Mixed Musings

Still some final tweaking to do, but today the new site replaced the old. Thanks to all who previewed and critiqued the site and those who provided pictures that have greatly enhanced the site.  Last but definitely not least, a special thanks to my son Jeremy who has shown extreme patience during the past 6 months. Animal aggression and anal glands I can do. But Internet technology? That’s a different story.

I spent the weekend at a vet emergency and critical care seminar and, aside from happily learning that even at that level they’re advocating keeping the animal and environment calm for the sake of the dog instead of emergency doc-jock reactivity, I discovered that the speaker hates to see excited dogs (especially Labs and goldens) engaged in fetch and barking marathons in public parks. In their most benign form, these displays upset me because these animals are so obviously stressed in that environment and their owners so oblivious to this fact. These dogs aren’t frantically going after that ball

Every holiday season I tell myself I should decorate more than I do, which is minimal. This discussion invariably includes the more practical me listing all the reasons why I shouldn’t: a small house heated by wood tree-friendly; the cat will be alone for a few days over Christmas and any decorations might be too tempting to ignore. That sort of thing. Even so, the longing remains. This morning for some reason it hit me especially hard as I went out with the dogs. Apparently the Christmas spirit took notice of my mood because while the dogs were doing

I’ve known for years that I have bears wandering through if not actually living on my property.  Once a young black bear veered off toward my place after loping down the road beside my car for a while as I was driving home from the dump. Other times, I watched them destroy bird feeders less than 15’ from the front and back doors of my house, effectively ending my bird-feeding days. And I’ve felt them watching me from the woods above the house. At first that used to bother me, but more because I had no idea what the

who has responded to these podcasts and blogs. Of all the net-related activities that get foiled by my dial-up, this one is especially slow. That’s saying a lot considering how slow everything else is! But I do want you all to know that I greatly appreciate your comments and read every one of them. and often feel greatly depressed when  I can’t respond as I’d like to. Some day…

Apparently the cybergods think play is an important subject too, because this link just showed up in a veterinary news service I receive. Enjoy. Play. Smile. 🙂

I receive a fair number of video links, but living in the a dead zone with a dial-up connection prevents me from opening most of them. Either I can’t open a clip at all, or my connection crashes half-way through the download process. Because what others may consider a short clip can take me several hours to download, this is all very discouraging. But evidently the universe wanted me to see this one, because it survived its early morning download ordeal intact. The Poop Detective’s CSI spin made me laugh for 2 reasons. One is because I’ve felt the

First and foremost, thanks to everyone who asked about how I and the animals were doing. We’re doing very well having suffered no more than a small tree down, the worst of which I’ve already cleaned up, and a power outage of about 12 hours. What lingers is the awareness of what a huge difference a relatively small shift in the storm’s track made. Not that far to the west, the flooding and destruction in Vermont is heart-breaking. Ironically last week I was kidding one of my clients who lives in a hard-hit area about all the flocks of

Because I consider this site first and foremost an educational one, there’s a lot of text on it. And because of this, I’ve wanted to add a search engine to it for quite a while. Clients and others who visit the site also have assured me that this would be a welcomed addition. After some research, Google’s search engine fulfilled my needs the best. The only drawback is that it comes with ads, something I’ve tried to avoid for multiple reasons since I started the site. Aside from noting that their presence in no way signals my endorsement of

There’s no podcast this week, but I wanted to share an animal-related mystery that I investigated at my son, Dan’s, townhouse when I went there with Frica and Ollie to celebrate Christmas. It’s not that this mystery is anything spectacular. It probably isn’t or wouldn’t be even if we managed to solve it. In the meantime, it’s a good example of the kinds of things animals do to which we would probably assign all kinds of higher brain function were a human to do them. But when a dog or cat does them, well, then it’s a mystery The

