Finals week 2011

Where to start when you are so behind on the blog… yes folks, I’ve just been too busy to blog. Busy with being busy, and then busy with not being busy as I think that “Private Practice” may have generated one stable relationship after 2 seasons of drama and perversion, and alas last night they attempted to kill the woman off. Simply harrowing. This is the fortunate or unfortunate combination of finals week, grading until the brains begin to hemorrhage, then going home to your neighbor’s trailer instead of your own for the evening because they have food and Netflix.

The last couple of weeks have certainly been interesting and slightly drama filled, as the continuing saga of the mangled meat horse mentioned in the last blog became … well… a continuing saga. I have a smile on my face now, for sure, but some tears hit the dirt on that one as the nearly degloved muscle did not end up surviving the ordeal and the horse came back in a few days with my very first foul smelling wound infection with “dying” added to the adjectives list for that particular muscle group. I can’t go into too much detail on the personal stories associated with this case, but it was a heart wrenching case for me as the only thing I wanted to do was order that horse a new leg on ebay and send that remarkable family home with a miracle. My boss happened to be gone for a few days when the horse returned, thus there was more than one 4 AM email going out for advice from my mentors who have not only seen many awful things but have the confidence and experience to tackle them with both skill and hope.  Many thanks to my favorite mentor, who arose from his own drug-filled post-surgical stupor to tell me what I most needed to hear on that intimidating Sunday afternoon: “You can do it.” I did do it, with many, many prayers sent up to the Great Healer for that horse to turn around. The Navajo people were doing their own rituals as well, and although I don’t know them well enough to understand exactly who or what they were praying too, their heart was right. The horse stayed for a week and I discovered that even unwrappable portions of a horse forelimb can be defeated with lap sponges, pantyhose, cut-off jeans and duct tape. Handyman’s secret weapon.

*Pause* in diatribe as I exited the premises to go to the Crownpoint Elementary School Christmas program to see hundreds of little kids sing off key and off beat… super cute the entire time of course. Especially my favorite one waving around a giant poster of a partridge in a pear tree.

Okay what else was on my list of things that I consider interesting… ah yes we were in the midst of the week of scariness. Also within that week of scariness – another intense episode in my dislike of haggling about money coupled with my dislike of death. I don’t enjoy haggling about money, particularly when the haggling is with relatives of a sweet, sad Navajo grandma who doesn’t speak any English and brings in her broken dog to figure out how broken it is, then at the end of the day I have to put it to sleep. It will be a lifelong struggle, I believe, to combat this inner feeling that I shouldn’t get paid unless I fix the animal. I know, I know, logic wins and it costs money to diagnose brokenness and euthanize things, but I just feel so bad for the people. So, so bad. It seemed to be the week of death in the dog world. But alas, in the horse world, mourning turned to dancing. Or at least some nice sound walking on a forelimb with a heck of a lot less swelling and stinking. Tomorrow I will see him again, this horse who became my son.

Being a vet this particular week has been pretty awesome, given the large number of chocolates and cookies that have come walking through the door! My pancreas may be sad but my brain is happy. A little sugar boost to carry me through final exam week. It still holds that it is better to give exams than to receive, however it still quite the butt-load of work. I didn’t ever slow down from the horse saga – just took off to Albuquerque last Saturday night to hang out with my peeps, look at Christmas dinosaurs, squid and octopi, go to a seriously awesome church, and then by golly I rode just about the cutest horse I have ever ridden. Who knew I could fall so hard for a 14.2 Paso Fino? Not I. But I did. Even now I forgot about my very late in life realization/fascination that the plural of squid is squid… thinking about that adorable little feisty little horse…. *Pause.* I’m a little distracted right now. I want to write about this horse but I started wondering what a group of squid was called, googled it, discovered it was just “school,” and was so disappointed that I’m trying to think of a better word. I do believe my bestie just solved it. “Squee of squid.” Okay we can move on now.

