Friday, March 15, 2024

Frankie: A Work in Progress

 Training Frankie in agility is a challenge. Well, it's a challenge no matter what dog you have, but Frankie poses some unusually challenging challenges. She's very fast, and outpaces me quickly. I started her on distance training early. I spent last summer working on a beginning distance class using Frankie and three agility friends and their dogs as test subjects. She hates to be drilled, and more than a couple of repetitions of a skill will frustrate her. She is heedless of personal safety and has taken out jump wings more than once. She drops bars, but I think that I'm the biggest problem there with late commands and getting in her way. She's a little dog but she needs a lot of room!

Because she is so resistant to drilling, I try not to spend too much time correcting mistakes. It works better for Frankie if I keep moving and circle back to the place where she had a mistake. I'd rather keep the speed and enthusiasm and focus on teamwork. 

Her start line stay was initially nonexistent. She'd stand up and walk or creep up to the obstacle, and she would break her stay if I took too long to get into position, moved, or even just took a breath. That's getting better in part because I have been working this behavior into our daily routine. But honestly, as Frankie gets older, she is showing a better understanding of her job. 

Frankie and I took two sessions of Rally Novice taught by another instructor at the club. Rally allows the handler to verbally praise their dog and use a lot more hand and body motion (with some limits) than formal obedience. Dogs and handlers navigate courses with stations. At each station, a sign indicates some sort of skill, like "dog down, handler walks around" or "270 turn to the left" or "about turn." Dogs are on lead for the Novice level. And it's like formal obedience in that the dog is worked from the handler's left.

 Frankie came into her first Rally class with no loose lead (that means she pulls on lead), no heeling (she forges ahead of me and often turns into my path), and no down. She's still not really got those things even now after two 8-week sessions, but she's getting better. And she has her moments of brilliance. Her left turns (dog on the inside of the turn) are just lovely. Seeing her excited to work with me for the full hour of class, and putting all of her energy and focus into this very non-agility activity, is a lot of fun.

Like most smooth fox terriers, Frankie went through a final growth spurt at about 18 months old. She got very lean and muscled almost overnight. She also got a little taller. She's lean, fast, agile, far too smart for her own good, opinionated...in short, the perfect smooth fox terrier.

Despite having significant reservations about whether Frankie was ready and concerns about her leaving the ring, I entered her in a trial a couple of weekends ago. One run, one day. This particular class could be run as FEO, for exhibition only. I could take a toy into the ring with me. I have 60 seconds to do what I want--run part of the course, all of the course, one obstacle over and over, you get the idea. FEO runs don't count for anything. It's an opportunity to train in the ring. Everyone kept asking me what I was going to do with her. I said, well, that depends on what happens at the start line. If she holds her start line stay, I will run the course. 

 First things first, however. Frankie got measured for the first time. At home, I had measured her as 15 1/2 inches at the shoulder. But now she had to be measured by a judge with a wicket. She did great! And measured out exactly at 15 1/2 inches. This puts her in the 16 inch jump height class as I had expected.

So how did Frankie do at her agility debut? She was magnificent. She exceeded all expectations. Her start line stay was amazing, never took her eyes off me despite the commotion in the gate area just feet behind her. She was a little worried about the new teeter but got right back on and performed it perfectly twice! Her weaves were blazing fast. Not one knocked bar. I could not be more pleased with her performance.

Video? Why of course, I have video. It's still on my iPad. It's enormous. I'll figure out how to get it dumbed down enough to slap up on the blog. 

In the meantime, I've got some agility training to do.

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

New, and New To Me

 I bought a new car this summer. It wasn't just new to me, it was actually new, with all of 12 miles on the odometer.

On a whim, on a hot summer day in July, I decided to stop by the local Honda dealer located near my house after lunch. I'd been thinking about getting a new car. I had been researching EVs for months but wasn't finding anything that met my driving needs. But I thought, maybe I can downsize and get a smaller SUV instead of the Odyssey. 

I gave a Pilot a quick test drive and hated it. Light, bouncy. And not nearly enough cargo space.

I love my Odyssey van. I can easily haul three dogs and the mountain of crap that we need to comfortably survive in a hotel and at an agility trial. I can fit 8 foot long pieces of PVC in it. I can sleep in it if I have to (and I did during the move from Oregon to Arkansas). The Odyssey just works for me.

I bought my first Odyssey lightly used. It was still relatively low mileage but I wanted a newer car with updated safety features that the old one lacked. 

