Pawcurious Vet Blog: With Pet Blogger and Veterinarian Dr. V

A whale of a tale

I haven’t been whale watching since I was a kid. It seems counter-intuitive, seeing as how I live right along the path of the gray while migration, and I have a marine biology background, but I guess it’s one of those things I keep meaning to do but never get around to. Just like people who live in Las Vegas never go to the strip, or those in LA stay away from Universal Studios, you tend to avoid the touristy stuff in the area in which you live.

So when a friend of mine asked if anyone was interested in joining her family on a whale watching trip on Monday, I said, “Oh! We totally need to do that!” The kids were excited, I was excited, we were good to go.

It was a gorgeous day in San Diego, albeit choppy as heck on the water. While we boated out of the harbor, a volunteer naturalist from the Birch Aquarium told us all about the annual gray whale migration. (more…)

Dr V, purveyor of poisonous crafts and ideas

I like spending time with my family. We do crafty things, because they’re fun and everyone enjoys them. One of our traditions, started back when my daughter was in kindergarten, is to make little Valentine’s Day trinket boxes to send to school on Valentine’s Day- a craft I found on the Martha Stewart website and immediately fell in love with. It’s a cute craft- you take empty matchboxes, cover them with scrapbook paper and ribbons, and fill them with conversation hearts. It’s simple, sweet, and it’s always gone over well.

Until this year.

Last Friday, as I was at home recovering from the jetlag of my Westminster trip, I was interrupted in my reverie by a phone call from the school principal, who called to let me know that she had received “multiple complaints” about my little craft. My immediate thought was, oh no, the kids forgot to remove the matches from some of the boxes, but that wasn’t it. Some parents were just mortified that I used matchboxes for a craft. The principal patiently explained, in the same tone one might explain to a kindergartner why gargling with Drano is a bad idea, about the dangers of sulfur residue. Then she said the part that really killed me: “You need to think about the message you are sending here.”

The message I had sent, or so I thought, was, “I care enough about your kids to spend a day running around gathering supplies to make a cute and time consuming re-purposing project.” But people being the contrary types who like to assume the worst read something else into it, what, I don’t know exactly. “Hey kids, pyromania is fun!” “Crack is cool!” Empty matchboxes are the gateway craft, y’all. (more…)

Trolled by travel

Veterinary work is an emotionally charged field. Rarely are people in an ambivalent, steady state sort of mind the way they are, say, at the gas station, or buying bananas at the grocery store. They are either happy because they have a cute young pet getting routine care, or stressed because their pet is ill/expensive/having surgery/waiting too long in the exam room. You get the picture.

So I’m used to dealing with stressed and angry people. You have to be. There are ways to defuse situations, and ways to escalate them.

Now I know that I am, personally, sometimes but not always, a bit of a hothead. Shocking, I know. I’ve never yelled at clients, never gotten loud, never thrown things or berated coworkers or any of that. Not because I’ve never felt the urge, but because that’s not what you do. Being pleasant and polite in the face of stress is what professionals are paid to do, so you do it. That aside, getting into it with clients or customers never serves any purpose, right? Help them solve their problem and move on.

Now on the flip side, when I’m out and about living life, I get irked not uncommonly. I try really hard not to, but it happens. And when it’s accompanied by jet lag, lack of sleep, and dehydration it only gets worse.

It was in this state that I arrived back home on Wednesday. I was already mad because I had to gate check my bag, which I HATE doing, and despite my attempts to make the bag handler-proof as it was being whisked away I realized my car keys were still in it. Greeeeeeat.

And because I am lucky when I travel and we had the extra pleasure of a TSA agent at the gate doing a triple level of screening, he took my nervous fidgeting as I watched my car keys being handed off to some stranger on the tarmac as signs of impending terrorism. He pulled me out of line for additional harassment, which consisted of him looking at my drivers license, up at me, back at my license, back at me for a good three minutes while asking me my name and my destination about three times. But he wanted to be thorough, so then he asked my middle name just for funsies, I guess, and, convinced of my benevolent intents, finally let me on the plane. (more…)

West Coast Meets East Coast

Westminster was so much fun. I can’t wait to go home and sort through all the pictures. For my first time there, it was an eventful experience.

