhere," she mutters to me, amused, as we exit the bathroom. "You're not even in your home town and clients are chasing you down." Well, okay, I admit it's a bit weird to be waylaid in a public restroom, but what are you going to do? It's odd, but so what? I'm still a rock star...

Except for that pus and mucus and diarrhea thing....

Juggling Chainsaws

2009-11-15T18:10:00.000-08:00

Saturdays can be a challenge for me.

For one thing, I am the solo doc that day, so there's not much in the way of backup. For another, lots of people want to get in on Saturdays, since most people have that day off. We're typically booked solid two or more days in advance. Moreover, it's a short day, so if emergent cases happen, we have only so much space to cram the extras in between the already-scheduled appointments. And, to cap it all, many people tend to sleep in a little on Saturdays, so they don't notice there IS an emergent case until, say, 11:00, when we are three hours from closing, and usually already overloaded with other must-be-seen-today cases who ALSO just got up and noticed that giant abscess on their dog's head.

Mind you, I have some advantages on Saturday. For one thing, I have the mighty SS manning the phones. SS has been in the biz for over 30 years and has worked with me for 14. She has a deep seated, near-mystical sense of the rhythm of a heavy case day, and knows how I work and where she can slip in an extra case - or two or three or eight. She knows - if it's an abscess, or porcupine quills, or a laceration - that unless the owner is insistent on seeing the doctor, she can just make an estimate, get the paperwork signed, and admit the animal, saving me a few minutes in the exam room whilst I juggle other cases. For another, while she is not a doctor, she IS extremely knowledgeable about animal medicine in general, and can often assess over the phone how immediately the animal needs to be seen (and, if she is ever in doubt, the answer to that is always "today".)

SS is backed up by KD, not so experienced yet, but smart and capable and willing to dive in and hold animals for blood draws or sedation if my tech is tied up and we are slammed. My tech is JD, who is new to the Saturday gig but who is catching the rhythm of it now and who is prone to popping up and saying things like "I can run that ear swab for you" or "There's a urinalysis on the microscope for you when you have time" (having already done the dipstick, spun it down, and stained it and put it on a slide for me.) Between the four of us we can usually shoulder a schedule that is at times double- and triple-booked, without compromising patient care. SS is adept at feeling where that break-point is and reining things in just short of that point - although I will say it is not always possible to hold back that tide, and sometimes all hell breaks loose.

This Saturday was a case in point. I saw 24 patients before we closed, 22 of whom I saw in five hours. A small number of them were (most fortunately) short appointments - rabies boosters, for instance, when the animal had had a recent physical, no new issues, and only needed the shot. But most were medicine cases: arthritic pets, sick ones, injured ones, complicated ones with intricate histories. Cases which required workup of various kinds: blood work, X-rays, cytology, aspirates... or else things that needed estimates for workup, or both. Meanwhile, SS has with her one of her Schipperkes, Wicca, a pregnant bitch who is showing signs that she is about to go into labor. Luckily, Wicca is content to stay behind the front desk under SS's watchful eye.

Still, even though I kind of felt like I was juggling chainsaws, we were keeping up with it by means of judicious delegation and stacking cases so that while that X-ray is developing I can get an ear swab which JD will stain and slap on the 'scope for me, and while she does that I can go do that second puppy booster while KD weighs the three adorable Pom puppies for me.

Eventually, though, the overflow starts. I check in three cases in short order that require procedures today - as in, ASAP, most especially in one case, a cat so rocky that even taking the extremely necessary chest film constitutes a life-threatening risk. Right about then we get a call about a vomiting dog which might have swallowed a bone and have a GI obstruction. But he's also had some rich food, so maybe it's pacreatitis, or it could be a virus.

"We can have a look and get an X-ray if the doctor thinks it needs one," SS tells the client, "but if it needs surgery, she may have to refer you. She already has three emergencies ahead of you, and she's double-booked for the rest of the day - except where she's triple-booked." The owners still want to see us - they like us, and don't want to go elsewhere, and they are, of course, hoping that surgery is not going to be needed. Okay, then. Come on down, and we'll work you in whenever we can.

It's over 30 minutes before I can see the dog, 100# of plump black husky who is petrified of our floors and highly unwilling to walk anywhere. JD and I manage to coax him to the back to radiology. We look at each other. The dog is crouched at our feet, all toes clenched against the terrors of linoleum. From experience, we all know that a dog who is this afraid of the floors is somehow magically able to magnify its weight at least 30% when we go to pick it up. I'm not sure how this alchemy takes place; it is as if their fear has a gravity of its own, drawing the dog irresistibly toward the core of the earth.

"Ready?" I ask JD, grinning as I realise that we're both instinctively hyperventilating, trying to pop a little extra oxygen into the bloodstream against the hold-your-breath, grunt-and-heave effort of getting the dog onto the X-ray table.

"Ready," she says, and we squat, scoop and stand, at least one of us cursing breathlessly as the dog grabs the table edge with his clenched toes and shoves hard, trying to return to the floor (which, while scary, is evidently less frightening than the X-ray Table of Death.) We soothe and praise and ease the dog onto his side, into position for the film. The one advantage of his trepidation is that he holds his legs as rigid as steel, so that once he is in position he lies statue-still so we can get our shot. Back to the room with him while I go see the three adorable Pom puppies, who are also hilarious. The black one keeps abruptly disappearing by dropping to all fours inside her blanket-lined box while her siblings stand on their hind legs, wagging and smiling and trying to lick me. Then she pops back up just as suddenly, an adorable jack-in-the-box move rendered even more charming by her sparkling eyes and happy grin - not to mention her wiggly attempts to climb out of the box to give me a kiss. I can't decide if she's doing this because she thinks it's funny - and we obviously do, too, praising her each time with laughter and petting - or if she's searching for cookie crumbs and, finding none, pokes her little noggin up in hopes of being handed a treat. Either way, it's a completely delightful respite from the intensity of the day, and even though I'm doing exams and vaccines the entire time, it feels like a small vacation.

Ah, well. The chainsaws await more juggling. Better get to it.

I snag my film out of the developer and hold it up, not bothering with the X-ray box yet - and there is no need to, as it's a quick and easy diagnosis: the dog has swallowed a rock. Great. Surgery #4 just walked through our doors. I calculate quickly: By the time I am done with the other procedures - all of which will have to go before this one - I won't be getting to it til about 4 p.m. at best, at which time my staff will have worked for 10 hours. By the time we're done with surgery and clean-up, that'll be more like 12 or 13. But the owners don't want to see another hospital.

Okay. Time to punt.

SS calls Drs. S and G to see if one of them wants to come in and cut the rock dog, which can be done while I finish up appointments, clearing the decks for the other three procedures. Those will still not even be started til after we close, but that will most likely put most of the staff out of the hospital after only 9 hours, and me out an hour or so later. That's manageable.... if one of them can come in to cut, that is.

Hallelujah. God smiles. They can BOTH come in - and they do, Dr G. tech'ing for his wife while she cuts - and bless them for coming in on their day off to bail us out. Meanwhile I finish my appointments and give JD an order of operations for the remaining procedures so that she can set up. By the time we send the last client out the door, Dr. S has the rock out and is closing. JD has an X-ray plate in and drugs drawn up for our anaesthetise-and-X-ray, could-be-broken-leg puppy. The pup had been trying to counter-surf and had gotten injured in the attempt, screaming and refusing to bear weight on the right hind leg thereafter. JD and I put that one on while Drs. G and S heave the sleeping rock dog onto a stretcher and take him to his run. JD develops my film while I set up the drugs for the next case. I go have a look at the film: a long oblique fracture of the tibia, and two green-stick fractures of the fibula. Well, it could be much worse: there's a reasonable chance that this can heal with a splint, although surgery would be more ideal. I call the owner, who declines surgery; she'd rather do the splint, given reasonably good odds of success and the approximately $1000 difference in cost between that and surgery. Okay, then. We'll give that a try, and hold surgical options in our back pocket as our bail-out position in case the splint fails.

The leg in question is between splint sizes, but the splints are designed to be cut down to adjust the size. I get to work trimming down a splint, which would be easier if our hack saw blade was even a little sharper. I have the feeling that a tongue depressor would work about as fast, but I persist. Meanwhile Drs. S and G have extubated the rock dog and are now - bless them - cleaning up the surgery table and entering the charges in the computer. About the time I have at last finished strapping the fractured puppy into its splint, Dr. S asks me if she can enter MY charts into the computer and get the meds up for me while her husband industriously scrubs surgical instruments. Well, yes, thanks, if you aren't in a hurry to go home. That would be just lovely. I'll just hoik this giant abscess attached to the bloodhound onto the table - nope, Dr. G is there first, and bends his muscular frame to the task without being asked. And lo and behold, there is Dr. S, shaving a spot for me to lance while I get my instruments ready. Well. That was easy.

The abscess is easy, too, and deeply satisfying. A large volume of rank red pus is soon in the bottom of the sink instead of under the dog's hide, and that's just as it should be. One injection of antibiotics later and the dog is snoring happily in his run, his giant noggin now only slightly larger than the original instructions said it should be. True, he is draining a bit from his incision, which isn't terribly aesthetically appealing, but IS an excellent and necessary component of abscess repair. We'll take it. Drs. S and G admire this happy outcome before departing. SS is close on their heels, as Wicca has started labor, and SS knows she'll do better in the comfortable surroundings of home.

Now on to the thoracocentesis cat. This it the rocky kitty, brought in for respiratory problems and weight loss. On physical I could only hear airways about half of the way down his chest. He's a bit fractious about restraint, and the instant he objects we let him up, because the slightest struggle turns him blue and makes him gape, panting with his mouth open. His X-rays show a large volume of fluid inside his chest, compressing his lungs into approximately 20% of their intended size. He has marked abdominal effort with his breathing - a restrictive pattern, which I have discussed with the owners during the physical exam. Despite this, he purrs nearly incessantly, rubbing his head affectionately against his owners, me , his carrier, my tech, my pen as I try to write in his chart, and his cage wall once we have stashed him in-hospital.

This cat is unlikely to tolerate anesthesia well; he's 13 years old, thin, and his respiratory system is very compromised. Fortunately, most cats will tolerate a chest tap while awake, because it provides nearly instantaneous relief from their respiratory distress. Even so, this is a tricky gig. If you should be careless with your needle, you can lacerate the delicate membranes of the lungs, creating a pneumothorax and an entirely new life-threatening problem to stack on top of the old one. There is an art to correct placement of the needle, and to feeling delicately with the tip of it when the lungs are expanding to the point where they are at risk of laceration.

The easiest way is to have three people: One to hold the cat, one to hold the butterfly catheter in place and draw the fluid off with a giant syringe, and one to operate the three-way stopcock that allows you, with the turn of a lever, to squirt the fluid out into a bowl, rather than back into the cat, all without having to move your needle. However, with two people you can manage, assuming reasonable dexterity and a cooperative patient - and two people is all we have now, as the rest of the staff has gone home (late, but without complaint, and not before making sure we've got things under control).

This kitty isn't best pleased with being restrained even a little, but consents to have me shave and surgically prep his sides with minimal struggle. He even allows me to pop my butterfly needle into his chest without more than a little protest. Once I begin drawing fluid off his chest he's a little happier, almost as if he's thinking: Hmmm. This might be a good idea, this whole needle thing. After we are 180 milliliters to the good, he pinks up a little, essaying a deeper breath now. I have my needle angled steeply down toward his sternum, as far away as I can get it from his gratefully expanding lung tissue. Still, I am feeling for the delicate grating tick of lung tissue across the tip of the needle; this, or blood, are both warnings to stop now.

Suddenly I feel a vibration in my left hand, the one holding the butterfly in place. My heart takes a leap; this is a much coarser, harder vibrato than the usual delicate tremor that warns me to back my needle out right this instant. It takes me a half a second - and my needle halfway out - before I realise that it's not the shudder of a torn lung I'm feeling: My patient is purring. Bless his pointy little heart. This is the sweetest cat I've seen all week, purring and bumping his head affectionately against JD while we hold him still and stick a needle in his chest.

Still, the better he feels, the less inclined he is to sit around while I re-inflate his lungs. He still can't tolerate much respiratory stress, and when I try tapping his left side I get blood right away, which means I have to stop this instant. I take him back to his cage; we've gotten 400 mls of a clear, light-golden fluid off his chest, and he feels lots better now. Unfortunately, it's likely he will recur with this problem within a week. The owners, who are stretching their resources to manage what we've done so far, elect not to go after further workup today, but instead to treat as best we can and watch for results.

I send JD home after her long efforts today, telling her to pray I don't have to section Wicca. She gives me a thumbs-up. Shortly thereafter I release the cat, now getting briskly to his feet and pacing his cage, mrrowing happily, to his owners. The other two cases have their releases scheduled and I am sitting down for the first time all day, calling owners with blood work results. I have stashed the clinic's on-call cell in my bag in case SS needs help with Wicca, but as it turns out, that was an unnecessary precaution - because I am still at the clinic when SS calls me to tell me Wicca has had a gestational sac bulging at her vulva for 45 minutes and isn't progressing. SS will try one injection of oxytocin to see if she can get Wicca going, but if not, I tell her, come back: I'm still at the clinic. Better now than after I go home.

I release my abscess dog and drink a little eggnog and a lot of water. My back has been hurting all day, and since noon I've been feeling slightly flu-ish, just a hint shaky and cold. Both the water and the eggnog help. I'm still a little bit off, but I can feel a little energy, a little heat, trickling through my veins. It hasn't helped that we've been hellishly busy all day, with no time to eat or drink or sit down, nor that everyone in the clinic seems to have been down with one virus or another for the last 3 weeks - except me, for which Hygiea (or whatever deity is in charge of virus resistance) be thanked. Hey, maybe it's the Kefir. You never know.

SS calls me back about then; Wicca hasn't responded to the oxytocin, and they'll be back in 20 minutes. Okay, then. Thank God I had eggnog at the clinic.

On the heels of that call, in comes my fractured puppy owners. Perfect. I'll get my last release done before SS is in with her laboring Schipp. In fact, SS is back just before that, and she calls Em, our head tech, who (bless her, now, too) agrees to zoom on in and tech for me as I cut Wicca. Meanwhile Wicca wails and squeals piteously at every contraction, and immediately stops pushing. She does extrude a little more membrane, but even with pressure on her belly and traction on the membranes, I can't shift the puppy. I can, however, tear the membranes - dang it - which takes the choice off the table: we're going to C-section land now.

Em has Wicca induced and intubated in no time. I am shaving Wicca's enormously distended belly while Em sets a catheter; as soon as she has it taped in, she takes over shaving and I scrub in.

The trick with C-sections is to get the puppies out as fast as possible. Accordingly, as soon as the bulging dome of Wicca's belly is draped in, I make a long, swift incision. Because SS keeps her dogs trim, there is little subcutaneous fat, and a small miracle occurs: Wicca has a gorgeous linea alba, the thin tendinous band that connects the two sides of the belly muscles to each other down the midline of the dog. This is the best place to cut, as it doesn't bleed and it heals strongly, and Wicca has provided me a lovely one. I am though it in seconds, exteriorising her enormous uterus not more than 5 minutes after she was induced. It takes no more than 90 seconds to get three puppies out of the first uterine horn. I can see the strong pink muscle contracting already, a good sign, as it minimizes bleeding. It's the work of another minute to get the last two pups out of the other horn, and now I can suture the uterus up. I can go a little slower now, but I'm still going as fast as I can and still do it right: I want the bitch awake as fast as possible too, so she can recover from her anesthetic enough to try to care for her babies.

I am not through suturing the first uterine horn before I hear the first warbling cries of the pup that was stuck in the birth canal. I take a deep breath, feeling the tension drain out of my shoulders. That was the pup I was worried about, the one whose membranes I tore. I was concerned about having abrupted the placenta, diconnecting the pup from his oxygen supply, but he is wailing lustily away. I am smiling a little as I surure the other horn, checking my inverting patterns, looking for bleeding. Wicca's uterus is contracting beautifully, firm and pink under my gloved fingers. I am humming a little as I start in on her linea.

SS and Em have all the puppies singing now, three boys and two girls, as I set my skin sutures. It's been a reasonably fast C-section, maybe 30 minutes skin to skin. I barely have my sharps off the surgery tray before Em is bustling into surgery, collecting my drape and gown. I scrub out, draping a towel over Wicca's much-deflated frame. I am starting to feel slightly hollow, hungry and tired as I am. But I am also feeling warm and relaxed, becuase we managed, somehow, to get everything done today - everything and then some - and lost not a single patient. There are five chubby, vigorous Schipps and a live, healthy bitch all stirring drowsily under their blankets, and I can't resist stroking the fine glossy coats of the new babies. There's something luxurious about this, this little pause to savor the fruits of all our labors, while around me bustle SS and Em, cleaning up. I wallow a little in the warm pleasure of new life, smiling to myself. Besides, I'm leaving the hospital only a little more than 11 hours after I got there. If not for Dr. S and Dr. G, that would have been a lot more like 14 or 15. I'm feeling pretty lucky, right about now.

Days like this, it doesn't matter how many chainsaws you have to juggle: Totally worth it.

Bawdville Act

2009-11-03T22:12:00.000-08:00

Author's note: Okay. I'm apologizing for this post in advance. For any of you who are of a sensitive temperament, this is your warning that the following post is of a lowbrow and earthy nature, and may contain references to the sexual habits of various livestock. I'd try to be delicate about these things, but it's way too late for that. Maybe I could be more circumspect if I hadn't groomed racehorses for a living... nah. Probably not even then.

It's breeding time at Wildwood farm. This is the time of year we run the boys with the girls in hopes of initiating next year's crops of chops. Naturally, this always occasions a certain amount of ribald talk from the wild women of Wildwood. It's a pragmatic, earthy kind of business, running a farm - or being a vet, come to that. People who might in the ordinary course of things shy away from frank discussions of the sexual congress of sheep and goats suddenly find themselves quite absorbed with the subject, and eager to discuss it at length. After all, it's not coming as any surprise to any of us how next year's baby sheep and goats are being made, and none of the livestock are going to be offended if we're a bit indelicate about such matters. Of necessity we do need to converse about the ins and outs (so to speak) of who has been bred when, and what that means for next spring's lambing season. Speaking euphemistically takes too long and leaves room for misunderstanding, so we tend to just cut to the chase... apart from which, life is more fun if you have a sense of humor about these things, so we tend towards the bawdy in the fall.

However, if you're shy, maybe you should just skip this post. The tone isn't likely to improve, given the subject matter. I'm just saying.

I decided to get a marking harness for Trinity this year, to limit the amount of guessing necessary to bracket my lambing dates. S&R needed new crayons for their marking harness, too, so I ordered everything together. It arrived in due course - a day later than I wanted it to, unfortunately; we like to start breeding November first, and so S&R duly ran Trinity into the ewe pen that day, since it was not certain when exactly the marking harness and crayons would arrive and time was a-wasting.

The next day, a Monday, my box of goodies arrives at the clinic. I find it, open, on my desk chair. The office manager sees me looking into the box and says, "Sorry about opening that. There were four boxes on my desk, and I just cut them all open before I realized that one was yours. I didn't go through it or anything, " she adds, as if concerned she's invaded my privacy.

"That's okay," I tell her. "Although it would've been less embarrassing if it weren't sex toys," I add, frowning thoughtfully. I glance up in time to catch her look of pop-eyed astonishment. "For the sheep, I mean. Why are you looking at me like that? What did you think I meant?"

Luckily, Mary is getting used to me by now. Rather than being horrified, she eyes me speculatively.

"Have you been into the caffeine today?" she asks.

"Only a little," I say, with an innocent grin.

"Uh-huh," she says in tones of deep skepticism, while I do my best to smile angelically.

Later, during a lull in the appointment schedule, I decide to have a look at the harness. The one S&R has is black, composed of narrow nylon webbing, and doesn't look half as pretty as this one does. Mine is made of wider, thicker, halter-grade webbing, smooth and silky and bright blue. All its myriad rings and buckles are shiny with newness. Having only once used a marking harness - last year S&R used theirs on their buck, leaving Trinity without - I am not entirely familiar with the arrangement of all the straps. I take it out of the shipping bag so I can have a better look.

"What's that?" J asks me, happening by.

"Bondage equipment," I tell her. "For my ram," I add - because J is used to me too, and there's a small risk she'll take me literally.

J laughs. "What is it really?" she asks me.

"It is bondage equipment - kind of. It's a marking harness. I'm trying to figure out how it goes," I tell her, lining it out til I think I have it right. Fortunately I am certain that S&R can figure it out if I've made any mistakes. Meanwhile another tech walks by and also asks what that is I'm playing with. When I tell her it's bondage equipment, she just nods - without the slightest look of skepticism or astonishment, mind you - and walks off. I'm telling you. It's bad when people you work with aren't shocked to hear that you've ordered bondage equipment. Maybe I've been working here too long.

After work I go to Wildwood to drop of the harness and the crayons. R answers the door.

"Come on in," she tells me. "Want a glass of wine?"

"Umm... well, just one; I should go do chores before it gets too late," I say, kicking off my shoes.

"Look, she brought presents!" R says to S.

"Just the marking harness and crayons," I demur.

"Okay, good," S says. "Unfortunately we've just eaten dinner," she adds.

"Don't worry about it, I'm fine," I say. "A glass of wine will be plenty. It smells good, though, what was it?"

"Roasted kid, with Chinese spices," S tells me. R is fishing in the roasting pan and locates a chunk of meat, which she spears on a fork and hands to me. I taste it. It's delicious: exotic and slightly sweet with hints of cinnamon and mace and nutmeg. Mmm. Have to get me some of that Chinese seasoning.

"Well, we have exciting news," S tells me, gleeful. "Our new buck bred JoJo, and Trinity bred Jacinto today."

"You saw him?" I ask in some astonishment, since Trinity seems never to be seen breeding anything, although everything he's put to comes up pregnant.

"Yep," S reports. "We were feeding. Trinity's attitude toward breeding is to go over, do the job, and then immediately shove his way into the grain pans for something to eat."

"Nice," I say, ironically.

"Here's Jacinto's attitude toward breeding," S adds, leaning toward the counter and miming eating.

"Oh, that's nice. Doesn't even stop eating," I say in mock disgust. "Trinity is going to get a complex."

"I think we're fairly safe there," S says with a laugh. "It'd take a lot more than that to hurt his feelings this time of year."

Well, fair point there. Trinity is not easily offended. He's a methodical ram, systematically checking out his ewes and philosophically accepting any demurs as a hint that he would be better served to seek affection elsewhere. There are, after all, other ewes in the pen. If this one isn't ready, maybe that one over there will be.

As it happens - and here put on your surprised faces - one glass of wine turned into two. And then there was ice cream. And there was kind of a lot of laughing and some injudicious remarks about various things, followed by more laughing and escalations into even more injudicious remarks. And pretty soon it was 8:30 and I still hadn't done my chores. Which is how I found myself still doing dishes at what should have been bedtime.

I'm telling you. I'm giving up on sleep. Between days of howling winds banging around my house and being on call, I've barely had one good night's sleep in two weeks. So how on earth is it that I am doing dishes at midnight, when I should be sleeping? When it comes to beauty sleep, I need all the help I can get. I'll be lucky if I can cobble together an appearance for work tomorrow that doesn't frighten small children and cause adults to ask timidly if I've been feeling all right.

I blame Wildwood for this.

Whips and Chains

2009-10-30T22:37:00.001-07:00

It's not what you think. (Is it ever, with me?)

This weekend I was back at Katie's cabin, helping her move some things; she's thinking of selling the cabin, and even if she keeps it there are some things that can be moved back to her house. Even this year, with its long hot summer and leisurely fall, winter will eventually come, and it's not likely that she'll need her canoe and her volleyball net for a while.

Up at the cabin it is colder - it usually is, the deeper you go into the Interior - and there is ice on some stretches of the road. We drive through any number of frozen-over puddles, crunching through inch-thick ice overlying 6 inches of water. In places the ice is muddy brown, but in others it's as clear and sparkling as chandelier crystal, rock-candying the margins of the puddles where others have gone through before us. The stream, in motion, has no ice at all yet, and even a fish lingering there in the chill current. There are deep red cranberries and rose hips still adorning the denuded and skeletal thickets, and a late lupin with purple blooms still clinging to the flower spike. Here and there in a protected lee, a deciduous plant still bears some green and gold.

