Spontaneous Scribbles

In which Atara sees the Sun

2018-04-13T16:51:00.000-04:00

Warning: Appropriate levels of vitamin D likely

It's sad I live in a place where this is the hazardous weather condition.

In Which Atara Tries to Resurrect This Thing

2018-04-10T07:32:00.001-04:00

Stuff like, how Atara can't travel without being groped or having other, less intimate
TSA adventures
We'll start with that since our plane is literally scuttling about the airfield to find a place to take off.

Cheers.

In Which Atara Accidentally Becomes a Porn Star... or an ASMRtist... we're not really sure which

2017-03-02T16:19:00.000-05:00

So I had this dog, Phoebe (she's with Jesus, now).

Phoebe by artist Betsy Marsch

She was super loving and affectionate with people and one day about 4 or so months ago I let her take a nap with me on the couch. She decided instead of naps that I needed every pibble kiss. I thought this was cute, so I filmed it. Pretty much just to show my husband later. This is really starting off tantalizing, isn't it? With the whole--this has to do with my dead dog thing. Just wait; it gets better.
Since I was in a compromised position, I of course started the filming vertically, and eventually moved it to horizontally. It's a terribly-shot video, is what I'm saying, here. The lighting is bad, I look like shit, and NOTHING HAPPENS. Phoebe gives me lots of gross kisses (this dog ate any poop she could find unless I found it first--she would even try to eat her sister-dog Lucy's poop WHILE LUCY WAS STILL POOPING), she goes to look out the window, she comes back, I tell her she's a very ferocious pit bull. The end. I'm fully clothed AND under a blanket.

I basically looked like this.

I don't even remember why I uploaded it to YouTube. I probably forgot that Google Drive was a thing, and it's not like people haunt my youtube channel. I think I hoped I could edit it later to show how cute Phoebe was being and nobody would ever know I'd shot any impromptu video vertically.
I guess I forgot to ever actually edit it, and I pretty much forgot about the video entirely. So then randomly a couple weeks ago I got a notification from YouTube that my video was getting some action (ha ha, see what I did there) that I wasn't expecting. I go to see what's going on and my video has ALMOST 30,000 VIEWS.

I mean, my highest viewed video at the time was the memorial one my hubsand made for his dead brother, and there were only like 230+ views. Plus there were personal feels attached to that and support from family and looots of friends bringing in those views. Also, it is a great video (shoutout to da hubsand's mad skillz).

Hubsand said my video probably got picked up on a website somewhere with more visibility, but for the life of him, he couldn't track down how or where in the inner workings of the interwebs. Great, I thought. Why couldn't they pick up one of my cute videos? Like Daddy's Little Helper, or a funny one, like hubsand reading aloud some of my more awkward vet tech notes. Or, God forbid, something actually beautiful, like aforementioned artist Betsy Marsch creating art in real time with a musician?!? But no.

So then I was immediately suspicious that my fame was of an unfortunate nature and thought some people were mightily confused, and just clicking and moving on when they realized I wasn't providing what they were actually looking for. So I went hunting to see what constitutes a "view" to YouTube. It looks like somebody has to stick with the video for at least 10 seconds, and probably more like 30 seconds to be counted as a "view." Source.
So no, I was wrong. People were sticking with my gawdawful quality video past the 30 second mark. This was srs biznes to them. I sort of decided at that point to pretend it wasn't happening. I figured it'd go away.

So no-one told you life was gonna be this way...

Then I suddenly couldn't ignore it any more because I started getting comments (most of which weren't in English, and I don't put a lot of faith in Google translate since the time I gave it a few Japanese tests it failed miserably), and somehow over 500 people had subscribed to me, and my craptacular video magically had almost 400,000 views.

I started mentioning this to some friends. Among the comments I received are the following:
1. *hysterical laughter*
2. *jokes*
3. "It's kind of an uncomfortable video to watch." Uh, yes, I know, it's terrible. You weren't supposed to see it until it was edited.
4. "Wtf? it's just your dog being affectionate! People need to get a life or GTFO."
5. Or, most interestingly, one person who suggested [wholesomely] that it falls under ASMR--Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. Basically, you get chills (like, a nice head scratch chills) from hearing certain sounds or watching somebody do a detailed job of something (I think I might get it when I watch a friend sketch). Wikipedia has some things to say about it, as does Cracked.

I have no idea what's going on, but ASMR videos sometimes looks sketch to people who are culturally conditioned to think whispering + women always equals sex, and I'm curious to see how many views I can get out of this, so I'm going to leave the video public for now. Hubsand jokingly suggests monetizing my new-found skill.
As of 3:55pm EST I have 781 subscribers and my video has 451,575 views.

It is now 4:01pm EST and I have 452,967 views. Will the madness ever end?

EDIT: due to running some of the comments through Google anyways and determining they're basically all porn-related, I am totally skeezed out and am making my video private. But hey, I described it up top for you with all the juicy details, and here are a couple selfies of Lucy and I basically re-enacting a scene from it. Try to keep it in your pants, everybody.

Do you even see all that skin.

Om. Nom. Nom.

The video is deleted with 455,098 views. My brush with fame.

In Which Atara Gets a Raise and New Bandage Scissors

2016-09-26T17:43:00.000-04:00

I got a new job.

The story leading up to that is full of treachery and tears and extra medications and my therapist has it added to the list of Things That Happened to Abby in 2016, so I don't care to talk about it here, so moving on.

I'm now going to be working at a large emergency and specialty care hospital.

Pros to this development:
1. It's only a 10 minute, really pretty drive from our house
2. I've always been super interested in emergency medicine
3. I think I'll be good at it because whenever medical emergencies happen, I'm the creepy person who's just really interested and totally not emotionally invested in it at all in the moment, and just see it as a problem to be addressed*
4. I already have several good friends working there
5. Pay raise
6. People seem super friendly and helpful thus far

*When medical emergencies happen to animals or other people, that is. If it's me, all bets are off. Usually I have a panicky meltdown if it's something which might involve needles. If I think it will only involve Xrays and such, I think it's all funny.

Anyway, I went to my first day of orientation and my first action was to disturb some poor person and make an idiot of myself.

I had parked, and started walking towards the hospital, when I saw two kitties in the back of a car, so of course I went over to say hello.

"What do you want?"

I wanted to take a picture for my crazy cat man, so I scratched lightly on the window to try to get the orange kitty to look at me.
No luck.
I scratched again.
LO AND BEHOLD THE BLANKETS STARTED MOVING. The kitties were not alone! They had a human person with them!
I did not wait to see who their companion was--I hastened away, muttering apologies into the wind.

Orientation itself consisted of a lot of paperwork and boring training videos about the software we'll be using that would be easier to learn just from spending half an hour in front of the actual computer with the actual software and somebody telling us to actually just look stuff up ourselves but you know, whatevs.

Oh, we did get yummy free lunch.

Gyro of Yummy

And a fellow orientee* had this epic Smaug tattoo (also the tree of Gondor, but I was more interested in Smaug).

"My armour is like tenfold shields . . . and my breath death!"

*I just made that word up

And best of all, they gave me my very own teeny calculator, a nice thermometer (laaadies), and BANDAGE SCISSORS.

The end

Did I Miss Anything?

2016-08-28T16:20:00.000-04:00

Wow, I haven't posted on this thing in over a year. Fail.
For one thing, I've been too busy, but for another, despite the fact I now am a Certified Veterinary Technician (license and everything!), and am working at an awesome clinic, I can't really figure out how to share stories from that on a blog without the possibility of some client randomly finding it, recognizing themselves, and getting mad.
People like getting mad, let me tell you.

So yes, I have amazing stories to share, and yes, I'm keeping track of them, and yes, I'm going to keep contemplating this dilemma, because I know a lot of you really want to hear my stories. But if I can't figure out a way to do it appropriately right now, you might have to just wait twenty years or so until the statute of limitations I just made up ends. Okay? Sorry about that.

Unless somebody wants to get me a publishing gig under a pseudonym?

Here's a teaser for you: HBC (hit by car) came in this week and I ended up looking like a serial killer. Don't worry, the patient is fine. My scrub top, however, is not.

Not My Best Post, but So Many Things!

2015-04-17T21:45:00.001-04:00

I am so, so glad it's the weekend. This entire week seemed to creep by.

Slower even than this guy, probably.

...and then today ended it off in an insane, adrenaline-fueled haze.

o.O

So to start it all off, I took a radiography test at 7:30 this morning since I won't be here Monday to take it with everybody else because I'm driving to Bloomington, IN with my sister for my Prisca's doctoral recital. And of course this test I studied the most for of any test yet this term and that alone stressed me out. Mrs. R suggested I even take it next week, since she told us it would be hard, but I was all: "weellll... that probably won't go so well since I am not going to study over the weekend."

"Fair enough," she said.

So I took the test this morning and had major confusion on three of the questions, since I overthink everything, but it turns out I got them right after all. After I handed the test over Mrs. R said "was it as bad as you thought it might be?"

"Yes," I said, and she laughed a lot more than I thought my comment warranted. But hey, I love to make people laugh.

Then we fell into this weird time-slog where every class seemed to take forever. I found out, during Exotics, that somebody's grandfather is going to bring his macaw in on Monday and I AM MISSING IT.

"It's okay," says Macaw. "Another time, perhaps."

So then me and four friends had signed up as the first group in our class to do our first ever actual radiography practice with the machine and an animal and the personal protective gear and thyroid shields and everything and like an idiot I was like "YOU GUYS, let's do Lucy, because she's crazy and Mrs. R can teach us how to radiograph crazy dogs!"
Because here's the thing--Mrs. R told us most animals can be positioned and will hold still for radiographs, and you get good at it and don't have to sedate them. So my thought process was "wow, I can't imagine that. I want to see how this is done. Lucy is a bit of a crack puppy, so she'd be a good choice, and we'll get to do the whole trial-by-fire thing under professional supervision!" And my friends, bless them, were like "sure! sounds good to us!"

BUT WAIT; I was trying to be responsible and take Lucy out beforehand to potty and get some of her energy out (a useless endeavor) and along the way I discovered Lucy is now in heat, so her usual crazy had increased ten-fold.
We returned, fifteen minutes before we were due in the radiography room, and I handed Lucy off to my buddy, Erica, while I ran to get treats to keep Lucy calm. Unfortunately, there were only three left, and since I care inordinate amounts about not being "that person," I jogged to the storage room to get a new bag for kennel. Whilst shoving a door stop in place I got accosted by my friend Emily who was all "somebody's having a panic attack in the bathroom and locked herself in so I ran and told the teachers and Dr. D is in there with her!" so then it's like, three minutes before I'm supposed to be in the radiography room, but I'm like "crap."

I didn't want to get in the way if the situation was being handled, but on the other hand, lots of bad things happen while lots of people watch because everybody assumes somebody else it taking care of it. And hey, I've got lots of personal experience with panic attacks.

So I went in the bathroom and I guess it was a good thing I did because the girl in there with the other girl was trying to help but obviously was at a bit of a loss. So I obnoxiously took over and ended up spending fifteen minutes teaching the girl breathing exercises (thanks, Mother-in-Law, for the training!) and she did awesome and got control back and I showed her some relaxation stuff and was totally actually useful, I think. I love being useful.
And the girl is really cool, and now I know her name and want to be friends with her.

Well, anyhow. We parted ways and I bolted for the radiography room (no clue how late I actually was--I just ran in and apologized and got filled in on the first part later). But since I wasn't stressed enough, of course Lucy was INSANE CRAZY DOG and would not stay calm. After about what felt like ten minutes of wrestling with her (while we were all wearing heavy, bulky lead-protected mittens), Mrs. R--who had already wrestled with Eugene (an intact, crazy, beefy male dog) earlier--was finally like "NOT DEALING WITH THIS; SHE'S DONE. GET ANOTHER ONE!"