One, there was drama. There’s always drama at these shows to begin with, it seems, but this year was extra dramatic. I know lots of you already know about the controversy about Westminster breaking ties with Pedigree, and all I can say for now is that I am going to do all I can to get a better understanding about what happened and report back to you, because I think it’s a worthy topic to discuss.

But there was other drama too. I actually like the Pekingese who won, but there were plenty of disgruntled people muttering around me about how they liked the Irish Setter or the Dalmatian or what have you. I’m not vested in that world so to me, so I just sit back and enjoy seeing the many beautiful dogs. Who won or did not win is not that important to me. I met Maverick, who some of you have already heard about- he went from being a rescue dog on Craigslist to showing at Westminster and Eukanuba. AMAZING story and I can’t wait to share him with you all.

But aside from that, I took a breather to do the one thing I really wanted to see in New York aside from the show itself, and that was the World Trade Center memorial. It was very moving, and jarring and surreal to be there.

It’s late, and I have to be up early to jet back home, so forgive me this abbreviated post. I promise to write lots more later. In the meantime, how was your Valentine’s Day? Anyone have anything fun they did with the pups or something else exciting to share? I’m already in the doghouse for missing this holiday at home so I have to plan something good in the next six hours.

Feast or famine and the mental block of learning DSLRs

My life is a long series of monotonous daily routines punctuated by brief and terrifying moments of outright insanity.

Take this weekend, for example. On Sunday, I’m running in the Helen Woodward Puppy Love 5K on the inaugural Team Iams with an ace group of dogs and friends. Brody and I are super excited. And by excited, I mean, Brody is excited for a long walk and I’m just now realizing I should have spent more time training and less time sampling Girl Scout cookies.

No matter. I may walk a lot of it, but we’re getting out there, and there’s going to be dogs and awesome people and doga, and it will be great.

Then, I’ve given myself just enough time to run home and shower before running to the airport to catch a flight to New York to see the Westminster Kennel Club show for the first time. I could have caught a slightly earlier flight and foregone the post-5K shower, but I figured out of a sense of respect for my fellow travelers this was probably not an optional item.

I still have no idea what I’m going to be doing there- I have no agenda, no scheduled meetings (aside from finally getting to meet Annette from Biscuits by Lambchop!) and nothing that I have to do. What I do have is a list of people I want to meet for drinks, and that is good enough for me.

What I do want to do is get some good photos, and this is always a challenge for me on these solo trips because my husband always takes the pictures. This is both a blessing (when he’s around) and a curse (when he’s not.) I’ve never learned the art because I’ve rarely needed to use it.

After seeing that hysterical and slightly cringeworthy screenshot of me trying to hang with the big guys at the AKC show with my point-and-shoot, I decided to go big or go home and bring my husband’s DSLR with me to New York. I’ve been using it for three years, but by “using it” I mostly mean “I set it to full auto and fix it the best I can with Elements”.

What this translates to is that I have spent the last 24 hours with the camera in my lap, flipping through “30D for Dummies” learning what all the buttons mean. I’m reminded of my first clinical days in the vet school hospital, when I stood in the exam room with one hand on the dog and the other looking at the chart murmuring, “Eyes….OK, looked at that….teeth….lymph nodes.”

It took me 15 minutes to get through the exam in those days. That will be me trying to take pictures of squirmy dogs with a new camera. “OK….hmmmm, low aperture means narrow depth of field? Or is it the other way around? Wait, where’s the button for adjusting shutter speed….” and then I will say forget it and flip the dial to Auto and just throw a sock over the persistent auto flash just like I do now.

Much like perfecting the art of the spay, I assume this will take a little more time to learn than the one afternoon I allotted to the task. Oh well, such is the life of a procrastinator. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a bag I need to think about packing and not do until late Saturday night.

Them cookies are serious business, people.

One of the reasons many vets give for choosing their profession is, “I like animals better than people.” It’s not a good reason, mind you, and those with misanthropic tendencies learn to cover it up pretty quickly or else have a rotten career, but I will tell you from experience that well, it’s true.

