Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas from Penny, Sampson and me! A nice holiday all around with the family with a morning filled with gift giving, an afternoon of relaxing, an evening of tasty roast beef (soooo good!) and a bedtime snack of chocolate cake!

Sampson and Penny enjoyed the gift giving benefits today too! Sampson really enjoys ripping paper and had a great time shredding open his presents that included rawhides, nylabones, and an elk antler to chew on. Sensing a theme? His paper interests carry over to things like toy instructions and newspapers too so I guess I'll need to be extra careful not to leave notes lying around in the spring! I can just see it now - "Sorry professor, my dog ate my study material!" Penny received the gift of food today - a Christmas salad, vitamin hay tablets, 2 bales of hay, and dried banana chips. She wouldn't have it any other way! She takes her "pig" title quite seriously! Both animals were kind and obliged their camera loving mother. Penny is the best - she even sits there and poses and puts up with me patiently!

It wouldn't be a complete post if I didn't mention how much I miss Lucy. I love having Sampson in my life, but it's still so bittersweet. I miss that silly dog so much. She was my special needs canine that fit so well with her special needs mommy. Sampson is so very lucky to have fallen into the spot he's living now but boy Lucy and I sure had to be so unlucky for him to get here. She was my Christmas present last year, he is my Christmas present this year. I still have a never ending supply of tears for that dog!

The One Year that Should Be

A year ago today, I brought Lucy home with me. She was scared out of her mind but immediately knew how to get the things she wanted - a comfy bed, a nice walk, a tasty meal. She instantly knew who her human was and she would have followed me to the ends of the earth. Lucy, Sampson is forever in your debt as he now shares the home you so loved. His shelter days are over and he doesn't have to wander the streets as a stray. He even proclaims his love for his new home by refusing to leave and dashing up the stairs to come back. It is so bitter sweet sharing this new love with him, a love that belonged to you not that long ago. I will truly miss you forever, but your memory will forever live on in my heart. 

 

Sampson

This is Sampson. He is a 1yo Australian Shepard mix and he is my new furry friend. He came from a shelter on Saturday, spent the night with a rescue volunteer and came to me on Sunday as a foster dog. Today we made it official so he now officially owns the house haha. He weighs about 40lbs and is a super sweet heart. He is very friendly and loving and whimpers when he's unsure about something. He doesn't like cars and isnt sure what going for a walk is all about but he loves to play and frequently grabs toys out of the basket.

Two Months

Well, it has officially been two months. Doesn't seem possible and doesn't really feel like it. Lots of tears today (not an infrequent event these days unfortunately). I did at least get to finish the day with a breath-taking night dive though. So many beautiful corals feeding and crustaceans running around!

I was rejected by yet another rescue group today. Lucy is turning out to be more irreplaceable than I could have imagined! This group's reason was that they felt that flying on a plane (in cabin) would be too much stress to fairly put on an animal. It's a fair concern, but the dog I was interested in is currently living in a rural shelter. Trust me, living in a shelter where infectious disease is common and stress levels in those animals is through the roof because of the negative environment is way worse than traveling on a plane for a few hours. Insert pathophysiology rant about cortisol and stress hormones here haha.

My study buddy would not have been impressed by all of the stress and studying that's currently accompanying final exams!

No More Term 5 Classes!

I'm sorry I've been a little on the quiet side this semester, I don't really have a whole lot to say these days. Everything seems so trivial and meaningless in comparison.

Today we finished our last day of classes for the semester today. It's about time! I am so very tired of these classes and I am not sad to see them go! So much surgery, and frankly, I'm just not much of a surgery person! Theriogenology is going to go out just as badly as it started - I don't think anyone has positive or happy things to say about the class and we certainly don't know what to expect for Friday's final exams. Diagnostic imaging ended up turning into a little bit of a war and although we haven't seen the exam yet, we "won" because what was supposed to be a cumulative crazy final is now just covering material from two visiting professors. We shall see!

All that is left for the term is studying, something I'm not very excited about. Still hunting for motivation so if you have some to spare, please send it my way! I'm leaving Grenada the day after exams finish to go home, and although I'm a little sad I won't get to do much diving after exams are done, I am definitely ready for a break. I am currently struggling to find a new canine companion (so far I've been declined, too late, or the a mistake happened and the dog didn't end up with the rescue organization). 0-3 is definitely a bit discouraging and the memories of my dear friend and her demise are still very fresh in my mind. A change of scenery will do my heart good I think.

I am currently finishing up a rescue diving course and I've currently logged over 60 dives since I started! Hoping to make it to 70 by the end of the term, we'll see! Still very afraid of the whole water on my face thing, but aside from that, I'm turning into a regular fish! I'm also living true to my cold blooded nature - I swear the ocean gets colder every time I get in. Taunting and teasing by my fellow diving friends has assured me that this is not the case! Saturday I came back so cold, I was shivering like I was in a snowstorm and my fingers were going numb! I always dive in a full 3mm wetsuit, but there are plenty of people who dive here in just a bathing suit. Sunday I caved and somehow managed to squeeze myself into Christie's 7mm wetsuit (she is tinier than the thinest stick around so this was really nothing short of a miracle!) and I must say, it was just the most amazing thing ever. It was like being enveloped in a cozy warm blanket or a nice big hug the whole time under water and I wasn't the least bit cold! That might be a first for me! I think it's time for me to invest in a wetsuit better suited for a dive site other than the Caribbean ;).

