Typhoon's Diary, February 20

Typhoon has asked for the podium, again.

 

  

La Dorada Typhoon’s Diary

  

It is with great trepidation that I tell this story. Many of you will be skeptical, many of you will flat out disbelieve, and many of you may get scared. However, I feel it is my obligation to tell, no to WARN you, about one of the scariest thing I have ever seen. You have heard of the Wolfman? Vampires? The Bogey Man Perhaps? I would rather deal with all three than to encounter the thing of which I shall now explain.

 

I started having sightings several years ago. This was when Meredith (she loves me) started coming out to help Carl around the farm with chores here and there. Well, I was a bit shy of her for quite a while, but then grew to love her. But sometimes when she came, I would catch a glimpse of the scariest things ever! Noisy, fast moving, high pitched and utterly scary to be around at all!

 

Now I wasn’t the only bull to be scared of them either.  Early on, we had a bull named Aries. He was one tough bull, I’m here to tell you, as I still have scars from him.  Another bull whose barn name was Texas, not as tough as me, but a bull none the less and several others were ALL Scared of these…. these… things!

 

Let me give you an example of just how scary these things can be.  One summer afternoon, Carl and Meredith were working on something in the barn. I kept seeing glimpses of these fast moving things around, so I was on alert. When all of a sudden, the littlest thing started making the single most awful noise I have ever heard. It was even worse than Mica bellowing on about not being fed grass first. This was ear piercing. Carl and Meredith came running right up to the scary thing! Man they are brave! Scared us bulls so bad, we took off running in the other direction. Meredith physically lifted the thing and squeezed it tight and soon after it stopped making that awful noise. I heard her tell Carl it was something about a bee sting? Lord only knows what that is.

 

On another occasion, Meredith was out with Carl getting grain and preparing to split wood. I noticed this fast moving, colorful little thing on MY hay bales! This was awful. Get it off. Then, there were two of them! What? There was this noise they made that was all new to me. Carl and Meredith called it giggling. I called it scary.  It kept on and kept on until Meredith the Brave had these creatures get down.

 

Now these kinds of sightings went on for quite a while. Years of being scared, but the littles seemed to get bigger (not a lot, just a little) and somewhat quieter.  I am still not convinced that these things are safe, but now, I have trained myself to look away and look brave when they appear.

 

What are these things you ask? Carl and Meredith called them….. Children! Sometimes I heard them being called Kathryn and Jack.  So beware, children are about!!!

 

He is such a drama queen. LOL

I Want To Be A Veterinarian

My grandfather was a veterinarian. He graduated from KCVC (Kansas City Veterinary College) in 1911. He was a veterinarian in the US Cavalry. He raced trotters. He imported, bred, raised, and trained guard dogs. He raised and trained horse and dogs that he sold to circuses. He worked for the federal meat inspection service to feed, house, and clothe his family during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s (the Great Depression and WWW II). He provided veterinary care to his neighbors after his meat inspection workday. When he retired from meat inspection, he went back to the farmstead, and worked as a mixed-animal veterinarian in a rural area of Kansas, in an area that had an abundance of horses (Mennonite settlements). I was tagging along with him on his calls by the time I was three years old.

I am a veterinarian. I graduated from K-State in 1977. I started my own practice straight out of vet school. I worked in a rural area, dealing with dogs, cats, horses, cattle, etc. Twenty years later, I added a job with the Veterinary Information Network (VIN), helping veterinarians use an online service that was designed to help them with their medical case and management issues. Eventually, I closed my private practice and went to work for VIN full time. Including tagging along with my grandfather while we treated our animals, and then working in my own practice, I've been involved in veterinary medicine for over 56 years.

In 1911, when my grandfather graduated from vet school, he had no educational debt. Back then, you paid as you took your classes. No money, no enrollment for that course.

In 1977, when I graduated from vet school, I had educational debt in the amount of $35,000.

In 2012, a typical vet school graduate had educational debt of $150,000 - $200,000.

The educational debt has risen immensely, but the salaries have not. Yet many students have no idea how this debt/income issue will actually affect their lives.

Veterinarians have started trying to educate high school and pre-vet college students, to alert them to the issue. Nobody is trying to stop people from going to veterinary college. But we're all trying to ensure that the people who do go are knowledgeable about the issues ahead of time.

So, the VIN Foundation created the I Want To Be A Veterinarian website.  The website has a brochure about veterinary medicine as a career. It also has the Student Loan Repayment Simulator.

If you want to be a veterinarian, that's great. I love my career -- and my grandfather loved veterinary medicine. (He didn't love meat inspection. Remember, he worked during the years when meat-packing reform was just starting.)

But if you want to be a veterinarian, at least know what you will probably be getting into. (You can't know it all, and you can't foresee the future. After all, when I graduated, where was the Internet?  LOL  Who could have predicted that I'd be using my training to help my colleagues around the world?)

So ...
If you want to be a veterinarian, please check out those resources.
If your child/grandchild wants to be a veterinarian, please check out those resources.
If your students want to be veterinarians, please check out those resources.
The VIN Foundation created these resources to help our future colleagues avoid unknown pitfalls, so take advantage of the opportunity and use them.  ;-)

Hope Is Not A Plan

In the last eight days, we've gotten three inches of rain. This is more rain than we got in the previous eight months.

Both my house well and the farm-yard well have been dry since November. I haul water in to keep the house (and the six cows who are living on my side of the hill) covered.

The ponds on the other two home places are way low, and it's hard for those seventy animals to get to those water sources, so city water is our backup.

But how long until the rivers and reservoirs that supply the city water supply run out? How long until those sources have to ration water?

That's hard to say.

We could get extremely lucky, and start getting moisture again, and maybe the ponds could refill. I can't see how the wells would be restored, though.

But as John Maddux says, "Hope is not a plan. Drought tends to happen in slow motion, lulling some producers into a wait-and-see approach. Now is the time to identify key dates and action plans in the event the rains do not come."

We're keeping an eye on everything, and will be ready to do whatever it takes to maintain at least some of the herd.

Check out more drought advice here.