The Cat

 The cat, who doesn't have an official name, is a dumb-as-a-rock ginger tabby. He's over 13 years old but doesn't look or act that old. 

 I've blogged before about his ability to start yowling at 3am, letting off once every second or so, and keep it up for HOURS. He sits in the most acoustically advantageous position, the middle of the staircase, to project his desperate cries for food to all corners of the house. If I or one of the dogs even twitches, he comes running into the bedroom screaming loudly, frantic that we somehow might be having a feast behind his back. 

He has full run of the house and for the most part stays out of trouble. His usual sleeping spot is in the upstairs storage room where he has two comfy beds to choose from. But occasionally he will show up in an unexpected spot. 

Last night, as I was winding down my evening, I carried Frankie into the living room to put her in her expen so I could sit on the couch and read for a while. This is our regular routine, and Frankie usually settles down and takes a break from being Frankie. I was surprised to find the cat curled up in Frankie's expen bed. He greeted us sleepily but didn't budge. I dropped her in there anyway and sat down to see what would happen. Science!

Frankie paced, circled, stood and gazed mournfully first at the cat then at me, and paced some more. The cat didn't budge. There was some sighing and a lot more pacing. I said nothing to either of them. With a final sad little sigh, Frankie curled up next to the bed on a bit of blanket. She didn't even get up when I went to refill my wine glass and grab my phone to take this picture.

 

Despite the fearsome prey drive and general pushiness of the terriers, I think it's clear who's in charge here.

 

Occupational Hazards: Ballet With Knives

 Working in veterinary medicine comes with special occupational hazards. Like clinical vet med teams, the pathology team is regularly exposed to the usual array of body fluids. Our working environment is probably a bit more splashy than a typical GP office, however. I always wear a surgical cap to cover my hair when I'm on the necropsy floor.

Let's add in exposure to ticks, fleas, flies, fly larvae, beetles, ants, and other members of team arthropod. Except for the ticks, most of them don't have much interest in us. Many animal ectoparasites are evolved for just a few species. But not ticks, of course not, those little generalist fuckers. 

There is the potential for exposure to some fairly nasty zoonotic pathogens, including rabies. We are vaccinated for rabies and the lab checks our titers every couple of years. We mitigate risk by wearing PPE. When needed, we work with suspect tissues inside a biological safety cabinet. Knowing what pathogens might be differentials in a given case before we handle an animal is important too. That comes from training and experience. I always take the reptile necropsy cases because I find their anatomy and pathologies really interesting. But they can have some weird bacterial diseases that can make people pretty sick. 

An extra special hazard is exposure to intestinal gases. This isn't much of a problem for small animals, but large animals like horses and cows can become pretty bloated after they die. A couple of years ago, I accidentally pierced the rumen of a cow while leaning over the carcass and got a blast of moist, bacteria-laden rumen gas directly in my face. I said, uh oh. Forty eight hours later, I dragged myself into an urgent care with a raging case of conjunctivitis. They loved the backstory though!

Other hazards that are common to pathology are being cut with sharp things, including knives, scalpels, claws, and cut bone; slipping; being rammed by rolling tables; and being whacked in the head by the hoist hook or a flying hoof when a large animal carcass unexpectedly rolls or slips.

Of course there is the potential for sharp things and slippery stuff on the floor in an operating theater, but it's a matter of degree for the pathology team. We might have five people armed at the same time with wickedly sharp knives moving about in a relatively constricted space. And we are performing our ballet with knives ankle-deep in intestinal contents and blood. 

Communication is essential. We can't go waving knives and scalpels about willy-nilly. It's essential to know where everyone's fingers are before you start cutting something. Planning is part of our ballet too. We need to be systematic about how we conduct necropsies and how we handle animal remains. To the external observer, it may look chaotic but we don't rip open carcasses in a random fashion. 

I'm proud to work with a professional, efficient team that is conscious of safety, looks after each other, and gets the job done with a minimum of drama. 

Somebody Has To Grab Her!

 Frankie's end of run routine is a work in progress. She still isn't coming to me in the ring. 

But I know that I'm on the right track with the training. Training is the solution, and there are no short cuts to be had there.

I'm taking an online class in pattern games and am doing twice-daily sessions with her. Those aren't specific to the end of run but they may help her learn to manage her big feelings better. Dogs like Frankie struggle with transitions of all kinds, not just at the end of an agility run. Doorways, moving through an exciting space, exiting her crate--all of these are transitions with very big emotions attached to them.

I mentioned a post or two ago that I'm having her put her head in the martingale when I hold it out. I've now added motion to that. I move away from her while holding the collar out. This encourages her to chase me rather than me chase her. It's been working well in class.