Yikes it is 10:14 and I need some sleeps. I never slowed down because I played hard in ABQ and then came home to write and grade finals every night until tonight. I can write more about this magical Paso Fino horse next week beCAUSE I’m going to ride him again this weekend. In the snow and rain. With the sheriff’s posse. I can't believe how nice people can be sometimes... sharing their magical horses! Until then I will end this blog with a couple of bulleted reports:

• My one-eyed puppy short legs is now big enough to jump onto the couch and into the car all by himself,
•  None of my dogs mind that a mouse runs across the livingroom floor every night while I am typing up/grading exams… and there isn’t a lot I can do about it at the moment because I have NEVER been able to set a mousetrap (GUILT – that’s why I studied brains in the fruit fly lab instead of the mouse lab), and live traps are far away in Gallup,
• My dad sent me some AWESOME bright red snowpants,
• Today I received a tiny Bolivian nativity scene in the mail with… *drumroll* a LLAMA in it,
• I have a Christmas reindeer,
• I am annoyed that my new position as a working professional makes me feel obligated to wear matching socks every single day,
• Tonight’s “Private Practice” episode sent my single moral candidate into the role of psychologically messed up baby-hater. Don’t waste your time folks, stick with the muppets.

Adios

Max claims foul

Hello again from the trailer on the Rez, wherein one collie-mix woof is not only dealing with a stitched up nose and a tingley paw that needs to be licked, but his horrible mom has placed him in the CONE OF SHAME and life is just, well, horrible. I have been out of the blogging mood lately, not sure why. It's been remarkably busy during the week and the last weekend I faced was Thanksgiving and I tore on up to CO to float about my Fort. MY FORT! No historical pains shall steal it from me. It was a fun Thanksgiving with friends, bathroom stitching of a Max nose that collided with a horse foot, a not-so-awesome encounter with some heart pains, and a rescue from sadness by the muppets. MUAH to Kermit the Frog. Saturday was full of fun times with fantabulous friends, and Sunday landed me in Albuquerque around 8 PM to meet some interesting folks at Barnes & Noble again followed by speedy travel to the nearest Albertsons to buy some H2O2 and make Pepperoni puke up the 4 giant frosted cinnamon rolls she dug up and wolfed while I was in the bookstore. Monday had me back at work in spades with several dogs and cats, one dog with a hip lux, and then the horse with a left forelimb injury that seriously took the cake for mangled meat. An hour of clip and clean followed by almost 3 hours of stitching with the last hour done by the light of the owner's truck headlights. It was FREEEEZING when the sun went down and I took two breaks to run inside and whimper while my hands thawed, lol. But dudes, I LOVED IT!!!! Stitching up a horse leg in the cold by truck headlights... dream number XXX come true. There was a lot of tension, he kind of degloved his extensor muscles down to just above the knee, but spared bone and joints and could still walk, so we shall see! Nice people, they truly deserve some miracles.

Tomorrow is pharmacology student presentation day... I'm pretty excited to see what they have come up with. Each student will present a drug from a different category we have studied, and the media team is going to come down and tape them! I have very little doubt that they will do really well. Little things are still annoying here and there with calculations, record-keeping, details... but overall the 2nd year students make me proud with all the things they are able to do independantly now.

Anyhoo, I suppose I'll call it good. The pup just peed in the house again. My little twit.

Everyone wears Nikes

It is late, but I have a few minutes while my dog comes to her own decision that “Pepperoni, come!” is a reason to come towards me instead of run to her friend’s house. I’m just back from an interesting afternoon in Albuquerque. I visited the infamous Sagebrush church, hung out with a few great people, and landed at Barnes & Noble for a while where I huddled up to read, “Oogy: The Dog Only a Family Could Love.” I’m not over my pitbull patient yet. But that’s another story. Instead I was handed “Navajos Wear Nikes”and couldn’t put it down. I only got to page 32, but I suspect the author is headed for a turn-around where growing up as a white boy on the Rez transformed his views into a realization that people are people everywhere and this culture isn’t that different from our own, at its core. I thought about it on the way home, and I think that I’ve been bouncing around that conclusion myself. I meet people who think it’s so interesting that I’m down here and I should write a book or something; however, on a day-to-day basis I forget that I’m on the Rez sometimes. After working here Monday through Friday I feel culture shock going to Albuquerque. I swear I start thinking I’m Navajo. It really doesn’t make any difference to me who is bringing their animal through that door. Reading through that book… there were stories of kids beating each other up on the playground, bully kids picking on the different kids, homeless animals in pathetic states, racism, abuse in families… what’s so different here than in Detroit, MI? Every culture has their pride, their issues, their wacky sense of priorities… 100 miles from abject poverty “my people” are ground breaking an 11 million dollar church building. So people want to drive fancy trucks and live in trailers, so what? (Pause as pup is now obsessed with fetch…) What else do I have to say about this. I’m feeling decidedly unprofound right now. Anyway, I don’t feel the need to write books. I feel like they’ve all been written. I’d rather just be nice, do my job, and see if some of these ideas that we are so vastly different could be knocked down in the minds of some of the people I happen to interact with. We are just people. We love dogs. The good people get mad when boxes of puppies get left on the side of the road. Politicians often parasitize their people when they are supposed to be serving them. Teenagers need to learn to do their homework. Some do well at developing their God-given talents, and some waste their potential being selfish and/or stupid. (Okay, when is this pup going to quit peeing in my house? Seriously.) As a whole it would be nice if we all would just stop classifying people based on the ones we’ve met or what we’ve heard. For instance, I am a Christian. That does not mean that I’m an asshole, I hate homosexuals, I go to church because I have a guilt complex, I love everything Republicans do, I think I’m better than you, I don’t know and don’t care about any other belief system, and I reject science. It basically means I think Jesus walked around on this earth a couple thousand years ago and told the truth, and now I’m pretty sure I have a mentoring type friendship/relationship with an alleged dead person. Making Him not dead. Wow that sounds weird. It’s not too big of a stretch for me though, honestly. Life and death are over my head. When I watch the light go out of a dog’s eyes I already know nothing. A Superpower making planets hang in place and then sneaking Himself into a world He created and gave away seems pretty plausible. He had some pretty awesome Superpowers while he was here. Those folks got to see stuff and believe, I have to read about it most of the time, *BUMMER*, but that’s life. I think if my community college English teacher read this blog she would cry. There is no main point.