At the cabin the view is glorious. The Mountain is out in all her glory, sharp against a blue sky. Off her right flank rises the sheer cliff of Moose's Tooth, catching the morning light across her face. The autumn sun shines silver at that hour, and the cliff face beckons, a smoky lavender-blue in the light, declivities and seams picked out clear, yet somehow still speaking of mystery. I turn away from this enticement with difficulty; we've had coffee on the way up, and more prosaic concerns intrude. It's time for a last memorial pee in the legendary Necessary House at Katie's cabin, and then on to practical matters.

Katie has her canoe stored keel-side-up on a little ridge. This allows it to drain and keeps it from filling up with rain water. It also, however, allows water to run down the hull and puddle under the gunwales, with the result that when we flip the canoe right side up, there are several 6-inch-wide platforms of frozen mud perched along the gunwales like little tabletops. Katie begins tugging at these, but they seem welded to the canoe, clinging stubbornly.

I tug at one myself, finding it hard as steel and unwilling to budge. Hmm. I glance around, looking for a tool of some kind. Ah, perfect: an oar.

"Hold her steady for a sec," I invite Katie, and I slide the blade of the oar under the ledge of ice across from me, seating it against the gunwale. Holding the oar shaft at the balance point with my left hand, I thump my right fist down sharply on my end of the oar. The oar blade pops up just as sharply, neatly levering the entire ice table off the gunwale.

"There. Just the tool for the job," I say with satisfaction, moving to the next ice table.

"Gimme that other oar!" says Katie with a gleam in her eye, and in a matter of seconds we have de-iced the canoe. We give each other a grin and slide the canoe into the bed of her truck, where Katie straps it in.

Here I will freely admit that I didn't magically develop the knack of MacGuyvering useful jury-rigged tools out of ordinary objects all by myself. No, the credit for this, I feel, must go to my friend Judi. Way back in the day, before my stints as racehorse groom and barn manager, Judi and I rode together at the barn that I eventually would manage. One day we were at the barn and I realized I'd locked my keys in my Karmann Ghia. It was a hot, muggy eastern day and I'd left the window cracked about 2 inches to prevent myself from being instantly parboiled on opening the car door. I tried reaching my arm through this gap to try to grab the door lock; it was a vintage car and had the little mushroom-capped lock stems that you never see any more, and I thought if I could juuuust get my arm far enough in.... But no such luck.

Judi exited the barn and sauntered over with her long-legged stride, eyeing my dilemma.

"I locked my keys in the car by accident," I said - rather unnecessarily, because who does it on purpose? - and withdrew my arm from the window, frowning at the car.

"Hm," she said, and without a moment's hesitation she stepped to the side of the car, slid her riding crop through the gapped window, hooked the little mushroom top of the lock stem with the loop at the end of the crop, and popped the lock.

"There," she said, with satisfaction. "Done."

My eyes sprang open wide for a moment, and then I laughed. "Man, are you a tool-user," I said with some admiration, shaking my head and retrieving my keys from the floorboard, where they had apparently fallen, unnoticed, when I'd gotten out of the car. "I'm pretty sure I've never even heard of anyone using a whip to jimmy a car door before, let alone seen it." Judi gave me a grin and a shrug, and sloped off leisurely to her own car.

I have to say I was rather impressed with that quickness of thought, the ability to see a solution to a problem - instantly, in this case - by applying novel uses to familiar objects. She didn't stop to think about it: It was immediately clear to her that she had in hand a tool that could be adapted from its original purpose to solve the problem at hand. That kind of stuck with me. And, following Judi's example, I've done a little MacGuyvering of my own, here and there, in the years since.

Once I was picking my mother up at Anchorage International. My mother suffers a bit from hypoglycemia, and knowing that airline food was unlikely to be much help with that, I'd come prepared with a bomber-sized bottle of Alaskan Amber. I knew from experience that beer was, for her, a quick fix for the hypoglycemia, and would hold her til we could get some real food into her. The problem was that I didn't have a bottle opener, nor was one available at the liquor store where I stopped to get the beer. I felt certain that at least one of the airport gift shops would have a bottle opener, but in that I was sorely mistaken. So there I am at my truck, with my hypoglycemic mother (looking a little pale around the edges), her luggage and a bottle of beer, and no way to get the beer into my mom.

But not for nothing did I know Judi. I set the crimped edge of the beer cap against the bumper of my truck, struck the top of the cap smartly with the heel of my hand, and popped the cap off the bottle.

"There," I said, in tribute to Judi. "Done." My mom laughed, but I think she just figured this was an Alaska thing: We ALL open our beers with our truck bumpers and repair our airplanes with duct tape, right?

The MacGuyver thing isn't just for Alaska, though. Back when I was in grad school, I was once taking care of a fellow grad student's dog while she went into the field. Nickie had an old collie with arthritic wrists and a ceaseless, cheerful grin. He needed fed and medicated twice daily, so I stayed at Nickie's house, driving her little VW Rabbit to and from school. Nickie, doing a little MacGuyvering herself, informed me that the screen door latch was broken, but she'd discovered that it could be opened from the inside by means of a spoon.

"Don't let it latch when you leave, though," she warned me. "You can only open it from INSIDE with a spoon. You can't open it from the outside at all."

"Okay," I said, and I was careful to pull the screen door to when I left, but to not allow it to latch.

Things went along swimmingly for a while, and then one day I returned from school to find that the door was latched tight. Crap. I was sure I'd been careful not to latch the screen door, but maybe the wind blew it shut or something. I could hear Nickie's dog inside, doing his "Welcome-home, I-really-need-out" bark. Poor dog. He needed his pain meds too, and his food supplements, and a good scritch. I looked around. Nickie had one half of a duplex, and the neighbor's back yard was divided from hers by a four-foot chain link... but the whole of both yards was surrounded by six and a half feet of solid cedar privacy fence.

I knocked on the neighbor's door, thinking they could let me into their back yard and I could hop the dividing fence and go in via Nickie's back door. Unhelpfully, the neighbors were not home. Crap. I went around to the side of the fence, where there was a gate. This had a latch on the inside, but it was padlocked shut. Even though I had a key, it had to be unlocked from the inside. I grasped the top of the fence, gave a little hop and tried to walk up the fence face, using the iron gate hinges as steps. Nope: Not enough purchase for my toes, and I was getting splinters in my hands. I gave that up and eyed the terrain. Maybe I could drive the Rabbit up the curb and get it near the fence, then stand on top of it... nope. There were two ornamental shrubs in the way, and I was fairly certain the property owner would not be happy to have his tenants - or their house-sitters - expensively destroying his landscaping. Not to mention what it might do to Nickie's car.

I looked at the hinges again. Maybe Nickie had something in her car that I could use to lever the pegs out of the hinges so I could just take the gate off. No such luck: she had no tool box in the back of her car. All she had was a thick wool blanket, a set of tire chains and a gallon jug of water -

A set of tire chains.

Suddenly I'm having a Judi moment.

I pull the chains out of the Rabbit and flip them over my shoulder, a little grin forming on my face as I carry them to the fence. This first set of chains I hang over the top of the fence, snugging them tight into the notches between the tops of the cedar boards and draping the chains down the fence. The second set I loop over the upper gate hinge, wedging a link into the crevice around the hinge as securely as I can make it go. I fold my jacket into a rectangle and flip it over the top of the fence to defeat the splinters. I put my toe into the stirrup of my lower tire chain, test it for slippage (none), and mount it like I'm mounting a horse. I grab the top of the fence - much nicer with the jacket over it - and, peering down between my knees for aim, step my right foot into the other tire chain. I step up onto that one, swing my left leg over the fence, toe it onto the latch so I can get my right leg over, and hop down into the yard.

Ta-da.

I hurry to let Nickie's cheerful old collie out into the yard, then go around to the front door. There is a book between the door and the screen; evidently the postman put it there, as it was too big to fit in the mailbox, and shut the screen door tight to hold it in place. I open the screen door with a spoon, go around to the side yard, and deconstruct my improvised ladder, stashing the chains back in the Rabbit.

When Nickie gets back I tell her that the postman shut a book in her door, locking me out of the house. Her eyes go a little round.

"How did you get in?" she asks.

"Made a ladder out of your tire chains," I say, describing the method in case SHE ever gets locked out in a similar fashion. And what do you know, Nickie is as impressed with my improvisational tool-making skills as I was with Judi's.

It's a nice little legacy Judi left me: the knowledge that when something brings you up short, with no evident solution to hand, looking at things a little slantwise will often deliver you a solution with no more than you have to hand. Even if it looks like you're stuck, you can always bail yourself out... as long as you have whips and chains.

Slow Fall Into Winter

2009-10-28T10:13:00.000-07:00

Author's note: Writing time is being consumed a little by editing time. Sorry about that. Things may be a bit slower on the "posting" aspect for a while, as I work on editing for the book. I hope you can all bear with me for a bit....

It's been a beautiful fall here.

We deserve it, after last year. Last year we came out of winter into a late, chill spring, and endured a cold summer, a raw overcast fall and an early, bitterly frigid winter. By the time we got to this spring, we were getting a bit cranky - well, I was anyway - and it didn't help that this spring was late and unseasonably cold as well. It was quite a pain lambing in it, not least of the reasons being the incessant worry - til things warmed up - that the lambs would be suffering or at risk.

This summer, though - glorious. It was hot. I mean ACTUAL hot, not just Alaska hot. We had temps over 90 this summer in the valley - the first time that's happened since I moved here. We had a whole week where it was in the upper 80's when I went home at night, every evening, consecutively. I actually used the air conditioning in my truck. I know! Amazing!

Normally, I am not especially heat-tolerant, most particularly when it's combined with humidity; that heavy, muggy weather blankets me in oppression and saps my energy and my will to do anything. (I realise the irony of this, given that I used to make my living grooming racehorses on the east coast - in the summer. I think it was the horses that made that tolerable... they make everything more enjoyable, don't they?) But this summer - wonder of wonders - I actually revelled in hot, humid weather. Revelled. Just a little, mind you, but actual revelling occurred. I kid you not.

Maybe because we'd just recovered, by dint of our beautiful hot summer, from what seemed like 19 months of winter - winter-winter, spring-winter, summer-winter and then winter-winter again - most of us were a little reluctant, maybe even a little apprehensive, to see fall coming this year. Because warm and glorious and restorative as this summer was, maybe we weren't quiiiiite ready for winter to come back again. I admit I was disquieted when I had yellow leaves falling in my driveway - just a few, mind , you but there they were- in July. Could that mean an early, cold winter coming? No, I told myself. That's just heat stress. La la la la la, I can't hear you!

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

Still, you face what you have to face. So I braced myself for a cold, hard fall and a colder, harder winter. After all, I did it last year, I can do it again, right?

As it turns out, so far I haven't had to.

It's the 28th of October today. The leaves finally all came down about 2 weeks ago; there were actual green leaves - GREEN, I'm telling you - still on some of the last hold-out trees until about 3 weeks ago. So far, my lake has yet to freeze. We've had one day where there was a thin scrim of ice on the surface, but it melted off by afternoon. There have been four days when the neighboring marsh - shallower and faster to freeze - has had that same thin, clear crust of ice on it, just for the day. The swans only left my lake 10 days ago. There are still ducks flying around my house, swift and sturdy as they launch themselves through the air on fast-beating wings. Last night it rained. I'll grant you there was about an hour during the middle of the day when there was a sleety look to it, when there was a faint scurf of white on the grass in the lees of the hedges, but that didn't last. By nightfall it was gone, melted by rain. In late October. In Alaska.

This morning there is the faintest ice-fractal on the surface of the water dish on my deck, but none on the lake or the marsh. No frost slicks my deck or clings to the trees. It's cool out, certainly - 33 degrees on my thermometer - but that's nothing. Nothing at all.

We had a winter, a few years back, where it never went below zero at my house all winter. To zero, yes, twice - but never below. It snowed, and the snow stayed, but it was mainly in the teens and twenties all winter. None of this 40-below-zero crap for THAT winter.... and certainly none of that never-gets-warmer-than-twenty-below-zero-for-three-weeks-strait nonsense. My lake didn't ice til the tenth of December. Given that I have some congenital abnormality that has me convinced that winter is over as of about February tenth, for me winter was only three months long that year. I enjoyed every minute of it - but springtime in Alaska is so full of vigor and life and burgeoning light that you can't regret the fade of winter, no matter how much you like it.

Hmmmm.... I think I could live with a reprise of that, this year.

This won't last forever, this long, gorgeous slide toward dark and cold. Sooner or later we'll be in short days and snow and ice. But for now... it's been a long, slow fall into winter.

The Way Of The Peaceful Vet

2009-10-04T10:51:00.000-07:00

Author's note: this started out to be a post about something else entirely, but sometimes you just have to go where the writing takes you. Sorry about that.

Early on in my career as a vet, it was easy to be unsure of myself... or easier, I should say. I still question myself daily - many times daily, in fact - wondering if I'm getting the right diagnosis, am I on the right track, what's best for this patient, how can I best achieve that within the limits of what both the client and the patient can afford, how should I handle that client so as to get the maximum benefit for them and their pet. That can be a tricky balance; some people need so much attention themselves that it distracts from the patent's care, and technically it's the patient I am there to care for. But realistically, no animal walks in and slaps down a gold card and says, "Hey, I have this bump on my neck, can you have a look at it?" The patient always comes with an owner attached - and ideally, this is how it should be. It is a good thing in the world that there are so many people who have the love of an animal - or several - in their lives, and vice-versa. So often I see that some part of the personalities involved - either that of the pet or that of the owner - would never have reached their full expression if not for that relationship. It immeasurably enriches them, and us, and the world; and if in some small way I am party to helping that along, then I am well-content.

To that end, I sometimes have to find ways of dealing with people and animals that I would not naturally feel an affinity for. The vast majority of my clients are wonderful, as are the vast majority of my patients; but I will admit that it is at times difficult to feel a sense of oneness with a dog who is trying to rip my lips off for no greater offense than walking into the room. It's perhaps more difficult to feel companionable with someone who refuses to even hear what I am saying - who declines to view the situation in terms of what is best for the patient, who refuses to listen to my best advice, who sets their own prejudices and judgements above what is, to my eye, clearly obvious and of critical importance - and which I have told them in no uncertain terms is the case.

Still. There are ways for most of this; and I imagine that as I go along I will find more ways, better ways, to handle the difficult ones. It is, after all, my job: to help. And if I learn something along the way, so much the better.

So I check myself constantly, making sure I've provided the information that is needed to make decisions, trying not to make the decision for the owner - that is their right and their responsibility, to make the best choice they can for themselves, their family, their pet. It is not always done well, and I may disagree with them; in their shoes, I might do differently. But I am not in their shoes, so I have to trust that they have chosen rightly for themselves and their pet. I try not to judge their choices - after all, I do not live their life. It's enough work living my own, and I have not the energy nor the wisdom to choose for them.... only to advise, to counsel, to guide and support, and then carry out their will as best I can.

I am often asked "What would you do if this were your pet?" - and I typically answer the same way each time:

"I'll answer that question, but I'll apologize in advance for that because it's a bit unfair of me to do it. This is different for me than it is for you; I can come in at 3 a.m. and Xray my dog if I want, because I have a key to the clinic - so these choices are easier for me than for you, because I can change my mind any time and go a different way, and I'm less intimidated by these procedures than most people, because I do them every day. That said, if this were my pet..." and then I'll tell them what I WOULD do if it were my pet.

So in this way I carry on my little war, my small fight against the dark. It's not a fight against death, really... I do want to help my patients have the longest, best-quality lives possible, but death comes to all of us in the end; and when it comes for my patients, I try my best to see that it comes with some dignity and some peace for the patient and the client both. In my imaginings, I think that death might not be so bad - it might, in fact, be an amazing good thing. And certainly the end to suffering - which it is my burden and my honor to bring to countless patients, past and future - that is something of value. From the simple view of an animal, suffering is just suffering. It is not ennobling, it is not enlightening. It is not a chance to learn grace and courage, as it might be for a person; animals have this in abundance already and hardly need the lessons of pain to bring it to them. No cat is thinking, "If I can just make it 'til Christmas" and no dog is hoping to live to see his grandson graduate from medical school. They live in the day, and if I cannot provide a reasonable hope that better days lie ahead - if I can only see that worse ones do - then it seems a mercy and a kindness to all of us, though to them most of all, not to let it go there. The hardest part of this being, of course, that while I am ending the animal's suffering, I am starting the owner's. It can be devastating to not only say goodbye to such dear friends as our pets can be, but also to have to be the one to make the choice that this is where that friend's life will end - and God forbid that we ever have to make such a choice for any family member but a pet. But still there is the hope of healing there, the redemption of knowing that you eased the pain of one you loved by the exercise of courage and compassion in making a difficult choice; of knowing that the last thing that animal knew would be the hand of a friend. There is, I hope, some comfort in that, and in knowing that you delivered your good friend into whatever comes after this life, as gently as it was possible to do. Death really is not the enemy here.

So no, my fight is against the dark: The darkness of ignorance, of carelessness, of failure of compassion, of indifference and neglect and cruelty and fear. My fight is to bring the light, maybe just a tiny bit, but to bring it where I can. My fight is not to give in to righteous anger when confronted with ignorance and thoughtless cruelty, but instead to find a way to change that; to stop it from happening next time, maybe. It's hard, sometimes. I have a temper that is slow to rouse, but once roused, is fierce and implacable: Scots to the core, my brother would say. That's a big horse to keep a rein on, and there are times I fail. But failing to rein it in does nothing to help the world. If I let that horse run, it will just run over things and smash them; it is only in harnessing it that it becomes a useful force.

So this is my battle with myself, to find a way to learn from all of this, so that next time I will be better at it, faster, kinder, stronger; so that I will not give in to the demands of ego, so that I never make it about me. It's not about me. It's about those I serve, who are in some ways the most deserving among us: the innocent. So if I must doubt myself in order to do this well, I will doubt. If I must sacrifice the need to be right, I'll sacrifice. If I must resist the temptation to judge, I'll resist. If I must hold tight to the reins of my temper, I'll hold. If I must stand my ground when I am afraid and tired and beset on all sides, I'll stand. If I must gather up all my courage and take the leap of faith, I'll leap. If I must yield my desire to dominate the growling dog or the fractious client, I'll yield. If I must submit myself to the burdens of this path, I'll submit.

One way or another, I still find my way along this path, arduous and gruelling as it may be at times. Because the gifts are great: It seems that the more I give myself to this way, the more I become who I came here to be. And I find my way strewn thick with the gifts of those I serve: Courage, humor, empathy and grace. Forgiveness and gratitude. Patience. Humility. Joy. Love. Mostly I think it is they - my patients, and often my clients as well - who bring me the light that I try to bring to others.

It is a path of irony, because it is composed of opposites: It is my left brain which processed the education, but the right brain that drove me to it. It is my intellect that gathers the information, but my intuition that best applies it. It is a way of fierce kindness and gentle ruthlessness. It is art and science entwined in a passionate embrace. It is where the clarity of knowledge and certain fact reveals the vast unknowable Mystery.

It is a juxtaposition of opposites, all right, and I still have much to learn about how best to stand at that juncture. But I'll keep trying.

The (Tall) Thin Man

2009-09-30T14:58:00.001-07:00

When I was in vet school, I had a mustang mare, Cascabella by name . She was actually a Christmas present form my sister M. An accomplished horsewoman, M had adopted Cassie from a group that had underestimated the mare's age. Once M realised that -and that consequently Cassie wasn't likely to grow much more and would therefore be a little smaller than M likes to ride - she started thinking about placing her.

"Well, she's the perfect height for me, so wrap her up and mail her," I said, jokingly. But as it happens, my sis thought that was a dandy idea, so she shipped Cassie to me mid-winter of my first year of vet school.

Well, how cool is that? I got a pony for Christmas. I was 28 years old at the time, mind you, but hey: It pays to keep asking.

Cassie arrived in good trim late one night in November. (Okay, so she was an early Christmas present.) She was wearing a custom-fitted black denim horse blanket (lined in gorgeous teal green wool) and matching shipping boots - all custom made by M, who is (besides being an accomplished horsewoman) also an excellent seamstress, a software engineer, a professional dancer (belly and ballroom) and a sheep farmer.

What can I tell you? It's an interesting family. We might be described any number of ways - some less flattering than others - but "dull" never enters into it.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch - or at least, sophomore year of vet school - Cassie decides one morning to lacerate her pastern in some manner I have yet to determine. I go out to find that she has a cut that encircles two thirds of her pastern. Blood has run down her hoof, staining it a dark red-black color, and I can see little crusty half-moons in the dirt where she has stood long enough to leave standing blood, now clotted into small, grim coronas on the ground.

Well, hell. I have class this morning - a cadaver surgery rotation, and moreover it's the first day of the rotation, the one least likely to have any flexibility in schedule. On the other hand - this is my horse. I love her, and even if I didn't, I am responsible for her. Any horseman knows the saying: "No hoof, no horse". This isn't something to be blown off.

I step between the strands of the fence and pick up her foot. I can see tendon along the back, a sight that makes my heart leap into my throat, leaving a sick, hollow place behind. Cassie doesn't seem unduly distressed; in fact, she seems markedly impatient for her breakfast. She stands on the injured leg without complaint or lameness and attempts to encourage me to feed her by means of judicious nudging and nickering deep in her throat. I look at my hands; the blood on her hoof is dry, leaving not the slightest trace or stickiness on my hands. This didn't just happen; she did it sometime in the night.

I feed up and go inside for Neosporin, which I slather liberally over her laceration, and, thinking furiously, I get ready for school. I sort through my options and place a call to the University's Equine Ambulatory service, who needs to know when I want her looked at: They need me to be there to catch her up and hold her.

"I don't know," I say. "I'm a vet student and I have rotations this morning. Let's plan on noon, and I'll go in and ask my professor if I can come back earlier."

Once at school - 15 minutes early, and in a welter of nerves - I hunt down the tech who is assisting with the surgery lab and set out my dilemma in front of her.

"You're in luck," she tells me. "The lab is being run by Dr. Sydney, who used to be an equine surgeon. He'll know whether you have to go back right away or if it can wait til noon."

I set up beside a cadaver - a dog that was euthanized at Animal Control, one of the heartbreaking cadre of animals who have no home. As sad as it is that these animals die for lack of homes, it's a small comfort to know that their sacrifice is redeemed at least a small bit by allowing us to learn surgical skills on animals who will not suffer should we make mistakes. In this way they serve us... but they also serve our future patients, their brethren, by letting us learn where our errors can do no harm.

Dr. Syndey arrives in due course and I explain my circumstances. He looks at me, his eye both keen and calm.

"Was the blood on her hoof still wet?" he asks me.

"No," I say definitely, having checked specifically.

"Then it won't make a bit of difference if you see Ambulatory now or at noon. I'll let you go now if you want, but I promise you that if the wound has already dried, a few hours will make no difference. She'll be fine," he adds with a smile, seeing the tension in my body. His voice and manner show not the slightest doubt,and I feel my shoulders loosen and drop, reassured by his expertise.

"I don't want to miss the lab," I say. "I'll stay and do it, if you're sure."

"I'm sure," he says, with a smile. His eye is level and kind, and he pats me sympathetically on the shoulder.

Comforted, I do the lab without distraction, and make it out to my house in good time. Ambulatory calls me to tell me they'll be there in 20 minutes and to be sure of the directions to my house. I give these to the student on the phone, who I can hear relaying directions to the clinician (who is, of course, the one driving).

"As a by-the-way," I add to the student, "this is a mustang mare. She's very manageable, but she'll be a little shy at first. It would be best if you didn't all just pile out and mob her all at once. She'll need a minute to get used to you."

"Gotcha," says the student. We hang up and I go catch Cassie up, bringing her out of the fence and letting her graze on the lawn while we wait.

A few minutes later Ambulatory pulls in in their big white truck. This is a crew-cab pickup, absolutely jammed with vet students. All four doors pop open and vet students come boiling out like clowns out of a VW beetle, so many that you can't figure out how they all fit in there. They immediately descend on Cassie and I like a plague of locusts. Cassie takes two quick steps back and tries her best to hide behind me. I step in front of her face, offering what protection I can, and tell the vet students, "Whoa, stop! You have to go slow with her, she's a mustang. She's going to flip if you crowd her."

