Note To Self

 I sit in the morning inhaling coffee in tiny breaths. Whispering to myself as a calling. A gentle internal reminder just to see if the systems are still running. Neglecting the cylinder count as a small way to permit a flaw here or there. Collateral acceptance snuggled in permissive acceptance. I try to be understanding to the engine that reminds me it is showing its miles.

My Birdie reminding me to relax more than I let myself.

Reality blankets like an insulator. Deep, silencing, unyielding. A tight jacket that hugs back like a finger trap. The more I struggle the harder it embraces. There is no feedback that permits relenting.

..And so I sit quietly. Appearances of acquiescence. A body that ages as the soul stirs lifeblood back in. 

Found on the side of the road with head trauma, blindness, pain and fear.
Her rescuer named her Angel. She, over 5 days, has made an (almost) full recovery.
They remind me that miracles are everywhere if you will let them in.

The daily sequence of hours that exist between coffee at my kitchen table, and the cat purring on my pillow each night are fraught with too many needful souls. Furr-iously feverish with chaos sprinkled atop. It is the life I always dreamt of. The life I felt most honorable, needful, and absolute within. The place where mattering means everything. A shadow of credentials accrediting the mastering of a skill. Those three little letters, punctuated to add significance. Bold, erect, commanding, at the end of the name I was born with. They, well, they were and remain, the epitaph I got to carry my entire veterinary professional career. If you are very fortunate you get to write your own obituary early on, and build that legacy as a path you adorn with good intentions and not feel so burdened by clearing the road for anyone elses foot traffic. 

The professional degree was the bait. But, it brought with it a fear that the years of repetition, the endless one note of the same tune, might produce some degree of boredom.

Stripes, Baby Ketchup, and their girls. Reminding me to take joy in being a part of their story.
There is nothing more that I cherish than being able to see them all grow up together.

The highlights are the same. The stories repeat themselves time and time again. Some with nuances that remind me to be a constant student. Others with a pat of reassurance that practice has brought mastery, and others are a harsh, painful, albeit earned reminders that there is work left to be done. All of the repetition remains welcomed. All of the wrinkles were earned. All of what is behind, ahead and around mine for the pile in my nest. 

P.S. I just celebrated 20 years at Jarrettsville Vet. It's a milestone that I had always hoped to reach. When you find your place you can call it home.

When No One Else's Opinion Matters

 "... so if I come in this week to put her down will you be ok with it?"

It isn't the first time someone has said this to me. Asked me for grace wrapped in permission.

It always strikes me as quixotic. This asking for forgiveness to be given as a form of equal parts willing participation and peaceful acceptance. As if I hold some power I do not recognize myself.

What does my opinion matter? Why would you let anyone else's judgement cloud your own?

I always take great pause to reflect when this is directed at me.

Who am I in your pets life? What influence do I hold? Why should you care about what I think?

...and yet I surmise that I know the answer, or part of the answers, to all of these. 

I have been the navigator to this girls every medical challenge and endeavor her whole life. I have been a part of every choice, decision, obstacle and surgery. There has never been a time where her life's choices haven't been discussed together. Her mom is a dear friend. She has grown into someone I adore and cherish. We did this, we grew into this, over Bella.

Maybe I am shying away from the weight of this question? Too comfortable in the minutia. The advocating for all that kept her safe and healthy, yet, deflecting cowardly when the final decision has to be made. 

Maybe I am a fairweather friend? So deeply entrenched I cannot see her past myself?

Maybe I am too deep to bail out?

Too thin to save from shattering.

Too ingrained to know where the professional obligation ends and the rest of me that still adores her begins?

Maybe we are in this together and she wants me to pick sides knowing Bellas story is ending and we will still need each other on the other side. The survivors side. The remorseful, guilty, heartbroken and alone side.

Bella is now 15. A shepherd mix who was once a spry, spicy, opinionated and complex. She was calculating and discerning. A true shepherd. They love you the first time they meet you and dislike you increasingly exponentially with fervent disdain every next time. I take great pride in being the exception to this universal rule. She has tolerated me, accepted me, and I dare say even liked me, from day one to today. 

Her mom tells me that she still gets excited to see me, looks for me as soon as she enters the clinic, and smiles as I approach. As I enter the room, just like every time before, she pushes her way to me and beside me. I wrap my arms around her and whisper our traditional "hello," and "I love you."  

"You love her and she is dying. My opinion shouldn't matter." I told her what she needed to hear, what I truly need her to hear from me. 

"I am here to help you. I am always on your side."  

What I hope she knows is that Bella could have never had a better life with anyone else and I am honored, grateful and humbled to have been a part of it.

It’s times like it is that everything falls back into perspective. We are reminded about what’s important, and what isn’t. And all of the other little problems just become minutia. 

Then I remembered it’s always this way. I live in this world. The world where life is fleeting and short and precious, and never to be taken for granted. That is the life of anyone in medicine and anyone who loves anyone else.

What I know is that this life I have lived, these souls I have shared it along the way with, these people at the other end of the leash, they all mattered. The reasons that people love their pets so much. They were the reasons I came here. The reasons I can't ever leave. There is purpose, and fulfillment, joy, grief and every shade of every meaningful emotion in between under this roof. It is the marrow of a lifetime that being vulnerable, honest, dedicated and absolutely completely emotionally invested without care to what that might cost you delivers. Bella is the reason we are who we are. 

