I Miss Writing

 I've been thinking about my little blog, waiting patiently out here in the ether. There's dust in the corners, wispy clumps of dog hair drifting slowly across the floor.

My last post was in late November, 2021--over a year ago! Lots of things have changed in my life, but one thing hasn't changed: I've still got plenty of opinions about it all. 

I want to pick this particular hobby back up, this tic that drives me to want to play around with ideas and words in this old-school format. (Funny/sad how typing on a computer is old-school.)

Calendars are social constructs, so it's not so much the end of one year and the start of another that's behind this. The change of season is significant, of course--length of day, cooler weather. But I feel like I'm entering a new phase of my life. Vet school and getting that DVM was a Big Deal. It definitely set down stakes in my life, as in "before vet school" and "after vet school." The past three and a half years were a necessary transition period, space to shift my mindset from student back to professional. And it's not that I'm really doing entirely new things. Still have fox terriers. Still do dog agility. But plenty of other things have shifted in ways that make me feel like it's time to poke my head up, take a look around, maybe start some conversations. 

 

For Public Consumption

I've been struggling lately to find blog-worthy topics. I absolutely love my job. I look forward to getting into the lab every day. There's no way to predict what will walk in the door! Unfortunately, most of the stories that I can spin these days, based on events at work that I find interesting or amusing, are inappropriate for public retelling. And I don't think that I want to turn this blog into "Tales From The Necropsy Floor." Even most veterinarians don't want to see endless photos of diseased tissues in dead animals.

As an example of a story that isn't suitable for public consumption, consider the rabbit we received last week. Most of the small animal submissions we receive are wrapped in bags or tarps then placed in a cooler or box or some other opaque container. The rabbit arrived in a small cardboard box, taped up for shipping. The necropsy techs were at lunch so I told Receiving I'd carry the remains back to necropsy. I opened the box to look for the paperwork...and found the submission form folded up and laid on top of the rabbit. No other packaging, not even a WalMart bag. Just the dead rabbit and a folded up piece of paper in an otherwise empty cardboard box. There are several layers of subtext as to why this was funny...but I don't think I can spin any of them into an acceptable party tale.

Here's another example. My interest in laying hens and ovarian/oviductal cancer is underlain by a deeper interest in reproduction. I now have access to many different species of animal, and I've begun building a library of fixed tissues and slides of reproductive tissues, both with disease and without. We recently received a male sugar glider for necropsy. I did some research and learned that, like most marsupials, sugar gliders have some freaky ass reproductive organs. I walked in to necropsy, pulling on the heavy gloves we wear and snapping them in place just like they do on the TV, and announced to my two techs, "Sugar gliders have a forked penis. I'm adding this one to my collection." They just laughed. Yes, I am perfectly aware that writing it out like this makes me sound like a psychopath. But I've explained to them my interest in reproduction and my desire to understand both the gross and the microscopic appearance of reproductive tissues of all kinds of animals. So I deliberately collect those tissues even if they don't have anything to do with the cause of death of the animal. This is another aspect of my job that I can't discuss outside of work.

Here's a third example. Besides animal remains for necropsy, we also get  surgical biopsies submitted by veterinarians located all over the state. These are lumps and bumps and masses that they remove from their patients and send to us so we can make slides and have a pathologist look at them to make a diagnosis. The basic process is for the submitting veterinarian to place the tissue in formalin. This chemical causes proteins in the tissue to become cross-linked so the tissue becomes stiff and sort of rubbery. We then cut thin pieces from the tissue, embed that in paraffin wax, then cut even thinner slices of that and mount it on a glass microscope slide. The tissue is stained, a cover slip is glued on, and then the pathologist gets that slide for interpretation.

When I took over supervisory duties for the Pathology section, I instituted several new QC processes, especially for the surgical biopsy submissions. There had been none in place before--apparently it was left up to the techs to decide how to cut up the submitted tissues. They would often slice up tumors in ways that suited them, but that did not produce diagnostic samples or slides. I now examine every biopsy submission and give the techs written instructions for key areas to focus on. Sometimes I give instructions to leave submissions in formalin for another 24-48 hours, or note that the sample is extremely fatty and needs to be placed in a different fixative.