Clinic days this week… really good cases. I fell in love with a big, ugly, super-adorable pitbull with some serious anemia issues that I couldn’t fix in time to save him. His weak little tail-wag stole my heart and I cried my eyes out on the way home after euthanizing him. All dogs go to heaven, especially pitbulls. I went to Gallup for a drink with some friends and saw several cultures represented in the drunks at Applebee’s, had my own drink with my fav nachos with spinach-artichoke dip, and came home again. You can occasionally have some very interesting conversations with the drinkers at the bar. Everyone has their reasons for being there, and it’s often rewarding to ferret them out. It was too loud for much chat last night though.

Well my dogs have all crashed and it’s time to crash. I sure love my little car. We have many awesome adventures together J

Home, home on the Rez

I am home and I am awake to tell about it. The trip to CO was simply fantastic. I was too happy to sleep most of the time, hence after my arrival home on Sunday night I made it through each work day to come home and fall asleep at 7:30 PM like an old person. Yikes. It was sooooo fun though. Let's see... arrival at Paul and Julie's around 10 PM Thursday night for a tour of their house, arrival HOME at about midnight for about three hours of freezing on an air mattress (not realizing the large black box next to my head was a space heater... duh...), then up early to visit my dentist and the pup's opthomologist, lunch with the fly PhD boss, then games with Samantha in the afternoon and the pleasant discovery that my tire changing equipment was in the back of my car the entire time. Caramel appletinis with Laurie, lots of coffee afterwards with Laurie and Sarah (two appletinis = too much for Janel to drive... lesson learned, lol), and then another night of being too happy to sleep as well as encumbered with some old thought circles of mine concerning how scientists are often sadly, sadly trapped in a pressured lifestyle of massive data production, guilt-filled weekends, and scary perfectionism. Some seem to handle that lifestyle well. I think I may be the type who needed to escape from it, as I find myself wanting to rescue people from it when they don't really want to be rescued. Where am I going with this blog? Hmm. Trying to recapture a glorious weekend when I'm 3 days out and thinking about dogs with diaphragmatic hernias. I'm going to persevere. So Saturday morning was the joyful morning of reuniting with my horse, my Annette, and my Leah, and we got just enough break from the wind to wander through the snake-less fields and rediscover the hobbit hide-out, the culvert from which creatures from the underworld emerge, and go far enough away to bring worried mules to the fenceline. It was awesome. My 31 year old T-bred mare is going strong, and despite her ribs showing she has a girth size that makes me smile and look forward to another summer with her. Equine senior is working its magic! I think I was actually starving for conversation with Annette. Two hours flew by. How awesome is it that God still teaches us better ways to pray, better ways to maneuver in relationships, better ways to raise teenagers... your entire life! You never actually get done learning. I suppose that could be discouraging as well... but in talking to Annette it was intensely ENcouraging. Somehow her stories fuel my own faith challenges, even though they are so different at the individual story level. The awesomeness of conversation with awesome friends. Love it. The end of Saturday involved me practicing my soccer-mom skills picking up one dog here and dropping off another there (a potential pup adoption and a playmate for Pepperoni), more games with Paul, Julie and chicken USDA boss, and then taking my massively sleep deprived self home to play poker with my family, Paul, Julie and Sarah. I'm pretty terrible at poker. Yep. The next morning I had pancakes with the purple PhD boss, left the dogs there, and went to my beautiful church for a taste of home preaching and a whole bunch of awesome people. Miss them all so much! But had to leave them all afterwards for the long journey home, with a stop in Albuquerque to finish writing an anesthesiology exam before my brains completely died. It was a nice stop in ABQ actually -- met some really nice peeps at Barnes & Noble and nothing was stolen.


