The dogs...

...are home! A huge thank you to Karen and Sarah, who drove us out to Byford in Craig's diesel-sucking beast, helped load two bedroom-sized dog kennels into the back (well, Chester's wasn't quite that big), then drove us home with two very large, hot dogs in the back drooling down their necks. Chester sat in my lap and Dixie snuggled up with her Iain, and we made it home.

They got the grand tour of our new house (which has an orange tree in the backyard-an orange tree!), and loved it right away. We had the bedroom all air conditioned for them, and they seemed pretty thrilled with that. They ran around and explored and even got the zoomies- not too shabby for two senior dogs in 38 degree weather! Next up was the full beauty salon treatment for the two stinky mutts. They were both brushed and bathed, and had their teeth cleaned and nails clipped. Only then were they allowed to pass out in our bedroom...on our new mattress, of course.

Because of the disorganization of our move, we don't have many dog supplies yet- a definite first for us! Case in point? The dogs' water dish is actually our new wok, but I'm pretty sure the critters don't care about the details. They are home, and our little family is back together again.

Moving day!

I thought I would write another update this morning because I think this weekend is going to go “poof!” and disappear before I know it. The title says it all…it’s moving day! It couldn’t come soon enough for Iain and I. It was another day in the low 40’s yesterday, and another night with no air movement in our room (as well as another night of being woken by screaming fights across the street, but I digress). Our new place has air con in our bedroom (!!!); to say we are looking forward to that is an understatement. We have a new mattress being delivered today but other than that, our house is completely bare. Like, not-even-a-fridge bare! We’ll have to build up to what we need a bit at a time.

The only thing more exciting than moving, is the dogs’ homecoming tomorrow! We are driving out to Byford with Karen, who’s boyfriend has generously lent us his ute (utility vehicle) in order to transport both the two dogs as well as their alarmingly large crates. I CAN’T WAIT!! I haven’t seen them now in over two weeks, since school started, because there are no visiting hours on the weekends. Iain has, though. I’ll make sure to write a little update when we get them back. They are going to love the house (and the air con, no doubt!), the huge yard, and the lovely park down the street. As soon as we can find a cheap little car, they will love the beaches too! Fremantle will only be a 20-minute drive from our house.

This past week was incredibly busy (I’m pretty sure I’ll sound like a broken record soon enough). I have a lot to catch up on this weekend. It seems like I can’t work hard enough right now to get myself to a place where I feel really good about what I've done. I leave at 7:45 AM, and get home anywhere between 5 and 7 PM, depending on whether I have to stay at school to work or not. Iain makes dinner, we eat, I start work again, but I am not yet able to stay up past 10 most nights. I am still so tired in the evenings, so there is a sense of panic as I work to get things done before my body fails me, haha. I am not alone- a lot of the people I speak to in my program seem to be experiencing the same kind of thing. I am sure as I get adjusted to my schedule, things will feel less frenetic and more balanced (shh…let me have my moment!). I also need to do at least one non-uni activity each week to de-stress, and I have decided that it will be a dance class of some sort. I was really excited to see that there is an active burlesque troupe in Perth (might be a little far, but we’ll see once we have a car), and there is also a belly dancing school in Freo! I will likely pick one of those things to do one evening per week. Also, I am joining the gym at Murdoch, and they have a bunch of different group classes, including modified ones during the day so that students can go between courses. I think that this will help to keep stress in check, as well.

Iain and I celebrated his birthday on Wednesday, so I worked extra hard on Monday and Tuesday to get my work done so that I could take the evening off. We went out for dinner in Freo, then went to watch the sun set on the beach. Afterwards, we went to Baskin Robbins so that Iain could have his favorite chocolate chip mint ice cream, and then we decided to have a long walk home in the darkness. It’s been really muggy here in the past few days, which is uncommon for Perth. That combined with the excessive heat makes it feel more like the tropics. At any rate, it was a really nice evening, and it felt really good to have made sure that we could spend it together with no anxiety on my part about schoolwork. Iain capped off the night with a phone call from Judy and Isla (his mum and sis), which was so great for him. It’s still kind of surreal that we can be 15,000 KM away from our families and still be able to have a conversation on the phone with them.