What I hope that others see is that its ok to throw your whole heart into something. Its ok to grieve like life will never hold its color again in the same way. It's an honor to be a part of a journey so rich and deep it changes you. Its life that is intended to hurt so you know how good it is. We are all in this together. It is what makes us so fortunate and rich. Mankind would be better off as a whole if more people had pets in their lives. Nothing else holds more influence in compassion, companionship, and community than the interdependence of sharing your life with another. They don't judge, they ask so little, and yet they reflect more kindness back than you ever invest. They keep us feeling human as we are reminded that humanity is our greatest attribute.

I don't just bear witness to these lives. We are a part of them.

When I Get Lost.

 

Alvin. A true example of how much we adore our pets. His story here

The most obvious place to start when you are lost is back at the beginning. Therefore, I go here.. Back.. Back to the place I last remembered knowing my way. Having a direction. A footprinted fossil. That old place to call "start here."

It is all I know to do when the map has been lost, the sherpa abandons, and the world reminds you that you are merely a speck. A tidbit of dust. A fleeting, insignificant blip on a timeline too immense to even contemplate comprehension. Me, the bag of aging flesh with so much determined compassion that even this reality is dismissed.

Retracing my steps as I attempt to resurrect my direction, (albeit a direction with accoutrements like “purpose” and “fulfillment”), I remind myself cautiously that I know, admit, publicly, that I have never chosen the easy path and I am fraught with a conscious empathy that propels me. This small character flaw is a burden. At times it has led to compulsion, but along that path I was moving in a  direction I believed in, and with it I had always gotten to somewhere. After a few decades of kinetic acceleration the directions have become more cumbersome. The world seems to close in, and be far less welcoming. Age, has privileges which lessen the compulsion for manners, but, you pay for that in diminishing opportunities. Gravity clutches your intentions and suffocates them into mortality. You can't get to the previously proposed destinations with the same vigor nor timeframe, but you don’t give a damn, so it all balances out in the end. Problem remains there just isn't a calendar with a timer counting down to designate END, so you plug away hoping it isn't aimless, fruitless, and depressing as hell.

Garfield. The reason in everything that I am and who I still dream of being.
His story here.

Maybe it's mid-life? Maybe it's inertia calling my bones to pivot? Maybe it’s the reflection of those around me nesting and preparing for a hibernation I'm not prepared for?

The conundrum remains. I am lost and searching. Fueled by frustration and losing a voice in the mass of bigger fish this world has to fry. My little cause lost in earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, and genocides in Africa, Gaza, and Howler monkeys falling from the skies over global warming induced desiccations. How do these compare with the with blocked cats, pyometras, and nasopharnygeal polyp looksies being fined out of emergency care? I don't know, I lost my map. 

There isn’t a megaphone big enough to hold my tune next to that cacophony of desperation the rest of the world is grieving. Yet, my plight, my purpose and my internal quest for recognition and empathy in animal welfare and companion animal needs remains as steadfast as ever.

The lost part was also my beginning. No one goes to vet school to change the world. It’s a futile fight in a world of humble hardworking blue collars. Purpose exists in heartbeats for utilitarian use. Sure, dogs and cats have gained a bit of status with their handbags, service vests, and bedfellow pampering, but, vet school, is equal parts food and pushing the limits of biology and financial cushions. I went to vet school with an agenda. I went to attain credentials to argue with bigger guns than the fodder could muster. A worldwide awakening of public opinion ripe for disruption. My hope was to be a pioneer on the frontier of acceptance that the pets we call family could earn some status that provided rights and consequences when infringed upon. Cruelty comes in many forms but the worst is the mass cover-up with just how poorly these beasts are treated, and how little value their lives hold for the food supply to remain cheap and domestic. No one likes to see suffering. The Styrofoam and plastic wrap allow it to be bacon versus Babe. Dogs and cats aren’t much better off. They are considered property in the eyes of the law. Replacement value for your four legged furry kid is about $100. Pain and suffering if they are killed or tortured are unlikely in the lobbying world of minimized liability the vetmed profession defends. We, the collective veterinary profession, lure out incredible medical advancements and opportunities out one side of our mouth when we recommend MRI’s, stem cell therapies, cloning, or organ transplants and protect liability with "property" status out the other. It is an unsustainable mixed message against a public so bound to their companions. We provide some pets month long stays in ICU's and chemotherapies with price tags now hovering around $50,000 and up. While others are bred to be mute lab-rat beagles. Compliance their greatest asset, yet doomed to die unnamed. The Auschwitz inhabitants of our day. We offer. We profit, and we refer to our own knowing price tags that begin at 10k lie ahead. We admonish when parents aren't prepared and yet we defer responsibility when heartbreak is delivered. We, the lowly GP's, always offer “economic euthanasia” as a mandatory treatment therapy option. We offer this to make our clients feel empowered and compassionate as the last true gesture of kindness to alleviate suffering we hardly ever have firmly diagnosed, nor been specialized to treat in its maximum effectiveness. We know you will get another pet. We also know it is much cheaper to replace than treat. We did this. We are responsible for that mathematical reality, yet, we judge and castigate when it happens. We are even so egotistically privileged that we feel good about recommending euthanasia as a benefit to our treatable yet priced out of affordable options within the bullet points of acceptable treatment options that we have now made this a lucrative part of the profession. (And people wonder why the profession is plagued by self help via iatrogenic euthanasia?). We kill ourselves as an option to seeking compassionate resolution to unanswerable dilemmas.

Pickles and Geisha. Rescued by a client who cuddles them like they are the most precious lives anyone of us has ever been privileged enough to be entrusted to protect. 

There are veterinarians so fed up with the anger of negotiating between need and availability, options and finances, or the endemic corporate structures of avoiding on call and surgery, they can either head back to training to specialize, expose themselves to most often kind side of medicine; in home euthanasia, where your clients always speak nicely to you and show gratitude or wash out and switch professions.