Last week, we received a tissue sample from a young Great Dane bitch. It was an external "mass" that was growing adjacent to the vulva of the dog. The vet excised it and sent it to us in a pill bottle. Not a good choice--pill bottles leak, and formalin is hazardous. They didn't put enough formalin in the bottle and most of the tissue sample was uncovered. Suspecting that it wasn't adequately fixed, I pulled it out to take a look and promptly bonked my forehead on the glass door of the fume hood as I yelped "My god, it's an alien baby!" The tissue was so complex and so confusing that I immediately called the submitting veterinarian to find out more. Turns out she was just as perplexed as I was, and was hoping that we would tell her what it was. I tweaked her a bit for sending the damned thing in a leaking pill bottle, which she took with good grace.

I drew a picture of the alien baby with trimming instructions for the techs. Then I sent a wordy email to the pathologist I was sending the slides to so he would have some context about why I was sending him 10 slides for a single biopsy submission (most only require a single slide). I described the alien baby in great detail. He replied with a mock histopathology report with phrases like "mixture of reptilian and insectoid features." It was hysterical. And I'll never be able to tell this story in public.

Glimmers

While there are dozens of amazing insults and insights that I endure every day, as do we all, none of them rise to the level of blog-worthy. While I am training a new puppy, and he is of course the most amazing, smart, and naughty puppy that ever existed, nothing there is really blog-worthy either. Although he does have a very amusing obsession with socks.

After several years at this, I should be able to find a kernel of something to write about on a semi-regular basis. But I am unable to find either the energy or the kernel.

Oh, I could drone on and on about minutiae of innervation of the small mammal head or about how my younger peers confuse kindness in an instructor with competence. Or about how it took me three days and multiple attempts at my taxes to figure out the pathway that was most favorable to me. Or about how I am wringing my hands over what snacks to bring to class on Thursday that will satisfy the vegans, gluten-frees, and other freaky food-o-phobes in class in addition to pleasing the largest number of the rest of us.

In sum, vet school is sucking all desire out of me to sit in front of a computer screen unless I am studying.

Still, there are glimmers.

Archie is quickly mastering hand signals for down, the obedience "around" command, coming up to my indicated side from a sit-stay or while moving, recalls in general (god, he's a stubborn little terrier), running with me (not ahead of me or biting or jumping at my hand), and verbal commands for turning left and right. I've never taught any dog a solid right or left verbal command. It should be interesting.

And Archie starts class in two weeks. Hopefully that will provide some training hijinks that I can write about.

And this interminable term draws to a close in just a couple of weeks (plus finals week after that). Spring break won't be nearly long enough, I'm afraid.

Telling Tales

Upon receipt of the bit of writing below, my French professor wrote in the margin (in French) "You could write French stories." I'm preening, that's for sure--that's quite a complement from Madame M. who is extraordinarily exacting about our grammar. The assignment: write a story about two animals using the three main past tenses (I ate, I was eating/did eat, and I had eaten [before something else happened]). Obviously we have the same three tenses in English but we don't make quite the same big deal about them as the French do.

I chose to retell the fable of the frog and the scorpion (it's antecedent could be this Aesop's fable). You probably know it. Sometimes the frog is a fox or another animal. The frog carries the scorpion on its back across a river, and halfway across, the scorpion stings it. As they are both drowning, the frog asks the scorpion why he did that, and the scorpion replies "I had no choice, it's in my nature." Grim, yes, but I thought it was an appropriate tale since in the novel by Sartre that we are reading for class, everything that happens is predestined.

To puff it up to a length somewhere between 250 and 300 words, I had to embellish the story with background details that aren't usually in the fable. But that's the very nature of storytelling, isn't it? 

L'histoire de la grenouille et le scorpion

Il était une fois un scorpion qui vivait dans un tas de feuilles séchées qui étaient tombées des arbres à l’automne dernier. Près de les des arbres il y avait une grande rivière. Elle s’étendait si loin que le scorpion ne pouvait pas voir l’autre rive. Au bord de la rivière dans les joncs où l’eau était plus tranquille vivait une grenouille verte.

Un jour, le scorpion est allé à la rivière. Il a découvert la grenouille qui était en train d’attraper des mouches et de s’admirer dans l’eau. Le scorpion s’est présenté avec beaucoup de politesse. La grenouille a retourné la salutation.

Il a dit à la grenouille qu’il voulait lui demander de l’aider. Il avait besoin de traverser la rivière parce que le jour précédent il avait reçu une lettre de son frère qui vivait sur l’autre rive. Il était très important pour lui de traverser la rivière pour voir sa famille.

