Happy Hour [2/6/23]

I need a drink

2/6/23 Hannibal 27

I love a story with a happy ending, especially when it involves an animal. And Lucky was indeed a very fortunate piglet. After falling from a truck in Nevada, he was saved by a family who witnessed his tumble. And now, instead of being fattened for slaughter, he will live out his days at the All Friends Animal Sanctuary in Las Vegas. Realistically I know it was chance that led to the good boy’s rescue. But I prefer to think there was some porcine McGyvering going on in the back of that truck allowing him to escape his doom. Maybe he even had help from his fellow prisoners or a stowaway spider. It could happen! I hope your weekend is as good as Lucky’s. Maybe even terrific. Talk about whatever.

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27 Comments

  1. i think my neighbour committed some kind of war crime against all the weeds in his yard and driveway

    not sure what he did… but something smelling vaguely like ammonia….and enough of it to make my eyes burn…

    which you know…. must have been a fucking lot… coz he wasnt spraying the stuff anymore when i got home…and this is outside

    only know it was him coz he left the big hand pumped pressure hose thing sitting on his drive way

    some nasty shit…whatever it is

    anyways..

    it being the start of the weekend…..i cant decide if i feel more like the baby goat…or the pig

  2. Faithful Hound will not be so lucky tomorrow. It is time for his annual physical. We have decided to abandon our local vet practice. It’s the only game in this area and while I’m confident the doctors are quite competent the office is so mismanaged…anyway, Better Half can still walk over to it but I can’t, so if we’re going to make this a family outing why not call UberPets and go back downtown, where we went for decades. A previous dog was one of their first patients. I still remember some of the vets, and I hope the one I snagged an appointment with remembers us.

    It has a much tonier clientele (I’ve spotted a couple of slebs) and a lovely waiting area. The one in this neighborhood is up a flight of stairs, no elevator, which is so convenient when you have a sick animal, and because the common area is so tiny they encourage you to go stand outside on the sidewalk or hang out at the restaurant next door and they’ll call you when your animal’s appointment is done. When Faithful Hound was a puppy this seemed OK, plus it was almost impossible to get a driver who would take a canine passenger (we don’t really have cab service up here, just private car services and Ubers) but now apparently there’s a whole UberPets fleet! The world is Faithful Hound’s oyster. Plus he loves a good road trip, and the way traffic is going on the Isle of Gridlock it might take us longer to get to the downtown vet’s than it would to fly to Boston or DC.

      • This vet practice downtown is pretty large, I think there are 10 vets at any one time, and then the vet techs, who tend to be dog-loving muscular young men, so that’s a bonus, but the vets move on and you never know what you’re going to get with the new ones. I had complete faith in all of them until years ago when this complete loon…anyway, she’s still there, I’m horrified to know, which is why when I made this triumphant-return appointment I called in person to set it up and have confirmed twice that we’re getting the vet I specified.

    • We had the best vet for years. He kept putting off retirement because nobody could afford to buy his practice. He told us young vets are coming out of veterinary school with upwards of $250k in debt. He eventually sold to a chain as much as he hated to. And it was awful. They wanted animals dropped off at 8 am regardless of appointment time and kenneled until after the appointment. I’m not putting Fanny through that! It took us awhile to find a suitable replacement.  It’s hard enough on most dogs to go to a good place let alone a poorly run office. I hope your good boy has a decent experience.

      • Oh I know he will. We’re veterans of the place. Our previous dog was a patient/client and over the course of her long life at some point she suffered every malady known, so we were frequent visitors, and she managed to shrug them all off and lived to be 16 1/2, partly thanks to them. And she was a German shepherd mix, so 16 1/2 for her was like what Peter Thiel is trying to achieve with his longevity experiments, without all the transfusions and the plastic surgery.

      • If you can find a veterinary school to attend. Do you know how few there are left in this country? I think like a dozen of them, but there must be ancillary livestock medicine programs that might fill the bill. At this practice, they’re all Cornell Veterinary graduates, and I think that started off as a livestock medical training ground in the beginning.

        • But you can’t call yourself a veterinarian unless you attend veterinary school. So those livestock medicine programs won’t get you very good jobs. For instance we have an Ag high school here that offers it. Without attending veterinary school its graduates can be vet techs for livestock vets. We have a lot of those here in The Horse Capital of the World.

          • Oh yes, I was wondering, all the horses for example. Who tends to them? And I can’t even imagine what the malpractice premiums are like for vet practices in New York, the most litigious place on earth outside the Markle-Windsor-Mountbatten residence in Montecito.

            • …I don’t know a lot about it but aside from the folks that idris elba movie was based on I think NYPD are about the only stables that aren’t some kind of niche look-how-much-money-we’ve-got deal, aren’t they?

              • I have friends in England who ride and who stable horses (they don’t have their own facilities; they board the horses) and they join hunts but not for live animals anymore. It’s assumed that, yes, there’s a certain level of income necessary to acquire the horses and board them, but they don’t find any of this strange.

                What they have are something called “country vets.” I doubt they are on the NHS. I assumed America had the same thing, but since I don’t live near Green Acres, and am not acquainted with Georgina Bloomberg or the Romneys’ dressage horse Rafalca I don’t know what kind of vet care is available to them.

                • Owning horses is very expensive. But even country vets are trained and certified veterinarians. Haven’t you seen All Creatures Great and Small? Lol If you haven’t the new adaptation is lovely.

  3. Knocked off work an hour early and made a pasta salad, low fat cherry sorbet, 99% lean burgers, and a light pastry with custard and strawberries.

    The leftover strawberry syrup went in with freshly-squeezed oranges and tangerines. Which is now part of a tequila, Limoncello, and seltzer cocktail. Mmmmm.

    Happy weekend DS!

  5. Not feeling too lucky.  Only got to see the wife for a few hours since I got home before she was back to Cali to help with her dad’s recovery.  One of my best friend’s mom just passed away, she was 102 but still pretty sad.  Neighbor called me yesterday to tell me his tenant who lives below me lost her Yorkie to a coyote the other day & she heard the whole thing!  Stupid to let it out alone in our neighborhood but the horror of hearing that is giving me nightmares!  Last night I saw one on the doorbell camera coming from that side of the house, probably looking for her other Yorkie!  I may start happy hour early!

     

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