Dogs + Balloons = ________.

Drifter, a vet's black lab, plays with a balloon and then finds out what happens when he eats it.

Rawr! Episode 2 - Bear Sightings

Straight from the Anchorage Daily News:

"City officials say there is 'a high probability of encountering a brown bear on this trail' and are urging people to 'avoid using Rover's Run under any circumstances'."

...hmmm sounds like a good place to be!

They went on to say, "The majority of the trail users are bicyclists who are more likely to encounter a bear because they move quickly and quietly."

I found this article in yesterday's paper and looked it up on the Anchorage Daily News website.  Here's the sighting caught on a surveillance camera:

Source: bears.muni.org

I have still yet to see a bear or even a wolf at that matter.  Once I go climbing, I'm sure I'll see some from afar off.  There is all sorts of news like this every day up here though, it's common, but it's still uncommon enough to make the papers. Kind of like shootings in Omaha, but it's wildlife in Anchorage, okay so maybe not...

Read more: Sow and 3 cubs

See more bear sightings here.

Rawr!

First real bear I saw in Alaska! Up close and personal...

...talk about a breathtaking and spine chilling experience!

W.A.A.G. Your Tail

Although all of you may not realize it, deep down inside you have a burning desire to find out what I have been up to this week that has kept me so busy.  Don't deny it, you know it's true.  Well, I will try my best not to let you down. 

The week mainly consisted of two things (with a couple minor changes): work and sleep.  As you may know I have worked 4pm-12am in the past week and a half or so, this results in an interesting sleep pattern.  See, I'm not tired after midnight when my shift is over so I end up finally falling asleep by four.  I don't have anything planned the next day before I start work at four PM so I don't set my alarm and wake up anywhere between one and three-thirty.  I somehow have a mental alarm that gets me up, but I don't know how I sleep that long, I just do.  So it's a vicious cycle of work and sleep. I hate that schedule, I would take any other schedule over that one.  The other schedules are midnight to 8am and 8am to 4pm.  I don't mind working some evenings, but when I do work the 4-12 shift it feels like I don't have as much time even though it's the same amount of hours.  I guess it's just how my body works.  I'm trying to train myself to wake up earlier, but now it's about breaking that habit. 

There have been some pretty fun events that have gone on this week, even though I have been busy.  Of course, earlier this week I saw a moose bathing in our sprinklers in front of the clinic.  I have taken quite a few pictures of the staff's pets in the clinic and some of patients in surgery and just around the clinic.  Here's just a small collection of what I took.

And yes, the Boston Terrier only has one eye. These are some of the patients that we've had in this week and I will forewarn you some pictures may be "less than appetizing".

My day off this week was Thursday so I hung out with Travis Dennison and went biking around Anchorage on the coastal trail.  We rode to an airfield where floatplanes were landing and taking off on a private, airplane-only lake.  It was pretty neat!  We took a break, ate at "The Sub" and then took a roundabout way back to his truck.

On the way back to his place we bought some discs for Frisbee golf and then later on, you guessed it, we played Frisbee Golf with Brandon Church (well maybe you didn't guess the 'Brandon Church' part).  It was a fun-filled day and definitely a nice change to my "cabin fever schedule".  Don't get me wrong, I love what I do, but I needed a break. 

This upcoming week I get two days off so I'm planning on not coming back for at least one night.  I'm not sure where I'm staying, but I'll sleep in a tent somewhere if I have to.  I need to get away and get up in some mountains!  Also, just as an FYI, I am only borrowing the camera taking these awesome photos and will need to send it back within this next week, so hopefully I can take as many pictures as I can before I send it away to it's home.  I might buy a cheap disposable camera and scan them in... you know, what we used to do in the 90's.

...And if you're trying to figure out what the title has to do with my post, absolutely nothing! "W.A.A.G." stands for "Week At A Glance", but other than that, there is no relativity. The "Your Tail" part came to me later on, don't ask how I thought that one up.  Hope all is well with you guys and have an awesome, exciting, fabulous, phenomenal week!

Hey! I'm Bathing Here!

At about 4:22pm on Monday (Yep, about, but not quite 4:22) I walked out and saw a cow moose taking a shower in our sprinklers in the front of our building.  Even Alaskans were taking pictures.  I knew people saw them in town crossing the road and such, but this was the closest I had been to one and I had yet to see one in town.  So much for enforcing public indecency - sure a moose can do it, but if I want to go out and shower in a sprinkler I'll get turned in to the authorities.  What kind of world do we live in now?!  As you can see the moose wasn't even threatened by these "tiny" cars driving by.  She was probably enjoying watching them... as they slam into signs, poles and each other, as the lady in the 3rd photo could have easily done.

It was a pretty neat experience and I guess the moose had been there quite a bit all day, but it was new to me at 4:22 because I woke up at about 3:36 yesterday afternoon.  I'm adapting better to the time now, but it's just the crazy hours I've been working lately that really mess with me.  A three hour time difference is nothing, but when you work a 4pm-12 shift one night and a 12-8am shift the next, you get kinda confused which day your on.  I've had to check the date more in the past week than ever before.