La grenouille réfléchissait à sa proposition. Pour traverser la rivière, le scorpion devait être sur son dos. Elle lui a dit que s’il la piquait, elle mourrait. Et le scorpion, il noierait.

Le scorpion a protesté. Il ne pourrait jamais faire mal à son amie ! Il a insisté. Il a supplié. Il a même pleuré quelques larmes.

Avec un soupir, la grenouille a accepté. Le scorpion est monté sur son dos et la grenouille a commencé à nager.

Au milieu de la rivière, le scorpion l’a piquée. Comme ils se noyaient, la grenouille lui a demandé pourquoi il avait fait cette chose-là. Le scorpion lui a répondu qu'il n'avait pas de choix, c’était dans sa nature.

Marking Time

I realized tonight that I started this blog just over four years ago in August of 2008. Its beginning is linked with Iz dying, which is a sad thing. I know that I'm not the most prolific of posters and I certainly have my dry spells, but CircusK9 has covered a lot of ground in the past four years. Thanks for hanging in there with us.

My Solipsistic Confession

Before many routine business meetings begin, there is usually some idle or humorous chitchat. Certainly it can fill the time needed to wait for important latecomers. But it probably has a more fundamental social function of putting everyone at ease, of establishing some personal connections. Maybe your lizard brain even gets involved by using it as a test to separate friend from foe, prey from predator.

At a meeting I went to yesterday afternoon, our preliminary chitchat suddenly and surprisingly focused on the topic of typing. SK started it off by saying that he wished that he could use his thumbs and pinky fingers while typing and that he was trying to retrain his brain and fingers to do so. I mentioned that a good friend of mine, a mutual acquaintance of the other two guys in the meeting, could type at light speed with only two fingers, and that it was quite a sight to see him go at it. BC sheepishly laughed and said that he had his wife type out important documents for him, not because he is sexist but because he can’t type at all. I said, ah, yes, the hunt and peck method. Then I said, I use all 10 fingers and never look at the keyboard. It’s the unexpected consequence of being forced to take a typing class back in junior high. I hated it then, thought it was unfair and stupid. Turns out that I learned an extremely valuable skill! SK then said, now smart phones are changing everything. Texting is usually done only with your thumbs, and virtual keyboards on some phones are so small that you can only use one finger at a time anyway. And we old-timers all had a good laugh at “those kids today.”

But the entire skit (and I am recalling it as a sort of comedic skit that we scripted out in advance) got me thinking about a topic that I often ponder: communication, and in this particular case, how technology is changing it. This afternoon I read an online discussion about whether personal blogs were a dying art (I don’t think they are; a topic for another time) and decided that was motivation enough to write this post.

So I proceeded to start another rant about the shallow, solipsistic, and derivative nature of FaceBook and Twitter, about the apparent inability of many people to sustain attention or even comprehension beyond 140 characters. I spun off into a related rant about how communication with virtual people belies a basic need of the social animal that we are to look our friends in the eye, see them, smell them, hear them. How else can we truly tell friend from foe?

Then I realized that I am as much a virtual entity to some of the whopping ten or so regular readers of CircusK9 as your FaceBook “friends” might be. I don’t pretend to be your friend but then again, I do sort of hope that you read my posts. In my desire to be read maybe I’m not that much different than someone who uses FaceBook to post repeatedly “look at me gazing at my navel.”

Except that I know how to touch-type using all 10 fingers and I always use more than 140 characters.

Readin' and Writin'

To my surprise, I have discovered through continuing this blog that I have become interested in the nature of narrative. What makes a story funny or memorable? How does the language that we choose, even at the level of individual words, shape the stories we tell? Indeed, what is the purpose of telling a story? Education? Bragging? A metaphorical "this didn't work so well, don't try it at home"? I find myself examining events taking place around me differently than I used to, pre-blog.

I sift and reject many stories that may be worthwhile and interesting but that aren't sufficiently blog-worthy (tip o'the fedora to Elaine on Seinfeld who gave us that meme; heck, thanks to Richard Dawkins for giving us meme in the first place). When I finally choose what I will write about, I spend a few days constructing the story in my head. It may then take me a couple of hours to actually turn it into a blog post with pictures and links.

