Category: One Veterinarian’s Musings
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Living Things and Dead Things
Today, I’m musing about the difference between living things and dead things. I wonder if I have been somehow transformed? I can see that I’m now looking at everything in my life through a new set of lenses. I’m using a new measuring stick. I am asking myself “Is what is alive or is it […]
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“Good Death”
Today, I’m musing about euthanasia, a word that means “good death”. As I drove away from the home in Waupaca wherein I had just euthanized a 13-year-old, 13-pound, lovable, much-loved, black, curly-haired dog with intestinal cancer, I thought to myself, “What a privilege it was for me to have assisted that dog through that sacred passage from life […]
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The limitations of words and numbers
Today, I’m musing about written words and numbers. From our molecules and cells on up, we are more similar than we are different from animals. Written words and numbers set us apart from any other living creature on this planet. I have concluded this is a human gift and a human curse. The fruits of […]
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Seeds and Stem Cells
Today, I’m musing about seeds and stem cells. As I declared last week: ‘Animals are not machines or computers!’ There are two attributes that animals have that machines or computers do not have: 1) animals are endowed with a capacity to heal themselves and 2) animals can reproduce. I’m wondering if our knowledge of plants […]
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Healing the American Animal
Today, I’m musing about how to heal the American Animal. Yes, it has been a long time since I have penned a “One Veterinarian’s Musings” column. While I have not been physically sick, I have had “writer’s block”. I just looked for this condition in the bible of mental health aliments, the Diagnostic and Statistical […]
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Lincoln and Darwin
Today, I’m musing about Lincoln and Darwin. I am a huge fan of both men. Both were born on the day I started putting this musing to paper, February 12th. Both of these heroes of mine were born in the year 1809, 203 years ago. We citizens of Wisconsin—citizens of the United States of America—are […]
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Imprinting
Today, I’m musing about imprinting. The cat on my shoulder in the picture is Bassui. Cutting-edge science—what we now know about cloning—says that there will never be another Bassui. Research shows that genes alone don’t determine who a given animal is, how it is formed, or how it behaves. I say what many say about […]
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Emotions
Today, I’m musing about emotions. Temple Grandin wrote, “My theory is that the environment animals live in should activate their positive emotions as much as possible, and not activate their negative emotions any more than necessary. If we get the animal’s emotions right, we will have fewer problem behaviors. … research in neuroscience has been […]
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Nature Deficit Disorder…continued
Today, I’m continuing to muse about Nature Deficit Disorder (NDD). First, full disclosure. I was introduced to the term NDD by the author Richard Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit Disorder, published in 2005. Second, I want to unpack something I mentioned in my last column, the medical […]
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Nature Deficit Disorder
Today, I’m musing about Nature Deficit Disorder (NDD). I have concluded that, while thankfully not as bad in Waupaca County East as it in the rest of the world, NDD underlies a lot of what ails us humans in the year 2011. As a veterinarian, I am book-trained regarding almost all aspects of farm animal […]