The students nod and essentially ignore me, fanning out to either side, pulling stethoscopes from around their necks and getting out clipboards. The clinician, an extremely tall, lanky fellow wearing a battered Stetson and worn cowboy boots, unfolds himself from the cab. At a glance he takes in the situation. Behind me I can feel Cassie starting to coil like a spring, preparing for flight but unsure where to go; she trusts me, but she is a wild horse. The first two years of her life she lived where flight was a matter of life and death, and though she is unusually good at managing her fear - you can see her thinking when presented with a new situation, evaluating it to see if she should stand or run - when she decides it's time to run, she does it as if her life depends on it - which, often enough, I'm sure it did.

"You all want to hold up now and back off of that horse," says the clinician in a quiet voice. His tone is conversational but the effect is immediate: The students seem to suddenly melt back and stand off to the sides. Cassie is still vibrating like a recently-plucked guitar string, pressing her head against my back and feeding her tension into my body. The clinician ambles up to her, unhurried and relaxed. In his stocking feet I imagine he is at least 6 foot 5, and the battered heels of his boots add another couple of inches to that. I step to the side, giving him room, and he sets his feet apart, straddling them wide to bring his face closer to Cassie's without leaning over her. He takes the sides of her halter in his long hands, his knuckles curled up against her cheeks, and gives her head a gentle shake.

"Hey, babe," he says to her in his deep, quiet voice.

The effect is instantaneous and astonishing. Cassie, who one second ago was barely controlling her need to bolt, relaxes instantly into his hands. Her ears relax, her eye half-closes, and she lets her head fall into his hands, taking a half-step forward to butt her head up against his sternum. This, her body tells me, is my kind of person. Here is someone who speaks my language. Here is someone I can trust.

"Why don't you all get a temp, pulse and respiration," he says then, in his mild way. "Dr. Stace," he adds, nodding at me. I look at him, cradling Cassie's head, and close my hanging jaw.

"Pleased to meet you," I say. "Although not half as pleased as she is," I add with a crooked smile, looking at my mustang, who now has her eyes closed and is rubbing her forehead on Dr. Stace's clinic coat as vet students swarm around her. "Sorry about your smock," I say, as black and white hairs begin to accumulate on the front. Dr. Stace gives me a slow smile and looks back at Cassie, who is now allowing him to rub her ears.

"She's all right," he says, dismissing his increasingly hairy clinic coat as a matter of no importance.

The students report their findings and Dr. Stace has a look at Cassie's pastern. Completely relaxed now, she stands patiently while everyone looks, while she is given a mild sedative and clipped and scrubbed and sutured up, while she is bandaged and injected with antibiotics. Her sedation wears off while Dr. Stace details her aftercare and she gives him a little nicker as he hands me the meds she'll need. He gives her a little sidelong smile, a secret thing, that warms the back of his eyes: something that is just for the two of them, some shared recognition.

"That's a nice little mare," he says in tones of approbation, gives me a nod, and takes himself off into the Ambulatory truck, now tightly sardined with vet students once more. I find myself staring after them as they back down the driveway and disappear down the road.

"Well. I never saw anything like that before," I say to Cassie, who is now lipping at her aftercare sheet with an interested expression, as if contemplating eating it. I walk her back to the pasture and offer her a carrot instead, which she feels is a fair trade. I turn her loose and she wanders off, her bright blue bandage jaunty against the steel grey of her leg. In the end she healed well, with barely a scar to show for her adventure.

I never got to go on rotations with Dr. Stace, as he left the University and went back into private practice before then; he missed it, he said, and I could see why. The next time I needed a horse vet I tried to get him - willing to bypass even the student discount I got from the University's Ambulatory service - but as it turns out he had as many clients as he could handle and wasn't taking new ones. Well, I can understand that; there's only so much time in a day, and anyone lucky enough to have Dr. Stace as their horse vet isn't likely to give up their spot. But even though I regretted that I did not have the opportunity to have him as a professor, I'm pretty sure I learned nearly as much from Dr. Stace that day as I did in a week of Ambulatory rotations when I went on them myself. Don't get me wrong: I loved my ambulatory rotation and I learned a lot from a good professor - and had a great time with my rotation mates, who teased me (the only woman on the rotation) like brothers. I teased them back, mercilessly, and we all got a lot done and learned a good bit about equine medicine and enjoyed the doing of it. What I learned from Dr. Stace was less about the "what" of medicine and more about the how and why, I think. Why we do this; how we keep doing it and doing it well; what it is that brings us joy in this work, despite its many burdens; how the essential inner heart of who we are is perhaps the most important thing we bring to our patients... more important, sometimes, than our knowledge and our skills, than our intelligence and reasoning, than our meds and sutures and bandages.

I imagine Dr. Stace is either retired now, or considering it; I would hope he's still amongst us on this earth, walking it with his long, ambling stride, his pace all leisure but his eye as keen and quick as a striking hawk. I can be sure of one thing, though: Wherever he is, he walks on the side of the Angels.

The Red Hand of Death (And Other Ways to Stay Sane During Vet School)

2009-09-28T20:01:00.000-07:00

Vet school is a stressful gig. It's not just the responsibility of it, the knowledge that you are undertaking to go out and save lives, do surgery, make tricky medical diagnoses; undertaking to be the expert, to have people rely on you for help in matters of life and death. It's not just the astonishingly fast pace or the intense workload or the massive amount of information and skills you are trying to master. It's not just the expense of it, the long hours and the early realization that, rather than floating somewhere near the top of your class, an academic over-achiever, you are suddenly average: EVERYONE in your class is an academic over-achiever and ALL of them are from the tops of their classes - and at least half of them (and probably more) were better students than you were.

No, there's also the sneaking suspicion that your admission was a dreadful administrative error, and that you don't really belong here. This feeling will be emphatically underscored by the realization that the stunning girl who sits next to you - who is beautifully made-up and has her long strait hair perfectly curled, who has a husband and a house and a job.... this girl is not just smart enough to get into vet school, but she's SO smart she also has time to manage a full life AND look like that. Every day.

That's when you're pretty certain you're sunk.

Maybe it's not a big surprise that I went a bit frantic on the studying the first semester. We had an exam every 10 days, because if they stretched them out further, the amount of material to master was just too vast to be contained within one exam.

Now, the upperclassmen and the faculty were all well aware of the fact that the first exam of vet school was the most stressful of all of them - until it came time to take the National Board Exam and the Clinical Competency Test in senior year (plus or minus a state board exam, depending on the state in which you proposed to work). It's tradition that an outgoing Freshman - now a newly-minted sophomore - "adopted" a "little sib": an incoming and somewhat petrified freshman. In my case, I had my regular big sib - who, on the morning of the first exam, brought me a plate of home-made snicker doodles and a nice encouraging card, which was bright and cheerful and full of moral support - but I also had my neighbor's big sib, a very kindhearted girl who had met me via a work-study situation and to some degree taken me under her wing. She brought both of us - me and the kind, funny, intelligent and intimidatingly beautiful girl who sat next to me, who was her ACTUAL little sib - a new and freshly-sharpened #2 pencil, a brand-new eraser, and a petri dish of m&m's, labelled "m&m culture, eat on [date of exam]". My neighbor also got a few extra goodies, but it seemed her big sib didn't want to leave me out. Isn't that sweet?

Next we are all ushered, trembling, sleep-deprived and sweaty-palmed, into the lecture hall, where they are to pass out our exam papers and tell us the rules (the exam being half written, half practical). There is a strange murmuring noise, which you quickly realize is composed of 131 freshman muttering last-minute aides-memoirs to themselves or their neighbors. The professors proctoring the exam are on the lecture stage as the second hand sweeps away the remaining time before the exam. Suddenly it's 8:00. You can almost hear a hundred and thirty-one hearts skip a beat in synchrony.

The lab coordinator gets up to tell us how the practical stations are set up in the lab: there are no more than four students allowed per station at any one time, though we're allowed to go back and forth between stations as many times as we like, within the 4 hours we are allotted to take the exam. We are also welcome to take the exam sitting in the lecture hall or go back to our cubicles and take it sitting at our desks, or anywhere else inside the building, as the honor code applies: we are expected not to cheat. (Although an honor board exists - a group of students who self-police their peers, with advice and supervision from a professor - it is rarely needed over the next 4 years, and never is a student actually found to have been cheating, at least in my vet school class).

Now there is a slight pause, and the lab coordinator tells us a joke. A pretty good one, getting roars of laughter. A bunch of students shuffle in at one side of the lecture stage; they are upperclassmen, and they put on a skit to loosen us up. It's pretty funny - although to this day everything that happened before that exam is a blur to me, and I have not the faintest recollection what the skit was about. What I do remember is laughing so hard I was nearly crying, while one part of my brain stood off to the side, looking at me and saying: Man. You are REALLY stressed out. Get a grip on yourself.

But the joke and the skit do their jobs: I am feeling cheerful and upbeat and a bit more relaxed as I start my exam in my cubicle, with my snicker doodles and my m&m culture, looking at a picture of my pony I have taped to the wall. (Okay, it's one of the racehorses I groomed right before I came back to school, but you get the idea.)

After the first exam, when I realise that I did well, I start to relax just a little. Maybe it wasn't a huge administrative error after all and I really DO belong here. I don't let up on the work, but I'm not so freaked out any more, since I've proven to my personal satisfaction that I can in fact handle the material, as long as I apply myself.

Still: it's a big deal, being in vet school, and I never want someone's animal to pay for me not paying enough attention in school, so like my vet school brethren, I work hard. Which means that we have to play hard - and we do.

At least some students go out dancing every time an exam falls on a Friday night, as there are no classes the next morning. I am amongst those who find this relaxing, and I'll dance til I fall over. Not well, mind you, but with great enthusiasm. Then there are various FACs (Friday Afternoon Clubs) at various bars and eateries around town, which vet students are adept at ferreting out, as many offer free or half-price appetizers and cheaper drinks from (say) 5 to 7 p.m. on Friday afternoons. There's my usual Saturday coffee date with my friend SF, at which we would vent and commiserate. We never said where we would meet; one of us would call the other and it would be:
"You want to meet?"
"Sure, what time?"
"How about noon?"
"Okay, see you there!" [click].
Then we would meet at noon, having never specified WHERE we were meeting or what for. It didn't occur to me until senior year that the only thing we ever specified was the time.

Sometimes I would take out my little mustang mare (or my thoroughbred mare, or one of the horses I boarded in my pasture for extra money) and ride in the beautiful old cemetery across from my house. Sometimes I would go for a walk or a run in the same cemetery. Sometimes I would just sit and listen to music, or watch a movie or a little TV whilst meditatively knitting or spinning yarn, or play silly games with my dog. Sometimes I'd just sit and stare out my window, or go down by the irrigation ditch running through my property and watch the ducks and muskrats playing in the water. I also developed a few culinary hobbies, the B list: making bread, beer and biscotti (all of which had the significant advantage that you could eat or drink the results of your stress-relieving hobby, providing further stress relief.) Sometimes I would write - can't seem to help that, no matter the circumstances - and sometimes I'd get out my pad and sketch, or just draw pictures in the margins of my notes.

In vet school I was also a hiking fool. I had a ratty old Dodge Dart, which half the time had to be started by arcing two poles on the starter with the assistance of large slotted kitchen spoon, but which limped me through the first couple of years of vet school. I took my dog hiking probably at least five times a week for the first three years - less often the last year, as the workload increased, but even then we probably made about three times a week or more (except for the month I spent on the ICU rotation).

But maybe the single most important thing that kept me sane through the first three years of vet school was the discovery of racquetball.

This was introduced to me by MT, she of San Juan rafting fame. For 7 weeks of the first semester of vet school (for me; she was finishing her Master's degree) we had a weight-training class three days a week and would warm up by playing racquetball for an hour or more first. Then we'd do our weight training and then we'd walk to Pescado Bay for fish tacos afterwards. Naturally MT was a much better player than I was, but by the time she graduated, I was hooked. Not because I was so good at it: more because it just felt so good to hit something.

So I developed other friends to play racquetball with, and was on the courts at least 5 days a week the first two years of vet school (during which we were up-campus and within walking distance of the students-only rec center), and on a slightly slower schedule for the third year, when our classes moved down-campus to the teaching hospital. I did have two unfortunate events associated with my racquetball obsession: One was that I tore my calf muscles badly on the court one day early in our sophomore year and was laid off for three weeks; that made me nearly crazy with restlessness, and to this day that calf has never been quite the same. And the other was that, consequent to my years making my living at the end of a pitchfork, I had tendinitis in both wrists. This made for a certain amount of strain on my right wrist during play, with the consequence that sometimes, as my hand grew slick with sweat, the racquet would spin in my grip, ruining a shot.

Well. I can't have THIS. I need to hit the ball so hard I split it along its seam. Need to, I tell you.

So I went shopping for a glove of some kind, something that would keep its grip no matter how sweaty my hand got. But naturally I didn't need TWO gloves, since racquetball is a one-handed game. To my annoyance, I could find goggles and balls and racquet covers, sweat bands and court shoes and all manner of workout clothing - but nary a racquetball glove to be found. Not one.

After much poking about I realised that golf gloves come as a single glove. Well. This looks promising.

So I tried on all kinds of different golf gloves of various sizes and makes, until I found the one that fit me the way I wanted. It was thin and light and didn't ruin my feel of the racquet, but it was made of leather that would absorb the sweat and would, if anything, become stickier if the sweat soaked through the palm. Perfect.

The first day I tried it out I was playing with a male classmate, C. He had thick curly brown hair and smiling dark eyes, and in some way reminded me of both my brothers - the curly dark hair and twinkly chocolate eyes of one, and the teasing demeanor and bratty-younger-brother spunk of the other. He was not so very much taller than me - perhaps six or seven inches - but he was significantly more athletic - well, or at least looked it, with a diver's build and a general lazy ease of motion.

We get on the court and I unzip my racquet cover, taking out my golf glove and pulling it on. It just so happens that this glove, the one that fit me just right, is bright red. C takes one look at it and starts laughing.

"What is that?" he asks me.

"The Red Hand of Death," I tell him with narrowed and menacing eye, trying not to grin. For some reason this makes C laugh all the harder. (Hmm, I can't think why THAT would be). On the other hand - the Red Hand of Death hand, no doubt - I beat him two games to one that day... maybe because he was laughing at me the whole time.

I'm telling you: It doesn't do to laugh at The Red Hand of Death.

Nowadays I find my stress relief in some ways differently, and some ways similarly. I no longer have a horse, and my gym does not have a racquetball court (although there is a gym in town that does, the fees have gotten ridiculous, and I have no partners anymore, so it hardly seems worth it.) I traded making beer for making wine, and baking for making kefir and roasting lamb. I still play silly games with my dogs, of course, although some of those games are a bit more serious - working sheep, for instance. There is less regular TV and more PBS and movies, although music and staring out my windows are still good. I do less sketching and more photography, less hiking and more flying, but I still meet friends for coffee. I have no patience for spinning anymore - in part because the minute I turn my back on it some Border collie snatches the end of the yarn and runs all over the house with it, unreeling it madly and tangling it in a giant spider web upstairs and down - but I still like to knit and crochet, especially while watching TV... it seems less wasteful somehow if I'm making something at the same time. And of course... I still write. I still can't help that. It's almost a compulsion.

These things do me fine, for the most part. Every once in a while, though, when I've had a particularly trying day I can feel a little itch in my palm, and I think: I wonder if I could get away with wearing it to work... The Red Hand of Death.

Okay. NOW You've Done It.

2009-09-24T08:11:00.000-07:00

And here I mean pretty much all of you.

I suddenly have acquired an agent. Yes, a literary agent, like the kind that helps you gather your random scribblings together and make them into a book which will then (with any luck) get peddled to publishers and hence appear on bookstore shelves.... and hopefully, the shelves of people's houses - after being well-thumbed, if all goes as planned.

This is all your fault, you know. You kept pestering me about publishing things, and just LOOK what's happened.

So here I have a little question for you: My agent wants me to order things as I want them to appear. My personal take is that the mix is the way I like it - a story about horses here, one about dogs there, one about Alaska next, a happy one, a sad one, a funny one, a sweet one. I think grouping them all together - like all horse stories here, and all sad stories there - will be less interesting (and in the case of the sad ones, maybe more overwhelming and harder to deal with.) But I want to know what you think, since you've been reading here for a while and know if you like the order or not.

SO: Mix it up, or group it by subject?

As for the logistics, I'll need to edit a bit (in part to be absolutely sure I've protected confidentiality), and it takes about a year before anything is in print, according to my agent. But I'll let you know, shall I?

Averting Catastrophe

2009-09-23T20:30:00.000-07:00

The other day I was poking around on VIN (Veterinary Information Network), researching something for one of my clients, when I came across an account of a spayed cat with persistent signs of estrus.

Well, once the cat is spayed, it's not supposed to go IN to estrus any more. And as anyone who has lived with one can attest, an in-heat cat is a real nuisance to live with. We used to get this call all the time on emergency when I was in intern:

Caller: My cat is in terrible pain! I want to bring her in!

Tech: What is she doing, ma'am?

Caller: She's rolling around on the floor screaming! Can't you hear her? [Owner holds phone out so that the tech can indeed hear long, moaning feline wails in the background.]

Tech: How old is your cat, ma'am?

Caller: Six or seven months...

Tech: Is she spayed?

Caller: No... should I bring her in? What do you think is wrong with her?

Tech [after ascertaining that the cat has no other symptoms apart from rolling around and wailing like she's auditioning for a New York blues band and hopes they can hear her from home]: You certainly can bring her in, ma'am, but it sounds to me like your cat is in heat, in which case the usual solution is to spay her. We normally do those procedures in the morning.

Caller: Are you sure? Can I talk to a doctor?

Tech [sighing, because now he has to wake up an intern or break one away from another case]: Sure.

This conversation is repeated almost verbatim until we get to the part where the doctor tells the caller that, although we can't tell for sure without a physical exam, it IS in fact likely that her cat is in heat.

Caller: But she sounds like she's in horrible pain!

Intern: Well, yes, they do sound like that. We'd be happy to see her tonight but the emergency fees do apply.

Caller: But why is she making that noise?

Intern: Ma'am, I know she sounds like she's in desperate agony, but it's more likely she's just desperate. For a date. [Weighty pause while this sinks in.]

Caller [in a tone of dawning understanding]: Ohhhh. [pause] So you're sure you can't spay her tonight?

Intern: Ma'am, I can see why this would seem like an emergency surgery to you, since you're not likely to get much sleep tonight, but I assure you that if she's just in heat she will survive until morning, no matter what she thinks about it. However, we'd be happy to have a look at her. Would you like to bring her in?

Caller: Well, I don't really have the money for the emergency fee or surgery [naturally, or else your cat would most likely already have been spayed, so we would not be taking this call].... Is there anything else I can do instead?

Intern [resisting the temptation to suggest earplugs or soundproofing her bedroom]: Well, ma'am, cats are seasonally polyestrous. That means that she will continue to cycle every few weeks all summer unless you do something.

Caller [in a pitch of rising hysteria]: All summer?!?

Intern: Yes, ma'am. Of course, you could do a false breeding, which will usually keep them out of heat for about 2 months.

Caller: Oh, that sounds good. What is that?

Intern: That's where you take a smooth slender object like a glass rod - a thermometer will work - and... er... pretend you're a tom cat. That will fool her body into believing she's pregnant, so her estrus cycles will stop for the length of a normal pregnancy, which is about 63 days.

Caller: [dead silence]

Intern: Ma'am....? Are you there?

Caller [in a small voice]: Maybe I'll just bring her in tomorrow to get spayed.

This was a call repeated over and over starting about February and continuing on until around November. It got so that when I heard my tech say "How old is your cat?" I'd just get up and go to the phone (presuming I had the rare good fortune to be trying to nap during my 16-hour overnight shift).

The false breeding thing does work, however. It takes a particular mind-set to be able to do this, but sometimes desperation plays a part. We had a classmate when I was in vet school whose wife bred cats. She had a particular queen who hated her husband, and it is perhaps a mark of his good nature that he didn't insist she place the cat in another home. The queen would hiss and slap at him and had, if I recall right, on more than one occasion attempted to bite him through his shoes or his pant leg. But she was a valuable breeding queen, and the wife (not surprisingly) did not want to breed her for back-to-back litters, which meant that there would be periods of time during which the general hissing and growling would be supplemented liberally with screaming and moaning. I gather it was creating a certain amount of marital disharmony; vet school is, after all, a gruelling haul with its high work load and its attendant stress levels, and having a cat screaming and moaning (not to mention clawing and biting) all the time isn't especially conducive to concentrating on your studies.

However, help was on the way. One day we got the false breeding lecture, and my classmate went home with a determined light in his eye. A few days later he reported that he'd given the false-breeding technique a try.

"Did it work?" I asked him.

"Oh, it worked, all right," he said, with a dark look.

"What?" I asked him, eyeing the set of his mouth. It took a bit of prodding, but he finally admitted that it might in fact have worked a little too well. The queen in question developed an immediate and inappropriate passion for him. She would run to the door when she heard him coming and throw herself on his feet, rolling around on them and purring wildly, rubbing her face against his ankles with every evidence of feline devotion and generally making a spectacle of herself.

"Well, at least that's better than her taking a swipe at you every time you come home," I said, encouragingly, biting my lips firmly to keep myself from laughing. He nodded.

"It's not so bad most of the time," he admitted. "But the other day we had friends over. They looked at her carrying on and asked me 'Doesn't this cat hate you?' So I'm telling them, 'Yes, she does, absolutely detests me' and trying to nudge her away from me with my foot." He gives me a morose look. "Didn't work," he concluded. "She spent the whole evening rolling around on my shoes. I think they suspected there was something going on between us." He gives me a dark look. "Go ahead and laugh," he adds, eyeing my face, clearly aware that I have at best no more than two more seconds of self-control left in me.

"Well, at least you know you have good technique," I said, declining to specify exactly what technique I meant by that (and not entirely certain myself).

"Oh, yes, that's me," he said sourly. "Have thermometer, will travel." But he joined me in a chuckle.

It's an odd life, being a vet; maybe the only thing odder is being a vet student. But at least our lives are rarely boring. And where else would you learn skills that will magically restore marital harmony with no more than a thermometer and a little determination?

Moose On The Loose

2009-09-20T10:22:00.000-07:00

It's a grey, overcast fall day here in Alaska, and there is a light breeze fluttering the green and gold birch leaves outside my window. My dog Finn is laying on my feet, a silky, comforting warmth. I am contemplating my errands for the day, and for no reason that I can think of, I am suddenly thinking of moose encounters.

I love moose. Some people I know say they look like they were made by committee, with all mismatched parts; but I find them elegantly adapted to their habitat, and strangely charming. That's when they're safely at a distance or on the other side of some barrier, of course; close to, I find them quite scary. I've seen video of man killed in Anchorage several years ago by an enraged cow. Unfortunately, the cow had been harassed and pressured all day long by various students and others on the U of A campus, who had gotten WAY too close and put far too much pressure on her for hours, taking pictures and so on. She was minding her own business, just trying to make a living, trying to get enough forage to survive the harsh Alaskan winter. She was browsing on some plants near a University building, and the unfortunate target of her ire happened to exit a door near her without realizing she was there. He was far too close to her, and though he never even glanced in her direction, she had had enough. Having been pressured and harassed all day long - without malice, but also without thought for the potential consequences - she wheeled toward the man, striking him in the back of the head with one large hoof. He went down like a sack of potatoes; I suspect he was dead before he hit the ground. She stomped on him for a few seconds, kicking at him, but he was limp as a rag doll. I don't think he ever knew what hit him.

It was a tragic thing all around; the moose was killed by Fish and Game, and of course it's a terrible thing that the man died, really through no fault of his own. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and made the mistake of not looking both ways before exiting the building.

Most of the time when I have moose encounters they're much more benign - but I'm not foolish enough to stroll out to my truck if there's a moose in my yard or my driveway. I've several times called in "moose" to work: "Hi, it's me, I can't get to my truck because there's a moose on my deck. I'll be in as soon as she clears off." There used to be a cow that inhabited this neighborhood pretty regularly, though I've not seen her this year. Many times I've seen her scat in my driveway, or a hollow in the snow where she's bedded down outside my fence. Once I found a spot where she'd urinated next to my truck; there was a hole burned through 3 solid inches of ice, leading me to a new favorite expression: "Man, that's just hotter than moose piss!"

