Your Pet's Best Friend

Riding the Elephant

When I was about eight, an elephant came to the Delta Fair.   She also walked the parade route, carrying "Baby Jack" Allen, DJ and local radio personality on KBXM.  If you looked hard enough through the DDD archives, I believe you could find the picture of a smiling Baby Jack waving from atop the pachyderm. 

Two teen-age guys were hired with a proposal only slighty better than the one Fay Wray got in "King Kong".  "How would you guys like to get paid to be in the parade?"  They got clown costumes, big shovels and even bigger wheelbarrows, and they followed the elephant.

On arriving at the fairgrounds, we found that elephant rides were available, for a very reasonable fee. We used to spend Saturday afternoons watching Tarzan (aka Johnny Weissmuller) ride the elephants.  Who could pass this up? 

I joined the very long line with my money clutched in my hot little hand.  When my turn came, I was miraculously at the front of the line.  We climbed a wooden stepladder and mounted.  Being first in line, my seat was on the elephant's neck, just like Tarzan, like the mahouts, the place that was just made to ride on.  It was like riding a horse, only so much better.  I was the lord of the jungle, lord of all I surveyed.  The elephant's handler gently led her around in a circle, occasionally giving her a light touch with his ankus, saying "Come on, Kerry, come on girl."  "Is this your elephant, mister?"  "She's mine while I got her."  I felt like Sabu and I didn't even know who Sabu was.  It was wonderful.

As soon as we dismounted, I rushed to rejoin the line for a second ride.  Alas, I found myself in the middle of the six or eight riders this time.  This meant I was riding somewhere about the middle of Kerry's mighty back.  It was a mighty back, but it was a little boney.  Imagine a two-by-four placed on edge atop a four-foot diameter culvert.  Pencil-lead sized wires protrude at random every few inches. I had on short pants.  All I could survey was the back of an unwashed head.  Perhaps I was filthy and sweaty myself, but certainly the boys jammed together with me were.  It was miserable, and I didn't line up for a third ride.

Ever since then, when an elephant ride has been available at a circus or zoo, I've taken advantage of it, but it isn't the same.  First of all, you climb some sturdy platform with hand-rails and an attendant.  Then you are helped onto the howdah with its cushions and guardrails and safety chains. You're on top of the elephant, sure, but you're riding the saddle, not the elephant.  The other riders are little kids.

It's not the same.

The trebuchet's maiden voyage.

Set the  Way-Back, Sherman.  About ten years ago, I was flipping the channels and came across a guy in England who had built an enormous trebuchet: a counterweight-driven catapult that uses a sling to further extend its throwing arm.  He was throwing small automobiles and upright pianos, among other things.  He like to see things "blow up" and dynamite is not legal for recreational use in England, so he had built this alternative.  I was captivated, and soon built a small working model.

Without doing much research, I decided I could just extrapolate the dimensions of my model and build a larger scale device.  Sixteen inches in the model became eight feet in the construction, and so forth.  The catch was that I wanted it to be easily transported in "knocked-down" form.  Why?  So I could take it to watermelon fields at the end of the season.  They just plow under hundreds of watermelons that are past their  "sell-by" date.  You could haul your siege engine out to the field and throw watermelons until you got tired of seeing them explode.

Charlie's Welding did some metal fabrication for me.  I used steel pipe for the cross members and wood for the uprights and runners.  Charlie Jackson made pipe collars to hold things together and I spent a lot of time drilling holes and bolting things together.  I was too ambitious, though.  Eight feet tall, eight feet wide, eight feet long, and a sixteen-foot throwing arm.  I only got it put together one time, and the enormous weight needed to move the throwing arm caused the axle to bend.  Plus, it was just too big to handle, even with a crew of four men (myself and three high-school kids).

