My Girl

My Girl

    

    I recently heard a talk show host encourage his listeners to forgive Michael Vick for his crimes. Up until now I could count on one hand the number of times I have been moved to write a letter to a public servant, a newspaper, or a talk show host.  This is one of those times. As relaxing as it is to watch Kira sleeping after a hard day of playing I knew I could not sleep until I wrote the following.

Clark,

I am a veterinarian who read Jim Gorant's book "The Lost Dogs". I read it not because I wanted to, but because I felt it was my duty.

I would like to share some things from the book with you.

One dog that was hanged did not die. "As that dog lay on the ground fighting for air, Quantis Phillips grabbed it by its front legs and Michael Vick grabbed its hind legs. They swung the dog over their head like a jump rope then slammed it to the ground. The first impact didn't kill it. So Phillips and Vick slammed it again. The two men kept at it, alternating back and forth, pounding the creature against the ground, until at last, the little red dog was dead." (page 93)

On the day Michael Vick turned himself in at the county jail to begin serving his sentence he "….had woken up that morning and bought a $99,000 Mercedes and paid $23,000 to a PR firm…." (page 151)

Go home tonight. Pet your dog and look into her beautiful brown eyes and remember. That's what I do.

Thank you for allowing me to comment.

Dr. Liz Cotton

Fuquay Varina, NC

    

Do Dogs Laugh?

     The results of Kira's DNA testing are in. She is part Labrador Retriever and part Bloodhound. Also part Boston Terrier.
    The Lab heritage didn't surprise me. Nor did the Bloodhound DNA. The Boston Terrier did astonish me.
    "The Boston Terrier can trace its history back to 1865 in Boston, Massachusetts. Early in the breed's history, coachmen for the wealthy residents of Boston cross-bred many of their employers' dogs for pit fighting purposes." This is from the company who did the blood test, Mars Veterinary.
    So I'll bet that there is a lot of Boston Terrier DNA out there in the population and that many mixed breed dogs will have a Boston in their family.
    One neat thing about photography is that it allows us to freeze motion and see things that we can't see with the naked eye. This photo was taken at 1/2000 second and was one of a group of 6 photos that were all taken within a single second.
    All of this technology just to prove that Kira laughs when she runs.

hidden fawn

Can you see the fawn? She is lying at the base of the tree. Her large ear is pointing up toward your right and looks very red with the sun shining through it, she is looking away from you, and her body extends along the ground further to the right behind some leaves.

The biggest threats to fawns come from coyotes, dogs, bears, and bobcats. We know through research that these animals don't see strictly in black and white, but they also don't see colors nearly as well as we do. Imagine the difficulty her enemies might have seeing her without the aid of color vision.

Now suppose that you are watching her without the magnification of a zoom lens. She would be almost impossible to see, wouldn't she?