December 28

I am thinking that I started this blog as a way to divert my attention from my thesis that I am starting, but prefer to think I did it for other reasons!  It finally snowed in Indy and yesterday we dressed for the weather and went outside with the dogs to play.  Falcon loved chasing the snowballs while Hawk prefers catching them.
Today Sara and I went to the outlet mall in Edinburgh to shop.  Needless to say the pet store outlet was, as usual, the favorite.  I broke down and bought a papoose for Weasel so we can carry him around with us, as he would prefer so I am sure I will have some interesting stories about that experience soon.  I gave Sara her Christmas gift - a gummy tapeworm.  Some may find that weird, but what's a gummy tapeworm when your husbands best gift this holiday was a book on de-fleshing dead animals and the best roadkill - seriously.  There is a story behaing the tapeworm though.  For ages I have said that the ideal diet would be a tapeworm, although you would need to find a way to kill it before it ate all of you - the onbe downside.  Well, Sara's professor last semester was telling them about a diet pill with a green pill (tapeworm) and a red pill (pesticide to kill the worm).  Obviously after that class discussion, she called me to laugh about it.  Needless to say, a gummy tapeworm was a bit Christmas hit!
I think, before I get into fun or weird stories, I will intorduce the cast of characters.  We have 4 dogs.  Hawk a German Shepherd Dog age 2, Falcon a black lab age 2.5, Weasel and weiner dog age 8, and Parsley a mutt age 15.  Cat 1 is Bongo while cat 2 is Stela (3 legged).  Garcia, the iguana, has been with me since 1995 and I have had ferrets since 1999 (started with 6, we now have 11).  Many stories will revolve around this group of characters.  We also have a variety of other animals for our programs and they will be introduces as the story or situation deems necessary.  We did have a pot-bellied pig for a while and she certainly has a few stories to tell.
Next time I may regale you all with the stories of the "lost and found" Vanderbush pets!  

Day one

It is December 23rd and I have decided to attempt a "blog".  In general I lead a pretty routine life although when I start to tell a story I realize that often interesting things happen.  My husband, Joel, and I run an animal education non-profit that includes animal programs, dog daycare, dog training, and animal behavior consultations.  He also teaches high school!  We have around 60 animals that we work with and take care of on a daily basis which is what usually leads to the fun and interesting stories.  So, to begin.....yesterday we had two veterinarians from Purdue come to our house in order to preform a necropsy on a kinkajou that had been in our freezer.  Joel recently went through a huge medical issue after the kinkajou bit him as she was passing.  We had an original necropsy done but they couldn't find a cause of death and about 2 weeks after the bite (it had healed an everything) Joel began to experience severe selling in his bitten finger.  Long story short - he spent around 8 days in hospital over 2 weeks and it still on medication a few months later to deal with the infection.  It was pretty scarey and involved an infectious disease doctor and the CDC.  Which leads me to the necropsy on my kitchen table yesterday.  The vets came down to take some samples and send to the CDC.  After a tour of the animals, we set up shop on the table and began to collect samples.  Joel helping out while the second vet and I tool pictures.  I can only imagine the site if someone had stopped in to say hello!  It went well and we even have some extra tissue samples in the freezer in case the CDC needs more.  Hopefully they will figure out where the fungal infection came from.  If it came from the kinkajou then the story and the pictures willl even get published!