I disassembled it and did a lot more research.  Then I re-engineered: six feet tall at the four-foot, double-thick axle, with outriggers still keeping the base eight by eight.  I never got it assembled again.  It never threw a missile, much less a watermelon.  My poor baby languished in a pile for the last eight years, four of them outside at my brother's house, where I was going to work on it someday. It was just too big for one guy to handle by himself.  I needed a crew.  I also needed some fresh enthusiasm, as I was fresh out.

I tried to interest the Venture Crew in taking it on as a project, but the former leader wasn't interested.   Ah, but now there's a new event at the Fall Fun Rally at Beaumont: Pumpkin Launching.  The new leadership and crew ARE interested in a working trebuchet.  They've spent several days re-assembling and modifying the beast, and today that rascal is throwing like a champ.  There's still some tuning to do -- maybe even some fine-tuning.  It was sure great to see it throwing.  I hope to get some video up on You-tube.  They've done a great job making my vision finally come to life.

I think this must be what Dr. Frankenstein felt like when the monster finally stirred and sat up.

Never wear a neck-tie around a monkey.

When I was in undergraduate school, I had pet rats for a while.  Of all the pocket pets, the rat would be the most popular and endearing except for one thing: that naked, pink tail (that, and "rat" being synonymous with treachery and evil).  They are smart, active in the daytime, remain docile even after long periods of neglect, non-noisy, and easy to care for.  If they just had a fluffy little furry tail... but they don't.   In those days, we didn't call them "pocket pets", and if you were interested in learning to care for rabbits, mice, gerbils, guinea pigs, hamsters and rats,  you would need to take a course of "Laboratory Animal Medicine".

Sinclair research farm used to be out in the middle of nowhere. Columbia, Missouri has spread out so much that I think the farm is in the middle of a housing development now.   In those days, it was a relatively isolated facility with several very large steel buildings containing thousands of little research subjects. In addition to the rodents and lagomorphs, there was a colony of miniature swine being developed as potential research animals, and there were breeding colonies of squirrel monkeys and Rhesus monkeys.  Dr. Charles "Bud" Middleton was the director of the facility, and our instructor/mentor for the eight weeks of study there.  He had a special interest in non-human primates, and these breeding colonies were the only monkeys in the University system. 

These monkeys were not research subjects, except in the aspect of how to most successfully raise them in captivity.  As we toured the facility on our first day, Dr. Middleton advised us in no uncertain terms, "Never wear a neck-tie around a monkey."  A monkey is so much stronger on a pound-for-pound basis that you have to experience it to believe it.  I saw a 30-pound monkey jerk a 200-pound man off his feet one day. A small monkey could certaily choke you to death if he got hold of your tie.  My general observations of the monkeys during my time there permanently disabused me of the notion that I might like to have one.

Bud delivered other pearls of wisdom to us.  It was from him that I learned that "A chimp will kill you in a minute."  The performing chimpanzees you see are all juveniles.  Jane Goodall's research showed that chimps will use clubs as weapons, and that they kill to eat meat, including chimps from other groups.  A 125-pound chimp is about three times as strong as the average man.

He made us learn to do hand-ties on our surgical knots.  He regaled us with stories of his time in the Amazon.  He let us know that National Institute of Health grants are often awarded more on the basis of the "old boy network" than on the merits of experimental design (he was a member of the NIH review board).  He was a heck of an interesting guy.  I wish that I had a picture of him.  He had a head of wavy silver hair like a television evangelist and a charismatic southern voice to go with it.

I thought of him when a little kitten came unglued, jumped into the air, executed a 180-degree mid-air pinwheel, and latched onto my neck-tie (I had neglected to zip my lab coat).  As the kitten swung back and forth like Tarzan, I was transported in time to hear the voice of the master: "Never wear a neck-tie around a monkey."  Words to live by.

The staff suggested that we re-enact the episode to get it on camera so it could be posted on You-tube.  I declined, but offered to loan them my tie.  No takers so far.

The Boy-Wonder Equine Surgeon

As I may have remarked earlier, caring for horses and riding horses were my father's only hobby, and practically the only activities that we shared with my father as a family.  The first picture in my website biography is of my wife and I on horseback.  It was taken at the Eminence Cross-Country Trail Ride where we spent our honeymoon, camped out with the horses and my family and about a thousand other people.