Another time I pulled in to my driveway and found her at the top of it, industriously stripping leaves off the trees. I parked halfway up my drive, got out a book and read until she moved off (fortunately I'd just been to the bookstore, so I was well-prepared.) Once she was bedded down about halfway down my drive; I had a safe shot to the truck, but I had to back down my driveway (which is on a hill) with extreme care; she came surging to her feet the minute I started the engine, but at that point seemed in no hurry to vacate the driveway. Instead she stood browsing on my birches for what seemed like forever, her rump end in the strike-path of the truck. Well, I'm not running a moose down for the sake of saving five minutes on my commute, so I waited. What the hey, my truck could stand a few more minutes of warm-up anyway, right?

The scariest encounters have been when I've had one or more dogs with me. One early morning, I let the dogs out into my back yard for their first stretch-and pee of the day. There was a sudden explosion of furious barking, of a tone that any dog owner knows means trouble. I yanked the door back open and saw a large and furiously enraged cow charging my fence, the dogs in scattering pandemonium in front of her, with only a thin barrier of chain-link between them. At that instant it looked flimsy and insubstantial as gauze to my horrified eyes.

"Crap! Finn! Ali!" I screamed. "Get in here! Raven! LEAVE it! Kenzie!" Meanwhile I'm jamming my feet into the boots by the door and running down the porch steps dressed only in an over-sized chamois shirt and a pair of Sorrels. I grab the first dog I come to (Raven) and pitch her up on the deck, where she has the good sense to go into the house, closely followed by Ali - who is not easy to catch, being swift and nearly hairless, but who has started to see the wisdom of backing off the moose cow, so I am able to make a lucky grab and heave him toward the house. Kenzie goes in on her own, following the other dogs, but Finn will NOT come off. Meanwhile Raven has turned around for a second look, so I dart up and slam the door in her face, lest they all decide to come out and rejoin the fray, and then I spin around and run out into the yard.

"Finn! LEAVE it, I said! Finn, God damn it! Get in the house!" I am shouting, slipping in the snow as I try to snatch any part of his body. Finn is dodging back and forth, fence-fighting the cow, barking furiously. Spit is flying from his lips as he leaps at the fence, springing off of it and evading my grasp again as I slide in the snow. The cow has twice kicked the fence with her powerful hind legs - making the chain link sway and bow alarmingly, chinging and rattling along its length - and has now turned face-on to Finn, dodging back and forth, ramming the fence with her head and striking with her lethal front feet, trying to find a way through to kill him. She is making a frightening sound - it's nothing I have ever heard before or can ever describe, something weirdly between a snort and a growl, a deep, thoroughly enraged sound that immediately raises the hair on the back of my neck. With one part of my brain I register that she has two nearly-yearling calves with her, hanging back slightly in the woods. This makes her even more ferociously dangerous, and as she rams the fence again with her head I am seriously afraid she'll come through it.

"Finn, God damn it! Get in the house!" I shriek at him, making another abortive grab at him, putting a hand down in the snow as I lose my footing. But by some miracle my fingers snagged just slightly in his tail, breaking his concentration enough that he finally hears me as I scream "Leave it, LEAVE it!" at him. He registers the fear and anger in my voice and breaks off, running at last up the porch steps, still growling and casting backwards glances as I follow after him.

"Shit! Shit!" I am panting as I shove the door open and stumble into the house, slamming the door behind us all. I can still hear the fence ringing and shaking as the cow rams it and I run into the bathroom, where I can look out the window at her. The fence is rippling and swaying, but it holds. Now that the dogs are gone, her ire dissipates quickly and she trots off into the woods, snorting and blowing, the calves high-stepping in front of her as they vacate my property.

I go to my living room and collapse on the couch, shaking and panting from adrenaline and exertion. Finn is panting too, but he looks thoroughly pleased with himself. The dogs mill about my feet, butting against me, all of them keyed up, but only Finn looking like he'd like another go, because that was fun.

"Damn dog," I say to him, petting him shakily. "When I say leave it, I mean leave it now," I tell him sternly. He grins at me, waving the luxuriant plume of his tail.

Next moose we see, he's not going to leave it. I know he'll do just as he did this time: race in barking furiously, leaping up to snatch at her face, dodging back and forth trying to grab a leg.

Yikes.

Well, he comes by it honestly, I will say. His mother, Keetna - a lovely bitch, a favorite patient, and owned by a friend of mine - is also hell on wheels - er, paws - when it comes to moose. J, her owner, told me this story.

One year, when Keetna was herself less than a year of age, J was walking with her step-daughter down a street in Girdwood, where they had a condo. J had Keetna on a leash, as any sensible person would with a Border collie puppy. It was summer time, a pleasant day. There was a moose browsing on some shrubs on the far side of the street, well off the road. J kept a weather eye on it, but it was peacefully engaged in its breakfast and they walked by without incident. There were other people here and there out on the street, but no one near the moose; everyone was giving it a wide berth. There was enough distance that J thought little of it, beyond taking care to leave it room and keep an eye out for any signs of irritation from the moose.

A while later, on their return down the street, J retraced their path. The moose was still decimating some home-owner's bushes, ignoring all else. About the time they were abeam the moose - or perhaps just a little past it - J catches motion from the corner of her eye and turns her head in time to see the moose charging out of the yard strait at them.

"Run!" she shouts, and run her step-daughter does - unfortunately, right down the middle of the street, the easiest possible path for the moose to follow and run her down - but luckily for her, the moose goes after J instead. J leaps into the woods, dragging Keetna, and dives behind the paltry shelter of a small black spruce. These are thin, weedy trees, some of them little more than a large sapling with a bristle of short, needled branches sticking randomly out from the sides. The tree J has taken refuge behind is one such, and it is little cover; the moose doesn't seem to think much of it, either, as she comes after J, making that hair-raising sound of rage and striking at J with her huge front feet. The spruce is narrow enough that the cow can strike at J from either side of it, and she does, her long legs whipping her sharp-toed hooves at J with bone-crushing force. J stumbles back from the strike zone, tripping over the uneven footing and dropping Keetna's leash.

The result is instantaneous. Keetna, freed from restraint, leaps snarling into the cow's face, her razoring teeth aiming for the cow's nose. The astonished moose rears back for a moment, her attention diverted from J to the snarling, snapping black-and-white fury in front of her. Keetna presses her advantage, using the moose's hesitation to leap at her face again. The moose turns on her haunches and runs. Keetna runs after her. Julie regains her footing and runs after them both, screaming at the top of her lungs, "Keetna! Get back here!"

The amazed neighbors look up to see a moose cow galloping down the street, with a small Border collie in hot pursuit, and J - herself a runner, and no doubt spurred by adrenaline - bringing up the rear, pelting down the road after them at top speed and screaming for her dog to come back now.

A short period of time later - although I imagine it seemed like an eternity to J - the moose has enough of a lead that Keetna breaks off her pursuit. She comes loping jauntily back to J, all smiles, and clearly pleased with herself. It was a lucky thing in one sense that Keetna was there, as she may well have spared J being stomped by the moose; on the other hand, it instilled in Keetna the absolute certitude that she is the Queen and Commander of all moose everywhere - a dangerous confidence to have.

So far that hasn't led Keenta into any serious trouble, although it's been a near thing at least one other time. That was a time when I was taking care of Keetna for J, when J was out of town. It was winter, and the dogs had all been out (on a runner in my front yard) and then back in and had their breakfast as I got ready for work. I was taking Keetna to work with me, and had gathered all my stuff. The dogs had been restless, but I'd attributed their subterranean growls and uneasy fidgets to the fact that we had a "strange" dog in the house - not that she was unknown to any of them, but that she didn't normally live with us.

At that time, I had a dog run along the side of my house, but it did not enclose my back door, as it now does; on that day it was empty, since the dogs stay inside while I am gone. I am thinking about the day ahead of me, paying little attention as I open the door and let Keetna outside to go to the truck; she's a well-behaved dog, so it naturally never occurs to me to leash her for the 15 yard walk to my truck. Keetna trots down the steps of the deck and about three feet into my yard and then starts barking furiously.

"Keetna, knock it off, you'll wake the neighbors," I say absently, juggling keys and lunch as I step out onto the porch, pulling the door to behind me. One second before I slam it shut - locking us out - I see movement from the corner of my eye.

There is a moose bedded down at the far end of the dog run. It comes surging to its feet, hackles up across its big shoulders, eyes slitty with annoyance, ears laid flat back along its skull.

"Crap! Keenta! Get in the house!" I yell. Keetna responds to this piece of advice by taking a short, stiff-legged charge at the moose, who is now rounding the corner of the dog run. Keetna and the moose are now about ten or twelve feet apart, a distance the moose can close in one stride.

"Keetna! Come!" I shriek, sounding a bit unhinged, even to my own ears. The moose, distracted, looks at me, now. I try to figure out how long I have to let Keenta come darting back into the house before I have to jump back and slam the door - or if I can just leave the door open, hoping the moose will not enter the house. As an added bonus I am imagining J's voice telling people "Keetna is lame because my vet broke her with a moose." I am thinking: Great, the first time I board Finn's mother at my house and I let her tangle with a moose and maim herself to death.

I plant one foot inside and the other on the deck, and try once more.

"Keetna! Get in the house right now!" I bellow, pointing furiously inside; Keetna looks at me, then back at the moose, who is now hesitating: still blowing down its nostrils in irritation, its attentions are divided and it is not advancing. Apparently figuring her work here is done, she trots jauntily back into the house, where I slam the door and let out a whuff of relief. Keetna gives me a glance of sparkling delight, clearly saying: Did you get a load of that? See how I made that moose back down? I am QUEEN of all moose. They do as I tell them or they feel my Border collie wrath.

I go call work and tell them I'll be late, as I am currently trapped in the house by a moose. They are not completely astonished to hear this; it's an uncommon occurrence but not unheard-of. I peek out about 10 minutes later, but the moose - who has now been joined by a companion - is happily mowing down on my birch trees. I'm standing inside at the window, thinking: The willow. Eat the willow. But no: They like my birch.

I'm late to work that day, but in the end it's all fine. Keetna's confidence in her moose supremacy is unshaken - although my nerves are less steady than hers in this regard. No one gets hurt. The moose have a nice breakfast. And my first client, who I have kept waiting for 30 minutes, gives me a twinkling smile.

"Nowhere but Alaska can you be late to work with the excuse that there's a moose on your porch," he says, but as my staff has craftily plied him with coffee, he is quite cheerful about the whole thing. I'm telling you. Moose have NO consideration for other people's schedules.

Ah, well. Part of life in the Greatland. But realistically, I prefer my moose either served up on a plate or safely on the other side of some sturdy barrier (preferably in a photogenic pose easily shot from my balcony or other suitable vantage points). But I'll be extra careful in the next few weeks; in fall and spring they move around more, so I can just about guarantee that somewhere along my daily path, moose will be on the loose.

Tales From the Bark Side

2008-10-02T15:30:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but I sometimes wonder if there's any truth in the common-knowledge sorts of beliefs, such as the idea that oddball behavior (and/or, quite literally, lunacy) increases at the full moon. I do think that particular wives' tale actually has some merit, based on the kinds of calls and cases we get during the full moon.

For instance, one spring evening a few years back, I get an emergency call for a gerbil with a degloving injury of the tail. As this is a non-life-threatening injury, the owner elects to wait til the next day for surgery. I gave instructions for nursing care overnight and the owner arrives in due course the following morning. It's probably a $4 pet which will live 2 or 3 years at most, but it came in for a $150 surgery (a gratifying sort of client - the monetary value of the animal is less important than the emotional and intrinsic value of the animal). Mind you, this is a procedure I've never done before, as I don't really do a ton of Gerbil surgeries (hmmm, now why could that be...?) However, the nature of veterinary medicine is that you get to see things all the time that you've never seen or heard of before. Luckily they train us A) to think, and B) to apply core knowledge to novel situations, so I figure I'll be able to wing it. I hope.

As you might imagine, it's a bit hard to inject anesthetic drugs into the teensy weensy gerbil vein and then get an endotracheal tube down the teeny weensy gerbil airway (partly because they don't make tubes that small, and partly because you'd have to open up the teensy weensy gerbil mouth and get past the NOT-so-teensy weensy gerbil dentition, which is impressively sized for an animal so teensy weensy). So, instead we box them down (which does NOT mean punching them in their tiny little rodent heads; it means putting them in an induction chamber and piping in the gas until they fall asleep.) We have an induction box for cats, but it's mighty large for a rodent about half the size of a cat's head, and would take weeks and weeks (well, a long time, anyway) to reach anesthetic levels of gas. I was kinda thinking we'd adapt a jar to the task, but then my eye falls on the induction masks we use for larger animals, like cats and dogs, in those cases where we have to mask down an animal rather than our usual IV-and-intubate regimen. I think: Hmm, maybe we can put the cat mask over the gerbil's head. Then I think: Maybe we can put the entire gerbil into the mask, up-end the open side onto the table, and use that as an induction chamber. It's small, it's compact, it's made for gas anesthetics, and it's handily equipped with a rubber gasket which will make escape attempts less profitable. Turns out it's the PERFECT fit for our little gerbil (appropriately, if unimaginatively, named "Gerbil".)

After chasing little Gerbil around her cage for about 4 minutes (she is a svelte and athletic little rodent, and an adept escapist), we manage to corral her with the assistance of a dry washcloth tossed over her head as a distraction. She isn't ALL that interested in entering the Anesthetic Chamber of Horrors (or so she imagines it, evidently, since she makes several abortive attempts to avoid admittance to the gasketed Hobbitty portal to her own personal LaLa Land). She is, however, no match for Jill's dexterity, and ends up adeptly threaded face-first into the cone, where she curls up cozily. On goes the gas. After a few minutes, little Gerbil falls asleep and Jill reaches her pinkie in and hooks the back end out of the mask so I can operate. There are itty bitty little vertebrae hanging out at the end of the tail, all naked and dehydrated. Dr. J has (in jest) volunteered to bring in a cleaver in case I prefer to do my amputation via the Three Blind Mice procedure, but I elect to use scissors to snip through the tiny jointed toothpick which is the distal third of the tail. I freshen the edges of the skin, point the tail-stump skyward and push the skin toward the table, like scrunching down the paper wrapper on a straw. A little nubbin of tail bone sticks up, which I trim back a little to give me enough skin to cover the tail stump. I pull the skin back up, like pulling up your knee socks in the third grade (though a bit more scaly and bristly than MY knee socks ever were, thank you very much) and throw in two sutures of a hair-thin absorbable. Off goes the gas. Jill frees the front half of our patient from the anesthetic mask and tenderly cuddles little Gerbil up in our washcloth to recover from her anesthetic, which takes about 91 seconds. Ten minutes later Gerbil is running on her little rodent wheel (tail tip jauntily adorned with purple suture) and drinking out of her water bottle (which, for her amusement, has a tiny plastic turtle toy floating in it.) Ta-da. Rodent tail-dock numero uno under my belt. (I bow modestly).

The next oddball thing was a client who caused me to win the stick-a-fork-in-your-eye-client-of-the-week award. They brought in one dog but had protracted lists of questions about two others. Dog number one is a Dalmatian who has previously lost a kidney to urate stones, a stone which forms as a result of an inborn error of metabolism. There's no cure, but by feeding a strict prescription diet you can generally avoid recurrences. The diet works by controlling urine pH and mineral content, which keeps the stones from forming - so long as you stick strictly to the diet and feed nothing else. The owner's concern is that our patient, JJ, is taking on the general size and proportions of a harbor seal. The owner is frustrated that the U/D is making JJ fat, and she isn't mistaken about the weight issues. The dog is nearly 100#, and should weigh maybe 65. Her neck, swathed in rolls of fat, is wider than her head, and she has a pronounced waddle. Rather sad, given the deep-chested athleticism she was bred for.

As I enter the exam room, the owner is feeding dog cookies to their new (four week old) puppy, who is along for the ride. (Who weans and homes puppies at four weeks?!?) The owner takes an additional handful of cookies out of the jar for her Dalmatian - who, remember, is supposed to be on a prescription diet to prevent stone recurrences, AND who is way way way too fat. So, yeah, let's give her a handful - not one cookie, mind you, but a handful - of decidedly NON-prescription dog snacks. Sounds good to me.

I narrowly prevent the owner from feeding the dog a pile of extra calories and inappropriate minerals. We get to talking about the dog's weight. The owner has decreased the dog's U/D by a third - but has substituted some of the Pedigree senior diet that their 13 year old boxer eats. They also feed pig's ears, dog cookies and a LOT of table scraps. Hmmm. That sounds PERFECT to me. The dog has already lost an entire kidney to stones, and is built like a sea mammal, so shovelling large piles of random non-prescription scraps down its throat is clearly a DANDY idea. Sigh.

I reiterate to the owners that the purpose of the prescription diet is to control the recurrence of stones, but that it is impossible for the diet to do this if you feed other items indiscriminately. They look at each other accusingly. "I told you so!" they say to each other simultaneously - which evidently means that BOTH of them are violating the dietary restrictions without compunction, but each is convinced that their own transgressions are NOT a problem, while their spouse's are. Sigh again.

After approximately 1,000 questions about the dog (as well as a nail trim, a procedure which is clearly NOT okay by our JJ), we get on to their month-old American bulldog puppy. Whom they have no idea how to feed. I understand them having questions about whether or not to feed a puppy milk replacer, but I don't get it that they're asking me if they should be feeding an adult food to the pup. (Hello? Do you not have two other dogs?) Luckily these are straightforward questions and readily answered, the more so since the answers are fairly obvious even to the inexperienced, so we dispatch them in short order (which, in this case, means about 10 minutes).

Last is their desire to breed their 13-year-old white boxer to their now-4-week-old puppy (who, you will recall is NOT a boxer, but an American bulldog). They have been advised by our office manager that the boxer is unlikely to live 'til the puppy is if breedable age, so they want to freeze semen. This would require us collecting semen from the dog, and also that the semen is of viable quality for freezing and reconstitution. The problems with this being that A) male dogs tend to begin to decline in both sperm count and quality at about 8 years of age, B) in order to collect a dog you generally need an in-heat teaser bitch to stimulate the male's interest (this is news to the owners), and C) since hand-collection of semen is a bit unnatural from the dog's point of view (what ARE we doing handling those parts in that way, they want to know, and just who gave us permission?), it's best if the dog has been taught to do this at some point in life. Generally this is best done in youth, when they will indiscriminately hump practically anything that will sit still long enough. Trying to get a 13 year old dog to go for this is typically a losing proposition. I'll let you guess if the boxer has ever had this procedure done in the past. But you'd better guess "no."

I explain all of this to the owners, who are a bit crestfallen. The boxer is a "five star champion", they say. Really? a five-star champion? Hmmm. It IS a white boxer; that's an automatic disqualification in the AKC. White boxers are excused from the ring immediately. And though I personally feel that coat-color fashions are way less important than certain other traits, and I myself do not show in AKC - or elsewhere - I have never heard of a "five-star champion." There are national and international champions of all sorts, but no "five-star" champions in the AKC that I - or any of my staff, several of whom DO show in the AKC - are aware of. So I am not sure why they have such a drive to not just breed their elderly white boxer, but to deliberately breed cross-breds which very likely will be hard to place in homes, since that there isn't a huge demand for boxer-bulldog pups by the public at large. Their yen to breed these two dogs together is particularly hard to understand in view of the fact that the boxer is seriously dysplastic and has marked arthritis in the hips and back. Given that this is a hereditary disease, and that American bulldogs ALSO have a tendency toward hind-end orthopedic disease, this seems like just a PEACHY idea. Not.

I have no idea if I managed to dissuade them from trying to collect the boxer - though I did suggest that if they really really need to breed this dog's bloodlines they might consider a grandson, as the dog has been bred in the past (presumably to other boxers, and evidently without regard to the coat color flaw OR the far more serious issue of soundness.) I admit that this was maybe a little craven - I'm kinda thinking that owners of purebred boxers may not be keen to stud their dogs out for deliberate cross breedings - but in all honesty, I AM kinda hoping that enough obstacles will crop up that they eventually abandon the idea. Regardless of the genetics involved, it really seems to me that these are people who should NOT be breeding dogs under any circumstances whatsoever. As nice as they may be, they don't seem at ALL clear on the concept as far as the health of the dogs they already have, and I'm just guessing here, but common sense may not be their strong suit.

Anyway, you could tell it was a full moon, because there were more oddball cases that week - most notably two different people who called for porcupine quill removal, neither of whom wanted to pay us to do it (one wanted us to hold the dog down for them while they pulled quills, and the other wanted us to drug the dog and send it home - fully anesthetized, mind you - so they could pull the quills themselves at home.) I ASK you - where on EARTH does this idea intersect with the world of reasonableness, common sense or sanity? Is it just me, or does this make NO SENSE WHATSOEVER?

Sigh. I really wish I'd been there to see Dr. P tell the hold-it-down-while-I-pull guy that he wouldn't do it. Dr. H got to tell the anesthetize-it-and-send-it-home guy that he wasn't going to do that (whereupon the guy started screaming at him that he didn't have the money to pay for us to do it and he's just have to shoot the f%*&$ing dog - because it's a well-known fact that being a complete a**hole makes everyone around you want more than anything else in the whole world to give you everything your little heart desires, especially if it is immoral, unethical, unprofessional and ILLEGAL. Not to mention just plain stupid.)

Oh, well. That's life on call, especially during the full moon, and sometimes the best you can do to try to cope is to go to bed and sleep a whole lot (presuming your dog Ali, who believes you should get up with the sun, will keep his whining to himself for a bit - I tell you, this is a lot less inconvenient when daylight does not commence at 4 a.m.) And you can cross your fingers that in a day or two the lunacy will have faded and things will be back to normal. Normal for us, that is....

On Wings of Owls

2009-09-19T08:58:00.001-07:00

We have some wild days at work. Some are wilder than others, though.

One day, a few years back, a man comes in to the clinic clutching his Carhartt's coat, bundled into his chest. Since it is around 10 degrees outside, this is a bit unusual; in that weather, most people come in actually wearing their coats. The receptionist, C, looks at him and says, "May I help you?"

"Do you treat owls?" he asks, a slightly desperate look on his face.

As it happens, we DO treat owls - and other wild birds, should they arrive at our doors. At the time we were one of the few local clinics who held a wild bird permit, although this is no longer necessary in order to treat wild birds. Accordingly, the man was ushered into the treatment area carrying his bundle of Carhartt's, which turned out to contain a large and deeply annoyed great horned owl. The owl, most unfortunately, had gone for the bait in a leg hold trap and had gotten caught in the trap. The man, who was daily and diligently running his trap line (as required by law) had come upon the trapped owl, a good 20 miles from town. Distressed that he'd caught an animal he had not intended to, he deliberated about what to do. He might have decided on the "shoot, shovel and shut up" course of action - and no one would have been the wiser - but instead he took off his coat, threw it over the owl, corralled its beating wings and avoided its snapping beak, released it from the trap and bundled it snugly in his coat. Then he got back on his snow machine and drove back to town - in 10 degree weather, mind you, and coatless (and let me tell you, this is NOT a comfortable experience) - got the owl into his truck and drove it to our clinic.

Nice guy, and one who is willing to endure some discomfort to do the right thing. Gotta love that.

We de-bundle the owl, do a physical - the owl hissing and snapping the entire time, and making abortive grabs with the talons of the uninjured foot - install it in a cage in isolation, and give the guy back his coat.

"Will it be all right?" he asks me anxiously.

"Well, the injury to the leg is serious; that'll be an amputation, which makes it a non-releasable bird, because it won't be able to hunt properly. However, the Bird Treatment and Learning Center in Anchorage has guidelines for amputees; below a certain joint on either the wings or the legs is acceptable, and this one falls into the "good" category. It'll become a teaching bird. So the upshot is that you've saved its life."

The guy looks relieved for a minute. Then his brow creases again.

"Do they like that? Being teaching birds?"

"Well, most of them adjust pretty well," I say, frowning thoughtfully. "But of course it's not a guarantee. Bird TLC screens them for that; the ones that don't adjust to public life, they usually keep in the hands of volunteers who are specially permitted. They have flight cages and so on for flighted birds, too, and try to do what they can for environmental enrichment." The man still looks doubtful. "It's a chance," I tell him. "Without you bringing her in, there would BE no chance."

He nods, accepting this, and departs in a little better frame of mind than he arrived in.