The dealer had two Odysseys on the lot, a white one (hated it) and a lovely slate blue one. I looked at the salesman and said, I'll take the blue one. No test drive needed. I know what I'm getting. It's not sexy or cool, but it is exactly the kind of car that I want.

A couple of hours and a lot of paperwork later, I was transferring dog crates and assorted gear from the old Odyssey to the new one. I felt strangely emotional--I was losing an old reliable, well, I can't say a car is a friend, but it was a reliable tool that I used every day. A tool that had transported me back and forth across the country to both coasts more than once. I was sad to say goodbye to the old van. But I drive Hondas for a reason: I immediately felt at home in the new van with its nice leather interior and spiffy safety features.

 


Monday, November 27, 2023

Frankie

It's time to lay out some of Frankie's origin myth. 

Oh, who's Frankie, you ask? She is the smooth fox terrier puppy I picked up over the Fourth of July weekend in 2022. She was only 10 weeks old at the time, and the last of her litter. I had some reservations about both of those facts but decided to load up Archie and Azza and drive out to northwestern Arkansas to see her. Her breeder was registered with AKC, and told me this was her last litter of smooths. She and her husband were switching over to whippets. I met the sire and dam and both seemed in good health and good conformation. The sire was a finished champion. 

And there was the puppy, a scrap of a thing, by herself in an expen under the shade of a tree. She willingly tugged with a raccoon tail toy I brought with me and seemed quite feisty and healthy. She had a lazy left eye and the usual "carousel horse" planes to her head that you see in American-bred smooth fox terrier lines. 

I had really wanted another male puppy. Male smooth fox terriers tend to be more biddable and willing to please. The females tend to challenge everything, making them harder to train. Archie is a dream of a companion and agility partner, and I was sort of hoping that I could strike gold again with another male. 

But nope, that wasn't happening. This little pup was coming home with us: last of the litter, runt, lazy eye, female. So many things that weren't on my list. But she had a spark that drew me in right away.

I named her Frankie. 


She's still a tiny thing, 16 lb and about 15" at the shoulder. Her lazy eye mostly resolved on its own. It will show up now and then but casual observers would never notice it.

In the past year and a half, Frankie has proven herself over and over to be one of the most challenging fox terriers I've ever worked with. At every waking moment, she vibrates, levitates, with energy. She never stops moving. She wants to be touching me all the time. She is exceptionally bold and oblivious to personal safety. As a result, she and Archie have never been in the same space together, although they do interact across gates in doorways.  

Azza fell into the role of auntie after a couple of weeks of cautious observation. Azza didn't embrace Frankie as quickly as she did Archie, but she eventually came around. Amazingly, Frankie can regularly inspire a lot of play in my 12-year-old desert dog. 

 

 

Frankie is a foreign body surgery looking for a holiday weekend. She eats toys, bedding, sticks, acorns, small stones. She chewed the handle and snap off a 6-foot nylon leash and swallowed almost 3 feet of it. Following a panicked call to a vet school classmate, I dosed her twice with hydrogen peroxide. Once she began to gag, I reached in and pulled out the leash.


Once I realized that I could not monitor her every move outside nor could I train her to stop constantly hoovering up inappropriate things, I ordered a customized basket muzzle that she wears when she is running around the backyard. I had to add some additional strips of duct tape across the bottom because within days she learned she could slam the muzzle down on acorns and pop them into the muzzle so she could eat them. This morning, she still managed to pick up a tree branch (not a twig, a 2-foot long branch) that had fallen overnight by pushing a smaller branchlet sticking off of it into the muzzle.

When I had her spayed earlier this year, she destroyed two cones and the collars holding them, and started to dehisce her abdominal incision within hours of coming home from the clinic. I ended up getting two full-body vests, rotating them every 24 hours so I could wash one, and zoinking her to the moon with alternating trazadone and gabapentin every 4 hours (plus a short course of antibiotics). I had to take three days off work because I couldn't take my eyes off her for a second. 

Frankie is currently taking a novice rally obedience class at the dog training club. One of the other students in the class complimented Frankie on her nice conformation, then gently asked, so, do other smooth fox terriers have a ... similar temperament? I laughed and said, no, Frankie is definitely a unique chaos agent all her own. She is so spicy, so much MORE than I've seen in this breed before.

On the bright side, Frankie sleeps very soundly at night in a crate next to the bed. Goes in without a peep, sleeps a full 8 hours. I'm not surprised--she has to recharge her batteries for another day of mayhem. 