So by golly we picked another one. A beagle mix named Buster. We had to measure him and re-do all the calculations and XRAY settings. Finally Erica, Amy, Mrs. R and I got him down and got our right lateral thorax view. Then we helped Jordan and Victoria suit up.

Sexy thyroid shield not pictured.

Then I and my two buddies spent an awkward and hilarious ten minutes groping each other in the completely dark processing room, trying to get the film out of the cassette, and the photoprinting in the correct place, and then feed the film through the processor (all with absolutely no lights and trying not to mess up the pre-processed film with our fumbling, grubby little fists).

You guys, it TURNED OUT BEAUTIFULLY. I mean, except for a fingerprint in the film. BUT WHATEVS. Meanwhile Victoria, Jordan, and Mrs. R courageously wrestled Buster into VD frog leg position.

This, only with fewer props.

They got their view! Then they processed it while my group cleaned everything, and the whole thing was super successful and we shared high fives all around and Mrs. R said something about it being so nice working with people who are friends.

"How do you know we're friends?" returned Victoria. "We might all hate each other."

"Well," said Mrs. R, "you're doing a really, really good job of hiding it. Thank goodness."

Turns out Lucy would have been amongst that small percentage of dogs that Mrs. R would "immediately torb up" for radiography if she'd encountered her in practice.
Good job, Lucy.

And I guess I never actually refilled the treat container. Whoops.

During all of this insanity I was experiencing, Garrett was at some huge Pittsburgh city-planning shin-dig behind the scenes with super duper special headphones and insane video equipment (including a 16x9 foot LED screen with LEDs for all the individual pixels) while his teammate was in the audience, providing feedback, while one of the company's projects Garrett worked on was presented to a room full of Pittsburgh big-wigs and some people from Copenhagen and stuff. And afterwards the mayor... you know, of Pittsburgh... came by and gushed over their presentation and of course they forgot to get a picture with him.

"Excellent work, Simcoach Games."

Then they picked me up at school and we all went and hung out for almost two and a half hours. It was super fun--we all shared crazy animal stories, and laughed a lot. Then, in a beautiful moment, after talking about insects, a large, black, winged insect with a huge, pulsing abdomen that looked stinger-laden flew into my face and dropped down my shirt and into my bra (we were outside on the deck of the restaurant) and I flipped out. Garrett then spent the next frantic two minutes trying to fish it out without it [possibly] stinging me or injecting my boob with evil insect eggs or biting me, and meanwhile this old dude who was alone at a table beside ours watched the whole thing in helpless mirth.

Glad we provided everybody with some great after-dinner entertainment.

And now we can relax for a day before my sister gets here and she and I drive 7 hours to IN, then Tuesday morning drive 7 hours back so I can make it to the house for the 3pm inspection.

Ramble ramble ramble. Time to play some Minecraft.

Happy Valentine's Day

2015-02-13T23:29:00.003-05:00

Fifty Shades of Grey is just a Twilight porno-fanfic, so it makes sense that it sucks. But at least it provides some good artistic inspiration.

I <3 y'all.

Here is something much more awesome and romantic:

Stories from Vet Tech 7: Distracting Pictures, and Tough Decisions

2015-01-24T23:48:00.001-05:00

Well, term 4 hasn't finished yet, but I think I and my friends figured out why upperclassmen always complained about fourth term. They weren't clear in their explanations, though. From what they said, we thought we'd have a test or two every single day, and they'd all be so hard our brains would leak out our ears.

But thus far this term has still had fewer tests than last term (the final tally for last term was 30 tests in 38 days of class... as of today we've only had nine tests in fifteen days), and they haven't really seemed any harder than last term. The issue appears to be that this term is just HORRIFICALLY BORING. Maybe it's because we're not doing much with any animals in class. Or maybe this is the hump term of school--our Wednesday of sorts, and we just have to get through it, and we'll be over half-done, and time will speed up again. Who knows. But it's been rough. There have been some good moments, though.

For one thing, during first term I got really close with a group of girls, but we got split up for second and third terms. I was with one of them through those terms, which was awesome, but I very much missed the others. But this term we're all back together again! In the meantime, I got closer with some other excellent ladies. But this term has definitely been filled with good times with all my friends. Multiple times they've proved how awesome they are; making sure I got study packets when I was sick and missed a day, being encouraging and kind in general, and just generally making time at school a really positive experience... even when I'm not feeling great, and even when we're all just trying to survive the next test.

A second thing happened which has helped make my future career goals more clear. Our Animal Tech class this term is Everything Laboratory Animal, basically. So that means really in-depth info about mice, rats, and other common lab animals.

The professor worked at Pitt's research lab for years and loved it. Last week after class one day she told me that I should try to do my externship at Pitt because "[I] have the scientific mind and would really be able to appreciate the research environment." Now, my head immediately swelled several sizes (I'm a sucker for praise from people I have respect-crushes on).
Visions of accolades danced in my head for days.
Now, I was 95% sure I had no interest in pursuing lab work as a career, but I'm always up for learning new things, so to do my externship at Pitt would be almost ideal; I could see what really goes on in a research lab, be involved in actual research, learn a ton, have a great addition for my resume, but then after the two month externship, move on to vet tech work I'm more interested in.

But the more I thought about lab work, the more I realized I didn't want to do it--at all. It's all well and good to say that laboratory research is going to help other animals and people (which it definitely is), and that there are lots of regulations that mean animals get analgesics and such if they need them. But the fact of the matter is, those animals are still almost all going to be euthanized when research is over (sometimes before, since the researchers need to run tests on body systems or need amounts of blood that a single, live, tiny mouse can't provide and still live to tell about it), and a lot of the research involves giving them terminal diseases... on purpose. I can deal with the animals at school getting poked and prodded because after six month's time they get adopted and [mostly] get really good homes. But lab animals usually don't. I dislike doing uncomfortable procedures on animals at any time, but knowing that it's not even to make them better or healthier, but rather harm them (even for the "greater good") makes me queasy.

Despite all this I was still talking myself into pursuing it. Why? Because I have always hung out with brilliant people. Not just smart people, but brilliant people. I got born into a family of them, some of my siblings are them, a lot of family friends are them... I grew up surrounded by brilliant people. Because of that I've had a pretty great education. But I'm not brilliant myself--I don't have the talent or the drive.

In college, I chose "enough sleep" 9 times out of 10, and tried to split the rest of my time equally between achieving the other two goals, and didn't really care if neither were achieved.

But here's the issue; for the entirety of my life, brilliant has been the norm. Brilliant is expected. It's just sort of assumed. Don't get me wrong, brilliant is pretty cool--I've learned all kinds of really fascinating things, and know people from all sorts of scientific, artistic, and philosophical backgrounds. If I have a question about something, chances are good I know, or have some connection to somebody actively working at a doctoral level in that particular field. I love that. I love learning. I love knowledge. But I have no desire (currently) to pursue further academic degrees.
I don't want to be a vet; I want to be a vet tech.

But I do want all those brilliant people I know and respect to respect me and ascribe to me the same brilliance they have. I like being thought of as "smart." And I am. But I come from a place where the average intelligence is master's level at the least. That's unusual, so I know my perspective is skewed. But being able to say that I have a "background in research" basically assures me a seat amongst the academics.

Luckily the majority of the brilliant people I know respect tradespeople. I know they don't think I'm dumb because I want to be a vet tech. But I think some of them sort of assume it's only a step along the path to being a full-fledged DVM or veterinary medical researcher.

Maybe I could do it. Maybe I could go to vet school and do great. But I don't want to. I don't want to go to school for years or spend months writing research grant proposals. It would drive me crazy. I love working with my hands, and I love animals. I love working with my brain, as well--but more as a sort of hobby.
Being a Vet Tech involves a lot of abstract brain work, don't get me wrong--but it's all directly tied to the practical. I need to know all the intricacies of how and why a dog might get infected with Dipylidium caninum, and what to do about it, but I've still got an actual animal standing in front of me. Showing clinical signs. Actual tests I can physically run. Things I can see, things I can do. The abstract knowledge is tied directly to the physical reality, and that's the way I like it; that's the way that makes sense to me.

I know this about myself, and I love this about myself. But I also want to be brilliant.

"But you'd hate it," Garrett said. "You'd hate working in a research lab."

"I knowww," I whined. "But I'd learn so much! People would think I'm a smartie!"

"They already do," he said. "You don't need to be doing something you'd hate to try to prove something people already know."

"But if I did research it'd be OFFICIAL that I'm smart."

Then, of course, I accepted what I'd already known--I didn't want to do it for the love of the thing. Yes, I would appreciate having a more intimate knowledge of how research is conducted. But I can always ask all the people I know who already work in research. I didn't care that I might indirectly be saving thousands of human and animal lives in the future by giving mice cancer now; I would have to steel myself every day and hate myself a little bit more every time I injected another one.
It's not like I'm not going to egg researchers' homes or anything--it is indisputable that they have saved countless lives--but I don't want to personally be involved in it if it involves harming many other little creatures.
What it comes down to is that I just want to convince myself that I'm brilliant, and have other people recognize it.

This is, needless to say, fruitless and vain.

So I'm going to concentrate on regular clinic work, but seize any opportunities I can to also work with exotics and large animals. There: immediate relief.

Or why not both exotic AND large?

But parrots are pretty great...

And I definitely need horses in my life at all times...

Basically, there are a ton of other things I could be doing as a Vet Tech that I would absolutely love.

My mom once introduced me to someone as "our closet academic." I like that. I'll take it.

I love what I am learning at school, and what I'll be doing in practice, and I have found my niche; I am content.

So now that all that rambling is over and done with and given to the wind I'll leave you with this moment from last week...

Clinical Lab this term is all about cytology--tumor biopsies are obvious topics, but also we've covered fertility-related cytology (most common with breeding animals).

Female cytology lecture and lab wasn't too bad. But male cytology... well.
Our professor started out the lecture with this comment:

"I'm going to talk about the procedure first, and then we'll go to the powerpoint. The pictures are a bit distracting."

You will understand why if you choose to watch the following video of Garrett reading aloud my notes from that class. I give it a strong Awkward/PG-13 rating. Proceed at your own risk.

And yes, I checked with him to be sure he was okay with me posting it.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm narcissistic enough I don't mind."

Sir Percy Goes to the Vet

2014-12-13T16:52:00.004-05:00

This is Sir Percy Bird.

And me. I'm there, too.

I have had Sir Percy since I was 9 years old, and he was <1.

He is now 16. That is a lot of years we've been together.

When I was young and foolish, my siblings and I used to play "birdie ball" where we would sort of chuck him across the living room to make him fly back and forth between us. He still lets me hold him now, so hopefully he's mostly forgiven me. I'm sorry, Pretty Bird.

"It's okay."

Once, Sir Percy was walking along the floor and Dad rolled over his little foot with a computer chair. He's been missing that one back claw for years now since it happened. But he still climbs up and down his cage with ease. The top is his favourite place to take a little snooze.

Zzz.

Until some jerk comes along and wakes him up with a camera.

My parents originally promised me I could have a bird to prove I was responsible enough to have a dog. But, as it turned out, my great Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Mike found our perfect dog for us a few months before I'd even gotten Sir Percy. We all trekked out to their gorgeous farm on the Tennessee river and what they'd tried to convince my Dad of over the phone was made abundantly clear in person--yes, a German Shepherd could be the perfect family dog for four young children.

Playing during a rare snow in TN.

