January 30, 2011 DPEC Las Vegas

I had a chance to go to Tina’s baptism yesterday.  It was a pretty small gathering which she said she preferred.  For the first time I looked at the missionaries there and realized how young they look.  I was surprised with their awkwardness and baby faces.  I realize that I was probably the same way as a missionary if not worse, but to me, I really don’t seem like I am much past the return missionary stage myself and that was a whole decade ago.  It was funny to hear the Elder’s side of Tina’s conversion story because I have heard Tina’s on occasion and sometimes wondered about what kind of missionaries they were.  After having met them I think it differently.  He talked about how they worked her apartment complex and saw her walking to and from her car to her apartment.  When she tells the story you have to wonder if they were stalkers but from their side I really think they were following her for the right reasons that maybe only you understand if you were a 19 year old guy walking around looking for people that might need the gospel.  It is hard to explain but one time they even talked to her but she cut them off before they had a chance to start.  She knew what they were because she had attended the church for a period in California.  Around that time I met her through being invited to a vet techs boyfriend’s band who happened to be Tina’s brother.  She talked about how she used to go to church in California and we stayed in contact but didn’t really go out on too many dates because I am so busy.  She contacted the church and had them send the missionaries out and began attending the single ward near her house.  That was the touching part of the Elder’s story when he would watch her leave in her car and then one day he got the contact information to go teach her.  I’m sure she wasn’t easy to teach with her constant texting and updating of her Facebook page from her phone.  She had a difficult time keeping her commitments to read the Book of Mormon but enjoyed the discussions.  She had the Elder’s over often and like to cook for them.  She even made them take care of her cats while she came home with me for Thanksgiving.  She didn’t have any problems with learning about the restoration and becoming a member of the Church she just had hesitation about taking the plunge and changing her lifestyle permanently.  I wasn’t involved with much of the process especially since Thanksgiving I haven’t seen or talked to her much at all.  She started nursing school and waitressing and I of course spend my time in the hospital or waiting for a phone call.  It is humbling to think that you had a positive effect on someone joining the Church.  No doubt she will be the belle of the singles ward and I hope they don’t smother her too much but just enough to make good friends and keep her busy learning.

After the baptism in between when they were changing her clothes and after I heard an Elder tell his side of the story I got up and told mine. I bore my testimony that today the feelings Tina is having are from doing one of the few things in life that we are sent here to do.  Kind of like when you haven’t done something you used to do so often like ride a bike, swing a rope, or ride a horse you are reminded how much you like it and how you wonder why you haven’t done more of it.  When we do things like getting Baptized, going to the Temple, and probably like having children don’t know for myself yet though, my theory is that we get that feeling of remembering that this is one of the things we came to Earth to do and it gives us such a good feeling of fulfillment and peace.

A young lady named Amanda is trying to be a bit of a horse trader of Rocky Mountain Trail Horses as as a result is shipping horses in from all over the country to establish a market and clientele here in Las Vegas.  I first met her when she bought a Tennessee Walking horse from New Mexico for $1000 sight unseen and when it got off the trailer it wasn’t eating, drinking, or acting right.  I looked at the horse and passed a tube and pumped mineral oil into her stomach to ensure that if she was a little impacted or other mild colic it didn’t get worse.  Just a common preventative thing to do even though I really didn’t see anything wrong with the horse other than when she walked up from the trailer to the hospital she looked ataxic which is she seemed uncoordinated.  My problem is that she is a Tennessee Walking horse and to me they look uncoordinated all the time when they are perfectly fine.  I am just not used to the way the swing their hip and legs.  Amanda expressed a concern that the mare didn’t move right so I did a brief neuro exam.  I did a sway test where you walk behind the horse holding the tail and when the hind leg closest to you is up in the air you tug the horse and a normal horse will be able to resist you fine without tipping or swaying much.  Without much pull at all I could pull the mare nearly over to the ground.    I held her head high and backed her up and did several other special tests to asses neurologic function and to my honest clinical impression she was not right.  Now, it is difficult to say if she is suffering weakness from not being healthy since getting into town or if she is truly have neurologic problems from some neurologic disease or traumatic event.  On top of it all my gut was just twisting because those darn Tennessee Walking horses move so funny that I could just be making it all up!  That was my fear anyway.