There is no map for this place. This crossroads of incongruities. This place where we have to be human in places of lost humanity. The place where greed greets celebrity. Kindness is annihilated by power hungry egos. It is dizzying to know where to go at times. It is harsh to look in the mirror and ask yourself if you can dissect the problem  from the solution when you know you live within both as a matter of necessity and survival.  

I'm still fighting. Fighting to refrain from accepting the self protective blank faced indifference that permits clients who can't pay to be turned away with some excuse about everything being “their fault.” Or, the litigious liability paranoia that defends our patients as being replaceable within the big scheme.

Sparky. Rescued within minutes of being euthanized, and hours after his owner surrendered him.
His owner was told he would be given less than a day to be rescued as the shelter did not have enough space to keep him longer than that.
That smile says it all. 

I don't know if I will ever find that yellow brick road. Or, the map I had predicted so long ago that would lead me to tranquility. Or, even my self-proclaimed Utopia of purpose driven bliss. Maybe mankind is so inherently flawed these just aren't possible? But, maybe, just maybe my path lies right here at my feet. The inherent perfection of the pets I call my companions. The wet noses of the patients I know to be my purpose. These beloved companions who love so completely and unconditionally they inspire me to keep marching on.

Lil D. Rescued from an online ad. Transferred to her foster mom in the WalMart parking lot.
22 toes (2 shy of the world record) and now living her best life in a home she confidently calls her own.

Where did I leave that torch and megaphone?

Cooper. Waiting for me to leave

How Did We Get Here? The intersection of veterinary medicines needs and the professions gains.

I have tried to hold on, to not lose faith. I know I am not alone. I used to believe, heck, know emphatically, that every veterinarian came into this profession with the same common goal. We all came here because we loved animals in such a compulsory way that we would endure decades of schooling to help them in whatever capacity we could. We were pragmatic in knowing we could not always bend fate by sheer hopeful will, nor cure where disease had overtaken, but every so often some little wet nose would be saved by the hard work of our hands and the training of our mind. Vetmed was about this for all of us. Wealth from collecting and consolidating, or, fragmenting and focusing, well that was for the other white coats and their heart transplants and cancer ports. We vets were a humble, gritty, salt of the earth bunch. Quiet, yet trustworthy. Never a white coat spared for vanities sake. We were smelly, dirty, and proud of the badges of barn dust and species feathers we pinned in our caps. We boasted about having to be very skilled to fix a patient who didn't speak their ailments. We helped every patient who came our way. Each and every one of them, owned, beloved, lost, frail, unnamed, or otherwise was seen our duty, and our reputation on the line if we didn't at least try. We fostered compassion with every act of empathy. We were never too busy to be a beacon of hope in a world of cruelty. We were old souls that passed on our pearls of the profession from our weathered hands and thrifty resourcefulness to fresh faces of the next generations. We stood for the common man and their house pets inherent nucleus of the families whole. I set out to go to vet school to be this person. I bought my practice to perpetuate this long sought after lifestyle. I came into vetmed with all of this as our collective credo. The torch of quiet kindness for the sake of all the souls of the world we live within made vetmed the most honorable profession of them all. Without exception we were all cut, fashioned, and trained from this.  

Raffles. My Beloved kitty

I used to believe all veterinarians came here for this. The preservation of purpose. Perhaps we still graduate as this fledgling of hope and goodness, but, somewhere along the way the elevation of the status to pets being the glue and marrow of our all too complicated lives became so valuable it was extort-able, things changed. These voiceless, beloved to the point of needed beyond replacement value pets became fodder for greed. At some point it became permissible and acceptable to go to vet school at a price point the market could not support. With the incurring hundred of thousands of dollars of vet school debt, the corporate take over of the practices and the limitless, unregulated increasingly escalating cost of care, the professions barrage of whispered reminders that we are worth the six figures we command, the idea of being the one who cares for all as the oath we all took got lost. The profits soared, the costs climbed and the divide between the cans and the cannots grew in never before seen numbers. It became acceptable to place blame. It became permissible to deny care. It became excusable to turn the most needy away as we lacked the time, the willingness, and the empathy for them to make it worth our while. I don't know when that first denial to help because it was no longer profitable to even try happened, but it is now a systemic plague that has killed millions. We are part of this even if we can justify to myriad of reasons why. There is a shortage of veterinarians, and a squabble of people throwing obscene amounts of money at them, making it feasible by charging exorbitant amounts of money to feed the machine, and perpetuate the profession. We were once the place where all are welcome, all are cared for, and now we are the profession of the wealthy, or good luck finding help among the masses in the same boat as you are. I am going to tell all of those nameless, overlooked, dismissed and forgotten, broken hearted pet parents who have met the face of economic driven pet care that they are right. It is now very much about the money. If you are a person who loves their pets as family, spends most of your day insuring that your pets are comfortable and happy beyond the ability to provide the same for yourself than you have either learned this lesson, or will soon. If you are a pet parent who will need to hear the estimate for the cost of your pets care, and then have to negotiate for a higher credit limit to provide it, let's say you do not have $6,000 on hand for a 2 am ER visit, then you need to begin to plan for the ugly that lies ahead. Most vet professionals would insert a strong recommendation to get pet insurance. I will not. While I realize that the future of healthcare for your pet is not foreseeable to most, it is helpful to have some kind of financial plan. The hitch here is that you will not have access to this at 2 am when the deposit is required. You have to have an emergency fund of at least $2,000 and you have to be prepared before that fateful night happens, and you need to have insurance.

My Storm and Frippie.