Her agility training has been quite a ride as well. She is comically fast. Think Roadrunner cartoon fast. It has been a challenge for me to learn how to handle her. She gets overstimulated/frustrated very quickly, spinning in circles and jumping up to bite my arm. I'm fortunate to have good training partners and instructors who help us work through these problems. 

Everyone keeps asking me when I will take her into the ring, and I say, she's not ready. Not even close. Archie started competing at 15 months. You could argue that he wasn't quite ready then, but he wasn't hell on wheels either. Frankie and I are still working on performing as a team. But progress is there--in the past 4-5 weeks, she went from only being able to complete 4-5 obstacles before melting down to completing 12-14 obstacles with some semblance of control and direction. I plan to debut her this coming summer when she is 2 years old. She needs a little more tempering.

 


Friday, September 22, 2023

You Are Served

 The lab regularly receives necropsy submissions from animal rescue groups, county and city shelters/animal control, law enforcement, vets, and owners that involve suspected abuse. I've been subpoenaed five times at work in cases that have made it as far as a trial. 

In all of these cases, I'd already been contacted by the prosecutor's office and was expecting the subpoenas, which come by email, but it's still a shock when they pop up. 

In one case, once the defendant took one look at the four witnesses lined up to testify for the prosecution, including me (I did the necropsy), another vet who treated the animal before it died, and two people from the rescue group, he asked for a plea deal right away. Showing up is important!

In another case, I testified in a county courthouse in northeast Arkansas. That was a simple trial in front of a judge. The evidence from necropsy was compelling--the same poison was found in vomit near the dog's head and in stomach contents from the dog. The guy was convicted.

Earlier this month, I testified in my first jury trial. Animal abuse was recently elevated to a felony charge in Arkansas, and the prosecutors worked really hard on this case. After doing the necropsy, I spent a couple of hours on phone calls with them, then another hour-long in-person meeting for trial prep. 

Trial day arrives. I was the eighth of eight witnesses for the prosecution. It was late in the day by the time I was called in, and everyone was tired. I was questioned for over 45 minutes! I was really stressed going in, but the prosecuting team's prep was good, and I think I did a good job of explaining emotionally difficult and technically complicated things to the jury. The prosecution used as evidence some of the necropsy photos that I sent to them. Even for me, it was jarring to see the photos splashed up on a giant flat screen beside me. I know the jury was shocked. I even acknowledged in a couple of my remarks that I knew it was hard to look at photographs like that. I was prepared. I am good at my job. It was still a relief to be dismissed. 

The prosecution team texted me the next morning--jury voted to convict, defendant sentenced to serve 2.5 years. 

Veterinarians deal with death every day. Nothing is routine--each case brings its own burdens. Animal abuse cases are particularly hard on the entire team. I didn't expect that being an expert witness would be part of my job here at the lab. But I made this career change in order to do more meaningful work, and sitting in a court room talking about difficult topics is just one of the meaningful things that I do now. 



Thursday, August 31, 2023

MACH Rose Country's Bust A Move

In March of this year, Archie completed requirements for a coveted AKC agility title: MACH or Master Agility Champion. Once the dog reaches the Masters level of competition, he begins to accumulate MACH points and double Qs. Points are earned by clean runs under the allotted course time. A double Q means qualifying (running clean) in Standard and Jumpers With Weaves in the same day. At the Masters level, no errors are allowed. Dogs have to get 750 points and 20 double Qs to earn the MACH.

 


Archie is a reasonably speedy dog with no problems making course time. He had well over 1200 points and 19 double Qs by March. I entered the trial in Tulsa specifically because I thought we could run clean under those two judges. I'd shown to both of them many times and knew their course design styles well. 

He qualified in Standard in the morning. A few hours later, we entered the Jumpers ring. I'd been here plenty of times--one Q on the board then we fail to get that second Q. 

Tulsa isn't my home turf but there were quite a few people at the trial that I knew well or counted as agility friends. The arena was well lit, the dirt surface was firm. I wasn't talking about the MACH thing with anyone, but they were certainly talking amongst themselves. Knowing I had that Standard Q, quite the crowd was gathered at the Jumpers ring exit when it came time for us to run. They were filming me too, but wisely knew not to tell me that. I was stressed when I stepped into the ring. So many things could go wrong.

As Archie cleared that last bar following a lovely clean run, I ran over and picked him up for a big hug. We did it!