Ok so that was the sum of it all. Something at least slightly more descriptive than WOOOOT that was SOOOOOO FUUUUN!!! But I'm back. Pandora entertained me with "Finally Home" as I was leaving my home address in CO, "Here Am I, Send Me" as I turned onto the highway, and "Ghetto Superstar" as I left my trailer for work Monday morning. Monday was quite a while ago and I don't really remember what happened. I think I neutered something. Oh yes... a pug. And took out his four deciduous canine teeth. That was pretty interesting as they didn't really want to come out. Good times. "Wiggle wiggle." I heard Dr. Bar-Am's voice the entire time. The afternoon was full of appointments, then of course I went home and collapsed. Tuesday was much the same. Equine float, neuter, appointments, catch up mounds of paperwork, collapse. Today I'm back to normal. It's 8:00 PM and I'm still fairly wide awake. There was a really interesting case today -- tachypneic dog, HBC yesterday. She had few other external signs of distress/injury. Radiographs showed mild pneumothorax, lack of diaphragm border and a lot of soft tissue opacity in the left lung field. I suspected a hernia but couldn't be sure, and my boss was more sure of the hernia with just a bit of hesitation so that we offered a Barium series but explained that she should be referred for surgery either way. We ended up putting her down, and she surely did have a hernia. Many things in the left thoracic cavity that didn't belong. It was a heartbreaker. It isn't my usual MO bring my own dog out to a sad owner to try and cheer him, but I did this time. So sad. Please pray for a sad man on the Rez tonight.

Pepperoni is over playing at her friend's house and I should probably go get her. And my nose is cold. And I need to get a lecture finished up for tomorrow. I was really proud of my students today while I was grading their exams. Some of them really excelled on the short answer questions, make my heart shine. One even offered some extra info about poison dart frogs and how their poison level varies with habitat and diet. This was followed by a fantastic picture of a turtle screaming at a syringe of ivermectin! I laughed so hard I cried. There are days when teaching is very rewarding :)

End of long day

Just finished writing the pharmacology exam for tomorrow. I don't know what happened to my brain last night but I worked on the anesthesiology exam instead of this one. Anesthesiology isn't until next Monday. I get confused sometimes. We just covered NSAIDS in both classes, which I planned that way so that they could study for both classes at the same time for these exams, but I get confused about which class is which. So it is finished, and my thumbnail is gone. I seriously have no idea that I'm doing that when I'm focused.


Today I castrated a red angus bull calf. He was pretty cute, about 350 lbs. I felt so bad for him. I just use locals, and I use them liberally so he doesn't feel a heck of a lot after the inital poking, but then every time I go to the front of the chute to help adjust something or grab something, he just LOOKS at me with those innocent accusatory eyes. I don't know if I'm going to be able to sleep. After that was my first Great Pyranese spay surgery and I learned all sorts of things about big dogs and their big vessels. One of the uterine vessels ripped after I had sutured everything, so I pulled out all the stops and had the dog catheterized and on fluids while I sought and found my stump to ligate it some more. Then the broad ligaments kept seeping and I was so nervous about all of the ligatures at that point that I extended the incision both ways to hunt down all of the stumps again and had my boss step in to make sure things were chill in there before closing her up. She has some serious skillzzzzz in finding the right pedicle stump. But alas it was just the broad ligament seeping and we ligated it and the dog is doing fine. I know, I know, everybody deals with this all the TIME and it's no big deal, but I'm still a bit high strung... starting to relax (just ask my old pig lab partner how far I had to come from). I love these dogs, it freaks me out sometimes that I have so much power over them. There was some great Great Pyranese hugging going on in the back at the end of the day. And some grooming. They're soooo FLUFFY and CUTE (muppet voice).


