What we do after hours

Jotting down ideas in the Blog gives me a chance to share with you what we do in other parts of our life.

My wife and I recently were involved in teaching couples the ballroom dance, Tango. It was our Decatur community's idea to try to break the world record.

The entire article the newspaper did is here: on our world record Tango try.

It is a lot of fun, and as I mentioned to the reporter, ballroom dance is an activity / sport/ event that helps to cross generational lines. You get to meet wonderful people, and you learn a little about yourself, and how to have some fun.

If you look in their photo gallery section here, you will see many of the couples having a good time. Many were either dressed up, or in Argentinean style dance. I, being a Dr, and surgeon, opted for the Zorro look because of the sword!

What do you do for fun?
Z

Cool periodic table of elements

I have a confession.

Hi, I'm Dr Ray, and I must admit that I am a science geek.

There, its out.

I know there are more of you out there, so check outthis web site- Periodic video where this team from Nottingham University explain, and do live experiments with the different elements.

Very cool in a geeky sheek sort of way.

I feel better now.

Taking care of senior pets and pictures

I know many of you may want a picture of your wonderful cat or dog. Last night I met a photographer at the Chamber of Commerce event. She is right here in East Peoria, and had some nice pictures of pets.

If you want to contact her: her name is Kelli Drake at Drake Photo

As I have been taking care of patients the past week, senior disease seems to be the common theme. How do we monitor our older pets?

First is your observations at home. Those eyes can be vital to understand your pet's health. Please understand that you have more knowledge than you may realize when it comes to how your pet is behaving and acting.

Second is a thorough physical exam. Within the past 5 months, we have found tumors on dogs that were hidden to the regular eye.

Third is blood testing to evaluate red, white cells, liver, kidney, pancreas, electrolytes, and other hidden conditions.

Just some things to think about.

Tricky Treat ball- great toy

Here is a link to the toy I mention to many folks for dogs.

Here it is called the Tricky treat ball

Happy Valentine's day!

Prevent Valentine defense. - learn from the dogs

We guys know a good offense makes a great defense in sports. The same happens in everyday life - especially with those special to us.

Valentine's day is like that, isn't it?

Those who have thought ahead of some things to do for their spouse, or girlfriend/boyfriend, find that the reward is terrific, and the more time they put into the idea ahead of time, the better off they are, and easier it is to pull off what you want to do.

Those of us that may have a tendency to take things for granted - like myself, may find we are playing defense, and catch up.

We need to take a lesson from the dogs.

Really. ;-)

Our dogs get up and greet us every time we come into the room. They _come_ and say _hello_ every time we come into a room.

They even do that if you just left 5 minutes ago and forgot something to take with you to the car. They don't make fun, or rib us. They're just happy to see us.

Stay tuned to the email newsletter to read a reflection by Andy Andrews about this very topic. It truly crystalized this for me.

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You have my guarantee we will never sell /give your email address away to anyone ever.
period.

Translator and keeping costs down

We are all conscience of making sure the cost of many things now a day. We are also doing that as well at Lakeview Veterinary Clinic.

So I thought I would share some of the things we have done, and will continue to do to keep our costs down, therefor keeping the prices we have to charge as low as reasonable, yet still give the same good service.

One thing that is ongoing in Continuing Education. I know we all understand it is important to keep up on the latest information in any job environment, and certainly veterinary medicine is no exception. In the past, we have attended a big convention where there are numerous speakers every day for several days. But typically these are in big cities, and there is hotel and travel expenses.

So we are doing more online CE classes (I'm in the middle of one right now on diabetes) and attending more local (within 3 hr drive) conventions. We are very fortunate being in Peoria, that we can get to Chicago, St. Louis, Indianapolis, and even Milwaukee in that short time, so it is very easy to get to high quality conferences and still keep our costs under control.

We will share other avenues we use to show we are all working to keep our resources current and still keep our costs reduced.

The translator is something I thought about as I was talking to a client and was sharing how we call in medical speak : 'brachecephalic' which is the medical name for 'no nose', or polakyuria (straining to urinate), and many others.

It is true that to a great extent, I believe our job here it to take the information we hear, read and see at our different conferences and 'translate' it into language, and use analogies that will make sense to people.

A dog or cat with glomerularnephropathy, thus creating proteinuria. That probably does not make sense but to a very few.
But the analogy I use a lot is: The kidney is like the coffee filter, and when the filter gets damaged, some particles start falling through - the smallest first, and those are what we try to measure when we are seeing protein in the urine.

Let me know if there are other areas where we should 'translate' better. :-)