Archie is the first smooth fox terrier that I was able to put a MACH on. I've been at this with multiple dogs for 20 years. He is also only the seventeenth smooth fox terrier to get a first MACH since 2003. Yep, those are all correct numbers. This should tell you two things: there aren't many smooth fox terriers that do agility, and it's damn hard to be successful in agility with a smooth fox terrier. 

Here's a picture I took of Archie in the hotel that evening. My little athlete, taking a well earned nap.


One consequence of this achievement is that I immediately dropped Archie into Preferred. This means he no longer has to jump 16". Preferred puts him into the 12" class with the little dogs. He flies over those jumps!

It's All About Meeeee.....

 In the past few weeks, I've read four biographies. I don't read biographies often but they caught my eye as I was scrolling through Central Arkansas Library's online offerings. Boy, what a mixed, and rather disappointing, bag!

The first was Page Boy by Elliott Page, the transgender actor. I enjoyed his work in the movies Juno and Whip It. I was looking forward to reading some Hollywood gossip and learning more about him. Sadly, about halfway through, I found myself skimming page after page, hoping an end was in sight. I became emotionally exhausted simply reading about his extreme lack of self-confidence and self-awareness. I can't imagine how much more exhausting he would be in person. If you have to repeatedly ask people around you the same question, over and over, for YEARS, then you should probably find a new therapist.

Next up was Spare by Prince Harry. I really wanted to have some sympathy for Harry and Meghan, since it was pretty clear she had been unfairly hounded by the British press and treated with extraordinary disdain and unconcealed racism by members of the royal family. Plus there was that bit about his mother dying so tragically young, apparently also hounded by the press. But in recounting episode after episode of his childhood and youth, it became clear that Harry was writing from a place of incredible privilege and wealth while remaining utterly tone-deaf to that privilege. Jetting off to Africa whenever you get your feelings hurt is not an experience most of us will ever have. By the end, my sympathy had drained away.

I followed those two disappointments with I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. I am too old to have seen any of her television work but I'd heard reviews of the book and decided to check it out. Spoiler and trigger alert: child sexual abuse, mental abuse, mental illness, eating disorders, substance abuse. Wow. This book was a difficult read. McCurdy is to be commended for coming out the other side sounding like a reasonably put-together adult. Not a book for all readers, but a well-written and interesting story. 

To round out the list, I just finished The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway by Una McCormack. I am a Star Trek fan from way back and this book promised some light entertainment. Janeway was the captain of the Voyager, a starship that was sent 70,000 light years from Earth by a morally conflicted interaction between Janeway and her crew, a threatened species of humanoids, and a dying alien trying to protect them. The multi-year TV series chronicling their journey home was a very successful addition to the Star Trek pantheon. This book was just as fluffy and entertaining as I had hoped. McCormack is a rather prolific fan-fiction industry unto herself, writing for the Doctor Who, Firefly, and Star Trek universes. 

 Ironically, the book I enjoyed most of the four was about a fictional character! 


Monday, January 16, 2023

Never A Dull Moment

The samples and cases submitted to the veterinary diagnostic lab are inherently unpredictable. No appointments need to be made, although we do ask that clients call the lab before bringing in a large animal for necropsy. With a few exceptions, we accept submissions directly from owners and commercial entities. The result is that there is nothing like a normal day to day routine at the lab. My section, Pathology, which includes necropsy and histopathology, is particularly prone to unexpected surprises. 

Surprise! There's a dead goat in the cooler on the dock, on top of two neonatal calves, all dropped off over the weekend. And the goat has no paperwork with it....

Surprise! There's a dead chicken in that box on the counter, shipped without any ice packs, literally creating a stink in the Receiving.

Surprise! It's 2pm, and Tyson just arrived with 36 live broiler breeder hens from three different farms, and didn't call ahead!

Pathology has no routine or predictability at all. We have to be ready to accommodate whatever comes in. In just the past week, I've had to deal with several cases that nicely illustrate how unpredictable my job is.

We have an incinerator to dispose of the tissue waste we generate. The incinerator occupies a fair bit of my management time each week. It is touchy (won't start if it is raining, or right after it has rained, for example). It is also a dangerous piece of equipment. We burn around 4,000 lb of animal remains a month, and use a forklift to hoist bags weighing as much as 1300 lb into it. But remember that unpredictability factor? In December, we burned just over 9000 lb due an unusually high number of horses submitted for necropsy. I was scrambling to keep the propane tank filled during the last two weeks of the year. 

