Gonzai Gallery

I went to the rescue event today to see the puppy and his sisters. They're totally adorable, but they are not border collies. Might be collie collie, but I think they have husky in them. And if the paws are any indication, they'll turn out husky-sized. Many practical reasons for not getting one of them. But darn they're cute. I also met some other dogs, and I liked Lance in particular, one decidedly over-sized Pomeranian (about 25 pounds) but cute and friendly as heck.

Then we went to Wegman's, which we don't do much, and got a reminder of why we don't. It was sheer chaos in there. Managed to score some first rate sushi, but the place is just too crazy. Now home for television time, I have not seen a single Oscar-nominated movie this year but I did manage to record one of the Documentary nominations, 'Paradise Lost: Purgatory', so off we go.

...and Disqus appears to have eaten it. Nine times out of ten, I write a long post anywhere, I copy it before I post it. This time, I didn't. And my nice long ranty post disappeared into 'moderation'. (I was posting to 'The Lost Battalion', the open thread on Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog over at the Atlantic. Hence the 'Horde' from the other day, commenters there refer to ourselves as the Horde.) I've been posting several times a day there and never once did one of my posts get flagged or marked for moderation. But this one went to the moderator for review. I posted another half dozen comments afterwards and those all posted no problem. I have no idea what happened here, and TNC won't be back until tomorrow afternoon to approve it. Nuts.

Anyway, the upshot was me ranting about the Westminster Dog Show being won by the Pekingnese, Malachy. Pekes cannot run, can barely walk, cannot mate, cannot give birth, can barely breath and are prone to all manner of health issues. As are English Bulldogs, French Bulldogs and several other breeds that have various physical deformations preventing them from doing the basic things in life. Why? Because dumb humans thought 'oh, this will look cute' and bred all these deformities into the animals, then wonder why they're so chronically ill/crippled. It infuriates me, the horrible things people have done to dogs in the name of amusement.

The football game is just not holding my interest. And the commercials have been either mundane or stupid. So pooh on that, switching to 31 Days of Oscar. 'The Lavender Hill Mob', specifically. We've already watched the Puppy Bowl 1.5 times and cleared the tv shows off the DVR, plus took care of a lot of paperwork and computer stuff, experimented with food (tried to cook artichokes for the first time, they turned out decently), did some cleaning, and looked at one house that had a stunning kitchen but way too many stairs, steep ones at that. Yesterday I finally was able to go to gaming again, didn't get to play too much between being tired and a couple games taking way too long to play. But I played a bit and got a few things done so I can't fault the weekend entirely.

Well, hopefully I'm done. I had a lot of paperwork to be signed by my 'supervisor', except I never really had one and even with shadowing, I worked with 9-10 different people. There was a lot of buckpassing before I conceded and had one of the vets sign my timesheet, at least. I left the student evaluation for the coordinator, because nobody wanted any more paperwork at that point! (Some 25 or so surgeries today.)

The surgeries included a pair of sugar gliders that were there to be neutered. Seems like microsurgery to me! They were pretty cute and slept in odd poses. There was a rat that came in for emergency surgery - several inches of her tail had the skin stripped off when the tail was caught in her cage door, so they amputated it. The rat was really amiable under the circumstances. But tops of the night was one of the first - a boxer and her puppies. One of her puppies never actually was born and was stuck inside her, so the whole gang came to the hospital for Mom to have surgery. Four week-old pups. Adorable. And their mother was very concerned for her babies. Nice that they could stay together.

So now it's some online assignments and wait for the final class in mid-February.

I suffered my first (and my second) animal-inflicted injury last night, so I figure that makes me an official animal care employee. First I encountered Vern, an overly ambitious dachshund who had picked a fight with a 95lb Rottie. Vern lost. Unfortunately for me, most of Vern's injuries were on his neck, precisely where I'm supposed to restrain him. So I had to hold him in a less efficient manner, and Vern wasn't about to hold still. Oh, and he needed his nails trimmed. He head-butted me in the glasses and scratched my left hand to pieces. Then for an encore, a 3month old kitten didn't like having blood drawn and tried to head for the hills, scratching the same hand in the process. I have a shredded hand today.

On the better side of things, three straight shifts with no deaths. Close call on Saturday, when a ferret arrived in full insulin shock. CPR/paddle shocks on a ferret. That was memorable. We were able to revive the little guy and he had surgery yesterday to remove the growths that were causing his insulin issues. He looked fine last night.

Over half way there...