I suppose I should get back to studying, I have a ridiculous amount of material to memorize between now and the official end of this semester and finals begin in just a couple of days!

One Month

Well, it's officially been one month since Lucy passed today. Ironically enough, I'm sitting here studying for a large animal surgery exam, the same exam I took that morning. My already biased distaste for this class has grown into pure hatred so thankfully we only have 12 more classes left until our evil cumulative final exam. Then I can put "surgical procedures" of large animals behind me.

My house is still very lonely. It makes me sad to come home to no greeting at the door. I'm bad at waking up to my alarm if I don't have to get up for class in the morning. I miss getting a nose in my face looking for food the moment the alarm rang. No one tries to steal 2/3rds of the bed anymore. I haven't properly stretched out in my own bed since last December (it was always about accommodating Lucy to make sure she was comfy!).

My heart is still very heavy. The double edged sword of being a vet student is that all of my friends and classmates have pets, and they all love them as much as I loved Lucy. That means at least 20 times a day, someone posts a video or picture or status about what their silly pet is doing on facebook. It means that I get to continually feel like my nose is being rubbed in the fact that everyone else has their beautiful animals and I don't. Lucy and I didn't deserve this fate. She had an excellent home and a great life. She was young and reasonably healthy (except that she had started peeing on the bed occasionally...). We'd only had each other for 9 months. She got a walk every day and tons of attention. So why her? Why my dog? What if I had come home a little earlier? Why didn't I just take the extra stupid 30 seconds to put the food away?! All I had to do was cross the room! That's it! Such a simple act could have made things so drastically different for us. Rhetorical questions I will never have the answers to.

I am at least starting to not cry every day. Only three out of the seven days for last week. I guess that can be considered progress.

50 Dives!!

This weekend I had the pleasure of escaping from reality for a bit to carve pumpkins under water, do a night dive in the Molinere statue garden, and complete dives 49 and 50!

To celebrate Halloween and be super silly, Eco Dive arranged to get a couple of pumpkins from Grenville, and then we took them out to the marine park to carve for fun. Poor weather and busy schedules prevented us from getting them done before Halloween, but I think Saturday worked just fine too. After all, every day of the year looks the same here weather-wise, it's not like it feels different now that it's November. Grenada also doesn't celebrate Halloween, so there's no stark notification that the holiday has come and past. Anyhow, we (Christie) had the foresight to cut the top off the pumpkins before we left for the marine park. Not really sure how we would have gotten them to the bottom if we hadn't preemptively opened up the huge air bubble inside! Grenada pumpkins don't quite match American pumpkins - they are funny shapes, colors, and really really thick! One of the pumpkins must have been at least 5 inches thick!

We sank the pumpkins in about 20 ft of water and got to work. It ended up taking an hour to get them to look how we wanted. Eventually the fish figured out something was up and came over to investigate the pickings. A school of sergeant majors was particularly interested in snacking on floating pumpkin bits! They were pretty entertaining to watch! The award for most entertaining actually goes to a crab in a hole. I (of course) had my camera and was slowly looking around when I saw movement in a hole in the sand. Not wanting to scare him so that I could get a picture, I crept over and while I watched, he voluntarily crawled out quite far claws ready! I happened to have a wedge of pumpkin in my hand and curiosity got the better of me. I poked the piece of pumpkin at one of his outstretched claws and he immediately clamped on and sped off down his hole. Problem? The wedge was too big to fit! I gently grasped the pumpkin piece and gave it a tug, but he was intent on keeping it! He did eventually let go of the pumpkin chunk, but when offered another smaller piece, repeated the same exercise!! He'd come out, grab a piece, race back down, repeat! It was hysterically funny! Christie swears he's got two cups of pumpkin stashed somewhere in his lair and I believe it! He just kept taking pieces! Silly crab! We are currently trying to figure out what kind of crab he is.

When we finished our pumpkins, we left them with glowsticks inside at the base of the new circle of children to be discovered on our night dive. Awesome! A blowfish and a bat awaited the Halloween night dive group!

Next up was of course the Halloween night dive! One of my friends has a Halloween birthday and really wanted to dive the statues at night as a "scary" theme type of deal. The dive was originally set for last Monday night, but Grenada weather has been super crummy and miserable lately so it had to be postponed. It meant we got to have pumpkins in the garden though and the weather was lovely so it all worked out for the best. It turned out to be a gorgeous dive with tons of life and critters! Many octopi, eels, slugs, a squid, sleeping fish, awake fish, a zillion starfish (I love watching brittle star legs shrivel and shrink back into the cracks and crevices as you shine a torch on them), and much more! I was pretty pleased to see the squid and took a ton of pictures in hopes one or two would come out well (still searching for the perfect shot but these weren't half bad). It was a great dive and we enjoyed every minute!

This morning I went back to the marine park for two more dives to hit my 50 mark! I can't believe I've done that many already! It hasn't even been a full 8 months yet! Both dives were lovely although the water was a little chilly! Yes, wimp here, I think 83F in a full 3mm wetsuit is cold. Feel free to poke fun. We were greeted by two sea turtles (separately) on our second dive and the largest barracuda I have ever seen (he must have been 4ft or longer!). Lots of little critters seen and a bunch of lionfish culled!

My original goal was 50 dives by May, so now I have to make new goals. Where to go from here, hmmm!