Last weekend was mostly spent studying, and in between, I did clicker training with the neighbor’s kelpie. Chili is smart as a whip and the kind of dog I wish lived with any number of my dog sport friends back home! She took to the clicker like every other dog does, with glee, once she got over her initial hesitation and unwillingness to offer new behaviours (likely in the event that she would be punished, I think). I never thought I’d say that if I could, I would have myself a lil' stock dog! I will miss Chili and Mandee’s dog, Tama. They have been good little surrogate dogs, but this time tomorrow we will be reunited with the real deal!! Did I mention that I am ecstatic?!

One other interesting note about living in Western Australia for dog nerds is the presence of so many dogs with intact ears and tails. The practices of ear cropping and tail docking are illegal here and may only be performed for medical reasons by a registered veterinarian. Despite the fears of opponents to laws like these, there has been no increase in breeders just doing it themselves, though that used to be legal. There is a very hefty penalty, and it is enforced. Seeing Weimaraners and Vizslas with tails is refreshing, and I just saw my first Rottweiler here the other day, with his lovely long tail wagging happily. I always marvel at Dixie’s gorgeous goofy ears, and wonder why anyone would want the first months of the relationship with their new puppy to include pain and discomfort for their new companion?

An interesting side note for my pit bull peeps: There are breed restrictions here on American Pit Bull Terriers, but NOT American Staffordshire Terriers or Staffordshire Bull Terriers. Back home these are usually lumped together under the “pit bull” umbrella.  The restrictions here do not involve mandatory spay/neuter, and you can still sell them provided you inform buyers that they are restricted. This means that they must be muzzled at all times and wear a special collar that identifies them. This law, in contrast to the docking/cropping laws, is poorly enforced…when everybody’s grandmother is walking her little Staffy Bull or AmStaff X down the street, and the dogs here frequently look so non-descript, I just don’t know how this would be expected to work. Breed specific legislation is useless and discriminatory anywhere you go in the world.

On the other hand, ex-racing greyhounds have a terrible reputation and must be muzzled under law in public. How’s that for a shocker! These dogs are generally very placid, gentle, and quiet. Some come equipped with a substantial prey drive, and are not safe with small animals, cats, and/or small dogs, but you can say this for individuals of all breeds. Greys have this kind of dignified elegance that I really appreciate. Still, they have suffered some of the same PR issues as pit bull-type dogs, which is to say that when a greyhound kills a cat or small dog as the result of an irresponsible owner, people wring their hands and cry out “won’t someone please think of the children!” There is a massive greyhound racing industry here in Australia, and WA is no exception. I have heard that the industry spits out dogs to the tune of 90,000 per year. Yikes. So who’s really the victim here?

Oops, looks like I went off on a bit of a dog tangent there! Shocking, I know. What else…I have a weird bite on my foot that I got at night. It was really painful, and then itchy. I’m not sure what’s worse- seeing something bite you, or discovering a nasty bite and not knowing what inflicted it, or when. As long as it’s not from the ubiquitous but dangerous redback spider, I’m happy. Anyways, I should get back to packing here. I also want to mention that I am behind on responding to emails from people, but that I will get to them! I appreciate the correspondence so much. Thinking about all of you back home and sending lots of love. Until next time!

First week of vet school

Last weekend, Iain and I took it easy- sort of the calm before the storm, I guess. We spent Sunday in Fremantle (Freo, to the locals), which is a beautiful little port town on the Indian Ocean. It’s only about a 20-minute bus ride for us from our neighborhood, so we tend to spend a fair bit of time there. Freo has great shopping, restaurants, and beaches (I can’t wait until Chester gets a taste of the dog beach!). It’s quite a trip to be down at South Beach and watch the shark-spotting helicopters cruise up and down…a little disconcerting, but I’m grateful nonetheless! We have also taken to visiting the weekend markets (kind of like a cheesier, more lurid Granville Island) to buy our fruits and vegetables. We left on Sunday afternoon laden with a bounty of fragrant passion fruits, watermelon, mangos, nectarines, and peaches, among many others. We also try to get in a good sunset-viewing from Bathers Beach at least once a week. Last weekend, while the sun dipped below the horizon and the sky turned a brilliant orange, we watched bottlenose dolphins frolic about no more than 50m offshore. It was magical.