Exploring the new PA neighbourhood with Ben.

She even attended a creeking at GCC during my college years.

Cani and Annabelle.

She remained the best dog until she died in 2011 at age 13, and now there is a dog-shaped hole in my heart, waiting for the time and space to to fill it again.

But anyhow, after getting Cani-dog all those years ago, my parents decided they'd still get me a bird, so I received Sir Percy for my 9th birthday a few months later. He was hand-raised by a breeder in Jackson, TN, and Dad went and watched that batch of babies for an afternoon one day before picking out Sir Percy to be my companion.

He was a pretty great pet. I mean, other kids didn't have little parrots, and I did. It was awesome.

Sir Percy has witnessed a lot in his time with me, and quite a few pets have come and gone since he's been here. We've had a random variety of snakes, a few turtles (including a little snapper!), a couple goldfish, and some wildlife.

He ignored Weepers, a sparrow I raised.

"Why is that thing here?" he said. "Who even keeps birds as pets? Ugh."

I don't recall him having any animosity towards my squirrel, though.

Me and T.J., both of us still young.

Sir Percy lived through encounters with a number of cats.

Figwit, who liked jumping on the side of his cage and trying to pull it down.

"Just one little taste? Pleaassee?"

Betsy's little kitty, Gillie of Ockham

Guen

Tiny Kitty

Sir Percy has also had to accustom himself to me acquiring a husband, and said new husband's pet, Rad Cherenkov, the beta fish.

So Sir Percy moved to the city with me.

He was fine with the husband.

New perches are always welcome.

He met Rad, decided he wasn't worth bothering about, and never mentioned him again.

Rad is basically a flower that swims around.

Rad, for your information, is almost 4 years old. He is a very hardy beta fish.

Well, I've been trying to read more about cockatiel care on my own, but going to Vet Tech school has opened my eyes to a lot more information that you can't get just by googling "cockatiel care." I decided Sir Percy should probably go to the vet. One of my favourite professors works with exotics and large animals, and when I approached her about it, she recommended a couple clinics nearby. I picked one, made an appointment, and today Garrett and I took Sir Percy to the vet for the first time in 16 years.

I learned a lot.

Firstly, while it's good to fast dogs and cats before vet visits in case they need bloodwork, it is not good to fast cockatiels because they'll tend to hypoglycemia.

Secondly, I learned how a healthy cockatiel's body should feel, and where natural little divets are, and how to tell if the cockatiel has fatty liver disease (a common complaint). Sir Percy has a perfect little body, with no signs of fatty liver disease.

Thirdly, I learned there is this thing called the "choana." It's sort of the nasophanyngeal opening, but it also consists of lymphatic tissues dangling from the top. Basically, it's cockatiel tonsils. In birdies, you want it to be spiky-looking. If they're blunt and dull, it would indicate bad diet and immune issues.

See the little tooth-like things? That's what I'm talking about, and they should look like that.

The vet showed me Sir Percy's choana, and, much to my disbelief, his are super sharp and pointy and not dull at all. So now all I can think about is---did dinosaurs have choana? Like, it wasn't enough they had dinosaur teeth... even their little throat lymph tissue needed to look like teeth?

I think we're going to need a bigger speculum.

See figure J-51.

The vet also commented how nice Sir Percy's crest looks. Usually they're kind of sparse and short by his age. This surprised me, since I'd thought Sir Percy's crest looked a bit ratty. But no, the vet thought it was super fine, even though it bends off to the left a bit.

Super fine neck feathers.

I decided to get him tested for psittacosis (a fairly expensive test, but the disease is zoonotic). I mean, it's been 16 years, but I figured we might as well do it right. We'll get the results from that in a week and a half.

Fourth thing I learned: the vet said that because Sir Percy is so old, he's probably set in his ways, and he wouldn't recommend getting him a birdy buddy, because he probably thinks he's part of our flock and doesn't recognize that he's a bird (which explains why he didn't know what to do with Wheepers). So I guess we're off the hook for that. I do think I want to invest in a new cage for him, though. This one is as old as he is, and actually looks its age, unlike Sir Percy, apparently.

Fifth thing I learned: I love exotics medicine and I definitely want to try to pursue that in addition to large and companion animal medicine.

Sixth thing I learned: Sir Percy weighs 77grams, a nice midway between the 70-85g the vet usually sees in cockatiels. When the vet first saw Sir Percy he thought he was going to be overweight, because he's fluffy-looking, but nope! Healthy birdy weight.

In the end, the vet was awesome, and gave us almost a 50% discount because I'm a Vet Tech student. Yay! Basically, he just charged us for the psittacosis test they have to send out. Sir Percy will be getting yearly check-ups there from here on out, and I'm thinking perhaps I could see about developing a relationship with this practice and either working there, or making other exotics connections through them.

And once I know Sir Percy is cleared of possibly having psittacosis, he can go back to his favourite past-time--cleaning people's teeth.

"Yum. Let's see what we've got back here..."

Special thanks to Garrett, for being my chauffeur and errand-buddy, and Dr. Glenn Marsch, for taking a lot of these photos, and siring me. Here's his flickr account.

Stories from Vet Tech 6: PG-13 and Parasites

2014-12-05T18:59:00.000-05:00

We've been covering the reproductive system in A&P, so, naturally, there have been a lot of good quotes.

During these discussions, I've had one burning question building up inside of me. We were discussing the male parasympathetic reflex caused by olfactory cues and behavioural changes in the female, and my time had come. I raised my hand.

"Yep?" said our prof.

"I have a weird question," I said.

"Okay," she said.

"So I used to work with these stud horses... and I swear that whenever I was ovulating, they'd get pushy with me and I had to be a lot firmer with them and, and..."

By this time the whole class was laughing, including the teacher.

"Am I crazy?" I asked.

"No!" said my prof.

"Thank goodness!" I said. "Because it was getting pretty weird when I'd have to come home and tell my husband that the horses all got boners when I walked into their stalls."

"I'm guessing," said my professor, still laughing, "they weren't picking up any behavioural cues from you, right?... but they could definitely pick up hormonal cues. Actually, that reminds me of this gelding I used to have. Zippy. And Zippy shouldn't have been behaving like this, being a gelding. But Zippy would get an erection whenever the farrier pulled up in his truck. It was so awkward."

Hey, hey, hey!

~*~

"Dogs don't have bulbourethral glands. Bulbourethral glands are also called Cowper's gland, after the guy who discovered them, I guess." She paused. "I don't think I'd want an accessory sex gland named after me."

~*~

Discussing mammary glands and that females will continue lactating as long as they are regularly being suckled.

"That's how you end up with people still nursing their toddlers and stuff. Eesh. If you're old enough to go get your own drink, it might be time to move on."

Good grief, look at that kid; he's ready to join the local flag football team.

I guess it's a great diet plan for mom, anyways.

~*~

Fun facts:

Armadillos always give birth to identical quads.

Really interesting and only kind of horrific facts:

1. Those cute little pot bellies that puppies and kitten have are actually caused by Toxocara spp (roundworm). Puppies are born with it because it goes transplacentally as well as transmammary, and kittens get it immediately after birth because it goes transmammary for them. Also, virtually every single adult dog/cat has encysted roundworm. You can deworm them, but it won't kill the encysted ones, which will just wake up and become adult worms whenever they want to later (which is part of the reason why you have to deworm regularly).

Irresistible!

2. Toxoplasma gondii is the protozoal parasite pregnant women are told to watch out for and why they are warned not to change cat litter for fear of catching this. In reality, you are much more likely to get it from unwashed fruit or improperly cooked meat, but anyways... normally people just fight it off and it's not a big deal, so if a pregnant woman was exposed to it prior to pregnancy, and then exposed again, it wouldn't be an issue because she'd have antibodies to fight it off. But if her first exposure was while pregnant it can cause miscarriage if contracted in early pregnancy, and severe developmental issues in the baby if contracted in later pregnancy.

But besides that, here's the really fascinating thing; it also might be giving normal, everyday people the crazies.
Read this article about it!

Just plain horrific facts:

If you want to know what the parasite Echinococcus granulosus does when it gets into a human (which is not its definitive host, and we'd be better off if we were), you can watch this video. It merits a solid 12 out of 10 on the ick scale.

~*~

Not quite so desirable now. Is it.

Desperate Times

2014-11-14T23:43:00.001-05:00

I've been having issues staying awake in classes this term because of it still being dark when I get up in the morning. I've never drawn so much on my notes before, just trying to look busy.

Please note the obvious lack of actual notes on this particular slide.

Stories from Vet Tech 5: More Crazy People and What Not to Write on Legal Documents

2014-11-14T23:38:00.000-05:00

"We do not recommend supplements to our veterinary clients," says our Clinical Medicine, and Anatomy & Physiology professor (the same fabulous math prof from first term) during our Clin Med class.

Not okay

"There are some that can be useful in human medicine, but they're not regulated the way actual medications are, and most of the ones you get over the counter aren't even in the correct form for your body to process them. It doesn't really matter how much vitamin D you're adding to your diet--if you're not eating enough fat, your body can't process the vitamin and it's basically worthless. And some supplements would be downright harmful--calcium supplements to large-breed puppies, for example. But some people, I tell you what--they buy their pets supplements and won't listen to a word you say. There was this lady... well, she had issues going way beyond this. This was also the lady who accused us of stealing her puppies. I told you that story, right?"

No, we said. You didn't.

"Well," said Clin Med, "I should tell you that story later, since we're discussing nutrients now."

She stopped and looked at her powerpoint, contemplating. "Actually," she said. "Can I just tell you this story real quick? It's so special."

Definitely, we said.

"Okay, so this lady bought her animals supplements all the time--from human stores--but that's not the fun part. So she had this golden retriever that needed a c-section. She's one of those awful backyard breeders. So she brings her dog in and we do an x-ray, and I tell her, you know, okay, I think I saw maybe 4 or 5 puppies in there, we'll do the surgery, and I'll call you as soon as we're done to let you know how it went, okay? So she leaves, and we do the surgery. There were only three puppies, actually, which is a common mistake to make reading the radiograph because we can keep the momma dog still, but we can't keep the puppies from moving around inside, so a lot of time one puppy will superimpose on itself and look like, you know, three puppies or something.

Pin the spine to the puppy

So I call this crazy lady and tell her the surgery went well, and guess what, your dog is doing so well you can come pick her up tonight. There are three puppies. So she says okay, she'll come get them, and she's bringing the police. And I'm like what? okay? and just hang up, because this lady is crazy, right? So she shows up without the police and is all mad at me and wants to know where the other puppies are. And I'm like there were only three puppies. I miss-read the radiograph, and I explain that whole thing to her.

No, crazy lady says. There should be eight puppies.

Eight? I say. I only told you four or five, originally.

No, she says. I talked to my son, who is a very respected human physician, and he told me there should be eight puppies, and you stole the other five, and I'm going to sue you.

I kind of look at her, thinking, you know, I don't want her inbred golden retriever puppies, and finally I'm like, okay, crazy lady, why do you think there should be eight puppies?

And she says (get this, you guys)... because she has eight nipples!

And I don't even know what to say to that. I just look at her and say that's... not really how that works.

Yes, it is! she says. My son is a very respected physician, and he agreed with me!

I'm like soooo you have a son, right? Like, one son?

And she's all YEAH, what's your point?

And I'm like, nothing. Nevermind. And somehow we convinced her not to sue us. The end."

This person was obviously made to nurse five puppies.

The whole class agreed that was a great story. "Do you have any more?" we asked.