Of course Amanda called the seller in New Mexico and said you sold me a neurologic horse and I want my money back.  The guy on the other end swore that the horse was fine when he put it on the transport and was refusing to give her money back.  She had me call and talk to him which I was glad to do and he was fine to talk to on the phone.  I explained what tests I did and what my impression was that the horse had some difficulty with knowing exactly where she was placing her feet which is called a defect in proprioception.  I didn’t feel she was severe and finding the exact cause of the neuro signs can be costly and difficult including blood work for EPM, radiographs, etc.  Prognosis is difficult to make without an exact known cause other than horses with neuro problems usually stay that way unless they are due to an acute inflammatory process or infection that can be resolved.  Long story short, she never got her money back and ended up sending the horse with the guy who transported her here.  I still have fears that the horse is probably normal for a Walking horse and I made it all up but I don’t know if I’ll ever find out.  They are probably riding her all over the desert without so much as a stumble.  

Nov 2, 2010

Election day across America and especially here in Nevada where Harry Reid has been a Senator for way too long.  I’ve done my best to follow all the ins and outs of what he is and where he comes from but he really is an interesting man in that little is know about him and his dealings.  He has done an amazing job of covering up his tracks and doing business in the shadows enough that there is not much evidence of his past.  We know that he came from Searchlight Nevada with nothing.  He is a lawyer.  And after years of public service he is a multi millionaire now.  We are either paying our public servants way too much or he is obviously doing dirty deals behind the scenes to position himself to make investments or flat giving political gain to those who either pay him off or allow him to participate with them in their money making schemes.  I have no doubt he has used his political position to get rich.  Not to mention the fact that he is LDS and aligns himself politically with those who would harm the family unit and take away freedoms from Americans.  He views the government as what he should view the church.  I didn’t know him when he was young but I cannot understand how he could not be corrupted today and I don’t understand how he could have a temple recommend.  The problem is that this opponent is not very sharp but she at least will stand up to President Obama and fight for smaller government, lower taxes, more freedom in our free market, capitalism, and personal responsibility.  Obama has gotten very nasty in his slandering of those who oppose his marxist beliefs.  He calls us “enemies” that need to be “punished”.  He could be a very dangerous man and I have no doubt that before he looses power in a couple of years he will get even nastier and nastier.  He is not a man of faith he is a man that understands manipulation and power.  He will try to exercise his power soon to force Americans in to what he thinks is America needs to be to fit into the new global community that he and his puppet masters envision.

My confidence has grown the last several weeks.  Procedures like passing a tube for colics I am really competent at.  M

November 22

I had to put down one of my favorite patients today.  His name was Commanche he was a big red bald faced horse that has battled with colic all summer and fall.  I used to think he had a stone in him but lately it seemed more like a tumor that may have been in his abdomen.  He was a very mild mannered horse that was good to work on.  He has nearly drove his poor owner crazy with worry and fret about his problems.  I would go out and treat him and he would get better only to again have colic signs a couple days later.  Two times I passed a tube into his stomach and relieved nearly 20 liters of reflux off his stomach.  It was a difficult decision to make for us and the owner but he was beginning to loose lots of weight and she could not afford to keep treating him on emergency basis.  It was a little disturbing to me because he was not in severe distress when I put him down but at the same time it was a good feeling like I had released his spirit from his failing body.  I didn’t feel guilt just respect for this good horse and the people who love him.  It must be one of those experiences that God feels and that as human learning Gods ways we have the opportunity to feel at times how he must feel by being blessed with the care of animals and the responsibility to treat them as well as we can and care for them even though that means at times making difficult decisions like today.

September 21, 2010

I went out on the south end of town this morning to see a horse who was thought to be bitten by a snake.  Its nose and upper lip was very swollen and his nasal passages were starting to close and make it hard to breath.  Snake bites are not very common here even though you would think they were being in the desert so I was thinking more along the lines of an allergic reaction to an insect or something else.  I enjoyed the drive because it was through Red Rock Canyon which is kind of a shortcut from the west side of Las Vegas to get to the southwest side of Vegas without having to go through the city or have the traffic of 2-15.  The cliffs your drive along have a beautiful red streak of rock that courses through one of the areas that give the canyon its name.  I have always meant to go hiking up there but have not made the time yet.  There are some clients there along the way that I have visited in Bonnie Springs and Calico Basin.  Whenever I go through there I get a really feeling of the old west even though we aren’t that far out of town.  There are wild burrows that range along there and on one occasion I came over a rise in the road to see 3 of them standing in the middle of the road.  I slowed down but they didn’t move as I approached.  When I was less than 10 feet away I finally came to a stop as they stayed like statues staring at me in my lane until I stopped and then they walked up along side of me to the passenger window where a technician was sitting and peering in the window and stuck up his upper lip as if to ask for a treat.  I am sure they have been feed by many a driver by and have learned that if they stop cars bay standing in the road it usually results in a treat.  I honked my horn and they bolted off into the brush.