Wow I just love Pandora. Whiskey Lullabye followed by Ice Ice Baby. Keeps things interesting.


I'm going to CO tomorrow! I havn't packed a thing and I believe I'm just going to take some dirty laundry back with me and borrow a machine. Lol. Some kids never grow up. I'm hoping I can take some more pups there with me. I got the last of the 6 box puppies adopted out today, however I came home and visited my neighbor since my nutjob pitt-mix dog jumped on her puppy this morning and I wanted to check on him... and she has 3 eight-week-old pups she needs to get rid of. So ya'll, 3 more pups. Cute as buttons, they look exactly like the box puppies, just more white markings.

Icecapades

Today I got a glimpse of what it will be like to drive through the Rez in the winter. Sheer ice. The first incline 7 miles or so towards Crownpoint was littered with cars off the road, just over the incline was upsidedown pickup #1, and the second incline had us all parked on the road for an hour behind upsidedown pickup #2. After the first hour on the road the snowplow went by, and according to NM native reports that was not normal. We don't get snowplows very often. But alas I made it to work after about two hours with only 1 dog accident in the back seat, checked on my frosted llama on the way there, and as usual I got to Crownpoint to find something totally different: dry roads and sunny skies. My little trip through the canyons to get there will be the challenge this winter. And avoiding all the nuts who don't know how to drive in snow.


I had a kitty cat spay today and not a whole lot else. Thankfully. The mound on my desk is terrifying and I have two exams coming up. I found out we have this Friday off and I'm going to go back to CO for a couple of days. You can't see it but I have a seriously big smile on my face! :D Missin' my peeps. And my horsie. I'll take my three goon dogs and hopefully squeeze my current Navajo pup foster project into an ophtho appointment at CSU. This is the pup I saw left by the road after a car pulled out in front of me, from right where the pup was, early in the morning on my way to work last month. Instantaneous transformation of Janel the bleary-eyed non-morning person to red-eye fry the guy mode. I snatched up the pup and sped up and passed a few cars to get behind the dude, then I flashed my lights at him and tailed him all the way to Crownpoint. He pulled into a bus parking lot and I whipped around and flapped my arms at him to roll down his window. STERN (but not yelling) mad Janel voice, "Did you abandon THIS PUPPY by the side of the road???!!!" *Cold stare*... and surprising recognition that the driver was someone who works at NTC. "No! I have no idea where that puppy came from." I explained what I saw, and they insisted they didn't know whose pup it was. He had picked up a hitchhiker and the pup was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I guess. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and took him some cookies later. The pup probably got dumped because of his bad eye. Noone has claimed him yet. SO! Adopt a Navajo dog. And donate a snowplow.

Puppy Monday

I loooooove puppies. What wouldn't I do for a puppy. You all-equine vets are MISSING OUT!!! Look at these little twits! I had barely finished teaching anesthesiology (students presented cases the last hour, impressed me!) and a couple of guys came in having literallly watched a &*@(%Y@ (insert bad word(s) of your choice) dump these pups on the side of the road. He got a plate number as well and I will do what I can with it. But anyway, I couldn't send them to a crowded shelter and the pup rescue in ABQ would have charged him about $110 to take them, so I figured I would keep them for a few days, spread the word, and then take them to ABQ myself this weekend if they couldn't all get adopted out. They are just too little and too innocent to not get good homes. They are cuddly little ragdoll pups that lay on their backs in your hands and occasionally grunt. They melt me to pieces. So far three are adopted out. Three more to go! Come on folks!


Other news... it's Monday again and I remember why I'm here. I wonder if there is some sort of seasonal affective disorder that goes weekly/weekend rather than seasonal. If so, I think I have it. I do love puppies. Today I also discovered that old yellow labs that are 7/9 BCS may have an interesting little skin roll along the trachea that looks kind of like a jugular but isn't. No blood in it. Anatomy Janel, anatomy. The afternoon was loaded with vaccine appointments and puppy adoptions, and a nice snowstorm. It's a little bizarre here in the canyons. There are 3 climates going to and from work. Snowstorm - clear skies - snowstorm or the other way around. I got back home and it was nice and clear. I was locked out of my house again, but not being sick, sleep-deprived and 11 PM returning from Flagstaff, I didn't mind driving over to the maintenance guy's house and telling him he needed to come over and break in my back door again. The post-Flagstaff lock-out is another story. 10 PM already I need to hit some hay. Need to run around and visit my llama in the AM and then pick up pups from foster homes. My friend Jess and I have mentally started the "Nab-a-Nav-a-WOOF" foundation. What say you?