Sure, it's a labor of love, done for my own sanity. Your reading (and enjoyment) of the posts is a happy coincidence. Still, I slave over a hot keyboard to find just the right words to tell each story. Which ones seem to resonate with you readers? The ones about dove-icide or the Step Dominatrix don't seem to make a ripple, even though those types of posts are the ones I spend the most time crafting. But slap up a rant and it is like poking an anthill with a stick.

Of course I follow political events in the US from afar. I have to. The US extracts taxes from my earnings. I pay into Social Security and Medicare. I park my savings in US institutions. I am a US citizen and will eventually return to the US. I would like to buy property there eventually. The ongoing political slap-stick (really, Larry, Moe, and Curly are more sophisticated than the talking heads in Congress, so I guess that I am insulting slap-stick) is an embarrassment, a debacle, a freeway wreck that one must look at, even if only out of the corner of your eye as you pass. Expats, even homeless ones like me, can and do vote. And since this is my soapbox, I do occasionally burst out with a rant.

But I hope that you find the stories about mango madness in Lulu or jaunts in the jebels with the dogs more satisfying to read. They are certainly far more satisfying for me to write.

The Examined Life (Agility With a Tiny Dog)

I was chatting with friends and family this week and realized how I look at my life differently now that I have this blog. Sometimes I see or hear things, or experience them myself, and think, wow, that would make a nice bit for the blog.

Am I more engaged in my own life? Perhaps. I have always had good eye and memory for detail but lately when I find something I want to write about, I don't focus on the details so much as the larger experience.

I have always written daily in my job but what I write is relatively cheerless technical stuff. And I churn out pages and pages of it. With accompanying tables and maps and charts and graphs. Certainly my reports are exciting to me and my intended audience but there isn't much there in the way of entertainment. Not blog-worthy, you might say.

My friends Gosia and Denise prodded me into this blogging experience after Iz died, ostensibly to help me deal with my grief. I still can't bring myself to write about her very much (I took pictures and video of her last few days that I have not yet looked at). Still, reviewing the events taking place around me and deciding which ones are worth writing about has subtly changed the way I interact with my dogs and my friends.

It was just a coincidence that one of the regular Q&A columns in this month's Clean Run magazine had a brief discussion about the minimum weight specified by the various agility organizations needed to tip the teeter. For AKC, that weight is 2.5 lbs. Teeters have to be calibrated such that a 2.5 lb weight will make the end fall to the ground. Not very fast, but all the way to the ground. I remember reading this and thinking, who would run a dog that small anyway?

At the trial this weekend, I had the pleasure of watching a young woman run a Chihuahua in the Open class. I could have enclosed this dog entirely in my cupped hands. It was barely as tall as the top of this young woman's shoe. Still, the lowest jump height possible in AKC is 4 inches, which was just around the height of this dog's head!

But there she was, running the dog on the exact same course that I was going to run with Mimi. The same Aframe. The same dogwalk. The same chute, tunnels, and weave poles. The same teeter.

The entire arena was riveted to this spectacle. A woman next to me said, "The dog is running 10 miles!" Well, of course she was not. The dog was running the same 150 yards that Mimi was going to run, just taking many more steps to do so. (This is one of many examples of the numerical illiteracy of the American public, don't even get me started.)

But back to the show. The teeter was obstacle 5, and every one of us held our breath as this tiny dog ran to the end....and paused....and waited....until at last....slowly....slowly....the teeter began to tip. It hit the ground and off the handler went to the table (8 inches high, in case you were wondering).

The weaves were a comedy act unto themselves. With a pole spacing of 20", this dog was taking half a dozen steps between each pole, but was clearly weaving with speed and accuracy. No, it was not slaloming or doing any of the fancy steps our larger dogs do. It was running back and forth through trees in a giant's playground.

A friend of mine, a very tall man who also runs a smooth fox terrier bitch (he and I are the only ones we know of here in Texas that do agility with smooth foxes, thus we are automatically friends), said, "I would look so gay if I ran that dog!" Debbie and I assured him that he would rock pink and glitter with the best of them.

We all held our breath again as the dog approached the Aframe. Most of us could only see the down side of the obstacle. We waited....and waited....and everyone clapped when the dog's tiny head popped up over the peak.

The dog went over time but just a bit and still qualified.

Afterwards, I went up to speak to the young woman who handled the dog. She was telling some friends that she had fed the dog several times that day just to make sure she was going to be heavy enough to tip the teeter!

Isn't that a story worth telling?