I’ve been working on it. I actually get along pretty well with people, as far as I can tell. But every once in a while I experience one of those penultimate human experiences that I’m supposed to relish, and all I can do is run away screaming and bury my face in the dog and not want to talk to another person for at least eight hours, possibly ten. I had one of those this week.

In an attempt to raise a good citizen, I enrolled my daughter in Girl Scouts. I did it when I was a kid. I tried to find my picture of me in my Brownies uniform to prove it, but I think it’s in the storage facility somewhere, at least that is my excuse. Anyway, as far as I could recall, it was fun: we made some ribbon barrettes, colored, got to wear those badass brown sashes to school and strut around every Tuesday, and I think one time I sold some Thin Mints. It was low key.

And I look around at the second graders these days dressing like Miley Cyrus and singing all the words to “I’m Sexy and I Know It”, and I realized something with horror: I’m apparently an old school prude. And I’m really not, but compared to what’s out there, I kind of am. And I had two main choices for after school activities for my daughter: Girl Scouts or the local dance studio, and if you saw what the eight year olds were wearing at the last recital you would understand why I went with the scouts.

Because the Scouts are the answer to all the things we bemoan about being a woman today, right? It’s about teamwork and solidarity. It’s about empowerment. Equality. Buoying your fellow woman instead of throwing her under the bus. Girl power and all of that, embrace your brain, etc.

Well. (more…)

Fashion Xanax

If I seem a little stressed in the next couple of months, I have a good excuse: we are going to try and sell our house. I say “try”, because this is one of those housing markets when upon saying “I’m going to put my house on the market” the universal response is, “Well, good luck with that.”

We’re staying in the area- after seeing all those pictures from Colorado this weekend I think it’s safe to say I am actually quite content here in San Diego, thanks- and the decision is one that has more to do with commutes and schools than anything else. Now, the last time we sold a house was in 2004, and as you probably know, the market was a little different back then. You could put a ramshackle log cabin on the market in 2004 and it would be sold for a ridiculous bucket of money back then. Our place sold in 10 days, to the second person who saw it. Ah, to be back in 2004 again.

Now, buyers are a little pickier. And the prospect of trying to keep a house in showable condition for possibly months, with two messy kids and a really rowdy Golden who would love nothing more than to go nuts each and every time someone comes by, has me in apoplectic fits. Worse than when I was taking the boards, worse than when I was pregnant. I have NO idea how I’m going to do it.

But I have a point here, and my point is: this is how we found ourselves at the mall on Saturday looking at little knick knacks, because my husband decided potential buyers would be impressed by more candles in the house. Now, I am ambivalent about that kind of stuff to begin with, and all I could think while we were wandering through the store was “It won’t matter, there’s no way the house is going to sell and then we’re going to be stuck in this house forever WITH A BUNCH OF EXTRA CANDLES TO HAVE TO STORE” and then I got even more stressed out and couldn’t concentrate.  (more…)

Cat Lady Undercover

Anyone who’s read this blog for a while knows I identify as a dog person. In this world, you’re one or the other, it seems, but just because you lean towards one doesn’t mean you dislike the other. I happen to like cats a lot, too. Which is why I took my daughter to check out the 2012 San Diego Cat Show this weekend. It really is a different world.

Much like a dog show, there are ‘rings’ where the cats are judged.

There’s none of this running around in a show lead, however. The cats wait in a cage until it’s their turn.  (more…)

Hello Olive

Our friends Jeff and Shelia recently brought home a poodle puppy, Olive.

Now, I love these guys to begin with, but when they told me how they prepared for a new dog- being inexperienced owners- I loved them even a little more.

They waited three years, until the time was right and the kids were old enough.

They researched exhaustively, picking a knowledgable breeder who spent hours with them visiting, teaching them about the breed, and making sure they knew the importance of early socialization. The kids have been trained in proper holding of a puppy. These people are prepared for a puppy and all the work that comes along with it, and that is why I am sure they are going to have a great life together.

Ready to play! Let’sgolet’sgolet’sgo  (more…)

Sometimes it’s better not to wait

A lesson I should know by now.

This afternoon, I saw Koa nosing about by the pool. She never noses about by the pool. So I investigated, and sure enough, a dead mouse was floating in the pool.