"Oh, my goodness, yes. All from this lady, too. She also sprayed her birds with cologne. Which is very bad for them. We were working on one of them one day and I thought the bird smelled pretty fruity. But you know how animals sometimes kind of smell like the homes they're from? But I sniffed this bird a little harder and it was way too strong. So we finish up the check up or whatever we were doing, and I take the bird back out and I say by the way, you don't happen to, you know, spray cologne on your birds or something, right? And she just gives me this look and says, of course I do--they LIKE it."

They do often enjoy baths.

Clin Med looks out over the class and sizes us up. "We can always discuss this whole nutrition thing later. Want to hear about the time she told us aliens abducted her cat?"

We asseverated there was nothing else in the world we would rather hear about; certainly not the relative dissolve-ability of fat-soluble vitamins.

"Great, because I'm kind of dying to tell this story, now. So she brings her cat in, and she's all shaky--you know? And tells us her cat had been hiding under her bed and wouldn't come out, so she tried to go down and pull him out, and he started talking to her. In English. He told her that aliens had abducted him and probed him and put an alien microchip in his brain and they were keeping tabs on her with it, and she demanded that we remove the microchip immediately. So Dr. L and I are trying really hard not to look at each other, because we'll lose it.

Incidentally, MIB is one of my favourite movies of all time

Okay, says Dr. L, we'll do an x-ray to see if we can find a microchip. So we take the cat back and do an x-ray. You guys. You know the normal microchips? For pets? Well, it's well-known that they can travel around. They're in the subcutaneous space and they can sort of migrate--but they migrate down--to the caudal end, maybe down the legs a little bit. It is extremely rare for them to go anywhere else. Well, you guys--this cat's Avid microchip had somehow migrated out of his scruff, up his neck, and into the SubQ layer on the back of his head. He had a microchip in his head.
So obviously Dr. L and I have a powwow.

What do we do? I ask.

Dr. Lee kind of grimaces. Maybe I should show her an x-ray of a different cat, he says.

You aren't going to do that! I said.

No, I guess not, he says.

So we take the x-ray out and explain that it's her cat's own microchip in the back of his head, and it's not in his brain. But she doesn't care, she demands we remove it. So we do. We make a little incision and squeeze it out and sew him back up. I hand that poor cat back over to her, and he sort of stiffened and just looked at me, begging me, I could see it in his eyes, not to make him go home with her again. But we had to, of course. And what do you know--she calls us later that night and said the procedure worked--her cat wasn't speaking English to her anymore."

~*~

"You guys, if something is oozing pus, the correct term is 'purulent'. Please do not write 'pussy fluid' on your medical forms. They are considered legal documents, and everyone will laugh at you."
--Every single professor

Please have your human on a leash.

2014-10-01T18:37:00.003-04:00

Today I went on a walk in the park with my cousin and her daughter and two dogs. I call her my cousin, because that is the closest approximation of the familial relationship we have. It's complicated.

Our family is much less sterile, and even more fun than this.

Anyroad, we went to hang out, and complain about life, and enjoy the sunshine and each other. All these things were accomplished. As we strolled along, chatting, we came across a group of older walkers, standing in a cluster blocking half the pathway, with their four--unleashed--dogs milling around blocking the rest of the pathway. Now, all dogs are supposed to be leashed in this area, but there's no point making enemies if you don't have to, so we let the dogs all meet (not that we had a choice), keeping an eye on one of my cousin's dogs, who gets nervous and nippy around bigger dogs.

"He's got a bit of a Napoleon complex," my cousin said, later.

Nervous Dog did great, which my cousin commented on, and we continued on our way, exchanging knowing looks about dumb dog owners, only to realize Unleashed Dog #3 was tailing us. The owner came huffing up, eventually, calling the dog, which paid absolutely no attention to her. I was peeved at this point and stood in-between the dogs, trying to block hers from Nervous Dog.

"You don't need to do that!" she said. "[Unleashed Dog #3] won't hurt him!"

"Ma'am, you're supposed to have your dogs on a leash," I said.

"[My Unleashed Dogs] are friendly!!" she said, angrily, as if that made everything okay.

"Well, this dog gets nervous around bigger dogs," I said, pointing to Nervous Dog. "And they're still supposed to be on leashes."

"SHE said he was fine!" Angry Lady said wrathfully, the "she" referring to my cousin and her previous, surprised comment about Nervous Dog's lack of nervousness.

Then we exchanged a few heated comments, hers mostly about us, to her dog she was attempting to leash. She then tried to continue down the path, loudly saying to Now-Leashed Dog #3 "no, I'm sorry, they don't WANT to be friends!"and other such passive-aggressive comments, while interjecting her commentary on us with trying to call Unleashed Dog #4 to follow her. Unleashed Dog #4 did not think she was very important, and continued circling and bothering our dogs.

"You obviously do not have control of your dogs!" I called after her, while we stood still, confident, waiting; interested to see how long it would take before she had to sheepishly come back and physically leash Unleashed Dog #4. It took a lot longer than it should have, then she faded off into the distance again with her animals, complaining about people who won't let their dogs have friends.

Then we passed a pile of steaming doggy poo.

"I bet that's theirs, too," said my cousin.

~*~

After this charming interaction, we went to the off-leash, fenced-in area to let our dogs have some fun. Several dogs and their owners came and went. Then I saw her. A large, fluffy, magnificent German Shepherd.

Such dignity.

"Shepherd!" I said. She turned away from the other dogs she was playing with and looked at me, and made a bee-line for me. I crouched down and she leaned up against me, panting, and let me pet her all over. I found her itchy spot, which she liked, and then after talking to her for a few moments, I figured I should acknowledge her owner.

"What's her name?" I asked him.

"Petra," he said.

Petra, deciding that I was now more interested in her human, and our interview was up, stood up, strode over to her owner, sat down squarely in front of him, and looked up expectantly. He gave her a treat, and made shame-faced eye contact with me.

"She's a therapy dog," he explained, sheepishly. "She marked you as her patient, and gave you therapy, and now she gets her treat."

I laughed. "Well, she was right," I said.

I went home and told the story to Garrett. "The thing is," he said. "She probably did know. I bet she might even have been able to smell and recognize your meds."

Best dog.

Crazy Train

2014-09-24T22:00:00.000-04:00

Welp. After months of headaches, and irrational, rage-filled crying fits because some dude on the street offered me a business card or flowers, or I had to, you know, go anywhere... I am diagnosed.

Because obviously this guy is a threat.

But I'm at a stoplight and can't escape without rejecting him and being a jerk!

The official ruling: "Migraines, general anxiety disorder, and agoraphobia."

So now I have crazy pills, just like everybody else, AND a therapist (to learn coping mechanisms).

Ah, The Far Side.

As for the migraines (which they definitely are), apparently I've been taking the Excedrin for so long it stopped helping the headaches and started making them worse.
Cool.
I didn't know that was a thing that could happen.

My crazy pills are going to make my headaches worse for a period of time, and then after a few weeks everything should start leveling out. So I just need to survive a few weeks longer. Garrett pointed out that the meds should be kicking in just in time for time-change and winter darkness and SAD to start being an issue. So there is that.

At least they didn't try to steal my blood.
And after taking the headache meds, my incredible migraine I've had all day has simmered down to merely "pretty annoying," which is totally workable. Boo-ya.

For fun animal facts I have these:

1. Basset Hounds are considered a large breed dog.

Long breed dog.

"Too much skin for his face."

--Garrett

2. If you can't properly train a dog, you shouldn't have children. (This was just the opinion of my dog-trainer professor, but I have noticed correlations betwixt badly behaved children and badly behaved animals in homes).

Or you have good kids AND good dogs.

3. The reason dogs and cats can't have acetaminophen (tylenol) is because it will cause the hemoglobin in red blood cells to denature (change its shape), and clump together, and the cell to basically leak all its goodies out. It causes anemia in dogs, and death in cats. So yeah. No tylenol.

Heinz-ehrlich bodies, with a bite munched out of them by evil tylenol forces

(or diabetes mellitus, or lymphosarcoma, or hyperthyroidism...)

Crazy Train

Stories from Vet Tech: Learning New Things

2014-09-09T21:53:00.000-04:00

I learn all sorts of new things at school. Some of them are unusual or not well known outside the animal-lover world, and some are more generally known, and if I'd bothered to think about it, might have figured it out. But they're all still amazing! And each time I get excited. Here are 5 of my favourites (i.e. the ones I remember right now).

1. The iris (the coloured part of the eye) is a muscle. Involuntary, non-striated, smooth muscle, to be exact. This is filed under "things I should have known, but somehow never thought about."

2. Zoos dread days that service dogs come to visit. Emergency alert calls go out to all the keepers whenever somebody brings a service dog in, and keepers surreptitiously follow the person with the dog and are always on alert. Why? because lots of exhibits (birds, petting zoos, etc) allow for human-to-animal interaction, which naturally means service-dog-to-animal interaction. This is dangerous both for the smaller zoo animals if the service dog's instincts take over, and dangerous for the service dog if it enters, say, the Kea enclosure. Keas are brilliant and angry and have those massive parrot beaks and will mob up on and kill a dog.

They laugh, but really this kea just wants to tear the liver from her still-breathing body.

Oh, and also? One service dog with kennel cough killed 5 out of the 7 Mexican wolf cubs the Cincinnati zoo had managed to breed years ago when for ten years basically everybody thought Mexican wolves were almost extinct (turns out the wolves had managed to move and set up operations in Yellowstone when we weren't paying attention, but it was touch and go for a bit). It's even worse now because people can get their normal pets labeled as service "therapy" dogs. Zookeepers get pretty suspicious when the "service dog" is a chihuahua with a sparkly pink harness.

Uh-huh.

3. Cats are "induced ovulators." They don't have normal periods of ovulation when they drop X number of eggs, mate and get pregnant, and that's that. During mating times the female will drop an egg each time a spiky tom-cat penis penetrates her (no wonder they yell), so actually, if she mates several times during her season, that single litter of kittens can have multiple fathers.

Are you my Daddy?

4. If you like fastidious, self-cleaning, independent-minded dogs (you know, the closest thing you can get to a cat while still being a dog--i.e. a dog that just looks at you when you tell it to do something), go for a:

Vizsla

Basenji

or Dalmation

5. And finally, good zoos do a lot of "enrichment" stuff now. The keepers try to provide toys or mental stimulation for the different creatures in their care. If the creature is, you know, a snake... that enrichment might be a nice new rock, or a different kind of dead rat.

"This is my favourite new toilet paper rollsss."

But the smarter your animals are, the more enrichment they need. Keas and macaws and animals like that get puzzles to play with (kindergarten toys and the little metal and wooden kinds you keep in baskets for when guests come over and none of you can solve them).

"Idiots can't solve a simple puzzle..."

But Bonobo monkeys? Our closest extant relatives? Well, like us, Bonobos enjoy the simple things in life, like squabbling, and then having sex. And eating, and then having sex. And that's pretty much all they ever do, which is really awkward for families visiting the zoo. At the end of their day outside working hard and sexing each other for the entertainment and horror of families everywhere, Bonobos like to kick back and watch TV.

Now, they fall into our "uncanny valley" of being WAY TOO CLOSE TO US FOR COMFORT and can read our facial expressions really well, and make a lot of the exact same ones--hence our discomfort with them (trust me, I hate apes just as much as the next normal person). They're fascinating, but creepy as heck.

Seriously; stop that!

Well, Bonobos love soap operas. It makes sense. What do people in soap operas do? Squabble, eat, drink, and have sex with everybody. Also they overact something terrible. You know how you've been in a waiting room and a soap opera is playing, and you joke that even though you can't hear it, you can still tell what's going on and who's doing who and related to who? Yeah, Bonobos do that, too. They even have favourite soaps.

Oh, no!