Things were slow at the hospital today and tonight - few emergencies, and half the appointments cancelled. Almost no animals there for boarding or overnight treatment. So I spent quality time with Onyx, a pit bull mix whose owner dropped her off for boarding six weeks ago and never came back. We had a grand time cleaning the dog ward together. I cleaned, she inspected afterward :)  Several cats came in, and all of them were perfectly behaved(!) One cat waited through 5 attempts to draw blood without complaint. Amazing. The only sad thing was Henry, a 16yo Labrador who was absolutely riddled with cancer and his owners finally realized it was time. The poor fellow was so sick and weak he couldn't move, and his owners couldn't bear to be with him at the end, so a tech and I stayed with him and petted him while he died. It wasn't easy, but it was better than last week, I guess because Henry was so old and ill.

Now I've got to get to bed, if I want any chance of getting through this week.

Night 2 of my internship was a night of death. My first assignment when I arrived was to 'bag' a dog - that is, put a euthanized dog into a garbage bag and then take it out to a freezer until it could be taken for cremation. The dog, Raven, was a 12yo, 90 pound husky whose sobbing owner I had passed in the hallway. Raven had terminal cancer and wasn't responding to treatment. It took two of us to get her body into the bag, and due to her size, we carried her out on a stretcher. Naturally they had me go backwards, and I slammed my bad hand into a doorframe. But we managed to get the bag to the freezer. While there we had to retrieve another bag; an owner had decided they wanted a lock of hair from their pet. So we carried the bag back into the office, opened it, shaved some hair from the dog's head, then closed it back up and took it back to the freezer. Later in the evening an ancient Boston terrier was brought in and the techs were putting a catheter in her leg. Silly me, I asked what was up. Maggie was being euthanized. She seemed really alert and friendly, but apparently besides being 14 she was having seizures several times a day. Fortunately I didn't have to 'bag' Maggie, because a triage had come in.

There were 4 triages during the 3 hours I was there, and I spent a lot of my evening taking car of one of them, Oki, a mutt. Everytime a vet tried to check Oki, an emergency would crop up, so I'd watch Oki again. (He had a severe allergic reaction to something.) Oki wound up as probably the only non-sad story of the evening; besides his problem being simple, I took him back to his owner who was thrilled to see his buddy back and eager to talk about his dog. So that was nice. The other triages also turned out to be not too bad. But when I wasn't watching Oki, I was looking after the animals in the ICU. The ferrets were a hoot, especially Larry, who was finding great amusement in flipping over his food dish. But James the cat popped his stitches and it took forever to get him to stay still long enough to restitch him. Another cat had been abandoned at the hospital by the owners, who decided the cat was just too mean to bother with anymore. (I can attest that the cat is nasty.) A sweet Dachshund, Fritz, hurt his back and was paralyzed. And poor Jetta the Rottweiler. She woke up a couple days ago and couldn't move any of her legs. Her owners brought her to the hospital, said they couldn't afford to treat her and left her. The poor girl still can't get up, and she's very confused and hurt. I spent a lot of time with her.

Throughout the entire evening, a vet was operating on the deformed leg of a 3 month old pup, Simba. Simba was under anesthesia from 3pm on, which is...too long for a puppy. His blood pressure kept crashing. They finally got him stable around 9pm and finished the surgery, but when they started stitching him up he crashed entirely. They worked on him for half an hour with injections, CPR, paddle shocks, etc. but they couldn't save him. I stayed late to see what happened with Simba, but I left right after. Enough death for one night.

Something I've never understood about the holiday season: there is absolutely no traffic at all in the mornings, but afternoon is gridlock to the max. Schools and most businesses are open, so where the heck is everyone in the morning? And if they're not at work/school, why the heck are they all going out on the road at the same time?

Speaking of being on the road, we were driving the other day, in a populated suburban area just off the Beltway, and we had to stop. To let deer cross the road. Three of them, just moseying along across one person's lawn, wandering at their own pace across the street in front of us, then down someone's driveway. Like it's no big deal. The distinction between city and rural is really gone...

Poor CJ. I let her out this morning, then heard a ruckus, yelling & barking from next door. I assumed CJ had started something with the neighbor's terrier and raced out to fetch her back in. Turned out whatever was going on, CJ had nothing to do with it; she was in the middle of the yard, mid-poop. Poor dog couldn't decide whether to finish pooping or go to Mommy, so she started hopping on 3 legs, still in her squat, towards the house. I should have filmed it.

Today wasn't as bad as it could have been, though. We had visitors. Munchkin the high-stepping chihuahua and Kya the gimpy pit bull. We trimmed their nails :) I didn't do so hot in the 'restraint' demo (it's hard to do standard restraint on a dog barely bigger than your hand) but I rocked the nail trimming. And I have two new doggie friends.

Final next week. I get my Mondays back. At least for a couple weeks.

That's how tired I am - I'm passing up gaming at Jim & Jeff's and playing at least as many games with Dexter the Doberman as I do with humans.

I want to be healthy again, dammit.