I came into vetmed when every patient was given options to make them feel better. I came here when "tincture of time" and a pennies on the dollar analgesic plan was the norm. I came here at a time when vetmed didn't have access to the diagnostics, the specialists, or the corporate ownership and we saved more lives in spite of them. I came here when every pet parent was given equal access to our time, our talents and our unquestionable integrity. While it wasn't perfect, it served the patients with equal concern for their family. It came with generous hope, and unmitigated compassion. It was a time when euthanasia was only offered to spare an untreatable pet a suffering death. When equipment was purchased to save lives not bolster share holder dividends and entice/dazzle new talent acquisitions. We paid at point of sale, and never conceived of buying by marketing and passing the purchase price to clients in packages tied to services they couldn't opt out of. We were independent, privately owned, and working for the community who knew us by more than our credentialled monograms. We were faithful, devoted, and supportive of each other in a home-town baked-apple-pie way. I came here to pass the torch my predecessors granted me. Somewhere along the way we all decided we liked stuff, nest eggs, and the chasing of wealth more than the ability to be kind to all. We, the huge collective chasing the American Dream, we, all bought into this. We are all going to be reminded of it every time a life lies in the balance. What would you do if you were in our shoes? How many times do people tell me that they couldn't do my job because they would want to save them all? Where does the ability to chase the American Dream, profit upon the fruits of your labors, and the quest to get as much as you can meet the empathy needed to save the companions we call our lifes joy?

What Am I Supposed To Do?

The question plays on repeat. Over, and over. And, over again.

It is inescapable. Perplexing, vexxing, and excruciating. All of these and sticky beyond excision. 

Nana, broken leg, ER advice; "surgery 10k, or euthanize"
my advice; "cage rest" 
she is alive and doing well today because her dad refused to have only two options for her

There are fixable veterinary problems all around me. In my effort to provide exposure to these treatable and yet often ignored veterinary issues, encouragement to face and fix them, I seem to have made myself the wailing post. I have become the beacon for hope and last place for help when there is none to be found at the footsteps of present veterinary provider. 

My question isn't why I have become this person, my question is how do I keep from becoming the only vet who cares enough to put the patient before the profits and the fear?

And all of those blocked cats..

I have spent a great deal of  time asking me how I got here? Why I feel so alone here, and what the hell I do about it? 

I have spent so much time in the problem that I cannot walk away. I cannot shutter it, suffocate it, stow it, or sacrifice it. I am in it, wholly and without reserve. 

What would you do if you knew there were answers, some of them ridiculously easy to solve,  answers that would save lives, save human hearts from being crushed, and right a wrong that just grows more egregious as it  consumes the caring around it.

What do I do?

And all of those PU surgeries

Today it was another desperate plea. A question on the Pawbly, the pet care site asking for help. They are always the same. 

"I love my pet. They are my whole world. They have this problem..... I have been to so many vets, no one cares. I saw your video. Is there anyway you can help me?" .. and there is always a photo. A photo of the pet. So sweet, innocent, and fragile and in desperate need. How do I turn away from those faces?  How do I stay in this profession if I sacrifice my ability to have compassion so strong it compels?

Babybear

Veterinary medicine is about taking care of animals. Somewhere along the day to day grind this got lost. It became about money, and egos, and trying to be bigger than our britches. We became distant from our purpose, and divided from our clients. When it was not profitable, or easy, or worth our time we blamed them, the clients, the people who make all of this possible. We used cruelty to remind pet parents that this illness, this unforeseen accident, disaster, (albeit treatable), isn't worth us intervening if they can't pay us handsomely for it. The cost of care has skyrocketed, the treatment for all of the ailments remains what it was decades ago when everything was a few  hundred dollars, or less. 

.. and so I remain here. Asking myself the same question and dedicated to finding, exposing, and disrupting the same problem.

Want to see what I am talking about?

See my YouTube channel 

or Pawbly.com 

Idle Hands and a Place Under the Moon

It's all oddly outwardly imperceptible, and yet to me, its perfectly congruous.

My life, it's little steps, the irony that is never lost,, and me,, well, my place inside of it.

Today is housecleaning day. The lunar calendar marked bi-weekly as the tidal flow of hair bunnies lollygagging their cotton candy dances on the fringes of every corner within this old house. I shuffle a vacuum in our customary cadence, the Charleston footwork and Lady Liberty extension wand. The movement of wreckage that once held such necessary value. A place of me belonging to it, and fixed in a place I felt a feeling of belonging within,, (you know simply because familiar is ensconced around me). The cement to the broken pieces that would fly out of alignment, the centripetal force of me spinning around within a planet that I evolved from, but do not feel belonging to. A home is supposed to do that for you. Give you a defined, owned place under the moons glow.

I pick up the towels at the front door. Their terry cloth fingers, anemone-papilla that collect and store the muddy feet traversing from countryside to domestic domains. A quick wave to disperse all back out the front door back into their places in the free universe. The dog hair floats uninhibited by gravity, and yet the mud does not. I shake them outside furiously, a force of a blow against itself reminding the fabric it has a purpose, and a master and it finds its greatest pains back up and against itself. Hitting hard as it folds in two, and smacks the life both out of and back into itself. 

My front doors are ancient mahogany. Worn, faded, hand ironed finger holds to remain steadfast to the Pennsylvania weather whims of snow, ice, wind, rain and varied onslaught of generations of inhabitants. Old, like everything else within this house, she is a single door to a large front stone and a brick path to the yard in front. As I open the door the wind blows in burnt leaves, desiccated and crisp, lighter than the mud landing on the hallways dance floor as they billow into warmth. They crunch under foot as I crackle them to confetti pieces and make more work for myself. I should have put a storm door up many years ago, saved myself the extra effort of having to clean up as I clean up.. and yet I never have time for such time saving tasks.