The incinerator lid is raised by cranking up two bottle jacks, one on each end. The jacks and the lid roll back as a unit on a track, exposing the interior of the incinerator. A week ago Friday, one of the jacks failed. It had been leaking hydraulic fluid, and I knew it was on its last legs. So when the techs came back and reported they couldn't get the lid opened, I drove to the incinerator (it's in a secure fenced maintenance yard across from the lab), measured the existing jacks (their labels had been scraped off by the incinerator manufacturer so they could be painted black), and drove to AutoZone to get two more. On Tuesday, one of my techs and I ripped out the old jacks and rammed in the two new ones. Good thing I'm handy with tools.

On top of that, I was scrambling to get more propane. Our walk in cooler was full because we didn't burn on the Friday as we often do to clean it out for the next week because of the jack issue. I usually call or text the propane delivery driver directly but he wasn't answering on Monday. It's pretty useless to call the company directly. But our director still has the business card of a "customer experience" rep at the propane company who helped him set up the tank back in 2018. One call to that guy and we had a full tank of propane (1000 gallons) the very next day. 

A young boa was submitted for necropsy that week. Against the usual backdrop of dogs, cats, cows, and chickens, I quite enjoy these unusual species. Even if I am not on necropsy duty that day, I always take these cases when they come in. They are challenging to handle, and their anatomy and pathologies are always interesting.

On Wednesday morning, I get this picture via text from a veterinarian friend.

That is a very sick calf with green snot coming out of his nose and eyes. Poor little guy. I actually received three photos of the calf, along with this text: "what tests?"

I had to laugh. This particular vet is young, but very good. He works really hard to help his large animal clients. And obviously, we have a lot of mutual trust and respect since he knows he only has to text me to get an immediate response. 

I first replied "gross" then I suggested some testing options and the samples needed, and let him know what I thought should be prioritized in case the client couldn't afford or didn't want to run everything I recommended. 

I had another vet call me on Thursday morning to tell me about a horse she had seen that had large bleeding ulcers in its mouth. Uh oh, a short list of differentials, at least one of which was reportable, came to mind. I've worked with this vet before so we chatted for a while about the case. I told her, I've got to escalate this so hang tight and I will get back to you. I texted the state vet. He happened to be in his office, and came right down to mine. He said, get her to email everything including pictures. She did, and I forwarded all of it to him and to the USDA APHIS vet in charge. They eventually decided it was not a disease issue that needed their involvement, and passed the entire mess back to me and the vet who called me. 

I get calls like this from vets and animal owners/producers daily. Since taking this job, I've worked very hard to make the lab a resource for reliable information and assistance. The result is that I spend many hours each week helping other vets and animal producers and owners, calling, texting, emailing, gathering information. By now, most of the practicing vets in the state have worked with me, and they just call me directly. It also helps that I have a solid relationship with my state and federal colleagues. 

Finally, it was Friday, and I was taking a breather in my office thinking the crazy week was almost over when the state vet pops in. We have a situation, he says. New developments, he added. I thought he was still talking about the horse with the oral ulcers. He said, oh no, something entirely new.

Turns out a brown bat had gotten into the atrium of the building and people were running around in panic while others were trying to catch it. The atrium of the building divides the building into two halves, the lab side and the Department of Agriculture admin side. All of us on the lab side have been vaccinated for rabies as a requirement of our job. Nobody on the admin side has received this vaccine. 

I told the state vet, I'm on it. He and I rushed towards the atrium, only to be met by two admin folks coming towards us with a very small bat trapped in a very large net someone had rounded up from Forestry. Neither of them had gloves. Oy.

I asked repeatedly, any human contact? Any spittle, blood? Any scratches or bites? Negative, negative.

Since the bat was secure for the moment, I had them follow me back to our necropsy area. We ran into the lab director on the way, and I told him, just keep moving, don't look, everything is under control. I put on gloves, grabbed a plastic sample transport container out of necropsy, and maneuvered the bat (stunned into immobility or injured) into the container. I closed the lid, and sent them on their way. 

As a general rule, we don't accept live animals for necropsy. As a result, we don't keep euthanasia drugs at the lab. That's partly because we don't want to euthanize animals here, and partly because we don't want the hassle of maintaining DEA licenses and keeping inventory and so on. However, we do accept live poultry. We use CO2 gas to euthanize them. While this is not recommended for euthanasia of mammals, it was my only option and was how I euthanized the bat. Within an hour of the state vet showing up in my office, the bat had been euthanized, packaged with completed paperwork, and was on its way to the Department of Health for rabies testing. 

Admittedly the bat was kind of unusual, but most of the rest was just a normal week for the lab. Never a dull moment.