The best part? They will get mad if the keepers show a repeat episode. I mean, they'll deal with it if they're really bored and saw that particular episode like, long enough ago, and don't really want to get up and change the channel. But if it's only been a month or something, and they were really looking forward to seeing whether Diana is dating young Anthony or older Jonathon or the men's really old, silver-fox father, they will freak out and scream Bonobo obscenities at the keepers until they fix the problem--just like normal people.

Omg. Get a room.

lil fox

2014-08-14T23:12:00.001-04:00

Mostly I hate the city. But sometimes I see something I hadn't noticed before, either because I was too busy pretending the city wasn't swirling around me like an ugly, noisy, seeping cloud of smoke and despair, or because someone added something to it since the last time I looked a particular direction.

We came home two days ago and as I opened my door to get out, my eyes naturally lifted up and rested on this:

He's trying to hide, too, poor little guy.

"Case Study"

2014-07-29T22:38:00.003-04:00

Our Terminology professor gave us all a writing assignment for Friday--use ten words from the last two chapters of our Term book (dealing with the skeletal system and its components), and write a case study. If we had a real one that had happened to a pet or a friend's pet, we could use that, or we could invent one. I asked if I could make it fun, and she said yes. So here is my attempt to use ten veterinary terminology words in a vaguely interesting way, and also make my English degree not a complete waste of time.

Enjoy.

“Case Study”

(The Wanderer, 1818, by Caspar David Friedrich)

Brandon stood upon the crest, overlooking the natal grounds. He clasped and unclasped his hands behind him, pausing at times to check his pocket-watch. Today was the day. Since his brother, Ambrose’s discovery Brandon had put all his wealth to work for them, sure that no number of antique cars would equal the worth of what they were attempting to bring to life.

Ambrose had unearthed ancient osteoblasts in the stomach of an engorged mosquito, legs akimbo, frozen in time in a drop of amber. A hapless ant was also curled in death in the golden-orange jewel, but she contained no exciting discoveries for the brothers. Brandon realized, distantly, still lost in memory, that he was suffering from an anxious tetany, perhaps linked subconsciously to the spasms working inside the wonders below him.

Suddenly, he saw a movement. He hastened down the slope, almost losing his footing in the loose soil, and collapsed, kneeling, beside the large, multi-faceted ovoid before him. The sun hit his face and reflected his visage perfectly a thousand times over in the tiny, smooth areas of the egg. He saw some new wrinkles on his brow, but noted them not--they no longer mattered.

Ambrose was beside him in an instant--his equipment had also picked up the movements in the egg, and summoned him to his brother’s side. Brandon’s myalgia was becoming more intense, and Ambrose murmured close beside him that it was nearly time. Brandon fell back into his reverie, remembering the ups and downs of the last fifteen year’s work.

By far the worst time was when an intern, quivering and sweaty, had come to them and squeaked that he’d found evidence of epiphysitis in the extremities of the diamond-egg tenant. They’d woken experts in their field across the globe and flown them, bleary and cross, to the brothers’ labs. Realizing what was at stake, the experts had set to work with lasers and prayers to correct the issue, and had withdrawn, satisfied, leaving only faint seams in the developing limbs to remind the men, in xrays, what almost happened. Now they were about to witness the results of their work.

Now the egg twitched, moved from inside, and a spine shoved roughly through the egg’s membrane and impossible outer shell. It slashed away at its holding cell, and then momentarily stayed still. The brothers held their breaths, fascinated. The spike seemed to be made of the same substance and beauty of its encasing shell, multi-faceted, clear, and perfect, yet incredibly thin and strong. The amniotic fluid seeped out of the rend in the shell, and a long muzzle, attached to the other end of the spike, shoved its way out and made a whuffling sound. Suddenly, with a heave, the occupant pushed the rest of its shell aside and slithered out onto the grass, gracilis, long legs tangled together like a newborn foal’s.

“Looks like the osteoclasts did their work,” Ambrose breathed. Brandon could not yet reply in words. He reached out and gently felt up and down each leg and tiny, cloven hoof. The seams were invisible now. He grasped the forleg nearest him and firmly bent it in and let it extend again.

“Flexion’s good,” he said. “I think they did.” The brothers fell silent, watching the new life. A light, late afternoon breeze rustled between them, and roused the bundle of silken hide and slim bones lying in the grass; the little creature began scrambling against the ground, bringing its long legs underneath it. It succeeded, took a tiny breath, and heaving itself up, it whinnied.

Stories from Vet Tech: The Lot of Tech Husbands, and Hell Hath no Fury like a Cat.

2014-07-18T23:04:00.000-04:00

All my professors thus far are women. Married women at that. This industry, like human nursing, tends to appeal mostly to women. In human nursing, that's beginning to change--the stereotype of female nurses is being beaten down. But it hasn't kicked in yet in Animal nursing. I think I've seen two men in leadership/teaching roles at VTI, and about 6 male students.

"It makes no sense," said Animal Tech. "I would love to have a man handy when I have to wrestle a 150 pound Mastiff down into lateral recumbancy."

For the men here, they have both more and fewer obstacles than the women have. On one hand, it's easier for the (generally) stronger men to restrain a large, frantic dog. On the other hand, if an animal has been physically abused, it's (generally) by a man, so the Vet Tech guys have an extra major hurdle to jump in winning the trust of biased, abused animals with PTSD.

But perhaps the roughest place for the men is as Animal Tech husbands. They deal with 3am ER visits for their wives and girlfriends with septic cat bites, and they must be flexible when it comes to strays. Luckily my husband is just as likely to bring home a stray as I am, but not all are as willing. With good reason.

~~~

"Best story," said Terminology. "We'd just gotten married. We were relaxing in bed, just enjoying each other's company, when I heard a noise. I turned on the light, and my cat had just had explosive, gelatinous diarrhea all over my new husband's pillow. We both freaked out and spent an hour cleaning everything, all the while me dragging towels around and weeping and begging him not to kill that cat. 'How much longer could he live, anyways?' I said. Well, he lived another 17 years. And he peed on everything. If it was on the floor, it was fair game. You bet my husband and kids learned to pick up their clothes real quick."

~~~

"I got this Golden when I was 19," said Animal Tech. "He died when I was in my thirties. He saw me through college, marriage, and kids. My kids grew up with that dog. I didn't realize it would destroy me when he died. I could not stop crying. Decided to try and find a dog in Pennsylvania or Ohio. More than that was too far. Well, I found this dog. This perfect dog. I kept coming back to her photo--there was something about her. But she was in Indiana. But I needed a dog. That dog. One day my husband came home from work, and I was under the kitchen table, cleaning up taco meat and crying. I'm talking Night of the Living Dead. Mascara everywhere. I hadn't had to clean food up off the floor for years because of my Golden. My husband looked at me. Now, he is not an animal person. If anything, he wanted just a little foofoo dog. One of those tiny ones. Something he wouldn't have to deal with too much. I wanted a manly dog. With teeth. But he looked at me and was like 'you want to go tomorrow morning and get that dog?' So the next morning we drove six hours to Indiana, spent twenty minutes with the dog, and drove six hours back home with her. She's been with us ever since."

And for heaven's sake don't breed your dog or buy from a breeder, either. If you think you require a certain breed because of how it looks/acts, you're doing it wrong. Shelter animals have all the personality traits (and a lot of the looks) you need and want, you just need to know what to look for (or find a friend who does!). PLEASE get your pets neutered. So not kidding.

~~~

"You have to be prepared," warned Animal Tech. "Be gentle with old animals, but do not ever underestimate them. This one time, some people brought their cat in to be put down. It was 22 years old. It looked like death. Like somebody had just draped skin over some cat bones. Worst mouth I had ever seen. Teeth like eugh. One bite from that one and you were going straight to the E.R. But it was completely emaciated, right? The owners said it had just gone downhill all of a sudden the last two days, and they knew it was time. So the vet and I took it back and are getting ready to euthanize it and I'm making jokes about how I don't even need to do anything to hold this thing down, I mean, look at it. And the vet was like 'yeah, scruff that cat.' And I'm like 'Really? are you kidding?' I was still fairly new at this. But thank God he told me to scruff it. The second that needle went in, that cat took on new life, freaked OUT. If I hadn't had it scruffed, it would've eaten my face right off. Now, of course, it was dead in like, two seconds. It was just like the last hurrah. Don't ever underestimate old animals. No matter how crappy they look. There's still life in there."

Stories from Vet Tech: New Friends, Amputees, and Cat People

2014-07-14T21:01:00.001-04:00

I slunk into the orientation room on the third floor, little knowing I would, for the next eight weeks, spend 50 minutes here every day for Biology.

"This will be your biology classroom," said somebody.
"Students are not to use the elevator," said somebody else. "The teachers have to move large things up and down it frequently. Please use the stairs."
"Your lockers are in the basement."
It wasn't until later the painful enormity of these facts all cohered together for us.

As is the habit of many new students I religiously avoided eye contact with all other students, exchanging only greetings with my admissions counselor, and found an aisle seat near the front, for maximum powerpoint viewing. As is also the habit of anxious new students, I'd forgotten that 2 minutes prior, whilst still on the street outside, I'd texted my husband a message that would require a response.

Suddenly, unmuted, a nerd sound to end all nerd sounds began its alarm from deep within a zipper pocket of my book bag.
The girl across the aisle turned to look back at me while I fumbled the phone.
"Is that [nerd sound] your text alert?" she said.
"Yeah," I said.
"Awesome," she said, and smiled.
I'd made a friend.