The dogs rush underfoot and scurry to stay close. Keep my company as I clean up their weeks worth of toys, and detritus. They are no help but great company. I serve their needs and they more profoundly have taken residence to serve as my place within the world.

This house, the housework is the one small piece of my home life I hold dear. I would never imagine letting it go onto another's hands. it reminds me that I have built a legacy while I cluttered myself around a nucleus of a home that reminds me I have been, I was and I still am.

While I am growing up, and old, learning that the jewels of life exist in the experiences much more so than the accumulated paraphernalia, it isn't lost on me that these days of housecleaning remind me to take stock and place immeasurable inherent value in just the being here. The being here with my family, the pets I call my most treasured companions and the moments they make for my time here more valuable than anything this house holds. I am constantly reminded to take great stock in the wealth this lifetime has afforded me, and that they have given me. It will never be an equal exchange rate, the gift they give me of belonging and the care I repay them in return.

It is my little life within a greater place under the moon.

The larger looming admission is to never forget how much my clients companions mean to them, and to never grow old, indifferent and callous to their needs and rights.

For more on my old stone house please see my other blog Stone House Beautiful on Blogger

Alone in the Jungle

Alone in the jungle.. How often does everyone else feel like this? I suspect, (dare I say, hope?), that it is most. Otherwise I think that I might truly be all alone in this deserted jungle? (And how crappy would that be!)? Why do we, (or, at least me?), seek solace in knowing the rest of the boat is in the same boat with us?

Day One, USMMA plebe line-up. Second Company 1987

Maybe the grown up me just hasn't totally accepted the rest of me as "all I need?"

Why do so many of us feel so alone? And, with that, isn't that exactly why so many love their pets so intensely? If that presumption holds true then why do I feel so alone, and all alone, in my profession? I have somewhere along the way learned that I am less abandoned and more appreciated by my clients than my colleagues. (How many other vets feel this way?). I know there are vets out there sighing a sad despair-a-tive exhale with that admission. The vet profession has become a gaggle of cohorts all protecting each other from the demons lurking in the self prescribed pink juice. There are collectives who have your back regardless of your shortcomings, mistakes, or inadequacies. You just have to be a vet and they have your back. Right? Well, maybe for the other vets. But, for the small group of us not in the in-crowd it's an existence of cosmic outpost inhabitancy. You are really, really alone if you pick your clients side over your professions allegiance. What if you are the poor Schmuck who still likes your patients better than your clients and your colleagues,,, well, then you are totally fucked. What if on top of all of that you are a vegetarian,,, well, there isn't a category for that, fucked, alone, pariah. Great. 

Droog shelter, Alexandria Ukraine, 2022

That's me, totally unequivocally alone. And yet I still sit here in my dingy throwing out life preservers to the gulls passing by offering quiet applause and anonymous cheers. Last week I spoke to an internal medicine expert who said to me, "I wish you luck, this one is not going to be easy, or make you any friends." Thanks, just what I needed to hear. 

Storm, blissful in the buttercups

I wonder if my legacy will just become the Ralph Nader of the vet med profession? I wonder if I will take any kind of joy in that title? Can't anyone else see that our misery might just lie right next to our denial? Why aren't we all just on our patients side, if you know we need to pick a side? Why not them? I think it's because the us gets in the way of the them? Doesn't anyone but me see they are one in the same if you just open your lids a bit more? Who says you can't do everything for them, our patients, and not have it come back to you in spades? Or, I just have to convince myself that alone is ok, I'm not going to like myself if I try to make my colleagues like me. I'm not going to have patients that purr, wag, or cuddle me in those quiet places that we spend together. They look at me with enough gratitude to make up the chasm of difference that the profession can't fill. it is enough, it has always been enough.

Here's to being alone, saving every goddamn blocked cat and pyometra dog that my colleagues turn away. Those dogs and cats deserve a chance, a palliative nuance of possibility, and an advocate who's lonely. 

Always kiss the cat goodnight

Here's to intention having merit. Self-preservation being empowering, and lastly here's to all of the vets out there throwing stones and not able to look in the mirror at the faces of the skeletons in their own closets. 

Chief Mate CS Global Mariner, 4th of July cookout.

Here's to the Fourth of July meaning just a little bit more to us that feel alone, and a world of possibilities if we all start living a life of freedom instead of loneliness. 

The Secrets Pets Bring Us

 The hidden world.

The best part of the job. Hands down.

I was always trying to get there. That other place. The place just on the other side of the fence. The end of the rainbow along the road I hadn't yet gone down. The woods on the other side of ours. Another state maybe? What about a country? I suppose I should start practicing their language now? You know just so I could find the loo should the need arise.

I was that kid. The kid not settled on here and now. There was no value in it; The present. This place I am already. It isn't a terribly detrimental character trait for a kid, but, these kids should try to grow out of it for fear of being trapped in 'never good-enough-land'. No one wants to grow old feeling like a foreigner. A nomad without a home to call your own. This feeling of not belonging in a world already full of coldness.

Frippie. Our morning wake up ritual.

But reality is that I was always this kid. I keep, and always have kept her alive inside of me. Albeit quiet. No one wants to build a relationship with a gypsy. 

Stealing a kiss before surgery. Maybe after too?

Well, almost no one. For me, then, now, always, the companions who left me feeling grounded, belonging, were just my animals. Named or not, they kept me at a constant. They provided the only place that I wasn't feeling alone.