One of the best pieces of news that we could receive, the night before I started school at that, was that we were offered our first (and only, by that point) choice in houses to rent! We are completely over the moon about it. It’s clean, comfortable, and our landlords are wonderful people. We signed the lease on Tuesday evening and we move in next Saturday. Next weekend will be a big one- moving day on Saturday, and picking up the dogs on Sunday!! We are going to have a “welcome home” celebration for the dogs Sunday night. It will be such a relief and a joy to have our little family back together again.

OK, now for the school stuff! Monday heralded my first day of official vet school classes at Murdoch, and it has been full steam ahead since then. The semester begins with physiology/histology, anatomy, biochemistry, and an interesting course called veterinary professional life (VPL), which focuses mainly on the “soft skills” that are so essential to being an excellent veterinarian. Our VPL lecture series brings in a new vet speaker each week from a variety of areas, so I will really enjoy that. Having classes all day is definitely something to get used to all over again! I am so excited and thrilled to finally be here. I have met a whole bunch of wonderful people, and really feel the sense of camaraderie that comes with embarking together on an intensely challenging program for the next 5 years of our lives. There was a membership drive for the special interest groups on Thursday, and I have officially joined the wildlife, bovine, surgery, and animal welfare groups. The wildlife group is very active, and some of the activities on the horizon include a raptor handling workshop in Margaret River, and wildlife post mortem workshops, where a local rehab facility brings in animals which have not survived to be examined and dissected by students.

Of course, one of the other things I want to do is hook up with a group here in Western Australia whose mandate is similar to my favorite group back home, the Canadian Animal Assistance Team. Sure enough, one of my classmates told me about Animal Management in Rural and Remote Indigenous Communities (AMRRIC). I will admit to getting a little excessively excited that this group exists! Vets Beyond Borders is active here too, and they appear to work primarily in India. India is also on my list of places to visit, to get a sense of and to hopefully be involved with the extremely successful Animal Birth Control (ABC) projects that have been in place in parts of the country for many years. These groups focus on sterilization of street dogs, as well as vaccination and parasite control. Dog rabies, in particular, kills more people in India each year than anywhere else in the world.

First things first, though. At the moment, my priorities have to be the distal forelimb of the dog, enzyme kinetics, and nerve conduction velocity. Still, I love that we are getting right into clinical material as well, right from the start. My anatomy lab last week focused on radiography, and I felt grateful for the very patient vets that I have worked with in the past who have explained images to me and allowed me to have a crack at sorting out what I’m looking at. We were also assigned our group term projects in physiology, and my group will be researching acute pancreatitis in a dog. After seeing so much of that at Vancouver Animal Emergency Clinic, it will be really fascinating to dive into the physiological basis of this disease. One of my friends’ group was assigned GDV, commonly termed “bloat”, in a dog- as a member of the number one breed affected, Dixie Dane was promptly offered up as an examination subject!

This weekend, I will be studying to ensure that I am caught up before we start some heavier topics and practicals next week. Sunday evening though, Iain and I are going into the city to meet up with some friends, so that will be a nice break. Next week is also Iain’s birthday, so we have planned something nice to do on Wednesday evening. I have been a little homesick this past week, and it seems to go in waves. My family and some good friends were really there for me this week, so I really appreciate that. I had a one-liner, “just thinking of you” message that arrived exactly at the right moment, on one of my harder days. I know I also need to catch up a bit on sleep...the past few nights have been really hot and we don't have air conditioning in our room. We sleep, instead, with frozen bottles of water. Thursday night, there was an incident across the street from us whereby there was screaming, shouting of death threats, and car windows being smashed. Iain called the police, and they arrived shortly after that. Later on that night, another incident occurred in the street, and it was my turn to phone the police. The emergency number in Australia is not 911, but 000. It's interesting because you have to say what suburb and state you are in prior to being connected, whereas in Vancouver 911 gets you a Vancouver dispatcher. Ah, cultural differences! 

