15 Rules For Visiting Your Veterinarian

1. Do not make an appointment. Just walk in, because they are going to be there anyway. Demand to be seen immediately! Become irate if you have to wait for anyone who was there ahead of you.


2. Bring all of your children. If you have no children, borrow some from a friend. Toddlers are best. Let them run around all over the hospital asking the staff a million questions.


3. Please ensure your mobile phone is turned on when you enter the consult room. Talk to everyone possible about what is happening to your dog/cat. Spend at least 10 minutes discussing this with them as well any other personal matters that come to mind.


4. As you leave, let your un-neutered dog urinate on every stationary object until you get outside. Do not tell anyone.


5. Please tell us if there is a problem, but wait at least 3 weeks to do so. Remember, continuous diarrhea for four weeks or more is considered "An Emergency Situation!". This is especially true at closing time on the weekends.
If you haven't brought your pet in to the hospital in two years, always tell the doctor the problem started RIGHT after the last visit and hasn't gone away.


6. Have your record under as many last names as possible. For your pet, have a registered name, a baptized name, and a nickname for each family member. Use a different one each time you come in for a visit.


7. When leaving your pet for boarding or any other procedures, never tell anyone in the office that you have changed your phone number since your last visit.


8. Never say anything important until the doctor put his/her stethoscope into their ears.


9. Always say, "Cost is not important! Just save my pet!"-- until you get the bill, then deny that you said it was OK to treat. Make a big fuss over every item even though you are not going to pay anyway.


10. If possible, always send your pet to the clinic with children under 18 years of age with no money or credit cards. Never tell them why they are bringing the pet in.


11. Complain about the cost of EVERYTHING. Stating that if you went to your doctor, you could get such and such procedure done for $100. Or that you will have to just "put your pet down" because you can't afford our prices.


12. Make sure you call an hour before closing to ask about having something done quickly (ex: express anal glands). Then, when you come in 10 minutes before closing, mention the huge list of other things you want to have looked at "since we're here anyway."


13. Make sure to never bring your dog in on a leash. It is best to let them run arround the parking lot and lobby without one. There is no need to be concerned about injury by cars or other pets.


14. Our Doctors' recommendations should not be heeded under any circumstances. They are just trying to con you out of your hard earned money. Feel free to waste an hour of our time and then decide you will take your pet home and "observe" him/her because you definitely know what is best.


15. When you believe that your pet may be in need of medication, it is not necessary to bring him/her in. Just call us on the phone and describe the injury/symptoms and we would be happy to diagnose the problem and prescribe medications for it. Of course, there will be no cost to you for the medicine, since your pet is not even our patient.

SIA- preservation through cultural understanding of the Eagle in History, Science, and Spirit

Now, this is why I love vet school. On Tuesday I had a ZEW meeting (zoo, exotics, and wildlife club), and the speaker was Bill Voelker from SIA, the Comanche ethno-ornithological collaborative (sia means feather in Comanche). He deals mainly with eagles, and he is one of the first people to really successfully use artificial insemination in eagles to raise babies in captivity and release them back into the wild. I have to say that before this I didn’t really have much of an interest in birds, but this was probably the most interesting club meeting that I’ve been to this year, except for maybe the one about treating the wild leopards and monkeys in India. 

To me personally, some of the most interesting aspects of SIA are its roots in Comanche culture. The reason this program was started was to help Comanches and other tribes get feathers from protected species that are integral to their culture, and from there it has turned into a breeding program for eagles, falcons, and other predator birds as well as a collection of artifacts and documents related to Comanche culture. 

I have always been interested in Native American cultures, so to me the stories were fascinating. And it also made it clear that there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of legal acceptance in the differences in culture, something else that SIA has had an active part in. But don’t get me started on that.

One of the stories was about Golden Eagles, and the different powers of the young golden eagle versus the older golden eagle (Comanches didn’t originally realize that the difference in the young and old eagles was due to age, they thought they were two separate birds). A young golden eagle has feathers with a white body and a dark tip, and then as the eagle ages the feathers turn entirely dark. So according to Comanche culture, feathers from a young golden eagle are especially powerful during the day, while feathers from a mature golden eagle are used during night time ceremonies, and both types of feathers have very powerful medicine. Golden eagle feathers are very highly sought after for these reasons, but it’s not like you can just pick up a couple of golden eagle feathers whenever you need them. And that was one of the goals of SIA, to be able to provide them and keep the Native American cultures alive. I just really love that they’re doing that.