~~~

"My kids were whelped in a vet clinic," said my Terminology professor. "They grew up knowing a heck of a lot more about animal medicine than any normal child should. But this one time, when my son was young, we were at a walk for Alzheimer's or something and we were talking to somebody else with a rescued Pit Bull, and my son goes 'MOM. Why does that pittie have four legs?' Poor kid. All we ever had were rescues from dogfighting rings and ones that had been hit by cars. They're all amputees."

~~~

"I'm a dog person," said Animal Tech. "I mean, cats are fine. I have nothing against cats. But give me a dog any day. Cat people are weird. At the vet clinic I work at, we had somebody bring in their cat to have it euthanized. She handed it over. The cat was already dead. I swear to God. They'd been carrying around a dead cat in their arms. The techs decided the least traumatic thing would be to pretend the cat wasn't dead. We took that dead cat and pretended to euthanize it, then just ushered the owner out and told 'em not to worry about the cost; it's fine. Go home. It's been a bad day. Yeah. They just handed us a dead cat.
You know what else cat people do? I had somebody with a bunch of cats. Whenever one died, they'd put it in tupperware. Just to hang onto it for a while or something. I don't know."

I thought to myself, I hope they at least kept it in the freezer. I should've asked.

"Actually," Animal Tech went on. "I should tell you guys, while I'm thinking about it... take cat bites seriously. I had a cat bite me right down to the joint in my finger once. Tiny little hole. I went septic because I was afraid going to the doctor for a puncture would make me a wuss. Yeah, ended up in the ER at 3am and was getting prepped for surgery by 6. I was in the hospital a week and almost died. Had three surgeries on this hand, actually. Seriously, you're not a wuss. Get that looked at. But moving on to the cat body language lecture... cats are great, you guys. I love cats. We have the best job."

Sin and Horses

2014-06-19T11:54:00.002-04:00

Alright, folks, I have a depressing story for today.
I forget who made me aware of this situation originally, but there is a man, Todd Pierce, who has Riding High Ministries. From what I've been reading they mostly work in prisons and bull riding circuits, and operate their "seminars" under the banner of Trying To Encourage Real Masculinity In Our Culture Today Or Something by showing Todd Pierce "breaking" a wild colt.

(Spoilers, if you still refer to it as "breaking", you're doing it wrong.)

Taken off the "about us page" :

Our culture has done everything they can to suppress masculinity; but it is very much alive in these men. They are aggressive, reckless, vicious competitors, yet they are humble, compassionate and sincere. They believe manliness is the same as being Christ-like.

Wow.

Better.

Seriously, wow. Where to begin? If these guys believe that an ideal (godly) masculinity can legitimately be aggressive, reckless, and vicious, their methods of horse training are probably going to follow those trends. Which does not bode well.

Let's begin with some definitions (thanks, Google!):

Aggressive:

--ready or likely to attack or confront; characterized by or resulting from aggression.

Synonyms: hostile, belligerent

--pursing one's aims and interests forcefully, sometimes unduly so.

Synonyms: assertive, pushy

Vicious:

--deliberately cruel or violent.

Synonyms: brutal, ferocious

Reckless

--(of a person of their actions) without thinking or caring about the consequences of an action.

Synonyms: rash, thoughtless

Okay. Now I'm going to try to explain what I believe this guy is thinking about these words, as a Christian, and explain why they are wrong. He probably is thinking that Christ is aggressive in the way He has conquered death, sin, and Satan. Here's the thing, though; if a Christian knows that God is creator of the entire world (including Satan... who is a fallen, created angel, not God's evil counterpart), and all-powerful, there is no "aggression" needed to conquer Satan or the suckiness of the world. Without going into all the theological hoopla of why the world sucks so much sometimes, basically keep in mind God did not create evil. People disobeyed God and sinned. That is why the world is messed up. But don't panic! He is in control and has a plan.

Anyhow, back to Satan... I'm likening this to someone whose infant is trying to bite the parent's finger. The parent needs no "aggression" to stop this. He or she simply removes the finger from reach and says "no." The parent is in complete control. Christ voluntarily came to earth as a person, born in very poor circumstances, and spent his whole life on earth healing people, giving them forgiveness and hope, free of charge, and then quietly went and died on a cross for them to seal the deal.
Sorry, that is not an aggressive life. Christ was not aggressive. The only times recorded that He got angry at people it was because they were trying to put themselves, their hypocrisy, and their made-up rules between sinners and Christ. And then he confronted them, but it was not for His own interests, it was on behalf of people He loved.
If we want to hammer this point home for good (wow, what violent phrasing!), Matthew 11:27-30 conveniently covered it, two thousand years ago. For context, Christ has been talking to his disciples and such about John the Baptist preparing people's hearts for Christ's coming, and then Christ prays to God, thanking him...

"My Father has given me all things. . . .

Come to me, all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit; and you will find rest. For the yoke I will give you is easy, and the load I will put on you is light."

What's this? Simultaneously Jesus declares He already has control over everything--aggression is not necessary--and then sums it all up by straight-up offering rest and comfort in a domesticated animal-related analogy!

Booya.

I'm sorry, I can't do anything even vaguely redeeming with "vicious."
I think Todd probably thinks Christ is vicious on Satan or something, meaning He slams him hard for his disobedience and messing with us. But the actual definition of vicious is outside God's character: deliberately cruel.
Cruelty is having some sort of power over someone and using that to crush that person mentally or physically more than he or she would ever deserve. It is not gentle. It is not humble. It is brutal.

Proverbs 12:10: A righteous man regards the life of his beast, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.

This commercial collectively made every horse person who watched it, cry.

Or at least tear up a bit. Like I just did, re-watching it.

I'll handle reckless just by sharing the rest of this story.
So this guy, Todd Pierce, posts a video on his personal FB page and it ended up going viral amongst a lot of horse people. Here is the video: Todd and his horse . Please go watch it. It's only 37 seconds.

Done? Okay, the video made me, and a bunch of other people furious. Here is everything wrong with this video that I can think of, seeing it, in no particular order. Firstly, this man is leading a men's retreat on horses in the woods. People who go on wilderness-type retreats are quite often not wilderness people. It is likely that a fair number of the men out here with him know nothing about horses, and need protection by having trail guides who DO know what they're doing. I was a trail guide for two summers. Believe me, you have to be super aware, communicate clearly and calmly, and sometimes definitely protect the public riders.

Lots of things can go wrong. Doesn't mean they will go wrong, but it does mean you have to be prepared for them, and do your utmost to protect against them.

Instead, Todd, without thinking, put himself, his horse, and all of those men and their animals in danger. You saw that horse careening around and running into the camera man? They were extremely lucky nobody got seriously hurt (except Todd, who apparently tore a ligament in his knee--more on that later). So if Christ gave his life to protect and care for us, this guy did the opposite, and put everybody and all the animals he was in charge of in danger.

Secondly, you know how people wear ear plugs when they fire guns?

Photo of Garrett by Dan Straite.

Yeah, well guess what--a horse's ears are much more sensitive than a person's. They're prey animals, and are super aware--listening and looking--ALL the time. You can give horses commands in quiet, low voices, and they do just fine. People who do hunt off a horse's back (and care about the horse!) will put earplugs in the horse's ears. Firing a gun three feet from this horse's ears was cruel. The horse was, apparently, young, and hadn't been trained about gunfire. If you have a good relationship with your horse and are gentle, it is fairly simple and straightforward to teach a horse not to be afraid of loud noises. But it has to be done patiently and kindly. This man failed miserably. This horse, if anything, just learned that gunfire is horrifying and the best reaction is definitely to freak out, pitch the idiot off your back, and get the hell outta there.

Being a cynical and terrible person, my first analogy to this "desensitizing" Todd performed was wondering if his way of "desensitizing" his virgin bride on their wedding night (I have no idea of his marital status, I'm just making all this up) was to just pound her as hard as possible and assume she'll still want a round two!

Seriously.

So anyhow, a lot of people got really mad about this (one of my big rage-inducers was seeing all the comments on the original video where (obviously ignorant) people thought the whole video was hilarious, and not, you know, HORRIFYINGLY DANGEROUS AND CRUEL), and I heard a rumour that Todd took the video down. But obviously he didn't, if it's still up where I could link to it. However, a few days afterwards he posted a status that ran thusly:

"Specific prayer request from Todd: Two days ago, Colton and I were horseback riding in the mountains when a young fox ran out and the colt I was riding threw a fit. As a result, I got bucked off and tore a ligament in my knee. ... etc"

Yeah, sure. A fox. Okay, assuming this story is true, and he was unharmed by that terrific fall in his major fail video, it still speaks volumes that he hasn't yet responded to everybody getting on his case about his bad horsemanship. Know what it speaks to? pride. But definitely not humility, that he supposedly believes in.
Also, yes, horses are prey animals and dangerous because they're hyper-aware and startle easily. BUT, here is the thing. Accidents happen, yes, but if you have a solid relationship with your horse, that animal trusts you. You've taught it not to be afraid of sudden sights and sounds, you read the horse's body language and brain really well, and if your horse does startle at a fox or whatever, you really shouldn't have an issue. You exhibit no fear, and the horse, which trusts you, picks up on that immediately. Sure, the horse may shy away from the fox a couple steps. And maybe you'll fall off if you weren't prepared. But throwing a fit like the one in Todd's video? Getting bucked off? That's YOU doing something wrong.

Which moves me into my final part of this rant. Horses are not evil. They are not malicious. They are just horses. Some are smart, some are dumb. But they all think like horses, not people. If a horse hates a certain type of person (men who wear hats, men in general, women in general, etc) it is because that animal has suffered trauma at the hands of a person fitting that description. It doesn't even have to be the person doing something wrong. The person could slip in the stall with the foal and accidentally bring a water bucket down on the foal's face and now that foal is terrified of water buckets and people in its stall and will misbehave, sometimes dangerously. The person didn't do anything cruel, but the person was still responsible for what happened.

Yet on this seminar page Todd Pierce uses a horse to teach the people that they are sinful and need to be obedient and accept Jesus ("my son"--see how Todd Pierce is making himself into God the father, here?):

"The horse was spectacular. She was a three year old beautiful, well bred black beauty. Despite her pedigree, she was nothing but a prideful, rebellious filly that bucked and kicked to express her strength. Once she realized her way wasn't working and she saw I was waiting, she received my son and was made new. . . People saw the Truth and were set free."

(mistakes his)

Sorry, that's a bad analogy. The horse was probably freaked out because she was young, untrained, and surrounded by a multitude of people she didn't know, making lots of noises and staring at her. That's like putting someone in the middle of a stadium full of strangers, demanding the person put together a car engine in front of everybody, and loudly complaining that person is dumb because he or she doesn't know how to put together a car engine even though they've never been shown how before.

Look, I get that masculinity in our culture is hard to define nowadays and a lot of people think it means being a dick to everybody and never letting anybody see you cry.

So true.

And that is not good.

HOWEVER. Christians wishing to change that need to get over their own masculine hurdles. Todd Pierce is probably a very nice guy who loves his family and really does love Jesus. He is also reckless with other people's safety, does not consider the comfort of his animals, and can't spell (that last one is obviously his worst transgression). Nobody is perfect, especially Christians, but if you see something wrong in society, you need to make darned sure your solution doesn't have the same problems, slapped on a Jesus banner. So masculinity in secular culture is lacking in respect and care for others? Maybe you should focus on making sure your own approach isn't suffering from the exact same problems, just directed elsewhere.

Thank you, and now I will go get dressed and start being productive with my day.

Khan-Rex

2014-04-13T00:53:00.000-04:00

I have weird dreams. I was going to link you to my old xanga site where I posted all my weird dreams so you could peruse them at your leisure, but apparently xanga deleted it. Years of insight into my brain: gone.
I'm really kind of sad about that. In contrast, for funsies I googled my old Lord of the Rings fandom handle to see what is still on the internet from my elven days of yore. Sadly, an entire thread of me introducing myself on a forum is still accessible. Let's just say I hope to heaven that gets deleted soon--I couldn't even make it through a whole paragraph of what I wrote ten or so years ago without great shame and a desire to disappear.
I was an idiot. And that's being generous.

So I suppose this is all you'll get to read of my dreams today.

Last night I was a lead scientist on Jurassic-Park style endeavours.

Sadly, Jeff Goldblum did not make an appearance.

We succeeded (the science of it is a little fuzzy in the light of day), and ended up with some pretty rad dinosaurs. They were smaller versions of all our favourites, and of course we chose to only create the predators. Because look how well that's turned out before.

We were planning for them to basically be living theropod amusement rides; a few splashes of danger on all the business ends of our new friends, but they're miniature so it's nothing some good, strong leather tack and determination can't handle, right? Wrong.