Sunday eve on the Rez

At this point of the weekend things feel more normal. I just finished lecture preparation for tomorrow – analgesia and canine/feline anesthesia – and sitting here on my couch with Pandora on, occasional phonecalls to/from the fam, and Pepperoni hiccoughing next to me (no joke, I tried to capture it on video and she stopped). I could be anywhere doing this stuff and I’m pretty content. This morning was less awesome, as I woke up at 5:30 AM to the pleasant discovery that my waterlines were frozen. This makes the toilet do a sad half-flush, FYI. My brain started revolving around some of those nagging irritations of Rez life and there is no going back to sleep. Why don’t all the rich politicians in the world come down here and live in these trailers for a while? Would that possibly get some heads working on problem solving in this area instead of maintenance of a broken system? Why aren’t all these kids reading and writing? Why are there so many brand new expensive trucks on the road when everyone lives in pretty dumpy trailers? Why do the cities look like crap built around casinos? Could someone just start posing these questions and coming up with some plans to turn things around? It’s almost enough motivation for me to drop what I’m doing and become a politician. Heck I bet I’ll end up being one of some sort. You can’t come down here and see all this, start to care, then not find your way to the top and try and do SOMETHING.

The rest of today was not super interesting. I went back to the church in Gallup and enjoyed their company. My friend had a meeting afterwards and I explored the Gallup mall. Behold, a light in Gallup. It was clean, organized, and otherwise a tiny oasis from the rest of Gallup. My watch died last week and I picked up an awesome cheap replacement from Big Lots. I noticed on the way home that it was cheap because it was a leftover Halloween special with skulls and crossbones on it. Sweet. That will go over well. Maybe I can color it out with a sharpie.

I’m bored by my own blog right now.

Momma said there'd be days like this...

Saturdays on the Rez are still a challenge. I slow down, sleep in a little...then I want to go visit my peeps. MY peeps. The ones I keep leaving to go on these crazy journeys. I stayed in most of the day and watched the Breeder's Cup races online. Even pixelated they are the most majestic creatures God invented. My old buddy Shackleford would have won if that one horse hadn't beat him. Big red handsome guy he is. So after the classic I had to escape and go on some adventure, and one thing I hadn't tried yet is going to Grants. I thought Grants had a Chili's or an Applebee's or something where I could go sit amongst some humans at the bar and potentially engage in light conversation. Nope. I stopped at a Mexican restaurant that I'd never heard of, and it was tasty, but more of a glorified Burger King. A little Navajo lady stopped by my table and sold me a Navajo necklace. Slowly collecting Christmas gifts. Food was good, but that feeling crept up again of being alone in a foreign country, and although I was slightly cheered/entertained by the sign on the way out that invited me to shoot turkeys on Nov. 19th to win a fat yearling lamb, I returned to exploring the streets of Grants for some sort of adventurous place to visit. As a rule, I don't stop in bars that only have two trucks in front, and the one hotel that looked fairly large had no restaurant in it. So there we have it folks, I made it to 7:40 PM on a Saturday before tear spillage, a new record, but tear spillage came anyway. This isn't usually the best time to visit Walmart, but I needed dogfood. The nice thing about Walmart is that is also contains life-saving items such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, so I am now back home again with an old friend of sorts. Miss you Tina, Tracy and Melissa! We should be watching this together. A half-pittbull and a half-collie are fairly good company as well. They don't say much but they luuuuuuv meeeee ;). Tomorrow I will go back to the church in Gallup that seemed fairly nice and normal, despite being in Gallup. Snow today, and lots of wind. Winter is coming to NM.

Kinaalda in Ganado

Okay...that was a blast, AND it was totally interesting. I ran through the mountainous sage-y desert, intermittently yelling, following the girl of honor along with her relatives, and I thought to myself... never saw myself doing this. Hmm! This is interesting. 

Grind the corn

 Suture the corn husks

 Make lots of cake batter

 Pour batter into corn husk lined fire pit

 Cover cake batter with more corn husks

 Cover cake with wet grocery bags, dirt, and FIRE

 Bake cake all night

I totally sutured most of those corn husks together. I've got hand it to these women. Running and yelling twice a day on no sleep, no sugar, no salt... not how I handle that time of the month. I'm really impressed. That's actually the first family meal I've been to in quite some time, although I did not recognize the part of the sheep that I ate. Luckily I've been trained in octopus.