I got an email from my friend Pam telling me she had about 15,000 worms doing their magic at her house. I knew Pam was a multi-talented person—singer, drummer, great raconteur, and co-owner with her husband of the Sea Solar Store in Dover, New Hampshire. But I had no idea that worms were eating her garbage too. Pam also sent me a picture of the Can-O-Worms, a round version of my worm hotel,  and told me it was one of several systems now available. I had no idea. Up until I got the hotel years ago, all the systems

One nice thing about not being a commercial success is that I can change my mind about things as I gain more knowledge and experience. I can say “Whoa, was I wrong about that! This makes ever so much more sense!” without losing sponsors or watching the value of my empire plummet. Nor do I have to worry about offending my groupies because a) I don’t have any and b) those independent thinkers who do follow my work know I often put a different spin on bond and behavior topics. For better or worse—depending on your view—that spin may

Last night I woke up to what sounded like a howl-off between a coyote sitting in my front yard and one in the distance. Either that or the one in the yard was howling for the sheer joy of listening to his/her echo from across the valley below the house.This morning when I looked into the front yard from the office, I saw the most gorgeous doe who bounded away before I got anything but this fleeting picture of her.   To say that both made my day is putting it mildly.

Thanks to the folks at Veterinary Technician Schools Online for naming my blog one of the top fifty blogs written by veterinarians. For those of you who are interested in a career in veterinary technology, this website explains online vet tech school options, degrees, programs, and salary, job, and career information. I think I’ll take the dogs out in the rain and then fix myself a cup of tea to celebrate.

Another audio book comes to an end and I can’t help reminiscing about events that occurred during its recording. And once I start doing that, my thoughts automatically wander to what other audio projects might lay ahead…

I finally got around to updating the references regarding the effects of spay and neuter and you can find these here. For those who don’t have access to some of these publications, you may be able to find at least abstracts of the articles by doing a search for the author’s name plus key words from the article’s title in Google Scholar or one of the other more academic search engines. Your local librarian or a college librarian also should be able to get copies for you.

Have you ever taken your pet to the veterinary clinic for some problem and gotten the feeling that your veterinarian just wasn’t listening to you? Or you got the impression that the vet had already made up his or her mind regarding the cause and proper treatment of the problem before getting what you considered a complete history or thoroughly examining your animal? At that time, you might have thought that the veterinarian simply didn’t care about your animal or you. But more often than not, these people really do care. It’s the way they’ve been trained that creates

A friend recently sent me the following lovely poem by poet extraordinaire  Mary Oliver. Because it was about a dog, I automatically compared that animal’s experiences with those of my puppy, Ollie. Once I did that, I could not resist the temptation to portray Ollie’s alternate reality poetically, too. Below are both poems, the exquisite original and the parody.   Luke, by Mary Oliver from Red Birds I had a dog who loved flowers Briskly she went through the fields. yet paused for the honeysuckle or the rose, her dark head and her wet nose touching the face of

Last day to sign up for the New England Federation of Humane Societies’ panel discussion on behavior assessments at the University of New Hampshire is Tuesday, October 23rd. I looking forward being part of the panel and exploring the many facets of this complex subject.  For a registration form or if you have any questions, contact Stephanie Frommer at stephanief@humanecommunity.org or call 603-352-9011 extension 123,

Given that this is the season of hope and joy, and especially miracles, a good friend’s dog is in the process of having puppies as I write this. I was at her place yesterday and experienced that feeling of awe like no other as I laid my hands on that dog’s abdomen and felt the lives within. We both readily agreed that there was do word to describe it but “miracle”. And when my friend, a vet tech, called while ago to tell me the first pup had been born, she used the same word. As I pondered this

Here’s a link to an interesting story about Maine’s new domestic violence law that covers both people and animals. It’s long been known that abusers will target animals belonging to others as a way of indirectly abusing those people, too. It’s also long been known that people will stay in abusive relationships if they can’t take their animals with them. Although this often elicits images of family pets, as the woman interviewed in this article makes clear, it also can affect farm animals. Read article here