When I applied to veterinary school, I envisioned myself as "The Boy-Wonder Equine Surgeon", the whiz-kid ministering to high-dollar pet horses in exclusive neighborhoods. [No doubt there was some subliminal influence from my boyhood reading of comic-books.  I loved Batman and Robin, "the boy wonder".]  Fortunately, our curriculum prepared us for a wide variety of careers in veterinary medicine.  I well recall my classmate, Rodney Moxley, who was single-minded in his ambition to work with large dairies... until he tried it.  From there he went to an exclusively small animal practice, to meat-inspector training, to a return to school and advanced training as a pathologist... and no dairy cows.

My first job was in a very general practice with lots of livestock.  After returning home to Kennett, most of my time has gone into dog and cat repair.  Horses are less than five percent of my practice these days.

What brought this to mind was something I said to a client today.  She wants me to do blood-work on twenty-two horses.  I did last year, but --  "You know, last year those miniature ponies and un-broke yearlings beat me up quite a bit.  I'm not doing the cowboy thing this year.  If you can't handle them, I'm not fighting them."  That's a bit of a change for me.  I used to take some perverse macho pride in being able to get the job done even when the horses were unruly. 

When I was a kid, I read a book called The Horse Tamer by Walter Farley, writer of The Black Stallion.  Many is the time that I have used the circling technique he described (in his handling of a wild zebra) to wear out a horse that wouldn't stand still for treatment.   The downside is that you can get pretty dizzy, and if you lose your footing during the process you could get stomped into mush.  The last time I had to do that (a few months ago), I found myself saying, "I'm too old for this stuff!"  [That's pretty close to what I said, anyway.]   I exercise pretty regularly, but I was ready to rest after that one.

I sometimes joke that equine practitioners wind up with nicknames like "Blinky", "Stumpy" or "Gimpy".    Chemical restraint (a tranquilizer) is a great thing, but you have to be able to handle the horse some to get the stuff into them. When an animal weighs a thousand pounds, they just don't have to be trying very hard to hurt you pretty badly.

Hanging up my "horse-tamer" hat is like seeing your picture and finding out that you've got a bald spot in back that you didn't know about: a little bit of youth trickling away.  On the other hand, I've got too many dogs, cats, and creditors depending on me.  I can't afford to get stomped into mush.

Bodily Functions are Disgusting

There comes a time in a young veterinarian's education when he (or she) realizes that his idea of normal conversation has become somewhat deranged.  When you're in class six days a week, from 7:30 AM until 5:30 PM, and in the library until 11:00 or so, and everybody you see is a fellow veterinary student or an instructor, you begin to think that everyone in the world talks about disease and injury and blood and poop all day long.  Everyone in your world is talking about those things.  Hey, must be normal.  Then you go out for dinner with family over the holidays.  You begin regaling them with some of your better stories and you notice people putting down their forks, pushing their plates away and making uncomfortable faces.  That is, you notice that if you're not so fascinated with hearing yourself talk that you're unaware of anything outside that sublime pleasure.

I find that even people who are very interested in caring for their very own pet's medical problem generally don't want to be "grossed out".  Most people really would rather not deal with the nitty-gritty (or poopy-scoopy) details of bodily functions.  It would really suit them fine if they had a Walt Disney dog whose tail lifts to reveal a smooth and sparkling white behind.   [The exception to that would, of course, be eleven-year-old boys.  I find that young Scouts feel bodily functions are the most humorous subjects in the world.]  This is apparently why people can't just say they've brought a stool sample (much less "fecal specimen").  It's always a "surprise" or a "present" or "his job", or (my personal favorite) "his homework".

On the other hand, if we're going to deal with medical issues, then we're going to have to deal with bodily functions.  This usually goes okay, although there are definitely times with reproductive issues when the discussion can go south in a hurry. 