Back to my horse with a swollen nose.  When I arrived at the place I began to think more seriously about it really being a snake bite.  The horse was kept way out in a hilly, deserty area that looked like a perfect area to encounter a rattle snake.  The poor horse’s nose was hugely swollen from the middle of the face down.  It was almost funny to look at because he looked like Bullwinkle the Moose from Rocky and Bullwinkle.  He could breath adequately but he did make a loud blocked nasal passage noise when he inspired.  The owner had been hosing his face off with cool water and said that the swelling had gone down just in the little while she had done that.  At this point I gave him a shot of anti-inflammatory Banamine and  a steroid to take down the swelling as quick as possible.  He usually gets fed in a tin feeder on the ground so I walked into his stall and removed the hay from the bottom of the feeder because I want him to keep his head up or the swelling will not be able to go away as quickly.  I thought about tipping it over to dump out the alfalfa leaves at the bottom because he was leaning down vacuuming them up but decided that he would be done soon and it wasn’t worth the trouble.  I vaccinated the horse for tetanus because rattle snake bites are notorious for causing secondary clostridial infections and they can cause really necrotic wounds where they bite.  Not a lot more else to do because anti-venom is available but to treat a grown horse it might cost thousands of dollars and usually not necessary because its rarely fatal though it can damage the muscle of the hart and weeks later the horse may fall over dead.  So I left telling her that as long as the horse can breath at this point there is not much we can do anyway.

Later that night I got a call confirming that her horse definitely was bitten by a rattle snake.  She was cleaning his stall and turned over his feeder and there was a 2 foot diamond back rattle snake coiled up hiding.  A chill ran up my spine thinking that I had been down in the bottom of the feeder cleaning out hay that morning and likely slid my hand over the snake with only a thin layer of sheet metal between me and it. 

September 19, 2010

September 19, 2010

For the last month as I have been organizing plans to head to Australia for the breeding season I have had the feeling that it might not work out.  Mostly because I have not heard much from the office lady in response to most of my emails about what I need to do to get my visa.  Turns out she was sending emails to a wrong address.  Long story short, they were planning on me getting a working holiday visa for which there is little paper work and no waiting period.  Unfortunately, the working holiday visa only is available for 18-30 years of age.  Since I am older, I would need to be sponsored, registered as a vet in Victoria, and several other steps that I haven’t been receiving because the emails were being sent to the wrong address.  So last week I got an email from the office lady giving me a couple options.  I could come as a visitor and they would pay for the plane tickets, housing, and living expenses but couldn’t legally pay me a salary.  The other option is that I could come down sometime in the future when the many steps to get a visa could be done in a timely manner and I could stay for a longer period of up to 12 months.  I let her know that I would love to stay in touch and hopefully arrange a time when I can come and stay for 12 months if it works out for me and them.  I really don't know if it will ever happen but I guess worst case scenario if I finish here in a year I have an option in Australia.

I was relieved in some ways because I am really happy here in Vegas and would really hate to miss the NFR.  It became pretty clear to me shortly after I graduated high school that I would really never be able to compete in the NFR so it would be a once in a lifetime opportunity to be in the NFR as the arena Veterinarian.  I hope to be able to do that for at least one of the performances.