While I was working on my shift last night I had to organize a bunch of past x-ray films.  Mainly just putting the new ones in their place in alphabetical order, but like I said I ended up organizing a bunch of past ones.  All I'm going to say is who ever thought of the saying "I before E except after C" was wrong.  They forgot to also add "and in the alphabet". Goodness, gracious people!  "I" isn't even close to the letter "E". Oh well, I'm done with that, but I thought it was funny.  Hope your day goes great and feel free to comment below.

Hmm Smells Fishy

Well I spent the majority of my evening at the nearby coffee shop surfin the web, sipping coffee and yackin away on the phone and stayed an hour past close. Oops! But I came back to the clinic to a pleasent surprise. One of the Techs grilled fresh ocean-caught halibut and salmon on the grill outside the clinic and served it up with spices and lemons and all sorts of goodies! YUM! I thought about taking a picture of my plate half-way through eating it (the fish not the plate, c'mon!) and then got distracted by the fish..

...and kept eating again. So I have no photo to offer you, but it was just the most delicious meal I have had up here yet!

To all of you that say "I hate fish", you are lying to yourself and everyone else. No one could hate this. Even people that aren't in their right mind couldn't hate fresh, ocean-caught, Alaskan halibut and salmon!  Until you have eaten every kind of fresh fish from every coast in the world, don't tell me you hate fish. :D

Now that we have that out of the way... here is something else that's fishy, but it's not edible. It's my schedule for the next two weeks. Yeah that adds up to approximately 90 hours of work. 90 hours! Phew, I guess if you can do that much for free you know you'll like it for a job. And I've got a whole month and a half left of that, but I enjoy it.

I have found that I love helping animals. I don't think I'll work in a clinic setting the rest of my life, but I have this yearning deep down inside to help whenever I see an animal that is hurt.  It's a neat, but sad feeling too because it's so hard to understand what they're going through. At nine o'clock this morning, a dog came in that was hit by a car and he looked pretty bad.  After taking X-Rays we found that what had looked like a broken forearm, was merely just a dislocated humerus. Thankfully, one of the Vets was able to quickly pop it back in place and we reinforced it with a cast to keep it from slipping back out so that it could heal.  His tail was also badly injured.  The skin was split open and ligaments were visable.  We shaved the hair around it and wrapped it in gauze.  It will most likely need to be rechecked after the swelling has gone down.  We were unable to suture it closed, due to the swelling and lack of skin available.  But, all that aside, he was a super lucky dog - no breaks or ruptured organs. The only other things he suffered from were some minor cuts and scrapes and a few broken/chipped teeth! Not bad for getting nailed by a car. Luckily for us he was also easy to work with, unfortunately his owner wasn't so much.

Well thats all the excitement for today! Thanks for reading and I hope your weekend finishes off wonderfully!

Feeelin' Foxaaayy

A couple girls from the Alaska Wildlife Conservation just brought in a
fox that was having some ingestion problems. "Foxie" was handraised
and is super tame. They said you could never handle and wild adult one
like this, but because he had been influenced by humans his entire
life he was much more friendly. Of course you can never trust any
animal, especially one from the wild, but he was "just the most
adorable thing" as some of the girls said. Unfortunately, he was gone
before they could get his number. Maybe I should dress up like a "cute
little fox".

Aaaanyways, my hours lately have been super messed up. Yesterday I
slept until 4pm and today I slept until 2:30pm only to have to go to
work at four! But it's all good. I was hoping to get out and get some
fresh air for a bit, but I wasn't able to. I might go out riding
around after I get off at Midnight. Well I gotta get back to work, but
enjoy the pics!

A Splash of Fun With a Hint of Scenery

Last Thursday I was invited out by some of the local kids up here to
go out to a lake and go airboating and four wheeling. There were
quite a few that showed up and we road till about 12:30AM. It was
such an eventful night and I saw my first moose in the wild.

We did everything from skimming through the water in the Ross's airboat to
spinning cookies with four wheelers and trucks to jumping dirtbikes
over berms. Water separated the different areas of land, so the only
way to get to the other side was to tear through the water with your
truck or ATV! Note to self: don't hit water at full throttle, it
never ends good.

The awesome thing about Alaska is you have so much more light to do stuff during Summer, but the best thing is that the people always make the most of it!  I still find it hard to believe that I am up here especially when I see the scenery - it's breathtaking.

I met a bunch of kids Thursday night and plan on hanging out with them
more in the near future. People are so nice up here. They're willing
to help you out with anything and are so care free.  And as you can see the night really did end with a "Splash of Fun" ...for some of us anyways. :P

Well, that's all for today! More stories and pictures to come for sure!

P.S. I have updated some of the other pages so feel free to check those out and remember to subscribe too! Just click "Subscribe to this posterous" or "Subscribe via RSS" underneath the section labeled "Get Updates" on the right side. Also, both last night and the night before I worked at the clinic 4 PM to Midnight; both nights had their exciting moments, but I'll save that
for another time!