Sort of. "Forever" is a really long time, ditto for "never". I find I’m more likely to have said "I’ll never do…" than to say "I will _____forever", but it’s a similar order of magnitude: a really long time. For instance, when I left home to go to school, I was never coming back to […]
Author Archives: Doc
When I was a kid there was a TV show called "Let’s Make a Deal". There were lots of appeals to greed in the program and many ways to make a fool of oneself. The BIG deal of the day always involved three doors (evoking that great short story "The Lady or the Tiger", by […]
I don’t know what brought this story to mind. Maybe it was the recent discussion of Pit Bull dogs. Many dogs and cats are pretty stoic about pain. Certainly some are screamers, wailing at even the vaguest contemplation of possible pain (much like my own self). Most conceal their pain, though. This is a survival […]
In the fall of 1973, I started working at the Equine Center of the College of Veterinary Medicine. I stocked shelves, cleaned and sterilized instruments, fetched and carried, swept and mopped, and shoveled out many a stall. At the end of the semester, I spent most of what I had earned on my dream stereo […]
I was born in 1953. Men born in that year were the last group to be subject to the military draft in the United States. There was a lottery system and each year numbers were drawn. If your birthday was in the 300s, you were off the hook. If your number was 10, you were […]
"Blackie" is seven years old. For the last two years he has had recurring urinary problems. Every couple of months, he’d have an episode of having to "go out" frequently; he would strain to pass small volumes of urine, and there would be noticeable blood in the urine. His previous doctor treated him with amoxicillin, […]
The most recent issue of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association had a review article about how people go about finding a lost pet. Researchers surveyed several hundred pet-owners who had lost a pet and asked what they tried in order to recover it. If they did recover the pet, the researchers also […]
The Cherokee District of the Boy Scouts held its annual Klondike Derby this weekend. This is one of the three district-wide camporees where all the troops in Southeast Missouri get together to camp, get acquainted, and have fun competing in activities using their Scout skills. The Klondike is always held in the winter (hence the […]
"Man mauled by Pit Bull still critical" read the headline. I visualized someone in his hospital bed, telling the nurse "Hey, you need a shave. And look at the cobwebs in the corner. You call this a hospital?" Of course, the headline referred to a much more tragic situation: a man who had been savagely […]
"Whoa! He didn’t like that!" says Fluffy’s owner, when Fluffy [not his real name] has just experienced some singularly unpleasant invasion of privacy — most commonly a rectal thermometer, or rectal examination. I suppose that when our loved ones are distressed (just as at a funeral) we feel compelled to say something, simply to show […]