A Day of Lectures

On the surface it seems like a no-brainer. If you had to choose between a talk about antique lace or one about kitten diarrhea which would you pick? Fortunately I didn't have to make such a tough decision - I attended both.

Yesterday was a day of lectures. The Deep Cove Weavers Guild hosted a lecture on lace. The speaker was knowledgeable and passionate about her topic. She shared many pieces from her collection - very pretty. Will I ever take up lace making or collect it? Not likely.

On the other hand, kittens with diarrhea feature all too frequently in my daily life. I was thrilled with the evening talk, proving that any subject can be fascinating with the right speaker. I learned about the latest research concerning Probiotics - the beneficial bacteria in the gut - and now have a much better understanding of what strains to use for specific outcomes.

The highlight of the evening came when the speaker, a renowned, board-certified, internal medicine veterinarian said, "hands down, the best diet, nutritionally speaking, for a cat is a balanced, raw meat based one". To be fair, she did worry about food safety, (the worry that either the cat, the person handling the meat, or - and honestly, they always bring this up as a risk factor - an elderly, immune compromised and obviously senile member of the household mistakenly eats the cat food - and develops Salmonella).

She admitted that she has never encountered this problem.

After years of being labeled at best, misguided, science is finally confirming what I've been recommending all along. I wanted to shout YES....

I guess it is good that we are all passionate about different things. Kittens happen to be one of mine.

Remembering Paka

The pink dogwood in our front garden is in full bloom. It's lovely - the highlight of the front yard at this time of year. This small tree holds a special place in my heart, not just for its intrinsic beauty but also because of how it came to be in my garden.

As I've mentioned before, being a veterinarian means that hand in hand with the joy that comes from having a life filled with animals, come days of sadness and loss. This is even worse when the animal that dies belongs to one of my friends. Paka was a special Samoyed dog who lived with my friend Alix. A couple of years ago she developed incurable liver disease. On a beautiful August afternoon, in her garden and surrounded by her family - both human and canine - I helped Alix to let her go. It was hard for everyone.

I'm a big believer in pet memorials. It helps to do something at a time of loss to celebrate the life of your animal friend. These days I make little hand knit, spirit baskets from the pet's hair. Many of my clients send me pictures and stories of their dogs and cats. Scrapbooks or videos are especially lovely and poignant. And some people plant flowers in their yard to remember.


A few weeks after Paka's death, Alix and her partner Hew gave me the pink Dogwood. It is a wonderful memorial. Every time I look at it I do think of Paka and I remember this sweet and gentle dog.

Oil Spills and Animal Hair

I haven't said much about the oil spill in the Gulf. It has been on my mind daily though. In the summer of 2005 I worked on the cleanup of the spill on Lake Wabamum in Alberta. A CN train derailed and spilled a million litres of crude oil into the lake. The aftermath was grim. We received almost 1000 oiled birds - 1/2 of them were dead when they arrived at the centre. We saw mainly grebes of all varieties, ducks, geese and a few loons (all the loons died). In the end, after weeks of a massive effort by a international wildlife response team, veterinarians, technicians and 100's of volunteers approximately 100 birds survived and were released back into the wild. As one of three veterinarians, my job was largely one of euthanizing those who were not going to make it. I hoped I would never see such a disaster again.
Here are some pictures from that summer - of a Western Grebe who did make it.

Oiled but stable - ready for a bath

Yes, we really do use Dawn Dish Washing Detergent

In the outdoor recovery pools

Release day - one of the most rewarding experiences ever

The Gulf spill is of course much bigger and the oil keeps coming. It has been over 3 weeks now. It feels to me as if the world is holding it's breath, just waiting for the worst to happen as the oil reaches the shores.
So last week when I heard about an project to make oil absorbent booms from hair I was intrigued. It sounds so simple. People all over the US and Canada are being asked to donate their pet's hair and their own hair (from normal hair cuts - no need to go out and shave your head) to a company called A Matter of Trust http://www.amatteroftrust.org/ . Volunteers stuff panty-hose with the hair to make absorbent booms to soak up the oil.