When it's time to amputate the owl's leg, we gather her up with a towel (and I'm only assuming she's a she, based on size). Birds are tricky under anesthesia; their airways are complex compared to those of mammals. For one thing, they have air sacs, which we don't; for another their airways are rather delicate. And of course they have different physiology. The consequence of all this is that bird anesthesia requires at least two people: One must keep a stethoscope on the bird's heart, listening without pause. The other must man the anesthetic machine, adjusting the gas flow as directed by the person with the stethoscope.

Naturally this is a bit nerve-wracking, so we divide up the tasks as seems best: me on the heart, Dr. J (a fast surgeon) cutting, and one of the techs manning the anesthetic machine. We mask down the owl, a tricky task as she is no more interested in having an anesthetic mask over her face than she was in being bundled out of the cage in a towel, and is inclined to attempt to bite through the rubber gasket on the edge of the mask. But the gas does its job and soon she is relaxing, her wings drooping open and her large golden eyes closing, their thin, papery lids hiding her fierce glare. In my ears her heart is fast but steady, relatively loud through the sturdy breast muscle. The leg is quickly prepped and Dr. J starts cutting.

I am listening intently to her heart, ignoring the hive of activity around her leg. "Turn it up," I tell the hovering tech, as the heartbeat grows louder and faster in my ears. "Okay, turn it down," I say a minute later as the beat goes softer, lighter, slower. Right about now I notice that the owl has lice, since a large, fat example of the species is now crawling leisurely across the back of my hand. Gah. But I can't move my stethoscope off the chest so I content myself with a little shudder and the knowledge that lice are species-specific, so even if this one runs strait up my arm and into the thickets of my hair, there will be no infestation: Just one creepy little bird louse to track down and murder.

"Turn it up... turn it down... turn it off!" I tell the tech, as the owl's heart goes to a feathery-thin, barely-audible flutter. A minute passes; the second hand is halfway through another sweep before I tell her, "Okay, turn it on again... turn it up...."

Dr. J is closing; the heavily-taloned foot, the leg bone a splintered mangle an inch above the toes, is discarded; it's a sad thing, trashing something so beautifully made, all symmetry and strength and sharp, strong talons, gracefully curved. But the foot has no blood supply, which means no healing is possible, so it is of no future use to the bird.

We inject the bird with antibiotics and turn off our anesthesia; I crush my visiting louse and roll the owl onto her side, ready to bundle her up in a towel to help keep her warm til she wakes up. But I cannot resist just once extending her wing. Quiet now as she sleeps, this is a marvel of grace and power, the feathers fanned in gorgeous overlap one atop the next, the long pinions showing the reach she will have in flight. Even completely still, it gives you a sense of movement, of grace on the air. The edges of the wing are impossibly soft; the reason for the owl's silent flight is that each feather has a finely-fringed edge, rather than the smooth, hard edges seen on the flight feathers of other birds. Evidently this microscopic fringing diffuses the air disturbance as the wing beats so that there is virtually no noise made by its passage.

After a moment I feel a slight tension in the wing. I release it and the owl draws it back slowly toward her body. She is waking. I gently wrap her in her towel and put her in her cage, then call Bird TLC; they have a volunteer in the neighborhood who will come pick up the owl that afternoon. That's a good thing, since we have no mice or rats on hand, frozen or otherwise, for her to eat.

When the TLC volunteer arrives, she is armed with gauntlets and a carrier for the owl. The owl, less than thrilled to see yet another person today, hisses and clacks her beak menacingly; she is already standing on her one remaining foot and half-spreads her wings, either for balance or in indecision as to whether she should attempt escape or murder. The volunteer, well used to such antics, waits patiently; after a minute the owl turns to the back of the cage, trying to shut us out. The volunteer reaches deftly into the cage, pinning the bird's wings in a gentle but firm grasp, and quickly transfers her to the carrier, which she then shrouds with a towel. The hissing and beak-clacking quiet immediately.

"Here's her treatment record," I say, handing it over. "She has lice, by the way," I add, in case the record isn't read immediately.

"Thanks for telling me," says the volunteer with a grimace. "We'll put her in isolation til we get rid of those, instead of in the general population."

A few weeks later I call TLC to see how the bird is doing. She is adjusting well, I hear; a young bird, she has taken to handling with relative ease. Her incision is healed and she is now louse-free. A flighted bird, she has been allowed the use of the flight cage, and she is eating well. As she adjusts, she will become an educational bird, going to nature centers and schools to teach people about predatory birds.

It's the best we can do for her; the foot was irreplaceable from the moment the trap snapped shut on it. The trap line was legal and well-maintained, and in truth it's uncommon for birds to get caught in trap lines. It's likely that it only happened this time because the bird was young and inexperienced. I sometimes wonder if salvaging these birds is the best thing for them; but I know from past history that some of them develop close bonds with their handlers. When I was in school we had a great horned owl in the Raptor Center that had cataracts. She was as hissy and touchy as an irritated rattlesnake, in part because her cataracts made people seem to spring into her face without warning, as a hand moved from her blind spot into her sight with no evident transition. I was leery of handling her (although I was fine picking up all manner of other birds, from barn owls to red-tailed hawks). However, when her handler arrived, her hissing feints calmed to his voice and she would shuffle cautiously to the front of the cage, looking for his gauntlet so she could step up, waving a foot uncertainly in the air for him to slip his arm under. The minute she felt the gauntlet under her foot she would grip it and step up, sidestepping down his arm til she felt the balance point on his fist. He would gather her jesses and bring her in close to his body, stroking her feathers and talking softly to her until she stopped gaping and snapping and started to fluff herself, and then they would stroll majestically out of the hospital and back to the raptor center, located across the parking lot behind the hospital. The handler was a big, beefy man, at least 6 foot four, but he had a way. He could soften his voice down to a soothing purr, and something about his measured, stately progress seemed to calm her easily-agitated nerves.

That was a good match, and without it the bird would be dead. She showed every sign that she was fond of her handler, letting him scruffle his fingers softly in her feathers, half-closing her eyes as he stroked and groomed her. On balance I guess I think that with the right bird/handler match, the teaching-bird route is preferable to the dead-bird route. It's hard to think of these birds, meant to be wild, living in captivity; harder still to think of the ones who are forever flightless when they are meant to soar. Still.... there is no question that people need to understand the value of these animals, so that we preserve their habitats and minimize the hazards to their survival, and there is truly nothing on this earth that will make you appreciate the incredible power of, say, a golden eagle, better than standing next to one and seeing it cast its sharp, piercing glance your way. There is no other way to really grasp the massiveness of such a bird, nor the latent power of its furled wings, nor the deadly beauty of beak and talon, unless you stand next to one, under its proud eye, and feel these things for yourself. There is an immediacy to that that makes you understand at once that this is a thing of value, something not to be lost. And for me, at least, it gives me a little atavistic shiver, fixed in that eagle eye; a reminder that should we perish as a species, the world would go on... but should we be here alone, the sole species remaining, we would die, bereft.

So I try, every so often, to think kind thoughts for the volunteers who take in these birds, who spend their time caring for them and teaching others about them. I try to think of the birds themselves, whose lives are spent not as they were born to be, but perhaps in a way that is worthy of them, even if not what nature intended. And I think of the kind of person who will drive 20 miles on a snow machine without a coat to give an owl a chance to survive, when he could have done otherwise in greater comfort and with no one knowing anything about it.

Kind of gives me hope.

Reality Bites

2009-02-24T19:35:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, people just don't want to hear the facts.

This week, I am standing in the office, looking at some blood work, when I notice SS getting A Look on her face. I pause and listen for a moment; sometimes this indicates a question that a doctor has to answer. But it appears that SS is discussing travel regulations. She is (quite patiently) repeating herself over and over, in a loop that goes something like this:

"Yes, sir. The Canadians will require a current rabies in order for you to enter Canada. They usually will not require a health certificate, but if you are passing back into the United States, you may be asked for one at that border. No, sir, we don't insist that you get the health certificate OR the rabies vaccine, but if you don't, you may be stopped at the border. No, sir, that rabies certificate is expired. Yes, the Canadians will require a valid and current rabies certificate at the border. No, the CANADIANS aren't the ones who will require the health certificate. That may be required in order for you to re-enter the United States. No, sir, WE don't require you to get the health certificate or the rabies vaccine. That will be the people at the border. Yes, sir, you DO need a current rabies vaccine....."

While I am wondering what is so difficult about this, SS is clearly wondering the same thing. Finally (after several minutes of this) she appears to have settled the question, and hangs up.

"Man, I'm glad I'm not that guy," she says. "I could hear his wife in the background the whole time, screaming about the rabies vaccine and how it's just a conspiracy to get their money. I don't envy him the chance to drive 3,000 miles with her harping at him all the way."

"Well, he doesn't have to get a rabies vaccine; he can take his chances," I say.

"So I told him," SS agrees.

I think nothing of this until a few minutes later, when KD comes back.

"Can you talk to this woman?" she asks SS. "She has all these questions about health certificates and rabies vaccines."

"I just talked to them," SS says, exasperated.

"Well, can you talk to them again? This lady is getting pretty nasty with me and I don't know what else to tell her," KD says.

"I'll take that call," I say. "What line is she on?"

This is one of those situations in which sometimes the client has to talk to the doctor. Although, having listened to SS, I know that she has accurately (and civilly, and with considerable restraint and patience) dispensed the correct information, sometimes clients will not believe it until the doctor tells them the same exact thing. In addition, certain people feel perfectly comfortable rudely abusing the staff, but will rein themselves in when talking to the doctor, so sometimes it is best that one of us just steps in and takes the call. I admit I take a small amount of lurking pleasure from this; I figure that if a caller has already been abusing my staff - particularly when I am aware that said staff has been more than professional and forbearant about it - the caller is then due a firm reality check, delivered calmly and with professional detachment, but without equivocation or ambiguity. This is in part to defend my staff, who work damn hard for me; partly to stave off future assaults on them by repeat attacks by the same client; partly because I personally feel that anyone who believes that the rules shouldn't apply to them has another think coming; and partly because I am, by being a doctor, engaged in a lifelong battle against ignorance and misinformation, and I love to slay those monsters.

I pick up the line and say, in a pleasant tone of voice (because after all I am not averse to slaying this particular dragon), "This is Dr. H. Did you have a question about rabies vaccine?"

"Yes," says the client. "I just want to know why rabies vaccine is better up here than in New Mexico."

"Better....?" I ask.

"Yeah, why is it only good for a year in New Mexico and it's good for three years in Alaska?"

"For one thing, that depends on the age of the dog; the first rabies is good for only a year in Alaska, too. It's only the adult boosters that are a three-year vaccine here," I tell her. "In addition, each individual state sets its own laws for the required frequency of rabies vaccine. This is dependant on the risk of exposure and what the public health officers of the individual states have determined to be appropriate in that environment."

This checks her for a moment.

"But you're saying I have to get another rabies vaccine because it says it's only good for a year in New Mexico, even though Alaska says the shot is good for three years," she protests. "We got the shots two years ago."

"If the certificate is expired, then it can't be used as proof of current rabies vaccine, no matter when the vaccine was given," I tell her.

"So you're telling me you're going to MAKE me get another vaccine," she says, waspishly.

"No," I tell her, "I'm not telling you that, the state and national officials who require the paperwork are telling you that that. If the state of issue will only honor the vaccine for a year, then the certificate is expired, and can't be used as proof of current vaccine."

"This is all scam just so you can get our money!" she accuses me.

Ah, yes. She's caught me. I personally invented this scam just so I could force her to pay me seventeen dollars (of which only a small percentage will actually go into my pocket). Yep, and highly worth it, too, for that princely sum. I resist the temptation to bang my head against the filing cabinet beside which I am standing, and settle instead for gazing out the window at a lovely view of the mountains, serene and peaceful under a crisp white mantle of fresh snow.

"No, Ma,am, it's not a scam so we can get your money," I tell her patiently. "WE don't set any of these laws, but we do comply with them."

"My brother is a - a biochemical - a biochemical physicist," she says, stumbling over the term (and leading me to speculate that he is no such thing.) "HE says that if you get one vaccine then you're immune for life." (Ah, yes. The well-known medical authority of the biochemical physicist. Whatever that is.)

"Well, ma'am, that's not actually true. A great deal depends on the health of the animal in question, not to mention their age, the agent being vaccinated against, the type, condition and quality of the vaccine, and the immunological status of the animal - in addition to which, if you want to have aggressive immunity sufficient to prevent infection and not just enough to hopefully stave off death, you do need to do boosters. Some animals will have longer immunity than others and some might even have lifelong immunity, but some animals are non-responders and will have no immunity at all. The only way to tell the difference and know which one your animal is, is to run titers."

There is a momentary silence.

"So what you're saying is that I have to get vaccines for my pets whether I want them or not," she says acidly.

"No, ma'am. I'm not saying that at all. We personally have no stake in whether or not your pets are current on vaccine. What I'm saying is that if you want proof of current rabies vaccine then, yes, you are going to have to have your dog boosted."

"What a crock of shit!" she spits. "This is all just a big conspiracy to get our money, isn't it?" (this last delivered in a tone of demand, as if she is insisting that I agree with her.)

"Ma'am, the state of issue has determined, for whatever reason, that in that environment it is appropriate for companion animals to be vaccinated yearly for rabies. Since rabies is a fatal disease of humans, in the interest of public health, they have set a protocol which they feel to be appropriate to protect human life and the public well-being. If you wanted to prove that your pets did NOT need rabies vaccines, you'd have to do titers, which run around $200 per animal. The state has determined that if you adhere to their rabies vaccination policy, they won't require you to do the much more expensive titer and will instead accept a rabies vaccination certificate as adequate proof that your pet does not pose a risk to the public health."

Now there is a pause. Since she can no longer return to the "this is a scam to make money" theme - given that the state could make a LOT more money if they insisted on titers - she takes up a new position.

"Well, it's a stupid law. All the states should be the same."

"Ma'am, not all states have the same risk of exposure. Moreover, it appears that your biggest obstacle right now is actually the Canadian border, and we in the United States do not have the right to set policy for another nation. They have the right to protect their citizens and animal populations from fatal infectious diseases in whatever way they see fit."

"Well, someone should make sure all the states do it the same way," she repeats, truculently.

"Perhaps so, in which case I suggest that you contact your local legislators about that when you reach your destination," I say.

"What I want to know is why you can't do something about this."

Sigh. That filing cabinet is looking better and better.

"Ma'am, this is not a legislative body," I tell her. "This is a private practice clinic. If you want to change the law, I recommend that you contact your legislators in whatever community you settle in at the end of your move."

"Oh, like that's going to help," she retorts sarcastically. "If 80% of the people didn't want a bailout and it went through anyway, it won't matter what I say, they won't listen to me. I think you guys should do something about it."

"Ma'am, I am not a legislator, I'm a private practice veterinarian," I say, increasingly baffled as to what this client wants from me, and unsure how government bailouts have anything to do with rabies vaccines.

"Yeah, but you'd have more pull than I would," she says.

"Ma'am, I have no pull whatsoever in New Mexico, as I do not live there and am not licenced in that state, nor do I practice there," I tell her.

"Oh, I'm not going back to New Mexico," she says. "That's just where I got the rabies shots the last time."

"Be that as it may, I can't affect any state law outside the state in which I live, and your beef isn't with the state of Alaska, it's with the state of New Mexico," I say.

"I still don't see why I have to get another rabies shot."

ARGH.

"You don't have to get one," I tell her. "It's up to you if you comply with state and federal law. We don't set those laws, we just comply with them."

"I DO have to get one," she contradicts. "You're telling me that I can't leave the state without another shot and a certificate."

Ah, I knew we could be back to square one eventually. I narrowly resist the temptation to say, "So, did you just want someone to listen to you bitch about this?" and say instead, "Did you just want someone to listen to your concerns about this, ma'am, or can I help you in some way medically?"

"Well, I just think it's a stupid law," she says, running out of steam. "I guess I'll call back about the shots."

"Okay, then," I say.

Shaking my head a little, I turn away from my window mountain view to hang up the phone. Unbeknownst to me, I have gathered a little audience. SS, KD, and Drs. S and G are all standing behind me in a little ring. SS and KD (having both already had the pleasure of chatting with these clients) are grinning appreciatively. Drs. S and G are looking at me with eyebrows raised.

"What was that all about?" asks Dr. G.

"Some people didn't want to get rabies vaccines. Said it was a scam to get their money," I tell him, going to take the next appointment and leaving him shaking his head.

I thought no more about it until the next day when I look up from a chart to see my receptionist B ushering Dr. G into a room. She whispers that it's "those rabies people" from yesterday. Oh, goodie. I am cravenly glad it is not me taking the appointment, and return to making call-backs.

Thirty minutes later Dr. G comes back out of the room. He has an expression of incredulity on his face.

"What?" I say.

"They came in for rabies vaccines for their dog and cat, but he asked me while I was there if I could look at these bumps on the dog. So I felt under the jaw where he said the bumps were and the dog has these huge lymph nodes. So I checked the other lymph nodes and they're all huge. So then I feel the dog's abdomen and he has a giant cranial abdominal mass. So I tell him all that and that I can't be sure where the mass is coming from but I suspect spleen or liver and I think the dog might have lymphoma," he says. I suspect the same thing; it's not a certainty, but it would absolutely be a big enough suspicion to take up the top three slots on my rule-out list.

"So what'd he say about treatment?" I ask; having gone the rounds with the wife yesterday, I figure the dog's hope of treatment isn't good. At the best of times, lymphoma in dogs is regarded as an incurable cancer. But curable or not, it can certainly be treated, prolonging good-quality time for the dog. Depending on the type of therapy, treatment can be relatively inexpensive (although the remissions achieved with minimal therapies are short). Longer remissions require more complex regimens and are correspondingly more expensive, and more taxing in the short run for the dog (although this is paid back by the greater duration of good-quality time on the other side of chemo.)

"He declined anything, even pred," Dr. G says. Pred is an inexpensive treatment for lymphoma, and while it doesn't provide a long remission, it at least provides good quality time while it lasts. Still, given the previous day's conversation, I'm not surprised to learn the owners won't consider it, and I'm not even all that surprised when Dr. G adds, "He says his wife has a bunch of herbals which will cure the dog." Well, or not; I'm not averse to alternative therapies, but if there were herbals out there that would cure lymphoma, we'd all be investigating them pretty eagerly.

"He says the cancer is there because of the Chinese poisoning the dog food with bugs," Dr. G continues.

"Bugs?" I repeat, not sure I'm hearing him right.

"Yes. The Chinese put bugs in the food to poison it, and the white cells attach to the bugs, which mutates them. Normally the liver filters out the bugs, but due to the mutation, the liver doesn't recognize the bugs. The second line of defense is the spleen, which sends a registry to the rest of the body."

"A registry?" I ask.

"A registry," Dr. G nods. "Then, because the bugs have mutated, the spleen misses it too and the registry isn't sent to the rest of the body and so the kidneys get cancer, which is how the poisoned Chinese food causes kidney failure. [Here I will point out that Dr. G told the client the dog had lymphatic cancer, not kidney disease.] But evidently it's all okay, because the owner's wife has herbals and grapefruit extract and these will obviously cure it, so I shouldn't worry about it."

I goggle at him for a moment.

"What did you say to him?" I ask.

"I was trying not to laugh about the mutating Chinese bugs," Dr. G says, "so I was mostly just biting my tongue. But I figured it was a lost cause anyway. I told him what I think going on there, and I even showed him the other lymph nodes were enlarged and that I didn't think grapefruit extract was going to do it. He doesn't want to listen to me. I don't figure he's going to, no matter how many more times I say it."

Well, he has a point. Some clients are so attached to their belief systems that no amount of logic, proof, persuasion or sweet reason will shake them loose from their delusions.

Reality: It's not for wimps.

Going Around in Circles

2009-07-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I had to take sheep feed out to the farm. I arrived there, limp and tired, after a crazy day at work. But somehow, time at the farm is like a little tiny vacation. I have only to step out of my truck and hear the thin, nasal bleating of the goats, underlain and punctuated by the deeper counterpoint of the sheep, and the coils of the day start to loosen and fall away. Suddenly my spine straitens just a little and I draw a deeper breath, and the shuttered prospect of my world opens up a little, giving a larger vista; a little perspective.

S and R are on the deck, leaning back in lounge chairs, basking in the Alaskan sun. I am immediately mobbed by their farm dogs - two adult Aussies and a Border collie pup, who is completely charming in the way of Border collie pups. An addict of the breed myself, I am of course enchanted by this one, and I pause for a minute to cuddle and pet her, admiring the way her ears have gone from silly to ridiculous. They have not decided which way they want to go - up, down, tipped, folded, sideways - and trade off frequently at this stage. Nothing could be cuter or more engaging, except for the rest of the puppy. She's a lovely thing, leggy and coltish right now, with a long slender head and an alert eye which misses nothing.

R comes around to be sure I've noticed they are out on the deck, and mentions that S is in need of another Mike's Hard Pomegranate, and hopes I'll help her by keeping her company. Well, all righty then. That sounds just peachy. R has a meeting, but makes sure we're well-supplied before taking off.

I make myself comfortable in a deck chair, opening my drink and feeling my shoulders loosen and my heart slow just a little. The dogs - the Wildwood three, plus Pepper - are nosing around on the deck. Pepper is inclined to stare intently at the parrot (out on the deck in its cage for a bit of sun and a change of scenery), but before long she has located a moose bone under the deck and takes charge of it. S and R have been on a horse-packing trip (with S's oldest daughter, up from college); the tack, tents and other gear, recently scrubbed, are basking on the deck with us, drying in the sun. I ask how the trip was.

"Amazing," says S, and tells me this story.

They went to a place called Horse Pasture Pass - which, although up a little in elevation, is (unsurprisingly) like a big horse pasture at the top of the pass. They had been seeing caribou here and there - little clumps, twos and threes - but in the pass, all of a sudden there are more like three hundred. The caribou come running towards them; the riders hold their mounts, who are alert and slightly tense, but not alarmed. The caribou veer around the riders, then circle them, flowing around them like the ox-bow of a river. The riders can hear the soft muffled thump of their hooves on the springy tundra, see the liquid gleam of their eyes, hear the soft snorting breaths of their effort, their grunting calls. The entire herd swirls about them counterclockwise, looping them almost completely before veering off to the right and continuing on their way, intent on caribou business that somehow has included a little roundup of a handful of women mounted on horses.

After this rather astonishing event, the riders continue on. There is a storm now ringing the meadow, low above their heads, with thunder rolling. But there is no lighting overhead, so rather than taking cover, they ride. When it begins to rain, it is with a vengeance. In seconds they are soaked to the skin, their rain gear failing, no match for the torrential downpour. It is like having someone empty bucket after bucket over their heads. They return to camp, where the nearby stream is swollen and rough with runoff; but they judge that it is low enough and far enough away that they elect not to move camp. They crawl into their tents, stripping out of wet clothes, every stitch drenched and sodden.

After perhaps an hour's rest, with the rain abated, Susan hears her daughter, C, and a companion stirring out of their tents. Suddenly there is swearing and cries of alarm. Everyone bails out of their tents; the stream has broken loose of its banks and is flooding; their campsite is now an island. A milk crate full of beers, secured in the shallows of the river for cooling, has broken loose of its moorings and is drifting down stream; other gear is in peril. The women start to scramble; only a small rivulet, almost narrow enough to step across, divides them from drier ground on one side. They start pitching gear across this, yanking up stakes and casting the tents across like fishing nets, gathering jumbles of gear and rescuing it from the waters. The ground, of course, is muddy, but they set camp again as the water starts to recede a little. Meanwhile one of the women goes out and starts picking up fish. Because fish are just laying there, startled and flopping, brought ashore by the flood and stranded by its retreat.

Well, if the waters cast you fish, you should not ignore the bounty.

So that night they feast upon grayling and trout, handed to them by the storm. One of the company has a fascination with fire (an easy thing to be fascinated with). Not content to merely stare at and tend the campfire, she has put her boots near it to dry. I gather that this sometimes pretty much takes the form of putting her boots IN it to dry, and has resulted in the untimely demise of more than one set of foot gear. But fascination is like that, drawing one back over and over to the source, coaxing one to play (in this case literally) with fire. With the not unexpected result that there are soon burns to contend with.

