Well, Sandra, it has been a year.

I'm really glad I became a veterinarian. I'm occasionally glad that I came out here to work on these horses. And I'm rarely glad to be a commuter.

And I'm just figuring out how important it is to have skills in this profession. Here in Los Angeles, for instance, it's good to have skills with numchucks ( the ability to identify, draw, locate, and kill a Liger in one shot is also valuable- Not only true in Napolean Dynamite, but also in Simi just down the road where they identified, located, and killed a suspected liger near the Reagan Library).

I've learned that when a client tries to pimp his girlfriend on me in the middle of a work day (on Sunday), it's actually a compliment and not necessarily a business offer. (A perk by any other name is still a perk. I work with some of societies most anomalous personalities, by the way. These are the people who could not get jobs at the carnival after getting fired by the circus.)

Improving client communications has become an essential part of my day. After an endoscopic exam of a patient with bilateral laryngeal paralysis, a thickened, greatly enlarged soft palate, and an entrapped epiglottis, it helps to say: "Si el caballo tiene problemas de respirar, llamame immediamente. Si el caballo no respirar, la espera al mañana."

And improving client education has become an essential part of my day: "The million dollar two-year old you just shipped-in from Japan has no recognizable normal soft tissue structures in either front leg and I doubt he will ever take one step out of a starting gate. Sorry. That sucks. I will be happy to go to Japan and take a gander at those ankles next time, if you ever decide a prepurchase exam is something you'd like to have. I even know some Japanese: Domo arigato, Mr. Robato."

I've seen some interesting internal medicine cases: "Yes ma'am. I just looked at the slides I made from the swabs of your horse's left ear. I believe what I'm seeing is amorphous debris. What? Oh. Yes, of course. What I mean is, it appears I'm looking at wax."

I've developed some superhuman powers demonstrated best by my uncanny ability to drink 24 cups of fresh ground French roast coffee before 6 a.m. every single day without the slightest effect on my dexterity or or ability to work. Or sois I jhs tihink I dolkjjjjjjjjjjjjjie.

Occasionally, I'm asked for a tip on a horse that is going to run. Well, here are a couple of tips for the Preakness: Bet on the jockey who wears the white pants. Put twenty dollars on Giacomo to win. Eggs don't bounce. And I don't gamble anymore.

I no longer buy flowers for mi esposa. What can I buy her that we don't have in our own back yard?! It has been springtime here since February. Our backyard looks like an arboretum. Day lilies, irises, alternaria, roses, fruit trees, calla lily, poppies (for medicinal use only), and a whole bunch of other ones I don't even know what they are, just grow and grow and bloom all year round. The best ones are blooming right now, though. Jacarunda trees are very cool (they are these very tall trees that bloom with purple flutes that fill the canopy long before there are any green leaves on the tree -- there are whole streets lined with these trees). We like that alot.

It finally stopped raining, and now all I have to do is to treat all my dogs for rain rot. Meanwhile, we're taking advantage of all the museums and art galleries while we're here. We've been to the Huntington, the Getty, and the MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art - downtown, across from the Disney Center, where parking is difficult to find).

We went to the Getty art museum awhile back and my wife got to see her favorite Van Gogh painting, "Irises." I got to see my favorite "Number 1, 1949". It reminds me of a food fight on a pavement in front of a paint store after an explosion. Lots of mustard and catsup colors. Very soothing. Seriously, though, I did get to see several Wassily Kandinsky paintings at the MOCA and a box with a white shoe inside and a stuffed white chicken with a spoon glued to its back. That was interesting. Not as interesting as the room with the rotating colorful lights where my wife, some little kids and I ran around trying to stand on certain shapes before they disappeared. Still drinking coffee...not a dollop of OH on board.

I was told when they were recruiting me that one can "go skiing in the morning and surfing in the afternoon" I have not had the time to do that. No. It is absolutely possible, though, especially if you ski in your wetsuit and have a helicopter waiting for you at the bottom of the mountain to drop you in the surf. Curiously, the waves are better in the morning, anyway, so it should probably be done the other way around. I haven't learned to surf, yet. But it is a dream of mine. I have seen lots of old, pot-bellied, bald guys on surf boards around here. You just never see them in "Blue Crush" or any of the other surf movies.

They're usually not wearing broad brimmed, palm leaf cowboy hats either. But that's my thing, dude.

