Charcey's Last Photos

Well, the last photos I took, anyway. I've had these for a few weeks and just never posted them (just like I never posted anything else!) in the flurry of the quarter. But Charcey was a trooper and let two students practice catheterizing a horse during one Large Animal lecture. She had to be sedated, of course (which is why Monica is holding her head up) but she let a student place a catheter in each of her external jugulars and it was quite fascinating to watch. So thanks for letting us see something out of the ordinary, Charcey.

All done! She perked up within 15 minutes after the last catheter was placed.

R.I.P. Lovely Ladies

Received some very sad news this morning - our resident horse, Charcey, was put to sleep. Apparently,this morning's Animal Care crew discovered her "not doing well" and so called Dr. Mac. She brought along Dr. Bellamy, who is a practicing large animal vet and who taught our large animal class last quarter, and he determined that Charcey "had a severe case of colic, most likely an upper GI obstruction. [Dr.] Bellamy looked at her, and said that her condition was grave, and even with surgery ASAP, her survival outcome would be 5% at best. So, the humane choice was to put her down." :o(  Charcey's age was estimated to be around 30 years or so so her passing isn't a "surprise" surprise. But it was still unexpected and rather sudden and I am definitely saddened by it. Thank you for being such a good horse and teaching all the vet tech students how to work with you, Charcey. Hope you're running free somewhere, enjoying your freedom from Frankie. ;o)

Unfortunately, I tacked the post about Charcey's passing on to a post I already had in the queue regarding Bonnie's death. Bonnie was our only female ruminant and she was found already deceased by the AM Animal Care crew two weeks ago. She, too, was elderly - she was between 13 and 15 years old and the standard life expectancy for such goats is about 8 to 10 years. Foothill received her several years ago from Stanford; Bonnie had been used in stent research and rather than euthanize her she was donated to our program. (Two of Bonnie's four jugular veins were no longer in service, as they say, so Dr. Mac said she was always concerned that if something happened to Bonnie, there would be no good place to tap in and treat her!) I'm happy Bonnie got to spend her remaining years in a place where she was free from stress and well-cared for.

Movie Morsels 67: More HP

I'm sorry - I'm probably wearing most of you out with my fangirl Harry Potter posts. But it's the last movie! Ever!! So you'll only have to suffer through it for a few more weeks. For that one lonely soul that is interested, EW.com has an exclusive behind-the-scenes clip of Harry, Ron and Hermione in Gringotts. Have I mentioned I'm excited? Cause I am! So excited!! :o)

Seniors!

Y A Y!!! My first year of vet tech school is officially over! My brain can finally relax! (I will still work at the clinic over the summer but otherwise I'm scholastically free and clear. Whee!) More blog posts to come...

Alisa, Jeff and Amy help us celebrate the end of a loooooong year. :o)

TV Tidbits 96: Man w/ Hot Man

Woohoo!!! Jake Gyllenhaal is heading to Iceland with Bear on the season premiere of Man vs. Wild (July 11)! The press release says Jake spent 2 days with Bear, though I don't think that translates to two episodes of two hot men. :o( And I'm a little bummed it's an arctic climate since I doubt there will be any doffing of tops (or bottoms). But maybe they'll have to swim through an icy lake... Fingers crossed!

Here's Discovery's slideshow o' Jake photos.

UPDATE (06/29): Even better! Here's a little promo for the episode:

Movie Morsels 66: Final Deathly Hallows Trailer

LESS THAN A MONTH, PEOPLE!!!!! Oh, and I thought I couldn't get more excited... LOVE this trailer!

An Ear-Cleaning Olive Branch

Are Linguini and Garfunkel getting along better? Yes. Are they getting along WELL? No. Funk is still making his displeasure with the interloper known and it's beginning to worry me a teensy bit, if I'm completely honest. I don't know how to make Funk like Gweenz! And Funk's funk is a bummer. :o(

Here's a video of them during a rare moment of sharing the same couch cushion:

McCauleys Love Chickens!!

You may not remember this but buried within the 132 photos I posted of our honeymoon were these photos of Robert absolutely GIDDY while feeding the roosters and chickens at the Waimea Canyon restaurant/gift shop:

 You can see his big ol' smile quite clearly!

 The quote here was "Are you getting this?!" Later I was told that was "the best 50 cents I've ever spent!"

Well, Robert would have had a stroke if he'd been able to participate in an A&P lab I had last week - we were on the avian unit so Dr. Mac brought in her three chickens for us to play with. It was fantastic!

L to R: Claire,  Tosca and Eglantine

Amy and Claire

Me and Eglantine

I had to take some video of me feeding the chickens - Robert would love it! Sure enough, he did; then he launched into the "remember when I fed the chickens in Hawaii" story, as I knew he would. :o) We are well-suited dorks are we not?

Say...

That Robert Half guy's voice sounds awfully familiar... and sexy to boot. ;o)

The Jewel Kitties

We have some adorable kittens available for adoption at my clinic... They were just dumped on our doorstep and we think they were born the first week of May. If you're interested or you know anyone who might be, lemme know - as you can imagine, they're very good at being handled!

These two are the cuddle bugs. :o)

This is Emerald, the only girl of the bunch.

Lali & John's Wedding

Robert's cousin, John, married his girlfriend, Lali, on May 21st and it was a really nice event. They had both the ceremony and reception at the Berkeley City Club. Leah and Quentin had also married there but had done so indoors; John and Lali got married on the second-story terrace, which was a lovely venue. The ivy-covered ceiling and natural light and breeze made the ceremony really beautiful. They chose to play 60s soul music at the reception so that made me happy, too. :o) Robert is a dancing fiend at weddings and so we definitely got some exercise that night! It was a lot of fun and we were happy to be able to share the day with John and the rest of the family.

With Maria and Lali

John

Robert and Angie

I did a very sad job of photo-taking so here's an excerpt from Carmen's album:

Click here to view these pictures larger

And just as a random aside, for those of you who remember David Hall, we saw him at the wedding! He graduated from Hastings with John and made a point of coming up to me and Robert at both the beginning and the end of the reception to chat. I'm not 100% sure he remembered Robert to be completely honest but he may have - I am always astonished that he remembers my mom back from her aide days at Parkmont. Then again, we did play Spin the Bottle at my 12th birthday party so I guess he should remember me well... ;o) (I kid!)

Amy's 30th Birthday

I referenced Amy's 30th birthday back in the Linguini post and since I'm procrastinating heavily (I have a 5-page paper on uses of lab animals in research due on Thursday) and I've already organized my iPod, I figured I'd go ahead and put up a slideshow of the event. Amy's boyfriend, Jeff, organized a surprise party at Johnny Foley's in the city back in April and it was a mesh of both program and non-program friends. Of course, as usually happens at such gatherings, each groups sort of stuck to its own but I'm antisocial so that was A-OK with me. :o) The bar was really fun; I'd done something similar for my bachelorette party but this was much more expansive and animated. And I got two of my songs played ("Take on Me" and "I Saw Her Standing There") early so it only cost me $2/song. As the night rolled on, the songs were costing much, much more - in fact, someone payed $40+ just to stop one of the guys from playing "Party in the USA." Ridiculous!!! Poor drunk people. They are really stupid.