I suppose I should have spared more than a passing moment to feel for the poor drowned rodent, but my first and immediate thought was, how the heck do I get rid of that? Because as I learned the hard way, there is nowhere in the yard that is safe from Brody’s investigational prowess.

The dirt in the yard is hard clay. You can’t dig more than an inch or two without some heavy muscle, and even that is not really helpful when you have a determined dog on your hands.

So I mulled about over it for a bit, before coming to the conclusion that I was going to have to find a burial site in the front yard instead, where the dogs never go.

Better yet, I decided, to wait until my husband came home, and let him deal with it. Then I went inside.

An hour later, I let Brody out, not thinking, clearly. When he reappeared by the back door, I took in his wet feet and thought, uh oh. I mean, it’s cold out right now. Surely, surely he wouldn’t go swimming in that arctic pool, would he?

But he would. If dead rodents were involved.

I looked in the pool. I suppose he imagined he was being helpful. The offending rodent was nowhere to be found.

And he was licking his lips. Looking quite proud of himself, I might add.

Ah, Brody. Keep that tongue away from me. More disinfectant for you, my friend. And some dewormer. BLEAH. Dogs are so gross.

Game on

I don’t watch a whole lot of football, normally. Living in San Diego, it’s kind of depressing. We have the Padres and the Chargers. Now, I know my husband will disagree vehemently, but they aren’t very good. He will defend the Chargers to the death, but they never win much, and it’s sad to get your hopes up over and over and over only to be robbed of glory each and every time. No fun.

I can say this because I grew up in Boston. Back then, the Celtics and the Lakers were in the midst of their killer rivalry, Larry Bird was the man, and it was fun. I see my relatives on Facebook getting to gloat year after year because they are Patriots fans through and through, and when you look at the overall trajectory of their team compared to, say, the one in my neck of the woods, they are doing pretty well.

As far as playing goes, I wasn’t much of a sportsman myself, being too far buried in books to really bother with such trifles as team sports. It wasn’t until I discovered tennis that I really found a sport I could sink my teeth into. For me, being the uber competitive solitary wolf that I was, this was the ticket. BLAM, I would smack the ball, and SMASH it at the opponent, and I never had to worry about complex game plays or counting on other people not to blow it for me.

It was me, my racket, and the ball. One time- just one- my coach decided to try me on a doubles team, which ended in disaster. The other player and I never really figured out how to work together; we’d both rush the net every time, tripping over each other to get to the ball. She, too, was a lone wolf. So back to singles I went, and the glory and the anguish mine and mine alone. Man, I miss that game.

But I digress. My point is, yesterday’s games were actually fun to watch, close and dramatic and high stakes. I like it when it’s like that. I like the pressure and the excitement of it all, so I sat down with Brody and watched both championship games with actual interest, which I usually have to feign. So even though I’m not vested in the final outcome, yeah, I’ll watch the Superbowl and hope it’s good. And if not, at least I hear there are some good commercials in the works.

As I watched Brody zoom around the yard in circles this afternoon, pausing only long enough to rumble over Koa or try to take out one of the kids, it struck me that he would probably be a pretty good football player. From an early age, he was a particularly athletic dude.

It would definitely be something rough and tumble. Football, I think, or rugby.  (more…)

Dogs are predictable

The thing about living with a dog is, they tend to behave in a very predictable manner. So when bad things happen, you can usually trace it back to an error on your part, and/or follow the trajectory of all the future things that will arise from it.

Case in point: Koa has now realized that when she is left alone for more than two minutes, the best way to assuage her anxiety is to lock herself in the pantry and eat away her stress. This has happened three times in as many weeks.

It’s entirely my fault, for making the fatal error of forgetting to close the pantry door before departure. And the price is paid dearly.

So when I arrived home the night before last to find my husband stalking the house resembling nothing so much as Jack Torrance in the Shining (Jack Nicholson version, of course) I figured something was up.

I had pre-emptively removed anything chocolate or scary from the bottom levels, but it was still a scene, nonetheless. Apparently the dog likes fruit snacks, by the way. And flatbread.  (more…)