August 31, 2010

August 31, 2010

Some firsts happened to me in the last couple days.  My first emergency call was last Saturday during the day when Dr Ballard got backed up with a bunch of calls he sent me out on a colic.  It was pretty routine really and nothing to exciting happened.  A grey arabian named Ben that was pretty much better by the time I got there so I just passed a naso-gastic tube and gave him mineral oil and palpated him and felt nothing abnormal.  My first night emergency was this Sunday night when Dr Schur didn’t want to come back up to this part of town.  It was a horse that had been bitten by a dog.  I expected a wound or two that I would clean up, give some antibiotics and a tetanus shot and be done but it turned out to be a lot more than that.  The horse was Crissy a small black mustang 14 years old.  She was not broke to ride but was gentle.  She has a pit-bull that is another one of the many out there that are great with people but can snap and really do a lot of damage like I saw with Crissy.  She must have been running around in her paddock for quite a while fighting off the dog because she had hundreds of bite marks on all her legs.  On her chest and thighs there was strips of skin hanging down and large chinks of muscle exposed underneath.  She was very sore and didn’t like to walk.  The dog also was in bad shape.  She was happy but had all of her teeth kicked out and who is to say she didn’t have broken bones but she sure didn’t act like it.  It wasn’t going to end well for her because there is not much hope for a dog that if given a chance would attack like that.  Heaven forbid that she do that to a human being if she gets wound up.  Not much to tell about the job, I trimmed up the flaps hanging and left some antibiotics and instructions to keep the wounds clean and call if she still is lame because this could mean that a joint or tendon sheath was bitten into and is infected.  I have called a couple times but haven’t been able to talk to the owner.  The other day though, I did drive by and saw Crissy standing in the back yard looking normal so I can assume hopefully that all is well.

August 29, 2010

It has been a bit of a grind these last few days.  Not that it has been very busy but it has been a lot of time up late sitting around checking on colics getting IV fluids.  They have done well so I guess I should be grateful but I would rather be busier doing different things than just being up late but not really doing much but babysitting.  I have been paying close attention to the “restoring honor” gathering in Washington DC that Glenn Beck organized.  It is interesting reading the different articles written about the event.  Most of them skillfully try to dissect what the people there are doing and their motives.  Most try to paint them as racist and deranged people but when I watch the footage that are ordinary and quite boring people to be honest.  I can help but think how much the church has changed Glen Beck and how much of a difference it has made in his life.  He is a great example of what enlightenment through the Holy Ghost can do to someone who is lost in life.  He has really gotten good at praying and receiving answers to his prayers.  It really makes me and so many others do as he did and look to God for answers to todays problems.  What I can’t decide is whether he will be successful in his movement to return peoples lives to Christ or if he will be one of the voices that will be extinguished in the period before the Second Coming.  I hope it is the former rather than the later.

I had an interesting day at Shiloh Horse Sanctuary and Rescue last Monday.  It is the clinics biggest client because it has somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 horses that are mostly either crippled or diseased in some way that people either tried to sell them at auction or they were surrendered directly to the rescue.  It is located in Sandy Valley which is about 30  miles southwest of Las Vegas on I-15 and then a right turn out into the desert for another 20 miles on a lonely road that climbs into the scorched hills and drops down into a dusty valley surrounded by hills completely.  In the middle there was an oasis-like clump of buildings and trees of a small sleepy community and off to the west on the slope up the hills was a bright emerald green block of land with a few buildings that is a large alfalfa hay operation.  It is amazing what water can produce in even the harshest environments.  I looked around for roads that climbed out of the dusty bowl but except for a couple dirt roads that wound off into the distance in to the hills the only road in or out I could see was the one we came in on.  We drove through the town to the opposite outskirts and visited a small horse facility to look at a horse with a bad eye and then we went to Shiloh.  Shiloh was started and is operated by Tony Curtis’s current wife and her mother and a countless hoard of mexicans.  I saw pictures of Jill Curtis recently with Tony looking exactly like Marilyn Monroe but these days with the addition of a few pounds she is quite ordinary looking but still tall and has a very kind yet strong presence while her mother Sally is shorter and even kinder in gesture and disposition and originally I mistook her for a friend instead of a mother because they appear too close in age.  Shiloh is an large piece of land covered with mesquite and geriatric horses, ponies and burrows bought from auctions all over the west, dogs rescued from the pound, and an assortment of pigs, goats, llamas and alpacas, and other farm critters.  We did a lot of lameness work, worked on teeth problems, froze tumors, and put down 4 old horses that have been wasting away recently due to disease, pain from lameness, or just old age.  What they do there is truly honorable and I am sure God approves and will reward their charity to his creatures.  We definitely need more people and places like this in on Earth.  But even though they intent to do the most they can for animals in my opinion they make a mistake by some of their ideology.  Every week they turn away over a dozen horse owners who want to surrender their horses to be cared for but they don’t have the room or ability to care for them so the owner should put them down but don’t allow them to be slaughtered.  It is probably true that if they had the resources they would like to save all animals but where they go wrong is when they tell the owners they they cannot slaughter them.  Slaughter is a bad word for doing the same thing as having a veterinarian come an put them down.  It is one of the controversial topics for vets today because the AAEP and most vets that work with horses think it would be best if there was a way that horse could be put out of its misery if its quality of life is not good buy humanly killing it and harvesting its carcass for consumption whether it is eaten by Frenchmen or dogs.  The current legislation to prevent the killing of horses for human consumption in the US does not care about all the poor horses out there who suffer unnecessarily.  It is wrong to force someone to not put a horse out of its misery or even tell them that they shouldn’t because once the horses is dead the carcass should be used and not wasted.  They don’t oppose the killing of horses they only oppose the eating of horses which in my opinion is only imposing your ideology on others which shouldn’t be done.  You can’t and shouldn’t save them all because they shouldn’t suffer for your ideology.