I never let her grow up into any other kid. The kid who had relationships so deep that you grow deep like the roots of a Sequoia. Strong, formidable, permanent, present. It was never that I didn't value fortitude, strength, and mightiness, it was that I could never decide if here was where I belonged. If the exchange for staying-a-while was worth the potential of not being able to go again. What if staying here meant I had to forego the greener grass elsewhere? Was I ever ready to take such a gamble? 

Looking back I don't know why I was so unsettled. It wasn't so much the loss, or absence of what I didn't have, it was a longing for always something more. More in the way of experiences, places, people and all of the stories that they brought. It was the stories. Making them, finding them, living them and amassing them. More in the way of options, freedoms, liberty, and self-reliance.

Elvis. One of the 54 cats we helped rehome from a hoarding case.
He was brought to us with 4 littermates, 3 had died over the weekend the owner was away.
The previous owner had no idea how many cats she had, or how many were spayed/neutered and she begged us to allow her to keep him, "because he was the healthiest." He would have died like his siblings had he not been taken away. We spent months trying to keep them all alive. We did. He was here to be neutered marking the end of his kitten struggle saga. After this litter we realized that the problem was far bigger than our clinic could manage and we called Animal Control. They have removed dozens of additional cats from her property.

There were very few constants in this life of meandering. There was a dream, a goal, and, a constant companion beside me. Those pets were my guide as much as they were my inspiration to keep moving forward. It was the pets. As a young girl who only wanted to be surrounded by animals all pets held a place of great importance, but very specifically, my pets were of paramount importance. They were my constant. My grounding, the reason for understanding who I was and wanted to become. The sense of belonging in this world I never fit into that provided meaning and substance. They were everything in my world that I saw as just passing by.

My parents, more accurately, my mother, decided to leave Long Island, New York when I was very young. They moved to the country for all of the imaginary wonders and miracles that they believed a country life afforded, and were not attainable in the city. Grass, trees, land to get lost in, and peaceful discussions about days lacking agendas and human bustling. For me it felt more like being removed. I was being removed from some place with lots of lives, to a place without humans lives to interact with. It was the first time I ever felt lonely and alone. Lost and taken away. It was the beginning for me, and I think my mom too, that there was a world we were without within.

Autumn, one of our technicians, and the lead for the 54 cat rescue, kept Oaken. He was one of the 54 cats we helped from a hoarding case 2020.

My mom countered the cricket cacophony and automobile silence by amassing pets. Her little farmette crawled slowly with the menagerie to make it look like a legitimate country living poem. There were two dogs, three cats, a pony of my very own, and a sheep she bought unknowingly at the county fair. The little cottage-cape in the country my parents had purchased came with  shabby two car garage and a field, but, no barn for the livestock to cohabitate. They never fully planned much of the jumping into they did. They tended to jump, best intentions in hand, and land wherever the free-fall dropped them. The barn, or lack thereof, was a very good example. The idea that you would purchase a horse and a sheep and not have a barn for them to be safe in snowy-laden New Hampshire is ludicrous. And yet that is what happened. My parents converted the well house, a wooden structure about 8 feet by 10 feet into a barn-ette for their newly Christened farmette. Few creatures are born into immediately having to flee the nest and wander alone the rest of their days. How would one survive if they awoken from delivery, set off swimming, and hoped for the luck of the draw to magically and successfully make it to a ripe old age? Unless you are a single-celled organism you need a buddy to help walk you through the perils of life. For all of the alone-ness I felt, there was a togetherness that these pets supplemented to dispel the solitude. We weren't put together to remind each other of the holes we had as individuals. We came together for the friendship of each other, Maybe the sheep, her name was Lambie (as original as the thought process in acquiring her had been), or Memory,, the pony that my parents helped me purchase,, a lifetime of savings for the gift I wanted more than anything I could have ever imagined. Memory was $500. Five hundred dollars to a ten year old girl in 1980. Memory, was short for Sweet Memory, and that she still holds firmly. 

Cali. Here for a knee injury repair. Always smiling!

I think that there are a lot of small animal vets by default. We start out as a little seedling intent on animals, but most specifically it is the horses. The vast majority of little girls love horses. We love them so much we want to fill our lives, every minute of them, with more horses. As kids we might grow up with dogs and cats in our homes. Closer to them in proximity, but, there is some allure to horses. Little girls love the idea of the smell of the hay. The aroma of the flat coat that can be brushed for days and still never luster. Horses are big, yet gentle. Soft muzzles always inquiring for a peppermint snack. It is a feeling of belonging that horses give to little girls. Solid, strong, yet soft and safe. You can wrap your arms around their necks. Breathe in the musty, earthy, perfume of their massiveness and still cuddle up near them as they graze contentedly by your side. Horses capture and transport. It is the glitter of every little girls dreams.

It was that horse, Memory that started it all. The cement of a relationship that I hadn't yet ever figured out started with her. A horse vet was born from the days on that farm that was so far away from everything I thought I needed to have more. 

Dexter waits for me to come visit.
Here for his annual exam and a hug, of course.