I think the most incredible thing about SIA though has to be their breeding program. Bill said that for one golden eagle, they were able to get her to lay 16 consecutive eggs (by removing the egg each day so that the presence of the egg wasn’t able to send a message to her ovaries to essentially tell her to stop laying eggs), and out of those 16 eggs 15 of them hatched into baby golden eagles. That is much higher than laying and hatching rates for eagles in the wild. To me, that is just awesome. A couple of eagles are retained for their breeding program, but the rest of them are released back into the wild. Recently SIA has been working with the Tennessee Park Service and has been releasing a lot of eagles back into the wild in the smokey mountains. I forget how many eagles he said had been released back into the wild, but it was a lot. Several hundred, I believe. 

SIA is also now working with about 25 countries worldwide (I think- don’t quote me on the number) to implement conservation programs for avian wildlife native to those countries. I can’t remember if they are working on breeding programs with them or not, but conservation and understanding is always the first step. 

All in all, it was really a very informative and interesting speech. And if it wasn’t already good enough, Bill brought in two of his eagles from SIA to show us. One was a female ornate hawk eagle, and the other was a two year old male golden eagle. They were not people shy at all, but the golden eagle didn’t seem to be too big of a fan of being carried around the room. He kept spreading his wings and flying up as far as his leash would allow (he hit the one of the tv’s that are suspended above the desks- ouch!) and the gust power from his wings was unbelievable! It was like sitting directly in front of a fan on high power, except stronger... all the papers kept blowing, as did the paper plates and cups, and if there had actually been anything heavier on the tables I am sure they would have been blown to the floor too. It was awesome. And the golden eagle was a total ham. He kept posing for pictures. So I guess he has a love/hate relationship with this kind of thing... or he was just playing it up for drama. 

These two eagles were obviously going to become a part of the breeding program. You can’t release eagles who are so used to people back into the wild. So how do the eagles meant to be re-introduced into the wild get handled? SIA uses older eagles who don’t really lay eggs themselves anymore to act as nannies, and they raise the baby eagles, feed them, teach them to fly (they take them out and somehow do this from the back of a truck) and so on, until the birds can be released. And then the nanny eagles get a new crop of babies to raise. It’s a good system.

And if anything that I said sounds even remotely interesting, then you should check out www.comancheeagle.org. I will admit that the website isn’t the most impressive that I’ve seen, but they’ve got some cool pictures, and you can learn a little more about what they do. I am hoping to be able to go down and visit SIA headquarters sometime while I am still here in Oklahoma. I think it would be really interesting to volunteer with them for a summer.

Bill Voelker with a female ornate hawk eagle

an ornate hawk eagle

a 2 year old male golden eagle

the white tail feathers of young golden eagle

this sort of gives an idea of the immense wing span of a golden eagle

Vacation... Sort of.

After waiting to be able to sleep and have a break for sixteen weeks, I bet you thought after finals all I would do is sleep and eat and live in pajamas. That’s what I thought, so I can’t hold it against other people if they thought I would be a slug too. And admittedly, right after my last final, which happened to also be one of my most dreaded, physiology, I did go home at about 10:30 in the morning and have a beer. And then I had a Harry Potter marathon with some more beer. I made it through movies 1-6 before I fell asleep on the couch and thought I’d better pack to go home. It was a good day.

But that was the only day where I can really say I did nothing productive all day. It’s like I don’t even know how to not be busy anymore. I actually got bored after watching 2 hours of television once I was home. Bored. How do I get bored after not being able to watch anything for nearly 4 months? I still don’t understand it. 

And at the very end of my vacation, when I really should have been making the most of my chance to relax, I ran around from errand to errand from about 9:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night. Why did I schedule everything in the last two days? Mostly because I’m a procrastinator, but also because apparently I don’t know how to relax anymore. The worst part is that I think I was almost at my happiest when I was running around doing all of these errands. 

Weird.

I think in one day I went to David’s Bridal to look at bridesmaid dresses, went to church to talk to a priest about pre-marital counseling, went to talk to a florist, went out to dinner with my family and Mike’s, and then went over my grandparents place to talk and say goodbye. And of course none of these places were very close to each other, and none of the appointments were under an hour. But now I seem to thrive on productivity, even as at times I hate it.

In fact, I was so sure I was going to be more productive that I made it a New Year’s Resolution to be better with my studying habits, so that I wouldn’t have to cram so much right before exams. I thought I would study every night (or, as I called it in an effort to convince myself, review) to keep on top of everything. 

Notice I said thought. Because here I am, just one week into my second semester, already with 2 quizzes to study for, and I have done no studying and only one out of three of my reading assignments. And I read the shortest one. The other two put me to sleep on the couch, both times that I attempted to read them. Maybe I can only be super productive when I don’t have to be.

It’ll be interesting to see how this semester goes.