S, an accomplished outdoorswoman (and holder of a medical degree), suggests brewing a tea of cinquefoil to soothe the burns. This is quickly done, as cinquefoil is readily to hand, growing wild nearby. The burns are quickly (and successfully) treated with the astringent tea - but what to do with the rest of it?

Well, that should be obvious, think the assembled riders: We should all bathe our feet in it.

So, while R laughs and shakes her head at this silliness, the rest of the crew bathes their feet - one foot (or sometimes only part of one foot) at a time, as the pan is quite small. I don't know if it helped, but hey: It's not going to do any harm, so it's probably worth a try. I'd've done it, if only to say that I had.

Back on the deck at Wildwood with a cold drink in my hand, I am thinking in circles - the circling caribou, the stormy crown like a halo overhead, the encompassing flood ringing around their camp -and my mind circles back to camping trips and hikes of days gone by for me: Times I've been caught out in storms, places I slept under the stars, people I laughed with until I cried, for no real reason that I can remember - because what has remained with me was not the reason for our laughter, but the joy of it. I am smiling at S's story, picturing it, feeling for a moment the spring of the turfy ground under my feet, the grit of riverbank silt on my skin, the cold trickle of rain over my scalp after it has penetrated the thickets of my hair and made it down to flesh. I am thinking of my fantasy horse (and of the fantasy money which would allow me to support it), and of going on such a ride next summer....

Well. A girl can dream, can't she?

Short and Sweet

2008-09-25T10:26:00.000-07:00

So, one Saturday a while back, I go in to an appointment to give vaccine to a dog. She pokes her little head out from under the exam table from time to time, looking shyly up at me with shining eyes, as I take the history (new dog, acquired four days ago from a rescue organization). She has been recently spayed, and from the looks of her has weaned pups not long ago, perhaps a month. She's a little thin and her coat is coarse and sparse, a bit dull, and I suspect her nutrition during her pregnancy and nursing was marginal at best - not surprising in a dog that has ended up, litter in tow, with a rescue group. She is a drab muddy black in color, with scruffy and disreputable tufts poking up here and there, of indeterminate parentage (though I suspect a little husky, some lab, and strains of some other unidentified ancestry). She is sweet-faced, though, with a whippety build and the absurd Sister-Bertrille-hat ears that often come with some sight-hound ancestry. She gives me a smile as I am reaching into the mini-frige under the counter to get the vaccine, squinting her eyes just a little to telegraph her good intentions, tail thumping a rapid tattoo on the floor.

"Well, hello there little one; are you a good pup?" I ask her - as if she can reply (why I do this, I never know, but I talk to nearly all my patients as if they are small children and can carry on a conversation with me - and ridiculously, I sometimes supply their half of the conversation as well. Oddly, my clients seem to find nothing bizarre about this. Perhaps they do the same at home.) In reply, my patient flattens her ears and wrinkles her lips ingratiatingly, gazing at me with soft eyes full of hope.

"She's a GREAT dog," the owner says fervently. I am surprised; she's just told me she adopted the dog only four days ago. It seems like she's hardly had time to have such absolute conviction about it.

"That sounds like there's a story attached," I say, as I fill my syringe.

"My other kids all like dogs, but my 13-year old is deathly afraid of them. I decided we had to get him through this, and maybe the best way was for us to have a dog. The right dog," she tells me. "We went to the rescue group to look and they had her on a runner out in the yard. I could tell by the way she was acting that she was safe to approach, but my son was scared of her. I told him, 'Go on, it's okay, go up to her' - but he would barely walk over to her, he was so scared. She was very excited, but I guess she saw that he was afraid, so instead of jumping on him like most dogs would, she sat down very quietly, looked up at him, and held up her left paw to him. That was it. He was in love."

"Oh, how charming!" I said, smiling at the dog (who smiled back.) "Good friends now, are they?"

The client gave me a benign look, full of peace. "She sleeps on his bed."

So it's a small little story, just a tiny event that took only a few minutes out of my life. But I loved the image of this one plain, neglected and unwanted little mongrel changing, in a single instant, the heart of a boy afraid of dogs. His world turned, that day, on a single upraised paw. And so did hers, as it turns out, because now she has a home where she is already much loved, and well-cared-for.

Some days, the good guys win.

Know Your Anatomy

2009-02-11T16:48:00.000-08:00

One of the entertaining things about being a vet is that you have the opportunity to learn some new and interesting things about animals, on nearly a daily basis. I have learned, for instance, that when people mention that their dog "has his lipstick out", they most decidedly are NOT talking about cosmetics (despite the fact that there is every possibility that said "lipstick" may in fact at some point come into close proximity to the dog's lips.) I've also learned that when someone refers to the "yayhoo" they are not discussing some rube they saw on the road or at a grocery store. They're referring to some body part for which they either don't know the anatomical name, or else know it but don't feel comfortable mentioning it in front of a doctor. Ditto with "doodydads", "marbles", "jewels" and "boys" (testicles); "ninnies", "teetees", "tatas" and "boobies" (nipples or teats, depending on the species, plus or minus the actual mammary gland); "hoohoo", "cooch", "purse" (?!), "twink" and "her - um...." (vulva); "down there" and "you know" (penis or vulva, depending on the gender referred to); "manhood", "thing" (always tempting me to ask with a cheerful grin, "What thing is that, specifically?"), "peepee" and "wiener" (penis.)

Okay, I get that. People are either trying to be polite by being euphemistic, or are actually embarrassed to say certain words in public, much less in front of (gasp!) a doctor - who in reality might be expected to be less dismayed by such terms than the general public, after all - or, worst of all: in front of a female doctor. So I firmly suppress any evidence of hilarity and pretend that yes, I DO daily use the term "doodydads" when speaking to my colleagues about testes, and of course "purse" is commonly understood always to mean "vulva" in medical circles. Most of the time I can pull this off with a strait face and nary a twitch. Luckily I have mastered a thoughtful expression involving me biting my lower lip whilst nodding and going "Hmmm..." which passes for careful consideration of the medical conundrum at hand, rather than an attempt not to either grin widely or burst out laughing. ("Purse"?!? I ask you!) If I fail in this - which occasionally I do - people are generally mollified by me saying (so long as I can do it with a friendly smile and a twinkle), "I understand exactly what you are referring to - I've just never heard that particular term before. Good one!"

Then there are the other oddities. For some reason, about 30% of people tell me about problems they've observed with their dog's "back hips" (as if there were "front hips" to compare to). Likewise, we often get requests to examine the "front shoulder" (as if there were back shoulders) or the "back rear leg" (is there a front rear leg no one told me about in vet school?) I kind of get this too. For instance, my techs are constantly tweaking me for referring to the "back leg" of birds. They patiently remind me that birds have WINGS in front, not legs, so there are only TWO legs to choose from, not four. I DO actually know this - promise! - but habits die hard. I'm thinking "pelvic limb", for which my usual and owner-friendly term is "back leg"; sometimes I just reach in the "pelvic limb" box in my head and pull out "back leg" even when talking about birds. My bad.

So those all make a certain amount of sense to me, even if they do amuse me at times (especially that thing where I say "back leg" about birds. I don't know why this cracks me up when I forget and say that, but it does.) Not everything makes as much sense to me, though.

One time a dog was in for a surgical procedure, and it was noted to have a very large mat behind each ear. We shaved them off - these pull mercilessly at the underlying skin, and create infections by trapping moisture and bacteria against the skin, so it's a big favor to the dog. The owner was enraged. They thought that the mats were extra ears, and that their dog had a unique mutation that made for four ears. I ask you. Did they not notice that in its original form the dog only had the normal number of ears? Did they think their dog just suddenly decided, as an adult, to grow more ears? It's not a starfish. It's a dog, and dogs don't spontaneously grow extra ears. And worst of all, did they never LOOK at the mats and recognize them for what they were?

Yesterday Dr. G had a client come in asking him to examine their cat's dew claw. If you didn't know, the dew claw is the thumb, the pollux, the first toe, the little claw on the inside of the foot, the one above the other four toes (always assuming a normal number of toes.) Some dogs have this removed in the first week of life; this is very common in sled dogs, for instance, since booties rub on them and make a giant mess out of them. It is also not uncommon on hunting dogs that work in rough terrain where the dews can get caught or torn, injuring the dog. Some people who breed show dogs or pet dogs also routinely remove the front dews (and in nearly all breeds the back ones are taken off, if present, even if the fronts are left alone; the rear dew claw is generally not a normal toe and unless the breed standard requires its presence - as in Pyrenees, for example - the dog is generally better off without them, as they very often create a problem by getting caught on things or being a nail-trimming pain in the rump.) My personal opinion is that unless the front dew is likely to cause the dog a problem - as in deformity of the toe, or in sled dogs or other working dogs where the dew would be an issue - it should be left alone. It is a functional toe, and in dogs that do a lot of lateral movement (like Border collies or any agility dog) or dogs who make turns at speed (like any sight hound, and many "other breed" dogs who love to run and do it fast) it engages the ground and stabilizes the foot, minimizing the risk of toe dislocation. But I digress.

At any rate, the clients come in and ask Dr. G to examine their cat's dewclaw. Obligingly, he has a look at it. It seems perfectly normal, as he remarks to the client.

"No, no - it's on the OTHER side of the foot," the client says.

Well, no. It's not. The dew claw is always on the medial side, toward the midline of the cat. If there's something on the outside of the foot, it might be any number of things, many of which would be cause for concern - but one thing it unequivocally is NOT, is a dew claw. It turns out it's an abscess, already ruptured, with the fur cemented to the skin in a hard carapace, including two small spiky projections, stiff as paper mache`, that the owner (not understanding the anatomy) has mistaken for a dew claw.

The same day I have a dog in that the owner says needs a wire removed from its mouth. The dog got its foot caught in the chain link fence and commenced to trying to chew himself free. The owners, discovering this an unknown span of time after the onset, cut the dog loose from the mangled chain link. But the dog's mouth was making a strange clinking noise, as from metal chiming against teeth.

I examine the dog - a cheerful, strongly-built Labrador - who is remarkably cooperative about me prying around in his mouth.

"Hmmm, let me borrow him to the back for a minute, where I have some instruments that might help," I say, having ascertained the source of the problem. The dog happily trots to the treatment area with me, where he is persuaded to plunk his muscular hindquarters (that would be the back hind legs, if you're confused) onto the floor. I grab a tissue clamp and, with the redoubtable J holding the dog's mouth open for me, extract a large slab fracture off the surface of the carnasial tooth. Inspecting it, I learn two things: One, the tooth is fractured into the root. Two, this is an old fracture, as the root is already discolored, indicating that it is many many days from the time of the original fracture. The fence-chewing has just displaced it.

About then, Dr. S comes in. "Is that the wire-in-mouth dog?" she asks. I nod. "What kind of wire was it?" she asks.

"Wire made of tooth," I tell her, holding up my slab of carnasial. She gives me an incredulous look.

"Why did they think that was a wire?" she asks.
"Probably didn't look at it; it was making a sort of metallic chiming noise," I say, demonstrating by tapping the slab against the counter. For whatever reason, the tooth slab does make a musical ching that sounds exactly like a bit of metal pinging on the counter.

I go show this to the owner, advising them that the dog needs the rest of the carnasial tooth extracted; the open root canals are a source for infection, which means an abscess is pretty much guaranteed. Marvelling, the owner takes the musical tooth fragment, making an appointment on their way out for the tooth extraction (for which they do not show up.) Oh, well. Guess I'll see them during the next year or so, when the tooth abscesses. Poor dog.

On Monday, Dr. G gets to see a dog who is being brought in because it has a ball stuck in its throat. Really? And it hasn't suffocated? Reasonably enough, my receptionist SS asks if they're sure there's a ball stuck in the throat. Oh, yes, she is assured. The owner can see it. However, the dog is perfectly happy, in no distress, and wandering around under its own steam. SS is even less convinced that it is a ball in the throat, as this is likely to be life-threatening in short order, if not fatal. But the owner insists that they can see the ball. Okay, then. Bring it on in.

Two hours later, Dr. G brings back a dog who has a large swelling on its jaw. I can tell at a glance that it's a nice big juicy abscess.

"Ooooh, nice abscess! You lucky brat," I tell him, because I love abscesses.

"This is the ball-stuck-in-throat dog," he tells me. I goggle at him.

"Didn't the owner say they could SEE the ball stuck in its throat?" I ask.

"Yes," says Dr. G. "It was the owner's sister who looked at it and swore she could see the ball in its throat. The owner didn't even look, just took her word for it. She's pretty mad now, because she thinks here sister made her look like an idiot." Dr. G looks as though he thinks the owner has a valid point.

I look at the dog. It has short hair. There's absolutely no question that the swelling is NOT in the mouth, it's on the outside of the jaw. I can't figure out how anyone could even begin to mistake that for the back of the throat. After all, the owner AND her sister both themselves posses a throat. I'm virtually certain that both of them have at least once in life swallowed something - say, food. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but I'd just about bet that on its course down the throat, their food did NOT suddenly form a large round swelling on the outside of their jawbones. Of course, I didn't watch them eat, so I could be wrong. I'm just basing my assumption on several decades of swallowing food and drink (and once, accidentally, a marble) and never once having a baseball-sized swelling - or any other sized swelling - appear on the side of my jaw. Now, I know you'll think I'm bragging, but I'm fairly certain I was aware of this even before I went to vet school. I know! Amazing!

Sigh. Just another reason why it pays to know your anatomy.

Of Bears and Bagels

2009-09-12T11:17:00.001-07:00

So Friday at work was insanely busy. It wasn't necessarily the number of cases - although that was quite high enough - so much as the type of case: ones that required extensive workups, deep and complicated reasoning, meticulous client communication and education. There were several complex cases that came in unscheduled and required lengthy procedures or testing protocols. Two of the nurses were out due to unexpected events, which left us unusually short-handed. And of course to top it off, there was the usual complement of abscesses and lacerations and hit-by-cars to field, just like any other day. This was somewhat more frustrating in view of the fact that my Saturday - a day usually jammed with appointments, often double- or triple-booked, a day when people calling for emergent cases are often told that we will get them in, but they may have to wait - had only four cases booked for the entire day. Four. I've never, in 14 years here, seen a Saturday as lightly booked. There were moments - well, hours - where all three doctors working Friday afternoon half-wished that some of the cases pouring through the doors would pour through on Saturday, just to give us enough time to manage the cases in front of us.

Like most days, though, it had its compensations. For one thing, we did a lot of good that day, got a lot of work done and helped a lot of animals and people. For another, it was one of those days that reminds me that by and large, I love my clients. Most of our clients are great, and several of the ones I saw that day were particular favorites of mine. One client - a client who has become a friend, and whose entire family are favorites of mine - had brought her elderly dog in for a procedure. Our pre-surgical bloods located a significant issue, however, so rather than proceed that day, I advised a course of treatment to address the metabolic disorder, with re-check bloods in a month. The client - a warm-hearted, funny, charming woman with strikingly beautiful eyes - thanked me for delaying the procedure, agreed to all suggested treatments, and then followed that up by asking, "And do you guys want donuts or bagels today?"

"Er - well, you don't have to do that, but if you're asking, I'd vote bagels," I said.

"Good choice. And do you want REAL bagels, or the crappy kind from the grocery store?"

"I don't know... do we want real bagels or the crappy grocery store bagels?" I asked SS, sitting nearby.

"We want real bagels," she said, laughing. "Is that FJ on the phone?" she adds, recognizing the behavior.

"Yes," I tell her. Meanwhile, FJ is asking me, "What kind of cream cheese do you like?"

"Well, personally I don't like the fruit kinds much, but anything else is fine," I say.

"Good for you!" she commends me. "How many people are there today?" SS counts them up for me and relays the information.

"Twelve," I tell FJ, thinking: That's convenient. An even dozen.

"Okay," FJ tells me cheerfully.

" You're my favorite now," I tell FJ, teasing, in a half-flirty, half-coy tone.

"I'm your favorite now?!?" she asks me - reasonably enough, since FJ and I like to go out to coffee and have girl-talk together.

"I heard that," SS says, laughing. FJ sighs.

"I know; my dad always wins," she sighs, resigned - but in truth, JF and both her parents are so good, so kind, so genuinely warm and loving and thoughtful and good-humored and generous that you would be very hard-pressed to choose between them. They are all lovely people, always a delight to deal with, and I've been very fortunate to be able to treat their pets for many years now. They are the kind of people who humble you, by virtue of no more than being who they are: You want to be a better person so that you can be worthy of their regard.

Half an hour later FJ arrives with enough bagels to feed an army and three different kinds of cream cheese.

Have I mentioned I love my clients?

One way or another we made it through the day and I left work only a half hour late. I needed to bring sheep feed out to the farm; when I got there, R helped me unload it. R had been moose hunting and was home for one night before going back out. I asked if she'd gotten anything yet.

"No, but my hunting partner got a bear... sort of by accident," she said.

"There has to be a story with that," I said.

"Well, we were in camp tented up and my hunting partner heard something crashing around and rattling things and poking around the fly of his tent. He waited til the snuffling went away and then stuck his head out. There was a bear in camp."

Oh, dear. Besides being dangerous in their own right, bears are destructive to property - they are, for example, fond of plastic and will readily chew up and destroy even extremely sturdy plastic objects, such as the impact-resistant equipment lockers on the backs of the 4-wheelers, and parts of the 4-wheelers themselves. In addition, the presence of a bear in camp pretty much ensures the complete absence of moose anywhere in the vicinity. Moreover, a bear that is not cautious about human habitations and presence is a potential hazard to every person it encounters.

"Yikes," I said.

"Yeah," agreed R. "Anyway, K got it before it did much damage, although it was pretty interested in our outhouse. There were ropes of bear spit hanging off the seat. A little too close for comfort, if you ask me."

I'll say.

"Come on in and have a glass of wine," she added, brightening.

Well. After the day I just spent, that sounds awfully good. You don't have to ask ME twice.

I went in and had a glass of wine and chit-chatted a bit with S and R and YS, sipping at a glass of Merlot (which had the strange and mysterious ability to magically refill itself every time I turned my back.... or maybe that was R being hospitable.) After more like two glasses of wine, S stood up.

"Come on, it's dinner time," S said, gesturing me into the kitchen. Well, this was not really my plan, but hey - I find it hard to turn down such invites at Wildwood, where the food is always as good as the conversation.

"What're we having?" I asked, sniffing appreciatively.

"Bear heart," S smiles.

"Yeah, I called to find out what parts of a bear you would want to use," R said. "S told me 'everything but the rectum'."

"Yup. No bear asses around here," says YS, to general amusement. This is followed by a story that S tells us about having gone to a specialty foods store in Anchorage once in search of jellyfish, which she had been told might be an interesting gastronomic delicacy. The store employees looked at her like this was the weirdest and most disgusting request imaginable.

"This is a store that carries pig rectum," she adds, to put it in context.

"Pig rectum...? To EAT?" I ask, in some astonishment; I thought that was only used for Fear Factor gross-out points.

"Yes, to eat. Jellyfish were unbearably disgusting to everyone there, but evidently pig rectum is just fine."

"Um... ew," I said, secretly glad that the usable parts of a bear do not include anything rectal whatsoever. I'm not sure if it was the wine - lubricating my ease of amnesia - or if it was simply that the smells from the kitchen were growing increasingly enticing, but I quickly forgot all about bear behinds (and pig ones, too) and got myself a plate.

So I had bear heart for dinner. I expected this to be tough, both because heart muscle is in constant motion from birth to death, never still, and so might be expected to be a little tough; and also because bear needs to be cooked very thoroughly in order to avoid the risk of trichinosis, a parasite that can kill you - quite painfully, I hear. But the bear heart was surprisingly tender - and having eaten bear before (although never, I assure you, the bear ass) I knew I would find the flavor to my taste. The best enchiladas I ever had were made from bear.

And bear heart: Yum.

I've lived in Alaska for many years, and have eaten many things here that I'd never tried (and sometimes never even heard of) before I got here: high-bush cranberries, low-bush cranberries, salmon berries, birch syrup, fiddlehead ferns, squash flowers, moose, caribou, reindeer, puff-ball mushrooms and morels, roasted kid and peacock eggs and pilot bread and candied fireweed, rose hips strait off the bush, rhubarb champagne and home-made kefir, pickled green beans and pickled pike, not to mention various kinds of secret-recipe sauces and ways to make or preserve fish and fowl and whatever else you might think of. But even for all that, eating bear heart was a bit of a novelty. But you don't want to waste the sacrifice, so if you shoot a bear, my advice is that you cook it thoroughly and honor the animal by using every last bit of it.

Except the bear behind.

Timber Wolves

2009-09-05T13:35:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you'll indulge me for another horse story.

Before I was a barn manager, I rode at the same barn I later managed, under the same exceptional coach who was later my boss. She had some excellent school horses - and some less excellent - but nearly every one of them had a story.

One of the great pleasures of that barn was that every so often K would organize a long trail ride for the intermediate and advanced riders. These would last for 3 to 4 hours, often include a snack, and would cover areas of the preserve normally not seen by anyone except, occasionally, the park ranger (or other equestrians, typically those who owned the horses they boarded at that barn and had the time to go exploring.)

On one such ride I was mounted on Sam, a horse I'd never ridden before. Sam had a long, deep, puckered scar on the left side of his neck; though the overlying skin was fully haired and the scar was clearly a long-ago injury, the resulting trench in his otherwise-smoothly muscled neck was almost an inch deep. It was at the juncture of neck and shoulder, deepest at the front and growing more shallow as it proceeded toward the rear.

"Wow, that's quite a scar," I said to Kate. "What happened to him?

"Oh, Sam is an old timber wolf," she said. "He got it over a jump."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "What do you mean by 'a timber wolf''?" I asked.

"I mean he was a cross-country jump racer. Not steeplechase; those fences are usually a brush of birch twigs or something like that over a frame. I mean he did the big cross-country courses like for three-day eventing. Some of those jumps are solid, and he ran himself into one one time and lacerated himself pretty good."

"I'll say," I said. "Doesn't seem to bother him, though," I added, as Sam had not even twitched while I brushed him up.

K laughed. "That was probably twenty years ago. I think he's over it by now."

"Twenty years ago?" I said. "How old IS this horse?"

"Thirty-five," she said.

"Thirty-five?" I asked her askance, wondering if he was going to drop dead underneath me on a three-hour ride in the heat of activity and the humidity of an Eastern spring. K smiled, correctly divining that I was wondering why Sam wasn't retired, out whiling away lazy days in the pasture with K's retired eventer.

"He's already been retired twice, once in his late 20's and once at 33, but he just can't take to it. He runs the fence screaming all day long, every time he sees someone else going out. He just can't stand it. He quits eating and starts picking on the other horses until you put him back to work."

Okay, then. At least I know if Sam drops dead under me, he'll die happy.

As it happens, Sam does not drop dead under me. He's a fun ride, with a big reaching stride and a willing attitude; he seems even more eager for the trail than I am. At about 16 hands and with a big scopey shoulder, he has a nice long suspension between strides, and while he might not be absolutely the smoothest horse I've ever been on, he's got a comfortable gait. As an added bonus, the long pause between strides as he canters along makes me feel like I'm flying.

In the middle of his fourth decade, Sam has done and seen it all, it seems. He has a level head on him, knows how to collect himself and keep a pace with the other horses without crowding them or rushing them, and is not phased by the small wildlife that might pop out of the bushes at inopportune moments: the swift red flash of fox darting along a hedge, the startling whirl of wings as a pheasant takes to the air. If I allow him to flank up next to another horse I can feel him wanting to race a little, but if I check him even the slightest bit he relaxes, laying in alongside, as if he's actually IN a race and being asked to lay back, lay back just a little now, saving himself for a stretch run.

Sam is also wise to the ways of balance, a horse that you can ride downhill at a canter without him rushing or pulling you forward of your balance point. He shifts his weight back on his powerful haunches and paces himself down the slope, feeling for his rider's balance and setting himself underneath it. This is a lovely thing; at the time (in my estimation) an intermediate rider, I'd have enjoyed my ride less if I was having to bring a racy horse back to my seat and my center of gravity on the downhill lopes. Sam did not have to be asked; he just handed it over as if knowing that this was what I wanted.

After a lovely long canter through a meadow and some walk-trot-canter through the woods, we made our way down the declivity in which the river ran. We walked a while and cooled our mounts on the approach to the stream. Here we paused, letting our horses drink if they wished. Sam did not wish; he did, however, want a bit of a shower - or perhaps he felt I needed one - because he walked into the shallow edge of the stream til the water was about mid-cannon on him, and then proceeded on to stretching out his right fore and striking repeatedly at the water, splashing himself and me and everyone else within 6 feet of us.

