Hooks and whips and tapeworms, oh my!

So this Sunday I spent a lot of time looking at dog poo. Beth, the other volunteer parasitologist at ARNO had decided that it was past time to run a basic fecal on all of the dogs in the shelter. Usually, we give priority to animals who appear to be suffering from gastrointestinal symptoms, or who are new to us at ARNO. With our limited resources, managing these animals takes up most of our time, so we rarely check for parasites in animals who lack obvious symptoms. The problem with this is that we miss infections which are easily transmitted to other animals and can cause subtle health problems. (Riddle me this, how can a dog tell you it is suffering from hookworm anemia?) So, just to make sure that the dogs were all as healthy as can be, Beth and I checked out about two dozen shelter mutts. It was a good thing we did, since we found a fair number of nasty parasites once we started looking. One dog had whipworm, several had tapeworms, some had hookworms, and a couple had roundworms. One especially unlucky dog named Paris had three different parasitic infections (hookworm, tapeworm and roundworm). Hopefuly, we will be able to complete a survey of all of the dogs in the next few weeks.

RIP Annie

We put Annie down Thursday. She was dying of kidney failure.

She looked and acted like her usual, long-suffering self when Nora and I left for California a week before. When we returned Tuesday evening, our roommate Erin reported that Annie had been hiding in the bathtub, shunning the cooler downstairs. When she came out of hiding long enough to greet us, she looked thin and frail. Nora took her in to the vet on Wednesday. He gave her fluids and kept her overnight for monitoring. Annie came home Thursday morning, and seemed to be recovering. She napped on a cold air vent for a few hours. But when she woke up, she started howling, vomiting, and soiling herself. Erin and Nora picked me up at the lab and we all went to the vet to put her down. Nora and Erin dug a hole in the backyard while I returned to work. They cleaned her up a bit, wrapped her in an old bedsheet for a burial shroud, and laid her in a box. Nora and I put the box in her grave and buried her after dinner than night. We left an old brick as a marker.

Nora took a few photos of Annie while she was napping, just a few hours before she died.


She looked at us like this all the time. She always looked maligned and long-suffering.


But she also looked very peaceful and content when she was asleep. We had her for almost a year. Nora sent a nice note to Lindsey, Annie's previous person. Annie seemed generally happy while she was living with us, and we were glad to be able to give her a nice retirement home. We're all sad to see her go, and it was especially sad that she had to be in so much pain the last day or two. But we were glad that we could all be there together with her at the vet when she died. The method of euthanasia was an overdose of barbiturates, so at least she had some relief could die quickly and painlessly.

Lack of Photos

Hey everyone.

You may have noticed that I am not posting many pictures to the blog these days. There is a very simple reason for this, my computer has run out of memory. This came as something of a shock to me, since I knew I was taking a ton of photos (which are quite large in Kb), but I guess I underestimated the sheer volume of pictures I have stored on my computer. To solve this problem, I am purchasing myself an external hard drive. Soon I should have a whole terabyte to devote to old schoolwork, photos, and other files which are unnecessary on a daily basis, but should be kept somewhere. Within a few weeks you can expect to see some photos from this summer that I have been itching to download and post.

In other news, my summer is going extremely well. I continue to do home repairs during the day, and about two evenings a week and Sundays I spend my time at ARNO. Sunday has become my lab work day, when I go around collecting cat poo and making wet mounts of samples. So far I have diagnosed tons of Coccidia infections, which are a common scourge among shelter cats. It makes me feel good that I figure out why an animal is ill, and be able to recommend treatment based on what I have learned over the past two years.

Friday Cat Blogging

I am sorry for the lack of Friday Cat Blogging last week. And I'm sorry for the relative lack of my posting recently. We've been busy. Hopefully I will be better at posting.

To partially make up for all that, here is Hodag, napping cutely in a box in the bedroom.


I hope everyone has a similarly restful weekend.

Summer Plans

It is as hot as Hades here, and the daily evening thunderstorm pattern has begun. Ah, summer in New Orleans; hot, humid, and buggy. Luckily, I have plenty of summer projects to keep me busy so I cannot complain too much about the weather.

What summer projects you ask? Well, for starters, I am trying to get the house into the best shape possible before hurricane season begins in earnest. I am going to be completing both cosmetic and structural repairs, indoors and out. Examples of items on my to do list include: paint touch ups to the indoors, purchasing and installing outdoor shutters (once these puppies are in I look forward to never having to board up our house for a hurricane) , installing rain barrels to prevent gutter water pouring onto the ground around our pylons, and sealing the fireplaces to prevent air leaks. My summer days have so far consisted of traveling to the hardware store, followed by getting filthy and completely covered in sweat before giving up for the afternoon. I do feel that I am making some progress, even if my projects are not being completed as quickly as I would like.

Other summer plans I have include volunteering at Animal Rescue of New Orleans. ARNO is a wonderful organization that cares for the stray, feral, and abandoned animals of New Orleans. They run a no kill shelter and also have feeding stations in the more hurricane damaged areas of our city. I am going to be a dog walker, walking and jogging some of their shelter dogs, and I will also be donating some time to their parasitology laboratory, diagnosing infections among the rescued animals at the shelter.

Hurrican Season

Hey, look! Hurricane season came just a few days early this year!

Welcome to the world, Tropical Depression ONE.

Life is good

On Saturday I graduated from Tulane with my master of science in public health. Also on Saturday I found out that the Tulane grant which will fund my PHD research was approved, meaning that I will be paid to go to graduate school. Life is good.