The isolation that moving to the country also brought me a kindled a purpose. I learned from a very young age that where these pets brought me the only true friendship I had known. But this friendship came at a price of being vulnerable that I was not prepared to accept. A farm animal, and to this designation my parents cast a wide net (all pets, i.e. all animals, were pets for as long as they were healthy and free of trouble) when a medical need, or a behavioral nuisance presented their stature on the ladder of importance fell to below my parents being designated as responsible for. I joke about it now, twenty years into being a veterinarian myself... that my parents had to be the worst pet parents my poor childhood vet, and lifelong mentor, ever had. They were the clients who called him at home at 2 am to notify him that our dogs had just returned from their all day expedition with a face, and frontal chest-full of porcupine quills. The dogs were muddy, bloody and keeping my parents from being able to get back to sleep. My dad asked if he "could drop the dogs off now (at his clinic conveniently located downstairs from where he and his family slept each night) so they could try to get a few more hours of rest before work the next day?" That saint of a veterinarian, said "ok." I remember listening from the top of the stairs, (these were the days of one corded to the wall phone per household), and feeling so relieved that the dogs were A) going to get veterinary help, and, B) they weren't going to have to suffer with a face, chest, and mouth (yes they were in the mouth and tongue) of sharp quills. I know now that Dr. Barsanti opened the door at 230 am, pajamas and robe on, took the dogs by their leashes. Placed them in the dog cages in the back of the main floor kennel area and immediately aced the dogs into a few hours long nap to face the task of pulling them out one-by-one the next morning. It is what I would do now. Who starts a 3 hour quill removal surgery at 2 am? Heck, who answers a phone, and their door at 2 am? Not me. (Damn, I hope he charged my parents out the nose for that one. I'm sure he didn't my dad would have never paid for it if he had tried).

Jenn is the office manager in her office. Never alone with our clinic house cat;
Seraphina, and my pup Storm.

I have written about it before. The pivotal place where my childhood trauma of feeling like my most beloved, and often only friends, were continually at the mercy of another humans decisions transitioned into an adult obsessional determination to find that the place where my destiny rested was in protecting these, and all others, pets. I would never be left sobbing in the corner while someone else decided who was, or was not, worth the effort, or expense, to heal them. It would become only mine to decide. That place where no animal in my purview would be denied care based on anything other than fate, and even she would be dealt blows to humble her if not frighten her away for at least a few more moments. If I had to give up, travel on, and never have left a footprint behind, then so be it. Is there isolation when there is purpose? I think I learned very early on that to have my dream of becoming a veterinarian to come true I had to have dedication and determination to a level that no one else possessed. I had to make sacrifices and decisions based on the long game. Always the long game. Every relationship I had was based on that premise. There was a here and now but I was not going to get stuck in it. Not for longer than that semester allowed. I lived my life for many years, a decades worth, in semester blocks. One at school trying to maintain straight A’s to dilute the Academies implicit bias and baseless defamation via the measure of academic and excellence. And the other at sea, working as a deck officer aboard a cable laying ship to fund the quest into its next chapter. There is very little chance at life, its tapestry of relationships on a schedule built like this. Going to sea for a decade was the most challenging, and even lonelier existence than moving to rural NH brought. No pets out there. Not much of anything except hard work and too much time to self reflect.

It had to happen. A relationship had to evolve from a lonely girl who lived for the tomorrows she lived to see and she wished the present day away.

My kitty Magpie. A cuddle in the sunshine.

My parents never understood my chosen path to get to vet school. They never accounted for veterinarian in the same light as lawyer, doctor, politician. My mom loved animals, to be sure, but she never wanted me to have to deal with the clients the likes of my dad. Too much heartbreak in vet med she thought. Animals might die, (she didn't waste time on the ins-and-outs of why, how or by who's hand), they died, it was sad. I should avoid sad, and poor. My dad knew the kind of people he was to his vet and he thought I would be far happier being far wealthier and steered me away from vet med at every chance he got. He got about 3 decades of chancing me out of this profession. In the end I was always more determined than he to not live the life he wished for me. It has made all things possible. And an even lonelier girl on the other side of it. 

I think it is a deal many vets make. I am not alone. My story is not unique. So many veterinarians left humankind to stay firmly grounded in the pet loving world. We left our souls tied to the hearts of the pets who never live long enough, never hurt your sense of not belonging, and never question your life choices even when you aren't quite sure of them yourselves.

There are secrets we all hold. For me, and the little girl still living quietly by herself inside of me, the secrets are in the days, years and lifetime that I shared with the creatures who always mattered more than everything else could. 

Seraphina. She loves me, and more importantly, we need each other.

I think that while I recognize now the cost of the sacrifices I made to make this dream my profession, I am not sure it was an even exchange. So many of us forego relationships, friendships, two legged children and even our too compassionate souls for this profession. We die, or at least sacrifice so much along the way to help others who will never enunciate a human "thank you." All for the power of this purpose. It is the secret so many of us share, and one of the many cracks that remains us we are all too human and ever fragile.

Related blogs;

We All Need Options.

Remembering The Vet Who Inspired Me.

Safe Harbor Vet Style

Hoarders, Surrender, and the Worst Fate of All.

The hardest part is looking into the eyes of the patients who want to live and knowing you can't do anything to save them.

New Beginnings and Old Responsibilities.

The Measure.

This is a blog about my life. A place to put the feelings, experiences, troubles, and many of the great successes of the lives we share with our patients, and furried family members. It isn't a testimony, a plea for help, or a call out to the profession that struggles so much. It is a diary. An open love letter to the life I live and the choices made to stay alive and happy here. It is about purpose and contentment, and these often feel mutually exclusive while you serve the human public who "own" pets.

Speechless; Screaming into the Vacuum.

I have been quiet.. for a while. Its not like me.. so, people have been asking..

"Where's the blog gone?"

I have  been blogging for long enough to know where the audience is, what they are interested in, and how I can coexist amongst these. The dilemma is that once you amass an audience they require frequent attention. They won't stick around if you don't keep them fed, assuaged and entertained.