August 27, 2010

Finishing up on last months story of the bathing beauty, in short it didn’t end well.  Due to the craziness of the owner and the poor condition of the horse I figured the main problem was that the horse needed to be fed better and have its sheath cleaned.  The penis did have a little tumor that most likely regrew from when it was here a couple years ago to have a much larger tumor removed from the same site.  After a couple days here over the weekend it was clear that the horse had more going on.  He had very little appetite though we was very thin and his teeth were in pretty good condition for an old horse which can become a real problem as a horse ages and starts to get down to nubs or loose teeth altogether so the opposite tooth over grows.  A rectal palpation revealed a strange mass on inside body wall of the abdomen that we hypothesized was a tumor.  We then began to think it may be a metastasized tumor related to the same cancer he had earlier and likely has spread to other organs in the abdomen that you can’t reach from the rectum.  This was not good news to give the owner who was quite upset but given the age of the horse there is likely nothing we can do that the owner could afford or that would improve the quality of life of the horse.  She decided to just come pick him up but it would take a couple of days to round up a trailer.  During those two days the horse really began to go down hill quickly.  He became more and more depressed mentally and even began to show neurologic signs of stumbling, and not being aware of his surroundings.  By the time the distraught owner arrived the horse was in very bad condition.  We began to wonder if he should be put down here and not taken all the way back to Utah.  Upon seeing her horse the crazy owner became hysterical yelling that she should have never brought her poor horse here and he would have been better on the farm with his friends (all of which were probably true in hind sight).  She kept draping her arms around him and crying uncontrollably.  She finally decided she would take him home and have her veterinarian put him down when she got there so we loaded him up though he at this time was having a hard time standing and starting to act very agitated.  As soon as he climbed into the two horse trailer and the doors closed the owner reached her arm in the side window to give him a handful of hay and he collapsed and struggled until he was in a very awkward position on his back wedged at the back door.  I crawled in the window with another Dr and tried to see if we could get him up but it was clear that he was not able or willing.  It was decided to put him down in the trailer and she could drive him home to bury him on the farm.  It was quite a dramatic scene with the owner involved but the sound I will probably remember forever in the sad sobbing I heard trailing off over the noise of the engine and the tires as the poor crazed and distraught owner pulled away from the parking lot and down the road.  I felt so sorry for the owner and wished that there was something I could do to comfort her but I know well enough that there are sometimes when there is just nothing that can take those tough experiences away.

Later on that night, I was assisting Dr Schur on an emergency colic farm call and she told me a story that happened to Dr Lamb and the owners of the boarding facility we were at treating the colicky horse.  The owners were kind of shifty in that they never worked yet always had lots of money.  In Vegas there are lots of ways that people get money but the husband did get put in jail for drug related stuff in fact he may still be there now because the wife came out to see us work on the horse but he wasn’t around.  In any case, they had a daughter in her teens several years back who had a horse that got colic really bad.  In fact, the horse had ruptured his bowel and once a horse does that there is no saving them.  You can do your best for a couple days with fluid therapy and antibiotics and surgery but eventually they will die from it.  So the only thing Dr Lamb could do was put the horse down.  It was a very dramatic scene with the daughter being very distraught, laying on the horse yelling, “put me in the ground with her...I don’t want to live with out her…” and carrying on.  Later on that night the teen over dosed on drugs and was rushed to the hospital but died that same night.  Thinking of how I felt earlier that day I could imagine how Dr Lamb felt when he got the news.  Especially since he was the one who put the poor horse down that caused the daughter to be so upset.  Both events were out of his control but it really made me think about how much of an effect horses have on their owners and how as a veterinarian might effect people lives.  As a veterinarian things can be so fragile and complex and the outcomes sometimes are so unpredictable more from the human side rather than with horses who are simple animals in comparison.