We're going to miss Zack. It's nice to have a classmate in town, even if he does live on the other side of the universe in LA terms. I've discovered a lot of humility since graduation, and getting to visit with Zack over a steak and a glass of wine was sometimes all the levity I needed.

The first six months of my job are an indistinct blur of panic, confusion, anxiety, and waste. Much like the first two years of vet school, I wish I could go back and do it again: "I can do that. I can do that, and not screw it up this time!"

Overall, we're pretty homesick. But we're going to stay another year. I want to become more conversant in Spanish, better at ultrasound, lameness, and surfing before I go back to Texas.

And, by God, I want to go skiing in the morning and to the beach in the afternoon!

Marine Layer


I sneezed for the 1014th time today on "The 110" just before Slauson, and I believe that event may have saved my life.

It was at the very moment that my eyes began to water and my nose itched and I forcibly expelled 50 lbs. of compressed oxygen, nitrogen, polluted LA air and four ounces of snot that I rocked forward over the steering wheel spewing mucus all over the instrument panel of my rather large and dirty Suburban assault vehicle.

The window of the rear passenger side door exploded with a thud and a crash and the flying of many fragments of blue-green glass. Simultaneously, the window of the driver's side door (I was the driver) exploded. I'm not sure. But I think I've been shot...at. Again.

Some would call it luck, but I know I just forgot to take my Allegra this morning. And who the hell goes around shooting shit just for kicks with what could only be described as bad aim and a small caliber pistol (I assume these are traits common to everyone because they are common to me)?!

I wouldn't even have noticed had my wife not said something about glass in the driveway the next morning.

Ever ate a cumquat? Well, can YOU spell it? Peels on or peels off? Do you suck the heads?

Finally, it becomes obvious that this string of consciousness is flagrantly influenced by sleep deprivation.

Sleep deprivation is also a good defense against the Freeway Shootists. A randomly weaving vehicle makes a poor target for a coward with a .22 pistol hiding behind his steering wheel...that, and not making eye contact.

It's only methane... 

Centaur

I’d be reborn the way you want me, a horse, a buckskin, and large framed.

I’d live for your touch.

To feel you on my back, your legs wrapped around my sides, your heels in my
flank.

The sound of your voice would thrill within me and I’d trot to it, my head
high so that I could catch first glimpse of you, so that I could watch you
smile.

We would go together across the pastures in the waning afternoon sunshine;
your dark hair glowing in the light.

You’d need no bit.

You’d need no saddle.

I’d need only your loin and your thoughts to tell me where to go.

I wouldn’t talk much, but you could talk to me all you wanted, and I would
be just as happy.

No one would ever know how much I loved you and no one would suspect.

Maybe you wouldn’t even know.

And I could just give you all the pleasure and never be a problem.

I’d never upset you.

I’d never let you down.

I’d never hurt you.

Those days would be bliss for us both and I could go quietly about my way of
having you when all along you’re busy just having a horse.

I’d be that horse in a hoof beat.

Things I have learned on Dermatology...

1. Our dermatologist has about 200 fire ant bites on his left leg, and a cytological examination of the purulent exudate from one of these pustules reveals a lot of debris and many degenerate neutrophils but no bacteria.

2. "You'll want to wear gloves especially if you might be contagious to lambs." (Dermatologist)

3. A dog's skin is "basically alkalotic."

4. Hemorrhoids are inflamed rectal mucosa and Aveeno may be an effective treatment (don't ask me how to apply it).

5. Malacetic shampoo will make you think "clean thoughts" as opposed to "dirty thoughts."

6. Our past SCAVMA president must shave his head every 3 days, but more often than that and he develops flaky skin.

7. Our dermatologist says he likes the smell of fish over the smell of vanilla. "When there is so much vanilla that you have to part it...well, it makes you wanna puke."

8. That's crap. It's all crap. There is crap and then there is crap and that's crap! Hell if I know. I just made it up.

9. When you get a good look at your professor's leg the appropriate explitive is "Holy CRAP!"

10. Cats die when you bathe them with tar shampoo. It's as simple as that.

11. It's practically malpractice to treat a rott or a dobie with TMPS.

12. I wash my dog with human shampoo. That's bad.

13. I used deodorant to keep my dog from licking her lick granuloma. That's not bad, but it's not good either.

14. It worked, though.

15. If you're using Sentinel and Frontline-Plus, then that's overkill, and you're spending too much money...like me.

Rapture

She likes the sound the wind makes when it rustles through the cottonwood leaves, rasping like cotton on corduroy, like the sound of applause and thousands of whispers. She stoops to look at the harvester ants carrying the leaves of a black walnut tree in corridors of their making that stretch, vein-like across the pasture. I see her brown eyes filled with wonder at every living thing, and I ache to have her look at me that way.