It's the end of a year. A time for reflection, introspection, and self critical analysis. Except, lately, I have been feeling a little lost. Which will be evident to those who know me once I start speaking here. I cannot try to bluff my way through a blog. The past vulnerability I have displayed would make the shallow attempt at plausibility obvious.

The problem isn't the lack of self-purpose, nor is it the voice loud enough to proclaim it. It is that I get overwhelmed... don't we all? Overwhelmed with problems, challenges, pressures, and doubt that our little lives can influence a change big enough to matter. And, if it doesn't matter why invest so much effort in the trying?

I feel/fear that my voice too often lives in a vacuum. A place where those who need it cannot access it, and those threatened by it do whatever they can to suppress it. It is a mountain of challenge..

OR, have I become the girl crying "Wolf!" so often that even I am sick of my own pleas for help? Do I still relate to her? Identify with her cause and, if so, can I still muster/resurrect/maintain the energy to be her?

When I feel really small and inconsequential I get overwhelmed, and, then I get quiet, pensive, and introverted as I search for the return to my path within.

So, I sat here quiet, for months. Searching for the next reason to write. Hoping something entertaining, relevant, meaningful would miraculously fall in front of me. It hasn't. I am still here in the same spot wondering and wandering through the routines of my days.

Now that I am not swimming in the vortex of cancer watching my beloved puppy die I have had more free time to think. (Not always a good thing).

I have gone back to work full force. Immersion into other peoples worries, the pets I adore helping, and the clinic that is such a mash of intricate working parts the greasy wheels echo needs I can't fill fast enough.

The tapestry of issues, needs, and unfilled voids is equally overwhelmingly daunting. The chaos surrounds and I continue to sit small and lost.

Every day there is a reminder of work unfinished. Tasks no one else is going to face publicly, and a mountain of requests for help I cannot complete.

A small sampling includes;

"This sounds exactly like my cat. I was told by my specialist (after a $900 bill) that he most likely wouldn't have polyps because hes too young (2 years 8 months). They told me they could look for polyps, but that it would be an additional $2600 and that they may not find anything. I am considering traveling 4 hours to you and just sent an email to Krista. Thank you so much for this video, I feel like I  may have found the answer to helping my cat!"  This was in response to a YouTube video I posted on removing a nasopharyngeal polyp in a cat. The video, which documents the entire procedure, lasts 2 minutes and 38 seconds.

I get tons, and tons, of requests to look for a polyp in a cat who has been given a $1500 (plus) estimate to have this performed.

"Why is there such a price discrepancy?" they all ask.

"Ask them, I have no idea.. really, I don't. But I know I am not the only one who does this procedure. Nor am I (probably) the cheapest." It is a curt, terse, quip  reply. (I am equally appalled, angry and afraid the throngs will find me in a drove of cat-carrier caravans).

I also get referrals from other clinics to help the clients they won't. I would love to say 'can't' but they can, they just won't and don't. Almost always due to cost. They won't offer a payment plan, or even third party billing plan, and they won't budge on whatever that "why?" is. It is infuriating. I suppose I should feel at least grateful (not the right word, maybe, consoled?) that they cared enough (also probably not the right word), to tell them other places do care enough to.

Here's my New Years (2019) proclamation.

Jarrettsville Vet will take care of our clients when they need us. Not just when it's profitable, convenient, and easy enough to do so. Through the adorable puppy and kitten days, to the vomiting, diarrhea, urinary blockages, pyometras, and nasopharyngeal polyp days. We will be honest, offer options to every ailment, and every budget, and help you help your beloved furry family members every single day. It is what people who have pets they consider family want. It is who we are in the clinic and out of the clinic. It is why I will keep making videos, with prices included in them, and screaming into the vacuum.

We might be small, but we are mighty and unwavering in our mission and purpose.

Can one person change the world? Only if they inspire a change others need and build a team that is as determined as she is. It's time to stop being quiet again. It's time to get back to work outside of the clinic.

I guess we'll both see how I sound on  December 29 in 2019?

Here is where I fall prey to the profession I feel is so important and vital. I can scream into a working vacuum at the clinic, but, at home in the  quiet moments I am screaming this,, all the damned time.

There are pets with treatable conditions out there who are lucky enough to have a family that loves them as an integral part of their lives. We, the veterinary profession, knows this. We feel the same way. It was what motivated us to go to vet school. This intangible need to take care of those who lack a voice but impact our lives so profoundly. Somewhere in the quest for greedy profiteering, status, titles, and shiny towers we lost who we were and why we came. We started blaming, shaming, and distancing ourselves from our clients all at the expense of our patients (and I would add ourselves). There are always options outside of economic euthanasia. There is dying in this profession. Some, (a fraction of what is actually going on), are untreatable, the rest, the patients being denied care, cheated from the actual treatment because we knowingly exhausted resources in the discovery phase, and the emergencies at 2 am who aren't told that cheaper exists after 8 am, are the skeletons that lead our suicide statistics. We, this profession turned lobbyists, did it to ourselves. We forgot. We forgot to care, to over extend for the sake of that wet nose. We forgot that vet school was always a poor investment. We forgot what it is like to live paycheck by paycheck because we also made poor life choices. And, we forgot that the legacies of our lives are the actions of the moment.

When we deny options that work for people we deny them the ability to care for their pets. We undermine the bonds our profession relies on for current and future viability. This reflects on our professions integrity and credibility. 

Here I am screaming.. is anyone there?

For more information on who Jarrettsville Veterinary Center is please visit our Facebook page, or our website.

If you have a pet question or a story about your pet to share so we can start to help others who might be in the same situation you are (or were), please visit us at Pawbly.com. It is free to use and open to everyone.

If you want to learn more about pet care visit my YouTube channel here.