This having garnered either laughter or exasperation from our companions, we continued on - slightly more damply. Me, I had this little smile on my face. Sam was showing me a really good time, and I was pretty happy if I was showing him one back.

There is a closeness sometimes about the woods in the humid east; even though it was relatively cool for an east coast day (due to the season), the humidity still hung that morning in the air, making it seem slightly muffled, wrapped close about us, the forest somehow more intimate than it would have been on a crisp, dry day. It wasn't quite misty, but not far from it, lending the quiet woods a sense of impendingness; a fey sort of morning, where you almost expect to see small wood sprites peeking out from behind the lush bracken ferns. The woods were full of the small quiet sounds that are almost like silence, though it is a silence composed of noise; the voice of the forest, muted and confiding.

After a time we came to the uphill slope that would take us back up out of the river bottom. Unlike our downhill trail, which had had a wide, smooth path, the uphill had a narrow winding one. No wider than one horse could manage abreast, we proceeded up it single file. Two or three horses head of me, out of my direct line of sight, K picked up the pace and we went up the hill at a slow canter. Apart from the hours I rode Happy - because any moment on Happy was an exercise in a kind of Nirvana - this might have been the most fun I ever had on horseback; more fun even than sprinting Georgie Girl down the straightaway, more fun than the most perfect jump course I've ever run, more fun than romantic morning rides with my boyfriend. I don't know why; maybe it was because Sam was in his element, maybe it was because I was in mine, in some way I'd never been before. Maybe it was because it was a perfect balance of thought and thoughtlessness, of physical and mental.

Whatever it was, the uphill ride was a rush. There were a lot of trees down across the trail - some not more than 6 inches in diameter, some over a foot, and all fallen at varying heights and angles from the ground and across the trail. The trees grew close to the trail, and some places the trail veered tight around one and then turned the opposite way to snake around another, equally close. There were places where branches hung low overhead, and others where a knobby boll might want to catch your knee or your stirrup, kicking your foot back and trying to pitch you over the shoulder of your mount. Some places a jump lay between two trees so close together that if you aimed off by six inches you'd unhorse yourself by ramming one leg or the other into a tree. The entire upward trail was a constant adjustment - jump this, duck under that, toe in tight here to keep off that boll, rein sharp to the other side to keep your knee from slamming into that tree, duck your head under that branch while your mount jumps that log, keep your forward seat for three downed trees in a row - and most places you could see no more than a horse length ahead of you, so you had no idea what came next. There was no preparing in advance, no planning: you just had to do the right thing when it came at you, and it came at you NOW.

Ahead of me I could see here and there the flash of color between the trees that was K's shirt, or that of another rider, generally seen off at an angle as the trail zigged and wove up the slope. But still you could not anticipate the trail; you knew only that eventually you would end up in that spot, but not how you might get there nor what hazards might lay across your path.

Sam, old hand that he was, cantered up this obstacle course with his ears pricked forward, taking my leg and my rein almost before I thought of them, as if he could read my mind, as if my thoughts somehow transmitted themselves instantly to his mind. He felt when I needed him to put in an extra stride before that big tree, and when I wanted him to stand back a little and take a longer jump. Despite his broad and well-sprung ribs, he threaded me through the serpentine trail without once knocking my knees or my toes, supple as water, graceful as a deer - and yet possessed of the springing muscular power of a jumper, driving us uphill and over jumps as if I weighed no more than sunlight on his back.

We came to the top of the slope at last, the trees opening out onto a meadow. K, reined around to make sure everyone made it out of the woods safely, gave me a grin as I drew up beside the other horses.

"Liked that, did you?" she asked.

I had no words to say how much. All I could say was, "Yes." But I said it emphatically, could feel my eyes shining and my face flushed with delight and excitement - and it must have been enough, because she laughed a little, a quiet little laugh at the back of her throat, but one that says: I could not have told you this, but now you know how it is.

I don't now recall much about the rest of the ride home - that it was a pretty morning, yes, and that the sun was starting to burn off the haze, sure - but that will stand forever as the Enchanted Forest Ride in my mind. I had many a wonderful ride on many a fine horse in those days, but that one was something special. There were so many delights in it that I cannot for the life of me say was it this thing or that that made it so perfect; but if I had to pick one thing, it would be that uphill ride, dancing over jumps and pirouetting through trees, feeling beneath my leg the powerful, joyous beat of the mighty heart of an old timber wolf.

Kefir Madness

2009-09-08T21:24:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been going a little crazy making kefir. I blame Wildwood Farm for this.

It all started innocently enough when I was over there one day, doing sheep chores or something - I don't even remember what. S announced that a friend of hers had given her some kefir grains. Now, I've had store-bought kefir, and it was more or less like liquid yogurt. I liked it fine, so I was mildly intrigued by the thought of making my own. However, both becuase S seemed entirely too excited about this, and I was confused by the term "kefir grains", naturally I had to learn more. I thought maybe that the kefir bugs came in a little granulated powder like baking yeast or wine-making yeast or something, but what S was spooning out of her fermenting kefir looked a lot more like some mutant cross between cottage cheese and a cauliflower, with maybe a little alien brain matter mixed in.

However, I was game to try it. I must first point out that it was NOT like the store-bought version - it was not sweet, nor fruit-flavored and -colored. It had a tang and texture more similar to buttermilk (which I quite like), although it had a little bit of a fine-grained spritz on the tongue, like barely-fermenting fresh-pressed cider. It also had some deeper notes to the flavor, something that reminded me of certain kinds of ripe French cheeses. And there was something else: It made me feel sort of.... good. Like it was making me cheerful and peaceful and all... good-like.

Eventually S gave me some kefir grains from her culture so I could start my own. Now, here I must point out that making kefir is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT and not for the faint of heart. The instructions follow:

1. Pour some milk in a jar.
2. Put your kefir grains in.
3. Put the lid on the jar and set it somewhere in your house.
4. Wait 2 days.

See? Extremely difficult. If you try it, you should probably lie down for an hour or two afterwards and make people bring you food and hot buttered rum so you can recover from your labors. A foot massage would definitely aid the process considerably, so be sure you mention that.

Ideally, the kefir should (supposedly, and if you can wait that long) be refrigerated (after you scoop out the kefir grains on the top to inoculate your next batch) for an additional 2 days. This is because apparently, if you put it in the fridge, the little kefir bugs will keep metabolizing and making nutrients for you to drink, but they produce different nutrients in the cold than in the room-temperature. Or so I hear.

Having done a little reading, it appears that the reason kefir makes you feel all good-like is that it contains significant amounts of protein, vitamin B and tryptophan - and small amounts of alcohol. It also has all kinds of other goodies in it, including several different strains of beneficial microbes (the home-made kefir, I mean; the store-bought kind usually only has 2 strains of microbe and no appreciable alcohol.) Originally, it seems that kefir was made of camel milk, but if you don't happen to have a camel - or if you do, but don't feel up to milking it, which in my view just shows good sense - it also appears that you can kefir a lot of things that aren't camel milk: cow milk, sheep milk, goat milk, soy milk, rice milk, coconut milk, fruit juice, ginger beer, sauerkraut, (which I guess would be kefirkraut, actually), even water and sugar. Some people believe that kefir can cure cancer, initiate world peace and intimidate harmful yeasts and bacteria and viruses right out of your body. Which may or may not be true - I have no proof either way - but I have to say: I'd drink it anyway, because I find it all yummy and stuff.

It's been like a little biology project. The kefir bugs seem to grow at nuclear speeds, so I can make many many different batches and mess around with them as much as I like. I can put in raspberry jam (which several of my clients bring me in the home-made version because they know I'm a complete maniac for raspberries.) I can put in agave nectar. I can put in strawberries and bananas and make smoothies. I can put in all KINDS of stuff - and as I have some congenital abnormality which makes me absolutely incapable of following a recipe as written, God only knows what might end up in there. But it'll probably be yummy.

Actually, Alaska is a good place for someone with my particular mental defects. That thing about not following recipes - it's really true. Ask anyone. I can do it once, if I force myself, or if I've never eaten anything like the recipe in question and I'm not sure how it's supposed to taste.... but the second time (and often the first) I'll be standing there thinking: Hmm, I bet a little bit of nutmeg would taste really good in this... [OOOH! Kefir with nutmeg and apricots! - Ooops. Sorry about that.] At any rate, it's quite annoying to people who have certain expectations about their food, like that you will not make their grandmother's famous chocolate cream pie with crushed pecans for the crust, nor shave chocolate and nutmeg over the top of it. But up here, there are LOTS of people who screw around with the recipe - or just make up their own. There are whole Alaskan cookbooks like that. One time I invented something called "moose baked in wine and apples" (which also included birch syrup and pine nuts and garlic, and if I ever make it again, will also include Craisins) and nobody up HERE thought I was nuts. I did get a lot of remarks from "certain people" in the lower 48, however, even though I specified -SPECIFIED! - that any meat could be used, if you didn't happen to have a moose handy. I ask you.

I don't know why we like to invent our own up here. Maybe it's because we don't have "normal" stuff that people in the lower 48 take for granted, or we only have it for a short time. Maybe it's because we have a lot of stuff that's normal for us, but is pretty unusual for people Outside, so Betty Crocker had no idea how to tell you to cook it. (First, take one pound of canned beaver, half a cup of dried lowbush cranberries, and 20 to 30 fresh fiddlehead ferns...) Maybe it's because we get snowed in and have to invent something out of whatever is in the pantry, which might be a can of smoked salmon, some pickled green beans, and - and KEFIR. Yeah. That's the ticket. Maybe it's because while our growing season is short, it's violent. Just today Dr. P brought in about 11 enormous squash which are "extras" (as in, they can no longer think of new things to do with squash, or else have run out of freezer space). I expect that sooner or later he'll be bringing in some "extra" cabbages, most of which will weigh in excess of 20# (that is, if the moose didn't eat them again this year). In years where I feel like gardening, I can grow enough sweet basil to make pesto literally by the pound, and still have enough to chop up into salads, layer on sandwiches or fresh sliced tomatoes, dry for later use, and freeze in olive oil for future use in soups and sauces. And that's not counting the live plants I gave away, or sprigs I bring to work and pass around.

Right now I'm having lurking thoughts about making stuffed yellow squash tomorrow for dinner - since I DO have a pound and a half of moose burger in the freezer, and thanks to Dr. P I have a yellow squash big enough that I could probably use it to stun a 300# hog, if I were to tap it smartly over the head with it. I have some home-grown rosemary and thyme and sweet basil, and I might even have dried apricots and Craisins, and some pine nuts and Parmesan cheese.... and I DEFINITELY have some kefir.

Arrow Escapes

2009-09-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

Well, the horse stories could go on forever - and I will doubtless trot out (as it were) the rest of them for you at some juncture - but I thought today maybe a little change of pace, in case the less horse-obsessed amongst us were getting bored.

It's moose-hunting season up here now. And beautiful weather for being out today, although my nurse M says her best hunting is usually on the wet and gloomy days. Fortunately for her that's what we had during bow season, which comes before the regular season. M bagged her moose on the last day of the bow season, filling her freezer against the winter to come. I have to say I admire the willingness to hunt an animal as large as a moose with just a bow, and respect the skill it takes to bring one down in that way. It seems fairer to me, in some way; the bow hunter has not such an enormous advantage over the prey as a gun provides. You don't have the range you can get with a rifle, so it's a little more of a level footing, at least in my imagination, and requires more skill of the hunter. M is a careful hunter, never taking a shot unless she's pretty sure she HAS a shot, not risking merely wounding an animal that will then wander around for days, suffering. She's been known to proxy-hunt as well - going out to hunt for someone otherwise eligible to hunt but who is too old or infirm to hunt for themselves; a generous thing to do, given the amount of work it is and that the meat goes to the person for whom she is hunting, not to herself. But not everyone is so meticulous in their ethics.

Not long after bow season was over, Fish and Game had to go trap a trumpeter swan that someone had shot with an arrow. Swans are a non-huntable bird in Alaska, so that in and of itself was wrong, and the kind of thing that completely infuriates me - and completely infuriates all responsible hunters, as well. Luckily for the swan, whoever shot it - and F&G thinks it was done deliberately - used a target arrow, not a hunting arrow. Target points are little bullet-shaped tips, a short cylindrical metal shape that is crowned by a conical point. Hunting tips, by contrast, come in a variety of shapes, depending on what you're hunting, but a lot of them are shaped more or less like the arrowheads made by Native hunters (which shape most of us would recognize.) Some people, in fact, still knap their own flint arrowheads and hunt with them. At any rate, a target arrow does much less harm than a hunting arrow would do, but it still enrages me that anyone would shoot a defenseless bird just to be shooting something - shoot it in a way that will cause it pain and harm, but not kill it outright. Wild swans up here are often semi-habituated; as they migrate, they travel from lake to lake, often spending a few days at their "usual" stops. Beautiful as they are, it's not uncommon for people to go down to the shore to watch them, and sometimes feed them. As a result, swans are often inclined to paddle peacefully over for a little gander at their admirers, and possibly a handout or two. After all, it's a long flight south, and a few extra calories aren't going to go amiss. But that means it would be extremely easy for some cruel, small-minded moron to shoot one of them with an arrow.

As it happens, Fish and Game managed to net the swan and examine it. This is not as easy as it sounds; apart from being strong and fairly fast swimmers, swans are strong and fairly sizey birds. They can beat you about the head with their powerful wings, and are not averse to biting if the need arises. Habituated though they might be, they aren't really interested in being caught. When you add to this the presence of a highly annoyed mate trying to goose you as you splash around in your waders with a net, you really have to give the F&G boys some credit. Eventually they did manage to corral the injured swan, however, and have a look at it. One of its wings was pinioned to its body by the arrow, but the arrow didn't penetrate deeply into the body wall. They were able to repair the injuries (with the assistance of the good offices of Wild Bird Rescue) and return the swan to its mate - and since the trumpeter swan mates for life, this is an important consideration. Well, all's well that ends well, in that case at least (although I would DEARLY love to see the shooter get what ought to be coming to them for their cruelty and their violation of the law.)

It's not the only time I've seen a non-huntable animal with an arrow injury, though.

Many years back, after I first came to Alaska, I was on call one day when some people paged me. They had found a dog that had been shot; it wasn't their dog, but they didn't want to see it suffering, so could they bring it in? Well, this is a sort of tricky situation; the clinic I work for is a small business, and they expect to collect fees, so that they can feed their families and stay open to help other animals. These people don't own this dog, and naturally enough don't really want to pay the emergency fees on an animal they don't own. And while it's true that even if I were independently wealthy I'd probably be willing to do this work for free, in fact it's not unreasonable for me to expect to be paid for going in to work on a weekend - or any other time, come to that. In those days Animal Control had no real facilities for handling this kind of thing, so... what to do?

Well, sometimes, you just have to go with your gut, so I told the callers to come on in. I just figured we'd work it out as we went along.

I had assumed, on hearing that the dog had been shot, that it had been a gunshot wound, by far the more common event up here. But no; when I reached the clinic, the good Samaritans were waiting anxiously by their car. I walked over to them and they said, "We were afraid to move him too much, since it's still in him."

Eh? That's not the usual thing people say with a gunshot dog. I look through the open door into the back seat, where they have ensconced the dog. He is laying across the entire length of the back bench seat, a long, rangy grey husky-mix sort of dog. The Samaritans, obviously being the planning type, have blanketed the seat for comfort and against messes, and have already muzzled the dog with a blue nylon muzzle ("We don't know anything about this dog and we thought he might want to bite," they explained.)

Well, I might want to bite, too. Protruding from his back, just to the right of his spine and just aft of his ribs, is the end of the arrow. It is embedded so deep that the fletchings are snugged up against his fur. In fact, if not for them, I believe the arrow would have gone all the way through the dog.

Yikes. I can't believe the dog arrived alive.

"Let's get him inside and see what we've got," I say. "Let me go get a stretcher."

We manage to slide the dog onto the stretcher and carry him into the hospital with a minimum of jostling. I have a look at the dog. He looks a bit disreputable, a little thin and unkempt, as if he has been on his own for a while. He is regarding me somewhat warily over his muzzle, but the muzzle is loose enough that he can breathe unimpeded. After a minute, when I've not done anything too alarming, he opens his jaw slightly to pant, and I can see that his color is excellent. He looks alert and oriented, as well - all of which is a bit of a shock, considering that I can feel the point of the arrow protruding between the ribs on the left side of his chest, tenting his furry hide but not penetrating through it. This means that the arrow has passed from his right upper lumbar area - just over the right kidney - across his midline through his diaphragm, and through his chest at a slightly downward angle. The tip is palpable about mid-thorax, maybe 4 inches above the point of the heart, but level with it. Somehow the arrow, while it most assuredly passed by them both, has not torn either the aorta or the vena cava, the two enormous vessels that travel down the body's midline: a laceration to either one would have caused the dog to bleed out in a matter of minutes. I can't rule out a nick in one or the other; sometimes the presence of the foreign body will plug the wound temporarily - until it is removed, and then the hole opens up and bleeds ferociously. I know that the arrow has passed by the stomach, the liver, the gall bladder and the esophagus, not to mention quite a stretch of lung tissue, but I have no idea what damage was done to which organ - although it's obvious that the diaphragm must have a hole in it, since the arrow goes through it. And, quite incidentally, the dog is also missing a small bit off the tip of one ear, and two toes on one of his hind feet. He's had an eventful life, this dog. But clearly the arrow is by far the biggest of these events, and the most life-threatening. I can imagine the path of the arrow through his body, and all the potential harm it might have done going in - or could do, coming out again.

Hm. This could be quite a disaster in the making.

I look at the good Samaritans.

"Ideally this would be something where I sedate him and Xray to see what we have, and then decide on a course of treatment, although in a situation like this the anesthesia itself might destabilize him and kill him," I tell them. "But that all incurs some significant expenses, and I'm not sure whether you intended to take responsibility for that...?" I ask, as delicately as possible. They look at each other, one of those marital glances that seems to carry within it an entire conversation.

"He's not our dog," the husband finally says. "We wanted to help him, and we'll pay the emergency fee, but beyond that..."

Well, okay. This is certainly reasonable enough. This is not their job. They've already done more than many people would, by carefully catching up the dog, muzzling him to prevent him from injuring them - or me, I might add with some gratitude - and volunteering to pay an emergency fee for an animal they do not own and have no responsibility to beyond that of common human decency.

Okay, the ball is back in my court. I can euthanize him, or I can try to treat. Euthanasia is tempting, given the frightening nature of the arrow path; but the dog is laying sternal, looking quiet but alert, breathing easily (and isn't THAT rather astonishing, under the circumstances), rotating his ears to catch our conversation. I call my boss to ask for guidance. He says I can do whatever I decide is best, but to try not to spend too much of the clinic's money, since we're not getting paid for it. I look at the dog. He looks at me. There is undeniable awareness in his clear golden eyes. Somehow I feel like I have to try something, at least.... and clearly I can't just leave him there with an arrow running through his body.

"Well," I say to the Samaritans. "Our choices are to put him down or to give it a try. I'm inclined to give it a try, but I have to warn you: I have no idea what kind of tip is on this arrow. I can feel the point of it just under the skin, but it's mainly embedded in the muscle of his chest wall between the ribs -so even though I think it's a target point, I might be wrong: it might be a hunting point, and if so, pulling it out will likely kill him on the spot. Even with a target point it's a risky endeavor: if it doesn't kill him outright from exsanguination, there are all sorts of possible consequences: he could get a pneumothorax and die from that, or it may have lacerated his esophagus, which would certainly kill him unless very extensive surgery is done. It might have nicked a loop of bowel or perforated his stomach, either of which could lead to peritonitis. That would kill him too, unless we do some major surgery. It could have lacerated his kidney, which would be another complete disaster, and I don't see how it can have missed hitting his liver. And of course there are infection risks along the entire arrow path; even if it somehow missed all his organs, it certainly wasn't sterile, and it's bound to have carried all kinds of bacteria in with it. He could get a massive infection in his chest or his abdomen as a result, which would naturally be a very serious problem."

They look at each other.

"None of the long-term consequences are your problem, of course, since he's not your dog," I add. "But usually when people bring in dogs like this, even if they don't decide to keep them, they want to find out how they did in the long run. I'm just letting you know he's got a lot of potential hazard to this. If you'd rather I put him down and not take the risks, it's okay to tell me so."

"Would it be... would it be okay to just pull out the arrow and see what happens?" asks the wife, tentatively.

"Yes," I say. "You don't have to stay," I add, knowing that the dog might crash on the spot and that that might be deeply distressing for these kindhearted people.

"No. We'll stay," says the husband, resolutely. He flexes his hand slightly, ready to step in. "What do you want me to do?"

"Just steady him and keep him from jumping off the table," I say. Carefully, I clip as best I can around the fletching of the arrow; if the dog doesn't die from the extraction of it, I'll need to suture that area, and I'd rather do it without hair on it. I gently prep around the shaft of the arrow and set a purse-string suture around it; if I'm quick, I can pull this tight as soon as the arrow is out, cinching the skin down to prevent air from entering the arrow path to minimize the chance of sucking air into the wound, and maybe encouraging a pneumothorax. I have no idea if this would in fact happen, but it's at least something I can try to prevent.

During all this the dog lies stoically, flicking an ear back at me, but barely twitching when I set my sutures.

I grasp the ends of my purse-string suture with mt left hand, bracing the heel of it against the dog's back. I grip the arrow's fletchings firmly in my right.

"Ready?" I ask them. The husband, hugging the dog around the neck, his mouth set, looks at me and gives me a nod.

I start to pull back on the arrow - pull back hard, because it doesn't want to move. But after a second it starts to shift. I feel a stuttering, grating vibration in the shaft as the point releases itself from the rib against which it was set, and then the arrow pulls out smooth and fast. I snatch my purse-string tight, tossing the arrow on the floor, and quickly tie down my suture.

I look up. Neither the dog nor the good Samaritan clinging to his neck has moved during the few seconds it took to pull the arrow. Slowly, the man straitens up, backing away from the dog as he might from a live hand grenade. All eyes are on the dog. Inside his blue muzzle, he opens his mouth and pants gently.

I watch him for a minute, two minutes. He doesn't appear to be bleeding out. I inject a large wad of antibiotics and enlist the help of the good Samaritans to lift him off the table.

"Let's get this muzzle off of him," I say, unclasping it and handing it back to its owners. The dog sniffs with interest at the nearest trash can.

"Well, okay," I tell the couple. "Let me take care of him through the weekend, see what he does." I ensconce the dog in a cage with a blanket and some water, which he drinks a little of. We handle some paperwork and I promise to call Monday with an update.

Monday the dog is seeming pretty chipper with his little hotel stay. He likes the room service, and has happily eaten everything offered, with no ill effects. He has no fever, no cough, no penumothorax, no abdominal effusions, no belly pain, no apparent ill effects whatsoever from being impaled by the arrow. The good Samaritans stop in and want to visit him.

"Sure," I say, leading them back to his run. "I've been calling him Archer," I add, since we had to call him something, and "That Dog That Got Shot With The Arrow" is a bit cumbersome. "He has no microchip or other ID, so Animal Control is going to come over and get him later today or tomorrow. I gave them a description, but they have no reports that he's gone missing from anyone," I add. He's not that hard to identify, after all, with his missing parts; I'm fairly certain if someone was looking for him it would easy for Animal Control to match him up with my description.

Leaving them to commune with the dog for a while, I go take an appointment. I go back to check on them. The wife is sitting on the floor in the front of the run, cuddling the newly-christened Archer. He's generally friendly enough in a slightly aloof, independandt sort of way, but seems happy enough to be getting his ears scratched by Mrs. Samaritan.

"We've decided we want to adopt him," Mr. Samaritan informs me.

"Oh," I say. "I'll call Animal Control and see if I can clear it with them." Animal Control takes information from me and the Samaritans, treating it as they would had someone called to report a stray, but been willing to house the stray (rather than take it to the shelter) while Animal Control seeks the owner. The Samaritans pay Archer's bill and take him home.