So I'm home, it's Friday, I'm missing the all night singing session. I would like to hear the horse song. Today at the clinic was pretty solid. Solid bull. We have the chutes up and running and 5 were run through for Trich testing. I spent the majority of the morning with 5 horses, but visited a monster bull just long enough to palpate him and determine that he and the other bulls need to find some other entertainment in their spare time. The things you learn about animals. I'm always super impressed with their muscles. I'm used to cows, and these guys were like "GRRRRR" (flexing muscles).

Oh yeah, I tripped and fell on the way back on the run. She can't trip, but I guess I can. I need to get in better shape, that was rough. Also, peeling potatoes with chatty Navajo kids = WIN.

Thoughts prior to Kinaalda

It is the first blog and I am a bit behind. But blogging should happen when you finish vet school and move to a Navajo reservation for your first job. Who does that? Well the reasons I am here are long and complicated. But here I am. In my trailer are two Navajo dogs and one non-Navajo dog. The little Navajo dog just pooped on the floor and the lingering aroma is fantastic. He's a little squirt and his cuteness saves him. Every time. Today at work I taught GI pharmacology, without my powerpoint as it mysteriously disappeared into space somewhere between the computer and the flash drive last night. But I'm a big fan of the dry erase board and the students didn't visibly judge me for flipping through the book to my chosen teaching sections and drawing things like intestines on the board. Intestines I can do. After that...hmm. Thursdays are sometimes a light day as there are no clinic students all day. I had the pleasure of expressing a cranky pug's anal glands. I enjoyed it as I can't smell so well this week. I'm actually surprised the poop smell is making it through my semi-clogged nasal passages. Not so clogged as I would be were I a 13 year old girl running to the east before dawn with wet hair containing corn chunks, however. But we can talk more about that tomorrow. There was also a euthanasia that broke me down a bit. Two obviously good souls were parted until we all meet our dogs again in heaven (pause as puppy has just emerged from the bathroom unrolling a toiletpaper roll... aww bless his heart he dropped it right over his pee spot. You know, he may just be that smart...)...and I was sad. The rest of the day was all on the computer or grading. A potential emergency did not show due to cost. That happens quite a bit down here. Tomorrow my favorite horse will be back, and a few bulls will be in for Trich testing. Then I'm taking the afternoon off to visit a Kinaalda ceremony with one of students. It took the entire week to build my resolve, now transitioning to excitement, to go to this. Honestly these last few weekends have been rough on my lonely soul and I have fled to far off towns to enjoy good company of more familiar faces. In fact I need to plan a flee place for this weekend as well. I don't usually make it far beyond 3 PM on a Saturday before the tear spillage drives me away from my trailer. It's been a rough 6 weeks. Longer than that, actually. But leaving the trailer always turns into something interesting. Xtreme llama parasailing or Flagstaff or both have been my getaways. I'm usually just too tired to go back to CO. I want to go so badly though. Soon.

 

 

I realize the blogs creates some questions. But it's my blog and I know what I'm talking about. What else today... free lunch as the culinary school is testing their talents. That was nice. I successfully taught almost all of my students not to give ivermectin to collies or turtles. This is good as I gave myself a minor heart attack last week when preparing the antiparasitics lectures. My non-Navajo dog is half-collie and if he had contracted mange I wonder if I would have had the sense to not give him Ivomec. Hmm. Not the first time I've slapped myself in the last week.

 

 

So tomorrow I will probably write about the Kinaalda. As crazy as it is, I'm curious if some early shaping in a positive way could come of it. For instance, when I am exhausted, sick, sleep-deprived, have 12 major things to do before I can sleep, and am operating under complex of stupidity and inadequacy, I remember that I survived the calving rotation at CSU under similar circumstances in the freezing cold on the back of a horse for 10 hours, and when I got off I cleaned the cow barn. Yeah, that's right. Don't mess with me.

 

 

Well I'm going to mess around elsewhere online for a bit. Last item of interest: the stories from my student concerning Kinaalda meshed with my enchiladas to create a dream of Navajo people wrapping live horses in cellophane to suffocate them and eat them. They then buried dead people in my suitcase. Navajo people don't do these things, however my brain is one of my ultimate sources of entertainment as is telling other people my dreams. Enjoy!