She's been showing a lot more interest in the leash itself too. I am using the leash in class so that I make class as much like a trial as I can (Archie never uses a leash in class--he's a good boy). I take her to the start line on lead, remove it, and toss it away. If I don't have a hand on her collar, she will dart over and grab the leash then bring it to me for a game of tug. Her leash is a braided fleece affair designed for tugging. I always tug with her because I want to keep her value for the leash as high as I can. 

Progress is slow. I get frustrated because she will be 3 years old in a couple of weeks and, damn it, she should not be running away from me in the ring at that age and after a year of competition. But Frankie is on her own schedule. 

Home Improvement--Making Progress

 Installing the new blinds has turned out to be quite a chore. I'm taking my time to make sure I don't damage the walls or the blinds. Drilling holes makes a mess that has to be cleaned up. I could have paid someone to put the blinds up but decided to do it myself. Of the 11 windows with blinds, I still have 4 to go.

 I got one of the big double sets done yesterday. These windows are on the front of the house and get strong afternoon sun so they also have curtains. 

 

Here's the upstairs bathroom.

 

My house sits on a high spot and the backyard slopes down away from the house so the upstairs windows, all of which are on the sides or back of the house, look out on trees. I think the blinds add warmth and color. The faux wood has a bit of texture which complements the trees. 

Tree pollen season is winding down and the rain predicted for later next week should finish that off. Once all the blinds are up, I will go back and clean all of the windows one more time. Then it's on to the next job!

 

Home Improvement

Despite the traveling I do to attend agility trials, and all of the teaching I do on the weekends, I'm basically a house mouse. I prefer the food that I cook myself and I rarely eat out (1 or 2 times a year). I don't like leaving the house once I'm home for the day. I work on lists of supplies and food that I need, usually only going out once or twice a month to restock or get things for home projects. I feed my sock and shoe fetish entirely online (Darn Tough Vermont and Altra are the only socks and shoes that I wear both to work and to agility, and I have way more pairs of them than I am going to admit to here). 

My job is stressful on many levels--physical, intellectual, emotional. Agility is a passion and is fraught with emotional and physical investment too. My house is the place where I can hang out and recharge. Where I can do what I want when I want. 

The house I'm in now was refurbed by flippers, and not very well. They made cosmetic upgrades but left a lot of important infrastructure untouched. I knew the house was horribly inefficient with its 30-year-old water heater, HVAC, blinds, windows, etc. The flippers put in cheap laminate flooring downstairs and cheap carpet upstairs, and cheap doors to the front of the house and from kitchen to garage. I decided to just live in the space for a while before I made any big changes. That "awhile" turned into years but at last the need for changes was forced on me.

I had the deck replaced two winters ago. It had become a bit of a crisis as I was falling through the rotting boards when I walked out there. As a large section of it is 15 feet off the ground, this was a serious safety issue that needed to be fixed quickly.

The water heater developed a leak this fall. Not a surprise. It worked for decades beyond its original expiration date. I had it replaced. I called an HVAC company out to do a winter check on my unit. They found some serious damage due to ... failed past repairs? Animals? Gremlins? I had it replaced.

And I finally got tired of looking at the hideous aluminum-framed windows that couldn't be opened, with trails of mold around the edges that no caulk could hide, and condensation between the panes due to long-failed seals. I had every window in the house replaced. Sounds so simple to type it out but it was a massive job.

Not that I replaced the windows myself. Hell no. I got three bids, did my research. I paid someone to do it. It took two and a half days, which is really fast from one perspective but an eternity when I had to take time off from work and be here all of that time. 

I also had them replace the stupid fucking French doors from the kitchen to the deck. French doors look nice until you actually have to live in a house with them. Can't put a screen on the darned things. The locking mechanism of one was broken and I could only open one of the doors. They leaked water around the bottom. They never sealed well and cold air whistled in around them, despite the Frankenstein monster layers of sticky-backed rubber seals I kept adding around them. And when I had the window company come out to measure for the windows and the new sliding glass door, they pulled off the trim and we discovered there was literally 3 inches of open, unfilled space on either side of the doors. Just air and a thin layer of siding between that trim and the outdoor world. No wonder the kitchen was so hot in summer and cold in winter. There was no insulation at all around the damned things.

I went with vinyl windows, of course. Not double hung because that's a marketing gimmick. The lower panes in the single hung windows still rotate into the room and can even be removed if needed. The basic functionality is still there. The difference in price between single hung and double hung windows was the cost of my lovely new sliding glass door. 

After the installers were gone, I spent hours (my entire Saturday) cleaning the floors and putting the furniture and carpets back in place. I still need to clean up the window frames here and there. There's still plenty of dust and vinyl curls to wipe up inside and nails and pieces of caulk and glass to pick up outside. 

But the windows are so nice. I came home today after 7 hours outside teaching and training at the club to a cool, quiet den. Ahh.