I never saw any of them again - Archer OR the Samaritans - so I can only hope it all ended well. I do know that no one ever showed up at Animal Control looking for Archer - and I also know that whoever shot him was never caught. I've seen many a strange thing in Veterinary medicine from that day to this, but there haven't been a lot of things stranger than having a full recovery from an injury like that solely on the strength of a single suture and a wad of antibiotics.

Since they weren't gunshot wounds, I suppose you can't really say that either that trumpeter swan or Archer dodged the bullet... in either case, it was more of an arrow escape.

Asses and Alligators

2009-08-28T21:29:00.000-07:00

Author's note: this is a story from several years ago. I will preface this by saying that the Rottweilers herein represented are not what I would consider representative of a well-bred member of their breed. Rotties were originally working dogs, and well-bred, good-tempered and physically sound examples can certainly be found - but in my neck of the woods, there has in the past been, and to some degree still is, an unfortunate abundance of questionably-bred orthopedic disasters of foul and unstable temperament. These animals are NOT what the breed is intended to be, although fortunately their numbers are declining in favor of more judiciously-bred animals that are truer to the breed's intended characteristics.

So Friday morning I started the day out with the biggest ass of month. Always a good way to begin, I find... everyone else seems so reasonable by contrast.

First thing that morning, in comes a man who, I will faithfully report, is rather good-looking, in a media-pretty sort of way; he is, however, not nearly as good-looking as he appears to believe he is, based on his superior demeanor. But perhaps I'm being unfair; maybe he just wants the rest of us to admire how well-tanned he's managed to get the underside of his nose, and is demonstrating this by keeping it pointed up in the air at all times. At any rate, apart from his unnaturally-even tanning-bed tan, he is very buff, which he shows off by wearing sweatshirts with the sleeves torn off - which I will say makes him look like he's pretending to be a high school jock, in defiance of his actual age. This makes me think "pretty-boy", by which I mean a (thankfully uncommon) member of the male gender who believes he is God's gift to everything in the known Universe. Such people tend to walk as if they expect the air to part before them in deference to their magnificence. This is a class of men I tend to dislike, so I automatically try to compensate by being extra pleasant and cutting a big margin for some benefit of the doubt.

This client is dragging - quite literally - his puppy in on a leash. The dog is petrified; on entering the clinic he immediately sits down on his haunches, frozen in terror, and has locked all legs, absolutely rigid with panic. Rather than coax, encourage or support the dog in any way so that he can learn to move forward and cope with his fears, he guy just pulls on the leash and skids the dog along the floor. This in itself isn't the worst thing I can think of - but it does mean two things: One, that the puppy - a 40# Rottweiler mix - has not been taught to walk on a leash. And Two, that the owner has little concern for the dog's state of mind. This is a 16 week old pup, so he should both trust the owner and know how to walk on a leash by now... and if he doesn't, dragging him around by the leash is not the way to teach him either thing.

The guy hoiks him onto the table for his last set of puppy shots. The pup cowers on the table, head ducked and limbs trembling, clearly afraid of me but just as clearly uncertain of the owner, from whom he appears to be unsure of his welcome. I try to reassure the puppy, petting and talking nice, as I mention (quite mildly) to the man that he might consider puppy classes for this dog; he's clearly afraid, and puppy classes will increase his confidence and make the rest of his life much easier and less frightening for him.

"Nope," says the owner decisively. "This dog just stays home. I'm not doing any classes with him. I did that with my last dog and he died."

My eyebrows go up sharply. "He died in puppy class?" I ask in some astonishment. Having been through three puppy classes with two different instructors, I cannot imagine any scenario where a dog might die in puppy class. Puppies are generally not physically or psychologically capable of killing each other, even if an instructor or owner would allow it, and because of the nature of the class - i.e., it's likely to be full of PUPPIES - the rooms are, quite naturally, puppy-proofed.

"No, he didn't die in puppy class, but I put $1400 of training into him and then he was out tied in my yard and some kids came into the yard and shot him," he says.

"I'm awfully sorry to hear that," I say, "but that didn't have anything to do with the classes. I'm not suggesting training that extensive in this case - just a basic class to help his confidence and give him the basics."

"Thanks for you interest, but this dog is just going to stay home," the owner repeats, dismissively. I look at the puppy, who is now leaning toward me, not the owner, for comfort.

"This is a nice puppy, but he's scared," I try again, thinking that concern for the dog's well-being may sway the owner. "Because of his breed, he may be at risk for fear-biting. If he does that he could be destroyed. Puppy classes might help us avoid that."

"If he bites anyone, I'll kill him myself," the owner says. "We're not doing any training. People pay too much attention to their dogs anyway."

Say WHAT?

I feel my eyes go slitty and hard. I hesitate for a moment, ire surging - what the hell else do we HAVE dogs for, if not to either use them for work or have them as companions - or both? In either scenario, you have to PAY ATTENTION TO THEM. Completely apart from which - but possibly more importantly - dogs are social animals. They REQUIRE interaction, and in the absence of other dogs they must get this from their owners. How cruel is it to deliberately choose to get an animal that requires attention, and then refuse to give it? This dog could have had another home, where someone might love him and bother to teach him some basic skills - but this man bought him, thus eliminating all the other options for the puppy, and then refuses to provide him the care he deserves. I suddenly wonder if the dog's lack of confidence is more due to his treatment at home than his inborn temperament.

This all flashes through my head in an instant. I give the owner a narrow look, but he is busy brushing imaginary lint off of his leather bomber jacket, now draped over his arm - although if this man is a pilot I'll eat my mouse pad. He's a narcissistic prettyboy, one of my least favorite kinds of people. I open my mouth to ask him why he even has this dog - and then I stop. There is no point. The man has no room in his world for anything but himself and his mirror, and any accoutrements that might up his image. I vaccinate the dog - all I can really do to help him is to prevent any miserable painful viral diseases from getting on board, and I am way too near to stabbing this jerk with a trochar (perhaps THAT would puncture his self-importance, but he might go flying around the room like a deflating balloon, and I really don't want to have to clean up after THAT). I try not to entertain any unflattering speculations about any - erm - personal deficiencies his preening might be compensating for, vaccinate the dog (with an apologetic head rub - I did try, little one) and get this GOMER out of my clinic.

Well, I admit I went back to the treatment area and vented a bit. I called him a gomer so many times that I finally had to explain to the bewildered nurses that it's a medical abbreviation of sorts - it stands for Get Out of My Emergency Room. They thought that was sort of funny, and it did restore my good humor to a degree. I had several good clients after that, including a favorite cat-owner, so about 10:00 I was in a pretty good mood. Which was when JB came back and told me there was someone outside wanting 4 vaccines, to be given in the car. There are two Rotts and two Rott mixes. And two of the four were "Caution" dogs, which means that at some time (perhaps many times) they have indicated a willingness to bite, and may or may not have been successful in this attempt.

Oh joy.

JB tells me the owner assures her that she will hold the dogs. Dr. P's eyebrows are practically airborne with skepticism. Fortunately the owner has brought her husband as well, so we have backup. Based on the jaundiced expression with which Dr. P greets this assertion, I gather he is not especially optimistic regarding the success of this plan.

While I am drawing up vaccine, Dr. P (who is prepping for a surgery and thus exempt from Caution Dog duty) says, "Tell them we have a sniper stationed on the roof of the clinic. If any of the dogs bite, the sniper will shoot... the owner."

I snerk a bit about that, gather my vaccines, and mentally gird up my loins for another round in the Vet-vs.-Vicious-Dog Smackdown Championships.

Outside I find that the owners have brought two vehicles with 2 dogs each in them. This is a dang good idea, since all four dogs are enormous. We start with the Rotts, both large, robust and seriously overweight bitches. They get the first one out, who begins growling at me the minute her feet hit the pavement. The two owners manage to twist and shove until I am presented with a large expanse of black hide as my target. I get the vaccine in, they wrestle the dog back into the car, and it's on to round two. The second bitch is wagging her tail happily as the owners squeeze her into position, but the minute I approach, needle drawn and at the ready, she gives a twist of astonishing agility (in view of her impressive girth) and lunges, snapping, at my face. I - no fool - have positioned myself so that a quick skip back is right in my repertoire, and I dodge neatly out of the way while the owners smack the dog and yell at her. She shows every evidence of contrition until I make my second pass, when she lunges upward in their restraining grip like a breaching whale, whipping her head from side to side and gnashing her teeth like a shark in a feeding frenzy. Spit is flying from her jaws and her formidable teeth are snicking shut with loud, sinister clicks.

"Maybe we should get a muzzle; you're going to get bitten," I tell the owners, backing off.

"No we won't; just do it," grunts the husband, corralling the dog again and hauling her head into his grip. His wife holds the collar in a death grip. I make a third pass and the bitch gives a mighty heave and twist, fast and lethal as a hunting alligator, and there is a sudden flurry and scuffle.

"What the fuck is WRONG with you?!?" the owner yells, clouting the dog across the head (now I know he's mad - he's just said "fuck" in front of a doctor). Suddenly there is human blood on the scene, and guess what? It isn't mine. Well, I did warn them, and they refused the muzzle, so my liability is covered. It only took 2 seconds, but the bitch's razoring teeth have nicked both owners. Now the man is mad. He sits on the SUV's tailgate, hauls the dog's front end into his lap, and gets a headlock on her. The wife grabs the rolls of fat in what is normally the scruff, and I make a quick squat-and-stab move, getting the vaccine on board and popping up like a Jack-in-the-box to get out of the way as the dog makes another nearly-successful gator-lunge at me - this time avoiding further bloodshed, fortunately. Ironically, this dog does NOT have a caution on her chart. And this is the very worst kind of Rottweiler, the kind that wags happily and smiles at you, but will lunge at you in deadly earnest at the slightest provocation - without even the warning of a lifted lip or a growl, and will keep at it over and over, despite the owner's correction. There's something creepily reptilian about this, despite the fact that the dog physically resembles a small, fat and extremely ill-tempered black bear.

After that the other two dogs - one of which was another caution dog - are sweetness and light. Both are males, both are trim, both are mixes, and both are vaccinated in a matter of seconds.

I go inside with A Look on my face.

"Uh oh... what happened?" asks JB.

"Well, two people got bitten, but neither of them was me," I tell her. "You might want to put a caution on Maggie's chart," I add. "She's the one who did the biting."

I stroll on back to Treatment to dispose of my syringes. "How'd it go?" asks Dr. P (now scrubbed in and about to enter surgery).

"Could've used that sniper," I reply. Dr. P (who has himself been bitten without provocation by at least one Rottie) bursts out laughing. But since I am not covered in blood, he goes off chuckling into surgery.

Y'know, when I went to vet school, they didn't say anything about wanting us to have skills that would make us eligible for guest spots on "The Crocodile Hunter". But maybe they should have.

Cappuchino Love

2009-09-03T09:09:00.001-07:00

Author's note: So you know how this works: my brain works like a giant spider web. I remember some story, and tugging on that strand of the web moves all the others that cross it. So thinking about Georgie Girl has reminded me of other stories from that era of my life, and now you'll all have to suffer through them. You poor things.

Sometimes barns are full of love stories - not the play Equus kinds of love stories, but romances full of passion and beauty of a different sort entirely.

At the riding school we had a number of school horses of varying biddability and reliability. There was the elegantly beautiful palomino mare Goldie, who was also a sneaky wee bitch of a Saddlebred; she had the magical ability to escape capture by somehow causing the other horses to run interference for her, getting in the way of her would-be captor while she hied herself off to the most inaccessible part of the pasture. I missed a lesson on Goldie more than once this way, to my secret pleasure; Goldie had a very upright head carriage, which by consequence hollowed her back to the point where she was a very uncomfortable ride. Moreover, she had a mouth like a steel bucket, with no more flexibility or subtlety than that, and was inclined to cheat at everything, either to save herself some effort or just because. You constantly had to watch her on approaching a jump, because she was inclined to run out, dodging to the side to avoid the jump (and sometimes dump her rider at the same time), or occasionally she'd just stop, with much the same results. More than once my instructor - having gone to catch Goldie - would to my secret delight return red-faced and irritable, leading some other school horse, less elegant to look at but more honest of heart, and much more fun to ride.

There was Sailor, a sturdy Morgan gelding, who had the unfortunate (and for his breed, unusual) condition of being nearly strait in the pasterns. This rendered him a rough and choppy ride, but he was as cheerful as the day is long, and willing to go along with whatever you had in mind, and as he was otherwise well-built, he was strong enough to handle adults and honest enough to handle beginners, with the result that he was an oft-used lesson and trail-ride horse. This never seemed to trouble him; he was perfectly willing to have a go at whatever the task was.

You already know about Happy Face, a plain-looking little chestnut Anglo-Arab, the most honest horse I've ever ridden. He didn't like to get his feet wet and would jump over a puddle that was two feet across to avoid it - but he would also jump just about anything else you pointed him at. One time during a lesson I was riding him through a jump course. As the last combination in the series, there were a pair of jumps set up in a wide V, and the course set by my coach had me riding into the mouth of the V, jumping the left hand jump, and then taking a wide turn to the right, looping out enough to angle myself at the right-hand arm of the V from the outside, and then jumping the right hand arm of the V back into the center of it. I lost my left stirrup going over my first jump, so I was fishing for it with my outside foot as I cantered my turn toward the second jump. I couldn't pick it up and I hesitated just a hair - just the slightest indecision over whether I should take the jump with only one stirrup or pull him up. Happy felt my microsecond of indecision and he leaned back form his canter just the slightest bit, waiting for me to tell him go or stop. I felt him hesitate and I hesitated more. That told him all he needed to know. I wasn't ready, and he wouldn't take me into trouble. He broke to a trot and ran out on the jump, the only time he ever did so with me up.

Perched on the fence, my coach's mouth fell open and her eyes went wide with shock. Happy never ran out on jumps. Never. To her this must have looked like an act of gross rebellion, a dishonest move, a developing vice.

"Spank him for that!" she told me.

"I won't," I said. "It was my fault. I lost my stirrup and he could tell I wasn't ready. I hesitated. He could feel my seat come back and he did what my body told him, which was not to take the jump."

"Oh. Well then give him a pat and tell him he's a good horse," said my coach, grinning at me. So I did, reaching down to corral my errant stirrup with my hand. By habit I checked my girth. It was loose - like hanging an inch below his belly loose. Evidently Happy had developed a bad habit after all, that of holding his breath when cinched up so that the girth would be looser when he let his breath out. In Happy's case, I imagine this was a matter of comfort - some inexperienced riders will cinch a horse up too fast, pinching them with the girth, and some horses will hold their breath in self-defense. But had he wanted to, at any time during the jump course Happy could have had me off, sending me and the saddle slipping under his belly with just the slightest swerve on his part. It wasn't in his nature to try that, even though he must have known the girth wasn't even touching him under his chest. If it had been Goldie, I'd have gone under her flailing hooves at her first opportunity. As it was, I put my leg forward on his shoulder, tightened the girth, and went back and repeated the last combination, with both stirrups this time.

There were times, later on, when Happy - getting sour from overuse - would hold his breath and even eventually make biting motions when being cinched up. Once a riding instructor came to me, frustrated, asking if I could get him cinched up. Of course I could. I just went out and rubbed his belly, talking to him kindly, telling him what a good, good horse he was, leaning my forehead against the lovely curve of his neck and letting him feel with his body that I loved him, that I trusted him, that I would not hurt him. I tightened the girth one billet strap and one hole at a time, infinitely slow, rubbing and praising and taking my time like we had all week if we needed it. Happy dropped his head and rounded his neck and let his eye go soft. After a minute or two the tension went out of him and he let his breath out on a sigh. I got him cinched up properly - gently, gently - and then turned to the riding instructor. She was a newer one, capable enough, but one who had not known Happy for years, as I had.

"Thanks," she said.

"You're welcome," I told her, "but this is his last lesson today."

"But I have him scheduled for - "

"Use another horse," I said flatly, steel in my eye. "He's done after this one."

"But it's for beginners," she protested. "Happy's so push-button, how a I going to replace that?"

"Use Coffee. Use Cappuchino. Use Sailor. They won't get anyone into any trouble. But Happy's done for the day," I told her, fixing her hard with my eye so that she saw I meant it. I turned on my heel and marched into the barn office and called the owner of the riding school.

"Happy needs to go on vacation," I told her. "He's sour, and he's trying to bite people for cinching him up."

"Cancel the rest of his lessons for the week," she said without hesitation. "I'll trailer him out to the pasture Friday." That was what I loved about K. Had she been there coaching and not out on maternity leave, she'd have seen the problem developing and stopped it. But the minute it came to her attention, the horse came first, and the instructors - who all loved to use Happy, for his excellence as a school horse - would just have had to lump it.

K was an amazing coach. I remember the first time she told me to do a series of three bounces - jumps positioned so that there were no strides in between, so that the horse bounced over one, then two then three without any intervening strides. This was hard enough for me at the time - I had a tendency to get behind the horse on the first bounce, not ready for the second jump and even less ready for the third - but she told me to do it without either stirrups or reins, my arms held to the sides like airplane wings. I looked at the combination doubtfully.

"I don't think I can do that," I told her.

"Yes, you can. Now let's go," she told me in a confident voice, but one that brooked no demur. I trusted K, so I figured that if she said I could do it, she was right - and she was. It was scary, but I bounced three 2.5 foot jumps without stirrups and with my arms held out like wings, only my seat and my balance and the calf of my leg keeping me with the horse. Stirrups? We don't need no stinking stirrups.

It wasn't only riders K was good at judging. One time, when I was working in the barn, a dapper little man came wandering in. He had a sort of round, doughy, pallid face surmounted by an absolute Afro of frizzy middling brown hair. His face was saved from absolute ordinariness by deep, warm brown eyes and an undeniable sweetness of expression.

"Hello," he said to K. "Are you the riding school owner?"

"I am," she said. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, I'm an engineer and I've just retired," the man said, raising my eyebrows. He looked no more than 40, so he must have done well with his investments. "I've been taking lessons for a few years and now that I'm retired, I'd like to buy a horse - just for hacking in the woods, you know, nothing fancy. I'm not interested in horse shows or that kind of thing." K chatted with him for about 5 minutes, discussing his level of expertise and so on. I was listening with only half an ear, price-labelling hoof picks and sweat scrapers behind the counter. After a bit K looked at me.

"Go saddle Cappuchino up, will you?" she asked me.

"Sure," I said, trying not to goggle. Cappy was a draft-horse cross of indeterminate parentage, a likable horse but not exactly a live wire. She was broad and stocky and slightly sway-backed, with huge dinner-plate hooves, her fetlocks liberally decorated with long, cart-horse feathers. She was a palomino, but unlike the lovely but bitchy Goldie - whose coat was a sleek, rich, glistening gold - Cappy's was light and fine and cottony, a sort of pale yellow duck down. Her mane, though abundant, was similarly cottony, perched along her crest like a strip of fiber batting from the innards of a stuffed animal. When wet, as if bathed or sweaty, Cappy's coat became invisible, revealing that under its thin down she was pink-skinned with many large brown freckles scattered irregularly and unflatteringly over her hide. She had a large coarse cart-horse head, with a floppy, protuberant lower lip that tended to flap rhythmically with her gait.

She was undeniably a kind, honest horse, and on the trail was a pleasure to ride: she was square as a box, and no matter what tilt or pitch she was on it was impossible to feel unbalanced on her at any speed. On the trail she would occasionally pretend to be wild and excitable, with large, slow spooking jumps to the side (which, as far as spooking, shying horses went, were laughably charming and easily sat). Still, even on the trail she tended to be a laggard, trailing slowly behind the other horses and having to be asked constantly to keep up. In the arena, she invariably proceeded around with her eyes half shut, dragging her toes with the minimum of effort, barely heaving herself in slow-motion over jumps, dangling her feet and rubbing the top of nearly ever jump with her toes. The fronts of her hooves in fact had a slightly flattened spot on them from all her toe-dragging. She had a tendency to be hard-mouthed and was inclined to lean her head forward of the bit and let the rider do the work of holding her head up for her, as if it were just too much effort for her to manage on her own. It was true you could put a one-year-old child on her back and be assured she would bring him to no harm - partly because she would barely move unless cajoled incessantly - but she didn't seem to me to be the ideal choice for a gentleman looking for a hacking companion, unless he wanted to proceed at nothing faster than a toe-dragging walk. She was, for one thing, 22 years old at the time, and while that might mean she had another decade or more of good use in her, it also meant she wasn't likely to be the liveliest thing on four hooves. And while she was easy-going and willing enough, she was undeniably into maximum energy conservation, in the form of proceeding at the slowest possible pace, regardless of gait.

Still, I went out and caught her up, brushed her down and picked out her feet and tacked her up. The dapper gentleman came out to meet her, stroking her and letting her smell his hands, and then he mounted her up and rode her up to the arena. Bemused as I was by this unlikely choice, I had to watch, so I followed them up.

The arena was set up for a jump course, nothing over two feet, and of course there was plenty of room around and between jumps to ride. The fellow walked Cappy around the arena for a circuit, getting the feel of her mouth, of her gait. Cappy was looking odd... something strange was going on with her. After a moment I realised that she had her head not just up, but on the bit, her head perfectly perpendicular to the ground, neck beautifully arched. Her eye was bright and open, instead of half-closed, and - wonder of wonders - her lower lip was tucked into a normal position, instead of hanging so low you could see the pink lining of it as it flopped loosely. She was picking up her feet, stepping along briskly, a light in her eye.

The rider asked her for a trot, which she picked up smartly, then a canter. All of a sudden Cappuchino had a big, scopey, reaching stride, well-collected but driving with power. He pointed her at a jump and she popped it smartly, tucking her big feet neat and high under her chest, landing on a turn, already seeking the next jump her rider wanted. She sailed sweetly over that one too, turning on a dime, taking a flying lead change in the center of the arena to turn for the next jump. A flying lead change? CAPPY?

I gave K a narrow look. She just smiled.

The man criss-crossed her across the arena, making a giant figure eight of it, and Cappy took another flying lead change, as smooth and lovely as any dressage prospect, turning tightly for another jump, a light of joy in her eye. He brought her back to a trot and her big heavy feet reached out ahead of her in a beautifully extended trot, floating - those big, heavy cart-horse feet floating over the ground, seeming barely to touch it, snapping up smartly and reaching forward with grace and elegance and undeniable beauty.

The rider pulled Cappy to a walk and rode up to where K and I stood at the fence. I managed to remember at the last minute to clamp shut my hanging jaw and tried to look as if this was just what I had expected.

"I'll take her," he said. "How much?"

"Thirty-five hundred," K said, which was a fair expense in that time, especially for a 22-year-old mare... but Cappy was a valuable school horse, and would have to be replaced. Given that she was strong enough to carry a 250# man without strain, and gentle enough to take a 2-year-old around safely, she wasn't going to be the easiest prospect to replace.

"Will you take a check?" asked the dapper little man, without hesitation.

We returned to the barn, where I unsaddled Cappy and brushed her out for the last time. Her head was up, her gaze following the man into the barn, and she stood watching until he came back out, giving him a low nicker when he reappeared. We untied her and walked her around to where he had his vehicle, with a horse trailer already hitched up. He'd come prepared. I watched Cappy load up willingly, and then watched her go down the road in her new trailer - a good horse, and I'd miss her - but there was not the slightest heaviness in my heart. She met that man and she knew - knew right that minute, somehow, that he was The One for her. And all the grace and power and joy in her big heart, mostly sleeping all those years as a school horse, awakened at once and said: Take me. I am for you.

I went back into the office, smiling dreamily, thinking about Cappy's life to come. She would be spoiled and cosseted, loved for every inch of her being, brushed and polished and daily taken on the communion of a ride with another soul with whom she was in complete accord. With a life like that - who's to say she might not have decided to hang around for another ten years, another fifteen? I hoped fervently that it would be a long time, a long lovely life, a reward for the many years of her faithful service as a school horse, a repayment for the countless people she helped teach to ride.

I looked at K, an expression of utter bemusement on my face. "How did you know?" I asked her quietly. "How could you possibly have known that she was the one for him?"

K smiled and shrugged. "I just knew," she said, simply.

"Well. That was remarkable," I said with wonder. "Cappy didn't go three strides with him up before she knew she was in love. I never saw anything like that in my life."

"It's a good ending for her," K agreed. "She deserved it."

Things like this don't always happen in life. But it's nice to know that they DO happen sometimes; a little touchstone for when things seem grim. A little reminder of grace. So when I get discouraged, I try to remember things like this: like Cappuchino in love.