In the early days of "Your Pet's Best Friend" on radio,  the late great Mr. Rudy Pylant was in charge of my account.  He told me "I hate your show. It's disgusting. It's on at breakfast time and I can't listen to that!"   I mentioned this to Jeff Wheeler, the station manager, and he put someone else on my account. [Lest you think there are any hard feelings, scroll down to the bottom of the Sons of the Western Bootheel page for a video of our musical tribute to Mr.Rudy.]

I try to be conscious of the sensibilities of normal people now.  It's similar to my hand-washing concerns.  After thirty-something years of this stuff, I've more or less lost the capacity to feel dirty.  I get disgusting stuff on my hands and I know that I need to wash them, but if I didn't think about it, I could probably just wipe them on my pants and go on.  I do wash them, though (a LOT).  In the same way, I try to speak of disgusting bodily functions in terms that aren't so disgusting.  That is, unless I'm dealing with Boy Scouts.

Everything you know is wrong.

Well, maybe not everything.  However, it is a well-known non-fact that if a dog's nose is cold and moist, then he is okay.  That doesn't happen to be true, but it certainly is well-known.  People don't just think it might be that way -- they know it.  In actuality, the only places that dogs normally perspire are their nose and footpads.  So, if the nose is cool and moist, that tells you that dog is perspiring.  If it's dry, that tells you he's not  perspiring. That's it, there's nothing else to it, the wet nose tells you nothing about his health status or temperature.  The reductio ad absurdum would be to note that a dead dog has a very cold nose.

And how does this relate to my blog?  Science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon once remarked that "...ninety percent of everything is crud".  Hey, I'd really like to be in the other ten percent.  Anyone who surfs the web knows that it is easy to find unreliable information.  You can put anything up on the web.  Of course, since I'm a veterinarian with seven years of college and twenty-eight years of practice experience, everything I say has been "vetted", all my guesses are "educated guesses", and all of my excuses are "doctor's excuses".

The test of truth is in the application of the data.  If you can USE the information to obtain predictable and desirable results, it is true enough.  On the other hand, if you plug your life experiences into the framework of the new rules and things keep going south, then the information is NOT true enough.

I can hardly keep my personal opinions out of the blog, and I don't intend to.  Some intentional nonsense is planned, but the important stuff had better be right.  If it's controversial, I'll provide references.  In the meantime, with reference to veterinary medical questions, I can recommend veterinarypartner.com.  This is a sister site to Veterinary Information Network, which you'll hear more about later.  The same database can be accessed through the library link at www.kennettvet.com.

Opening Day

About twenty years ago, a young man named Roland Nash was working sales for KBOA radio station in Kennett.  He stopped by my veterinary clinic and proposed that I advertise with them by doing a short radio spot on pet-care.  I had already written some newspaper columns, and I enjoyed speaking to groups, so I agreed to give it a try.  Jeff Wheeler was the station manager and we worked out a deal.  If I would buy some weather-watch spots and so forth, they would run my four-minute programs at the 30-second rate.   Thus was born "Your Pet's Best Friend", my weekly radio spot, currently running on KTMO, KOTC, and KXOQ. 

Doing the show has been a lot of fun.  Taking the common (and sometimes not so common) animal  medical situations and adding some silly scenarios as lead-ins has given us a lot of good feed-back. Occasionally someone asks for  a demo tape, but Hollywood still hasn't called.

One year ago, I started developing a website for Kennett Veterinary Clinic and it's still a work in progress at www.kennettvet.com.   In an interesting karmic circle,  another KBOA alumnus, Steve Mays (www.smays.com) has convinced me that the way to communicate with my clients is to blog.  According to Steve, that's the way to get your unique voice across and keep folks coming back for more.  My voice is unique, but I must confess that sometimes I find myself the only person laughing loudly at something in a movie.  I'd like to think I'm the only one smart enough to get the joke, but it's possible that my sense of humor is slightly askew.  I reckon we're going to find out which one is the case.