She likes the smell of horses and the feel of a satiny soft muzzle against her cheek. She brushes every inch of any horse who will stand for it, agonizing over witch's knots and bot eggs and not stopping until that horse exudes the shimmering beauty she knows belongs to every one. She revels in the reptiles and the amphibians and the dragon flies and the mosquito dragons and spiders as big as her small, tender hands. All of that color and different textures and the feel of these things against her own skin make them marvelous and more wonderful than all the finest silks of the world.

She likes to save the sickly bird and the injured lizard and the hapless cowboy down on his luck. She'll travel for miles or not travel at all to help one of these poor trodden souls. And when faced with the choice between paranoia and pity, she'll take pity every time.

So, when he tells her that he fears for her safety, he's really only being selfish. He likes the same things she does, and tries to become more like her, and it would make everything a little better and everyone a little nicer, if we would all do the same.

And every sickly bird, injured lizard, and wilted cowboy would have a friend.

Loyalty

He was my mother's horse, a stocky bay Quarter Horse with a crooked, lightning bolt blaze down his nose, four socks, and bright, mischievous eyes. Unbroken at five years of age and hardly broken ten years later, I among very few rode this horse and rarely if at all.

So it was that one night at around sundown I stole into the pasture and slipped his head into a bosal gaining his back in the way of an Indian, flat-footed swinging up with one hand on the withers. Ribbon snorted and crested at the poll lurching against the thick, rawhide noseband, braided cotton reins thrust against his chin. His flowing black mane brushed my face.

It was a magical night in the panhandle with a moonlit, blue, gypsum light glowing metallic on the fallow fields before me and shimmering on knee-high corn plants at my flanks. I pressed my legs into his sides and we did the one thing he loved. We flew into that cobalt columbium with haste and wind and the pounding of unshod hoofsteps on the hardpack and echoing against the cumulus clouds outlined and laced with silvery moonshine.

The smell of freshly turned soil laid heavily against his flared nostrils and my own and we sailed down the turnrows to the grassy hollows leading into the wash. And once upon a dry creekbed where burrowing owls screeched their greeting, I brought him to a smooth, uninterrupted trot trespassing the prairie dog town and sneaking through a neighbor's watermelon patch.

His body heaved with every breath and the white peppery smell of horse sweat steamed through his wetted hair. We found a particularly good patch of ripened watermelons and I fell among them sliding my pocket knife through the vine and pilfering the heavy oval into the shadows. We split the melon, and he dove into his half with maximal malice while I patiently nibbled 'round the seeds.

Filling to our ribs with the pink of the black diamonds, our bellies watery and blown, we walked back in the waning moonlight to the sounds of cattle crying in the distance and a far irrigation motor purring. Sometimes an owl might call my name. (I never died.) And sometimes we could hear the other horses wondering where went Ribbon and the boy. Or the dog barking. A coyote's howl. A sandpiper piping. And the very breath of the moon itself exhaling. A sigh of wind against our skin.

I had been thinking about loyalty, that night, and the special kinship I shared with this horse who was only a few years younger than me. Like a brother, I thought he was. And I thought I would test him, so I feigned fainting and fell into a heap onto the soft, plowed dirt beside the road. Onward he persisted, the clip-clop of his hoofsteps unabated.

For about 30 feet.
Then, to my astonishment, he stopped, cold, and through a slit in my closed eye, I saw him turn. He stood for a moment as if to say, "C'mon, quit screwing around!" I didn't move a muscle. He rolled on his hocks and walked back to me, head low, ears flicked forward in concern. At my side, he nuzzled me, not once, not twice, but three times.

His concern growing, I finally had to move out of the way when I saw a foreleg bend as if he were going to shake me.

The disgust he felt at my resurrection was evident in his face. But I laughed like the teenager I was, and I placed my hand upon his withers, and Ribbon carried me home through that cobalt columbium down the dusty, sod hardpack between the cornfields.

I would never ride him again without being bucked-off first.