I started eyeing my modest collection of dog and cat hair. The stuff I'd slowly collected from my own pets and all of my friends and clients - my stash. Does it have to go? And what about all the weavers and spinners I know with basements full of fleece - after all wool is hair.
So for the last week I've been trying to find out if these booms really work and do the people who are in charge of the cleanup really want them? I've checked with all the oil response groups I can think of. They are using millions of super-absorbent, synthetic booms but I cannot find any mention of the hair ones being deployed. I spoke with a friend who is a biologist. He was skeptical. Apparently BP has had over 3500 calls with ideas and offers of how to clean up the spill. One oil spill scientist says hair won't work if the oil is thick. The oil I encountered at Lake Wabamum was thick - it was tar.
Heaven knows, like everyone else I want to do something to help. It feels awful to watch helplessly, but for now, I think I will hang onto my stash and keep watching to see how this unfolds. I'll keep you posted.

Fibre Days

I seem to have lost the first half of this week. Lost in the nicest of ways. I was able to devote time to fibre interests early in the week. Monday I attended a spinning workshop with Anne Field http://www.annefield.co.nz/ Anne is a textile artist from New Zealand. She wrote the "bible" of spinning - The Ashford Book of Spinning. It was first published in 1986. Many of learned to spin using this book, so it was a delight to meet Anne and fantastic to spend a whole day with her. The workshop focused on spinning silk, mohair and alpaca. I think I finally have grasped how to spin using a "woolen" technique.

Rosie was one of the workshop participants - you just have to love those ears!

Yesterday Anne lectured at our Guild meeting on Collapse Weave.While, I'm no longer a weaver I enjoy and am inspired by anyone who works in a creative and beautiful way with fibre.



Today is catch up day.....

Dog Names

Be careful what name you give your pet. It has been my experience they tend to live up to their names. An appointment with chihuahua named Nipper or even worse, a pit-bull called Chomper can make me a bit apprehensive. So when I named my little herding dog Nudge, I thought of many happy possibilities. Here is one way he lives up to his name.
We have a pretty consistent evening ritual in our home. After dinner Peter and I often settle in to watch a movie or TV program - he watches, I knit. When Nudge was a small and crazy puppy, he would get the zoomies at this time of day. You know zoomies - the dog (or cat) becomes possessed by a overabundance of exuberance, causing him to race around and around the house at top speed , jumping on the furniture and any cats or people in his pathway. It is funny to watch - to a point. As an antidote we got in the habit of giving him something to chew like a bone or a tendon. In order to get this bone, he had to learn to sit quietly on his blue mat. This ritual calms him down and more importantly gives us an hour or so of much needed quiet.
Now days though, if we are a bit slow - perhaps talking to each other or reading the newspaper before turning on the TV - I get the stare.....


And then Nudge starts running to his blue mat and nudging it with his nose and running back to me. Very clear communication on his part.


This running back and forth gets pretty annoying so it isn't long before I've spread out the mat and he is waiting, not a doubt in his little mind that the chew will appear.

And it always does. I don't dare run out . I'm embarrassed to say, but it seems he has me completely trained now.

Puppies

These are the calls that brighten my life. There is nothing like healthy puppy check-ups to bring a bit of joy into the day.

Every veterinarian has days and even weeks of nothing but ill animals - sometimes, ones that we can't help. The majority of my acupuncture patients are older dogs and cats. They are wonderful souls, but too often sadness and loss go hand in hand with my practice. Some days, I loose track of the balance in life -puppies remind me.

Laney and Marvel are gorgeous, 14 week old Australian Shepherds. If you too need some joy in your life, they are looking for homes. http://webspace.webring.com/people/vf/firesong/index.htm

Old and New

Some pictures of my latest project - one of them anyway.

I bought a couple of bags of New Zealand Corriedale wool from Aurelia http://www.aureliawool.com/ at last years Weavers and Spinners Retreat. The colourway is Paua -named for a colourfull shell. After months of spinning enough for a sweater, I started knitting. I love the roving, I love the singles and I love the way the plied yarn looks. Unfortunately I did not love the way it knit or more to the point, I did not like the way the stripes were forming, at least not when using a simple stockinette pattern. So I've done nothing with all this handspun for the past few months.
When I was moaning about this yarn at the knitting Retreat last weekend a friend suggested using a different pattern stitch. So now I'm trying the Garter Stitch Jacket from Fleece Artist. www.fleeceartist.com/projects_sweaters.html This is the new.

The old is a luxurious mohair yarn that I'm salvaging from a Value Village sweater. I do this occasionally - peruse the sweaters in thrift shops looking for fantastic yarns that have, through no fault of their own been made into ugly garments. I simply pull them apart and reknit them. It is an inexpensive and green source of yarn.

The jacket is one strand of this self striping mohair alternating with one strand of my striping (nicely now) Corriedale. I think it is very pretty and it feels lovely.