But these projects never really end, do they? As they were installing the new windows, I realized that I couldn't put the horrible 30-year-old blinds back up. I just couldn't do it. So I measured everything and ran to Home Depot to order nice faux wood blinds in a warm maple color. Too bad I didn't realize this two weeks ago. But I can limp along with temporary window coverings until the new blinds come in. Deliver to the store for free? Why yes, I can pick them up. I'm still debating whether I will put the blinds up myself or pay someone else to do it. I took all the old blinds to Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

I'm fortunate that I can afford to replace these important parts of my home when I need to. The dogs and I will benefit from a cleaner, quieter, more comfortable living space. 

 

Leash! Leash!

 Although Frankie's overall agility skills have dramatically improved in the past few months, we still have one training issue that I can't seem to make progress on. 

At the end of runs in trials, she won't come to me. She knows it is the end of the run. After the last obstacle, she takes off, zooming around the ring. She sometimes visits ring crew or the judge, and she runs really close to me but won't let me catch her. 

I have to tell people coming in the ring after us to not come in the gate until I have her on lead. Which can sometimes take a minute or two, an eternity in agility when the actual run may have only been 30 seconds long. 

She's not aggressive. She doesn't attempt any obstacles. She just runs around the ring at top speed. 

My interpretation of this behavior is that she is too full of emotion and energy and doesn't know what to do with it. She doesn't want the fun to end. I mean, she comes in the ring so high she's levitating. The actual running of the course doesn't do much to calm her down.

I've spent almost 3 months working on a routine to get her to go to her leash at the end of a run. In this part of the world, most AKC clubs have plastic buckets near the exit gate into which the leash runner will drop your leash. You must enter and exit the ring with the dog on lead. You can carry the dog in and out but they still have to have a leash on. 

 First I built value for a plastic bucket. I added the leash in the bucket. I switched to different buckets. I added a second bucket for a delayed reward. I moved the buckets around. She was doing well with this routine at home and in class but it fell apart at the last trial. On her very first run of that trial, I made a beeline to the bucket, yelling "Leash! Leash!" She turned and rammed into me behind my knees. I ended up flat on my back looking up at the ceiling. She weighs all of 18 lb and she took me down. She had six runs and ran around the ring at the end of five of them. 

 The only exception was her last run of the second day. I ran this one For Exhibition Only. The handler can bring a toy into the ring and can take obstacles in any order they want for their 45 seconds. It doesn't count towards a qualifying leg. At the end, I whipped out the toy from the back of my pants. She grabbed it and I grabbed her collar. Since her reputation was already firmly established, everyone clapped. Sigh. I'm glad to entertain but I'd rather be celebrated for a nice, clean run and not successfully grabbing my dog.

I still think this routine can work but we aren't quite there. So I added having her put her head into her martingale collar before I would reward her. I hold it out and she shoves her head into it then I shove a treat in her mouth. I take it off and repeat 2 or 3 times. 

 I do this every time she goes outside to potty. I have one of my students put the leash in a bucket somewhere on the field and I do this in class after she runs. Months I've been at this. So many repetitions.

I managed to convince her to do stopped contacts by repeating and rewarding over and over. I have to trust the method and hope that I can convince her that the end of a run is not the end of the fun. 

Bah! Humbug!

 I don't celebrate holidays. I don't put up decorations or make special food. I don't wear costumes or specially colored or bedazzled clothing. I don't do gift exchanges. I'm not a monster. If invited to a friend's house for a shared meal on a designated holiday, I go, eat, and be appropriately merry. I just don't do anything for holidays on my own.

I don't celebrate birthdays either. I don't buy the dogs special toys or give them special treats. If I want something for myself, I save up money and buy it when I am ready. I don't need to wait for a special day for that.  

In vet school, my classmates had an annoying habit of singing "Happy Birthday" whenever they found out it was someone's birthday. For four years, I lied and told them my birthday was January 1. I chose that day because it reliably fell during the holiday break, so there were no classes, thus avoiding the matter entirely. 

For most holidays, I waver between anger at the false veneer of religion that is slapped on as if that was sufficient excuse, dismay at the empty commercialism, and just not seeing the point. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy to have paid holidays from work. I'm like my job but I have plenty of things to keep me occupied when not at work. It would be nice to choose which Monday or Friday I can take off in, say, June, rather than being told, it's this one day. But that's hardly a substantial complaint.

I think that hyping up events that "must" happen on a specific day ends up excluding too many people. In this hyping, the same events are deemed lesser or meaningless if they happen on any other day. People are pressured to participate by peers, family, and corporate overlords. Maybe they can't afford decorations or special food or themed clothing. Maybe they have to work that day. Maybe they aren't Christian. I can't drum up much positive feeling as a result.

Still, I don't make a crusade out of crushing holiday cheer. I just opt out.