We had some grand runs with our new transports around my parents' orchard, but as the dream progressed it became more obvious that not only had we managed to resurrect predators with their normal cleverness, ours had somehow been endued with an extra dash of something that meant they learned very quickly and could, you know, talk. It swiftly became apparent that their intelligence rivaled ours and all that stood between them and world domination was knowledge and opposable thumbs. What began as a reptile joyride ended in a cold war. We couldn't dominate them mentally into subservience, and to stay alive we had to keep acting as if we were on friendly terms, helping them learn while we shared frantic whispered plans between ourselves to try to find a leg up. We had basically become hostages to the dinosaurs and it was only a matter of time before they figured that out for themselves.

A good portion of the dream was taken up with this stage. During this time a personality emerged amongst our theropod captors--a Tyrannosaurus with the intelligence, charisma, and evil of Khan Noonien Singh.

You'd be taken in, too--admit it.

The point still stands.

Now this is going to get weird.

First, all the other dinosaurs seemed to sort of drift out of my consciousness in the dream, this new character was so pronounced; so overwhelming. I didn't notice any of the others anymore.

Second, some portion of you reading will sympathize with this, and some portion will think I'm either weird or perverted (or both), but bear with me... this Tyrannasaurus was stupid attractive. As in, I had a mongo crush on him during this dream. He was evil, sure. But evil never looked so good.

For that portion of you I promised would get this, let me explain thusly: he was the dinosaur version of Simba from Disney's Lion King. Okay, now some of you get it, and the rest still think I'm crazy. But there is precedent for this. Just try googling "simba weirdly attractive" and you will get 684,000 hits. That is kind of a lot of people who have struggled with inner confusion over this issue whilst watching The Lion King.

Angst!

Please see this post from a random denizen of the internet if you don't believe me. I think she summed it up well (and also proves even if I'm crazy, at least I'm not alone):

"I find the lion Simba physically attractive. And I recognize that that is weird. But I know I’m not the only one! And Mufasa? Totally a GLD (Good Looking Dad). The part when he’s climbing up the cliff out of the wildebeest stampede? He is totally yolked in that scene. Like I wanted to touch his biceps. . . . of course Disney is going to make everyone attractive, but what really weirded me out tonight was that I was really into Simba. I feel like someone put a lot of thought into how that lion should look to make us care about him. You could just see what he would look like as a human, and he would be a hottie. Longish, wavy hair, strong jawline, deep brown eyes, tan, tall, wide shoulders."

So anyhow, Khan-rex (as I will affectionately call him from here on out) and I had a thing going. Well, to be accurate... in his mind I was just the only person close to being his mental equal, so as an adversary I wasn't too bad, and there was some interest from his side, but mostly it was me totally crushing on him and his brains. His appearance fluctuated during the dream. Sometimes he was full-on T-Rex, sometimes he was more anthropomorphized and started looking like a cross between a tall, long-haired football-playing Grover I've seen around, Garrett, and the theropod we all recognize as a T-Rex. But he was brilliant and charismatic and terrifying. He asked questions as if I was his superior, and we discussed things as if I was his equal. All the while I was half in love with him. At some point we were both looking out a window and talking and I turned to him and flat-out said "you are very handsome." He made no return. He'd heard, but it didn't matter at all to him. His mind was already on his next move. He was quiet another minute and then he requested clothes so he could blend in, and he left to roam Pittsburgh--presumably to map it and create his plan of attack for world domination.

While Khan-rex was out roaming me and the rest of my team of scientists were still basically being held hostage by the other dinosaurs. The whole while both sides were still pretending we were friendly. Then someone would just be dead. It was terrifying.

Somehow I snuck out, stole a car, and tried to get help a few times in Pittsburgh, but my forays were useless and I had to return. Some number of months later Khan-rex returned, more powerful, and with a suit of red battle armour (for this return he was 100% Tyrannasaurus). He prowled around, roared, killed some people, and then left to take over the world.

Years passed. We tried to create and join various resistences. But somehow Khan-rex had taken the entire human population and either beaten them to submission (as in our case) or brainwashed them into serving and basically worshipping him. The only people who held out were the Swiss. They and Khan-rex carried on a continuous battle with each other--neither gaining ground. I remember my perspective suddenly changing, though, and watching, third-person, as some brainwashed people got shoved into drones (not to pilot them... for some reason they would only fly if a live human being were inside), and then sent into the battles. The drones were light grey-coloured metal pill-shaped things that flew with tiny pairs of white, feathered cupid wings. But once up in the air the people inside forgot the brainwashing, realized what was happening, and begged the opposing forces to shoot them down. It was supposed to be some emotional scene in my dream that I got to witness this.

This came up in a Google image search for "depressing art".

Appropriate.

Finally there was some headway. I worked it out so I stole a large truck from the outside world and the plan was for me to drive it back into our science research compound we'd been trapped in for years, pretend to be delivering the laundry for the inmates, and sneak my team of scientists out. But of course we were guarded. The outside of our compound already looked like Helm's Deep, but now the added guard station was set up to look like a gas station and it was manned by overweight, lecherous, brainwashed white trash guards. Khan-rex, having essentially taken over the world, didn't bother to visit anymore, so my crush was vastly out-performed by my anger and Desire To Save the World.

I had to flirt with one of the guards, but I got the truck into the compound, and began loading up my skinny, ragged, and exhausted scientists.

And then I woke up and had to go to work.

Well played, Sir.

One Degree of Separation

2014-02-23T13:53:00.000-05:00

I'm having a thought.

Why has individualism taken off so much in our culture? Especially in a time when I firmly believe we are more connected than ever. Perhaps as a way to escape that connection? I think it is good and healthy to have a positive view of the individual self: your body, soul, talents, weaknesses. But that needs to be balanced with the knowledge that your actions and decisions now have the ability to affect more people than even you dream of. And that is the thought I'm having.

1914. A hundred years ago. Phones, telegraph, snail mail. That's what you had, and the lag was incredible.

"Yes, I'll hold."

Home phones began to spring up in the late 1800s with service from the Bell Telephone Company. But they were not the commonplace things they are now. And their reach was still very limited. The idea of someone being immediately reachable through a personal phone in his or her back pocket was incredible.
About a hundred years ago the people in charge could use radios to talk in immediate ways, but the average person did not have the ability to communicate quickly with his or her loved one fighting in Germany.

With the advent of the internet, personal cell phones, cell phone towers, smart phones, and social media, all of a sudden we are able to have personal relationships and even daily interactions with people outside our town, and even across the globe.
Heck, humans are even capable of talking to each other in space, or communicating with our robots on an entirely other planet.

Curiosity, taking a selfie on Mars...

for you to see on your computer screen at home.

I'm not saying all this connection is necessarily always profitable. You can more easily come in contact with dangerous people, or morally ugly things. Sometimes ugly things are painful, but good for us to see and recognize--such as injustices happening to others in another country (or even our own).
I think the benefits of connection outweigh the negatives, though.

Luddites argue that relationships on social media cannot be real relationships because you aren't meeting face-to-face. But by that argument, the woman writing letters to her sweetheart in 1945 did not have a real relationship. Her relationship was in suspended animation until he returned (or didn't return).
By that argument, my husband and I dating "long distance" when I was in PA and he was in NM was not a real relationship.
There are difficult things about having a relationship over distance. . . but at least you can still have that relationship.

Case in point, when I was five and lived in CA I had a best friend.. Mostly I think our relationship consisted of both of our tiny brains being fully occupied with visions of unicorns all the time, and tiny, tearful arguments over whatever issues five year olds have to argue about. They were probably about to our various personal horse-related toy collections and a normal five year old's unwillingness to share them.
Well, if not for social media, I would never have really talked to that friend again. Instead, we found one another on social media and discovered our characters, having matured almost 10 years, were still compatible. Our relationship now has vastly improved over what it was since it now involves fewer tearful fights. Now we can share fun things with one another we find online, and because of this new connection we have we can share parts of our personal lives with one another--her pregnancy and a new baby, and my job with horses--you see we've still not quite gotten over that old obsession.
That relationship definitely enriches my life.

Because of technology,

I now know she would still appreciate this picture as much as I do.

Because of the connection the world now has, I can talk to my friend now living in Russia; I can follow updates about missions work I helped with in Japan two years ago; I can keep a close relationship with a best friend from college now living across the country whose life currently consists of a PhD program and people I've never met; I can make plans with my cousin in England to meet with her and her family during the few days my husband and I visit England for my brother-in-law's wedding.
These are all good things. Are they perfect? No.
But they are still good.

This brings me back to my original point--whether you think it mostly good, or mostly bad, we are all very closely connected right now. I haven't done much on this blog recently, so my traffic is low. But the country (other than the United states) that has been reading my blog the most, recently? Ukraine.
I've never been to Ukraine. I don't even know anybody from Ukraine.
I am friends with one person who lived in Ukraine for a year and sometimes follows me and my blog on social media. I have that aforementioned friend living in Russia who I know reads my blog and probably knows people from Ukraine. But that shows just how connected we are. I know somebody currently living here in Pittsburgh who once lived in Ukraine, and I know one person in Russia who might share something I've written with somebody he knows. And that is all it takes for me, not knowing anyone native to Ukraine, to have people in the Ukraine finding and reading my blog.

"Americans are so odd."

I mean, my goodness--my little traffic ticker you can see to the right of this post shows that my site has been viewed by over 8,000 people. Now, a goodly amount of that is a smaller number of people viewing my blog regularly, but nevertheless... there's no way I personally know even 4,000 people. All the extra pageviews are coming from random online searches, and people being linked to my blog by somebody else. I'm on the internet, so my words here are fair game to thousands of people (or millions, if I got real popular, I guess).

So with this idea that we are all closely connected, we need to get rid of the idea that our actions and decisions affect only us. It is selfish to believe that, and, quite plainly, incorrect.

Example? Somebody decided that not getting vaccinated for measles would only affect him or herself. That person's home base is normally Pittsburgh, apparently only a couple blocks from my home. Because of the incredible connections we now have, that person went to visit people in New York. And, because we are naturally drawn to people with similar life experiences, at least one of those people happened to also believe he or she didn't need to get vaccinated (or else they both had parents who believed this, and the individuals in question never bothered to remedy the issue) because it wouldn't affect anyone else. So guess what? the person from Pittsburgh came back from New York, with the measles, and then rode a public bus a few blocks from my house and exposed countless numbers of people to the measles. You know who rides public trasit? A lot of families with very young children. Pregnant women. People with compromised immune systems because of illness or medication. That's who. Now there is the possibility someone is going to have a miscarriage, someone will get sick, and someone else will die... because a couple people in two different parts of our country did not realize how very connected we all are.

Someone far away makes the decision to leave his wife. I know the wife. I am affected by his decision.
I feel sympathy for the wife, and then am taken by a spirit of fear that the same will happen to me. My husband, who did not give me any reason to fear, is perplexed by my anxiety and feels somehow guilty lest he's caused any of it. My husband feels pain because a person he does not know who lives thousands of miles away caused pain to another person my husband does not know. I am the only connection between the two.

This connection we all have can be the source of great good--healing friendships, new, healthy romantic relationships, comfort through finding others like ourselves with similar interests ("what?" says C.S. Lewis of the nature of friendship, "you too? I thought I was the only one!").

But it can also magnify evil, or spread disinformation and harm. We must be careful.

Ultimately it's up to us whether an online relationship is healthy or not. It's up to us to recognize our decisions do not affect only us.

We have to realize things we say to one person may end up reaching someone else entirely. A foolish decision one person makes might cause harm to a hundred others.

Technology is neutral; humans using it are not.
Both are powerful.

And because that was so heavy a post, and I can't stay heavy for long, here is a picture of a hedgehog with marshmallows on it:

