A Valentine's gift idea for your music loving boyfriend...

Well, it's Valentine's day, and some of the folks at the clinic are bitter, while others are scrambling for last minute gift ideas. Recognizing how stressful this can be, I thought I'd offer a great gift idea if you have a boyfriend who loves music. Speaking from personal experience, whenever I notice certain arm movements from Amanda's side out of the corner of my eye, it's a soul crushing experience as I just know that the music is just a tad too loud and she's going to turn it down a little. So the next time you are driving together in the car, and a great song starts playing, reach over to that dial and turn it up. Oh, man - he's going to love it! When you see the smile hit his face, throw in a little "Happy Valentine's Day" and you're done! No gift wrap required!

Progression of the profession...

One of the many reasons I chose to work exclusively on cats concerned the wealth of new information we are now getting regarding feline medicine. For a long time, cats were viewed as small dogs, and treatment protocols were extrapolated from our studies with what turns out to be a significantly different species. If you browse through the veterinary journals from ten years ago, you cannot find near as much feline specific information as you do today. In fact, today's feline content takes up more than half of some of my favorite sources. It's very exciting and rewarding to be involved in an areas of the profession where such dramatic improvements in quality of care is being attained.

As another example of veterinary medicine progressing in the right direction, veterinary dentistry seems to really be coming into full form with increasing numbers of general practitioners purchasing and utilizing advanced dental equipment. Now, while I only recently graduated in 2003, the small animal dentistry curriculum was very limited where I trained. I would dare say that out of four years of school, I attended perhaps only eight hours of lecture on the subject and had only one dental case which I had to share with four other students. Truth be told, I found dentistry to be very uninteresting.

A harsh reality hit me in the face when I started working here. Trained on how to pay attention to my patients during physical examination, one of the most common problems I was recognizing was painful dental diseases such as periodontitis in the cat. That summer of 2003, the excitement of being a new veterinarian quickly turned to terror as I madly scrambled to figure out how to overcome my inadequate knowledge of dentistry.

Up next: Going from "plucking wigglers" to discovering the true meaning of dental prophylaxis. Also, the benefits of having a supportive employer.

No, I'm not kickin' it with Leroy

So I got tons of stuff to read. Currently I am really enjoying a book called The Omnivore's Dilemma which I'll likely post on a bit later. I also have tons of journals to tear thru. Since I am about to move into my first house, I have begun packing and have decreed that the journals must not go. I also have a stack of the random Sunday New York Times sections which I want to scan before recycling. This may sound odd, but I really am just trying to get my $5 worth. So the last thing I should be doing is reading Dr. Cornelius's blog at 10 pm on a Monday night - yet I did and you'll do yourself a favor to check it out. I nearly destroyed my keyboard after snorting out some milk on it because of the line regarding an old lady recommending crack cocaine for the flu.

Which brings me to a surreal experience on that subject which always makes me laugh because I felt it to be so absurd. So I am with a friend trying to meet up with another friend, and of all places, we're supposed to hook up at Denny's. No, we don't intend to eat at Denny's, but for whatever reason, it made sense at the time to do it this way. So, there we are, at Denny's - something like 3 o'clock in the afternoon and the place is dead. We're standing in the entry area to get out of the cold, and we keep scanning the parking lot for cars bearing our friend. After standing in this strangly quiet diner for a few minutes, we notice some movement. This guy who had been standing at the trunk of his car since before we got there, starts slowly strutting around the building. I know he is heading for us. After all, there are absolutely no customers in the entire place. I'm like a deer in headlights, not sure what is about to go down. Finally, he steps on in, and just stares at me eventually murmuring "you kickin' it with Leroy?"

I am dumbfounded. Who is Leroy? What about me makes this guy think that I am there for him? Here you have me, being me - looking at him, who looks about the exact opposite of me - is it possible that we could have a mutual friend? Alas, I reply "no...man...I'm not sure I even know a Leroy." The guy looks a me a bit longer, nods his head, and then slowly returns to his pervious post. We were so utterly confused, and from that day on we loved joking about that odd day at Denny's. Years later something clued me in to the true meaning of that exchange - guess I must have looked to be suffering the flu.