Inspired by the season

2013-11-27T14:23:00.003-05:00

"My," said Daniel. "You are so large. Wow."

"I know," said Thomas. "I will be the largest turkey, sure enough."

"You will make an excellent Thanksgiving dinner," marveled Daniel. "What stuffing are you hoping for?"

"Sage," said Thomas, without pause to consider. "It is such a strong, full herb."

"Not like 'thyme,'" said Daniel, unconsciously turning up his bill a tad. "'Thyme is for little, skinny, stressed birds."

"Like wild turkey."

"Yes, like wild turkey."

The two sat in ruffled composure for a moment, cere and nail wrinkled at the thought of a thyme-stuffed wild turkey.

"They will definitely be thankful for you," said Daniel.

"They better be," said Thomas.

Decisions, decisions.

2013-10-28T18:05:00.001-04:00

This past weekend we ended up at a friends' house, debating Life and whether free will is a thing, or it is all predetermined and we are merely dominoes doomed to fall along the weaving path we've been placed.

Van Gogh's "Starry Night" in dominoes. Just because.

Some valid related thoughts include the fact that if God is all powerful, then he could stop bad things from happening. The fact that he does not stop them means he is indirectly responsible for them happening.

Or what if we only create the idea of free will in our minds because we feel the need to have some control in the world, but really we are only choosing things already chosen for us to choose.

Or maybe, the Deist argues, God created us in his image, which included brains and souls, and set us free to make our way in his world and wants to see what we'll make of it.

I tend to fall more in the grey area of all of these. Mostly because the Bible seems to imply both that God is very aware of all of our dealings in the world, but also that we do, on some level, have choices to make. I also, based on personal experiences, believe very strongly that sometimes God does step in, in unusual (I won't say unnatural, since that's impossible of the being that created the natural world) ways to help us along. Perhaps, to assuage the Deist--if he's reading this--I will say this only happens if we are completely lost as to what to do and just ask God to make it obvious what our choice should be: i.e. get rid of the other options.

There was a point to this.

Oh, yes.

I am very bad at making decisions. The more possibilities, the more confused and distressed I get. Ice cream shops paralyze me. I know I will always appreciate a strawberry milkshake, but variety is the spice of life, so I should try something new, but then a decision is demanded: I panic; my vision blurs, and I walk away from the counter holding a cup that contains all the things I like separately (like heath bits, gummy bears, skittles, caramel, and vanilla ice cream) but are Not So Great when combined. I always end up huddled in a corner with my concoction--nose wrinkling, and just wishing I'd gotten the strawberry milkshake.

Simple, and perfect.

Luckily, I never had to make the decision to be a Christian. That was obviously predetermined for me. Probably because God knew that, if given the option, I would find it hard to give up, say, nature worship and a totem animal (it would be an otter, folks).

What. Google: this is not an otter. Try again.

Hello, friends! This is me and my otter friend.

So then I cruised along through life. High school was easy: I was homeschooled. College was easy: my Dad taught at a good school and we got free tuition, and also a ton of my high school friends were there.

But then this dude wanted to date me.

Hoo boy. THAT is a decision.

Cockatiel and cat not included.

As all our friends and family will attest, I freaked out about it so much I made myself sick. I thought the dude was pretty hot, and it was cute he liked animals and stuff, but boyfriends are big responsibilities. Especially because boyfriends have this nasty habit of becoming husbands.
Long story short, I eventually ended up just begging God to make it obvious what I should do because I had no clue. I was too anxious to even have a personal opinion, one way or the other.

Whew. It worked.

Now I'm moving on to wondering what to do with my life, career-wise. I like them animals, but don't have any formal training. So I ponder and pray and ask God to help me figure out what I should do.
So, as set-up, two years ago, I drive by this beautiful farm and see a sign proclaiming that friesian horses dwell within. I stalk online, email the owner, and wonder of wonders, she needs help with the horses. So I prove myself capable to her.

Except for my habitual phone use while driving. Naughty stuff, folks.

Then I ask to watch ultrasounds of mares. Then she asks if I've ever thought about being a veterinary technician. I have not, but I sure am now. But then I worry because I am a hands-on learner, and I fear being given a book of animal science facts to learn by rote memorization (which fails me miserably). so maybe I'm not cut out for it? And then a couple months later I ask to watch them castrate a colt, because I'm thinking more about the whole vet tech thing. And then my boss asks if I want to volunteer at their veterinary office (oh, yes: her husband is a vet and their office is half-way between my home, and her home), and they will train me in the ways of the veterinary technician. So then that sounds awesome. It won't cost us anything extra, since working at her place already more than pays for the gas to drive there and back, and the office is on my way.

I will definitely be the one with the stethoscope. Not the bored one.
This picture cracks me up. I am so glad I found it. Look at everybody's faces. Hahahaha.

But then what about hubsand and his master's degree? Usually that lands people in CA. We don't want to go to CA. We have friends here, and a church here, and some of our family is here. Hubsand hears about a job possibility in Mediocre, PA, but isn't sure it's the right thing for him. So then he's talking to one of his part-time professors about this very thing and she mentions she's CEO for a company in our very own Mediocre, PA that does things Garrett's interested in, and she straight-up says "if you want a job, come talk to me."
So he goes and thinks about it, and then emails her, and she says "come to our company's office Wednesday and let's talk."
Did I mention there's a veterinary technician school in Mediocre, PA? Because that's important. Also that my other current place of work (a place, you will recall, I did not apply for, but also just landed in my lap because I worked with somebody years ago, and then met her again on a cold day at a gas station no-where near where either of us lives) is fabulous, and would probably work with me so I could still work part-time and go to school.

So now we've got two futures up in the air, and a meeting on Wednesday that might help solidify them both.

But danged if it doesn't seem like we might be stuck in Mediocre, PA for a while yet. Because things keep happening, and we keep meeting people in hallways, or online, and we happen to prove ourselves competent to them, before we realize just how important it might be, and then they happen to have keys to doors that are really appealing.

We didn't orchestrate or plan these things. Hubsand and I had other plans (or no plans). And, might I add, plans separate and unrelated to each other, career-wise, and then whoops! Events transpire and people we meet innocently are suddenly pushing us both towards futures that would co-exist peacefully with our current lives and our apartment lease contract.

Regardless of how much (if any) control I might have otherwise, I am definitely not in complete control of my life.

Thank goodness.

Eagles, horses, and ponies.

2013-08-30T19:24:00.000-04:00

Sometimes when I hear Elton John sing "Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road" I try to imagine him as a farmboy.

How about no.

Elton John might have put on some wellies at some point and been corralled in a pasture for an album photo op, but has obviously no other ties to the country life.

I've heard people complain about strangers wearing cowboy boots when s/he (the observant complainer) thinks the boots look silly and doesn't think the stranger has ever set foot in a barn. Now, I do find some styles of boot reprehensible.

This, for instance.

But in general I like the look, and they make me think happy thoughts.

I think about grass, barns, and being unafraid to walk through mud. I think of the warm, molasses smell of sweet feed, and the pleasure of doing chores at the farm while various animals follow me around. I get an egotistical thrill when I turn around and run into a horse (or llama, or nilgai, as the case has been) who had been about his own business before I showed up, but decided he would rather spend time with me. They follow me because they are genuinely interested in what I am doing and want to stay close; I like being viewed as a safe presence to animals, and also to humans.

Me and Mara, very content in each others personal bubbles.

(Photo by Priscilla)

Sometimes the horses try to get involved with my chores and end up pulling hoses out of troughs, and picking up and losing brushes and tools I was trying to use.

Iron Man, not helping.

This is frustrating, but even then it is a delightful sort of frustrating. The kind of frustrating where I yell a little bit and demand an explanation, but can laugh because the general response is to amble over to me to see what the fuss is about, and ask for an itchy forehead to be scratched.

Here Redman (Iron Man's son) gets into the game of de-worming and

helps me chase an unwilling Magic down.

"I'm just going to rest my entire head here, thanks."
-Tomme

A couple weeks ago I was hosing a sweaty Iron Man off near my boss's house. A car pulled up with a couple people there on matters of business. I talked to them while continuing my work. My work included me making several demands of Iron Man, including telling him to move his butt over, and pick his desert-plate-sized foot up off the hose line. In both cases he obeyed instantly without me touching him, but only by hearing my words and reading my body language.
When a stud horse that weighs roughly 1300 or so pounds and whose head towers over his observers decides to move, it is an impressive thing. I made my demands and turned back to the visitors. Their mouths were actually open.

"That," said one. "Is a beautiful horse."

I realized in that moment that to these two businesspeople, I had an impressive skill set they were not gifted with (or had no knowledge of), but definitely admired. I was actually badass. I could just tell this huge creature to move, and he would, without a grumble, and continue playing with the thin rope I held him by. I suddenly understood that there are remarkably few things I feel pretty confidant in about my abilities, but understanding horses is one, and it is amazing.

This all does go back to music.

I have a great job in Pittsburgh with a very reasonable, understanding boss, and a lot of really fun co-workers. I am very competent in my job and enjoy doing it well. But I don't love it. I don't love the commute that sometimes takes 24 minutes and sometimes takes an hour and a half, but usually takes 40 minutes. I don't love all the cars and the people and the noise, and the time it wastes in my day where I could be doing something useful or fun, or nothing at all. I don't love the city. Sometimes it is okay, and sometimes I am glad I can easily access an asian food store, or go to Bikram yoga every week with a friend. Sometimes at night when we're driving back into the city it is quiet and all you can see are the lights and it is beautiful.

But I can't have a dog. I can't take a walk without staying alert and making eye contact with strangers so we both know we've both been seen, if the police have to ask. I can't walk outside and see sky and fields. I walk outside and see an attractive apartment building blocking the sky, with some shaded porches on which a few hopeful tenants have tried to keep planters alive, and no grass, and a few, thin little trees in grates by the road.

Most of the time I am philosophical about this and focus with pleasure on the asian food stores and the yoga and friends and blessing of a job I have. But sometimes I get depressed, and stuck in traffic, and decide for subtly masochistic reasons to play John Denver, and he sings this song.

Horses are creatures who worship the earth
They gallop on feet of ivory
Constrained by the wonder of dying and birth
The horses still run, they are free

My body is merely the shell of my soul
But the flesh must be given its due
Like a pony that carries its rider back home
Like an old friend who's tried and been true

I had a vision of eagles and horses
High on a ridge in a race with the wind
Goin' higher and higher, faster and faster
On eagles and horses I'm flying again

Eagles inhabit the heavenly heights
They know neither limit nor bound
They're the guardian angels of darkness and light
They see all and hear every sound

My spirit will never be broken or caught
For the soul is a free-flying thing
Like an eagle that needs neither comfort nor thought
To rise up on glorious wings

I had a vision of eagles and horses
High on a ridge in a race with the wind
Goin' higher and higher, faster and faster
On eagles and horses I'm flying again

Flying again
Flying again
Flying again
I'm flying again

And then I just am sad.

I do not belong in a city, even though I appreciate some amenities it offers.

I am so glad I still have the opportunity to go north and see nothing but animals and nature for a few hours* every week, and a husband who understands and supports that need.

And then I am there and feel more like this song:

Somewhere out on the prairie
Is the greatest cowboy that's ever been
And when he lays his hands upon the ponies
They shudder with an understanding skin

And he says ponies
Now ponies don't you worry
I have not come to steal your fire away
I want to fly with you across the sunrise
Discover what begins each shining day

When the storm clouds in the west
Are quickly gathering
The ponies they run wild there
Before it rains

You'll see their sleek dark bodies
Brightly gleaming
You know the fire is flying through
Their brains

And he says ponies
Ponies don't you worry
I have not come to steal your fire away
I want to fly with you across the sunrise
Discover what begins each shining day
I want to fly

Me and Malachi, a pony (and sometimes butt-face) from Marmon Valley Farm.
(Picture by Priscilla)

Tomme, enjoying the day.

(Picture by Ronni)

This is a bad picture of my very own Rust-pony from MVF.
I miss him. Other people didn't like him, but I did, and he would do anything I asked him to (sometimes we fought about it, first).

Ronni (owner of the horses I work with on Thursdays) suggested I look into veterinary technician schools, and that idea is sounding more and more appealing. Also, there is one in Silicon Valley (where we might end up when Garrett graduates in December). I might have found a career direction for this whole animal thing!

That would be nice, and for now I pull on my boots with pleasure on Thursdays, and sometimes decide to wear them in the city for no reason at all.
I've earned the right.

*Fruedian slip, I accidentally typed "horses" again, first, and corrected it.