Occasional homesickness, anxiety, and police incidents aside, Iain and I are really, really happy to be here. It was the right decision, and I think that will only become more apparent as we settle into our new life. 

"Discoverers Welcome"

I was up really early this morning, so figured I’d do a bit of writing. The title of this post is what was written on my carry bag after I purchased my textbooks at school the other day, under the Murdoch crest. I liked it! Anyways, about our time here so far: The first day that we arrived in Perth (a Friday), we walked around all day to get our bearings. It was close to 44 degrees Celsius and after arriving at 6:30 in the morning, we’d vowed to stay up until a somewhat reasonable hour to try to kick the inevitable jet lag. After a long day of wandering (“don’t stop walking. Just never stop walking!”), we ended up at Kings Park, which is a huge area of “bush land” right there in the city. It is absolutely beautiful, and we saw a ton of birds, including: Australian magpies, rainbow lorikeets, little corellas, galahs, willy wagtails, wattle birds, and many more. We also spotted several of what looked like little skinks- I still have to try to find out the species. I think Kings Park warrants another visit sometime soon, when a) we have the dogs back b) it’s a more reasonable temperature and c) we aren’t running on empty after about 60 hours with no sleep! Iain and I were both blown away by the parrot species here. In Vancouver, we have pigeons and crows at the park. Here, you’ll find flocks of parrots; no big deal. It does make me cringe even more when I consider keeping cage birds as pets. These guys need to fly!

Transit here is pretty decent, if you happen to be close to or right on a transit line. The suburbs (there are tons and tons of them!) are very spread out, so it makes getting around a time-intensive process if you aren’t right where you need to be. We had come here fully intending not to have a car, and to just use transit. We are now pretty sure that we will likely need to pick up an old beater, especially because we have the dogs. That will probably come after we’ve settled in a place, and I still intend to use transit to get to school. Iain and I both purchased “SmartRider” cards, which get you up to 25% off the regular fare. For me, as a full time tertiary student, I get 25% off of the concession fare, which ends up being a significant savings. Right now, we are living in Hilton, which is a bit of a sketchy neighborhood. It’s about halfway between the university and Freo (the beach town!), and just a ten-minute walk to the bus stop on South Street. That’s the street that Murdoch is on, so it’s just a 10-15 minute ride to school from there.

Perth and its surrounding areas are quite beautiful. It is a temperate, Mediterranean climate, though it feels a little tropical with the palm trees everywhere, and the heat. We've heard that the winters have been pretty dry for the past few years, and the temperature apparently hovers on average between about 15-20 C. It seems really weird to me to have a winter that is that warm, with so little rain! As such, water is expensive here, and is one of the utilities to contend with when renting a place. It's why we don't want a big, grassy garden- tenants are responsible for the care and maintenance (including watering) of said garden! 

One of our favorite things to do has been to visit the dogs in quarantine. We miss them a ton, and wish they could be here with us right now, but the 30-day quarantine period does give us time to find a place. Byford Quarantine Station is unsurprisingly located in Byford, which is about 40 KM outside of the city. For us, that translates to 3 buses, 1 train, and a total of 3 hours each way to get to the pups for our one-hour visiting period. The upside is that Byford is very rural, so we have seen wild grey kangaroos every time we've been there. We heard our first laughing kookaburras there, as well! It was also pretty cool to see a hazard road sign that simply said “bandicoots”.

The staff at Byford is lovely, and we feel confident that the dogs are receiving great care while they are there. Still, it’s a kennel. Chester and Dixie are sharing accommodation, which is nice for them and which will make their time there less lonely and more bearable. The first week we were there, the dogs were on their 7-day vet hold, so couldn’t leave their kennel. By last week, they had graduated to being able to use the exercise yards, which is fantastic for them. I did some range-of-motion exercises with Chester’s legs, and a bunch of massaging. I think that the lack of exercise has made him a little extra stumbly, but when he was able to run around a bit, he quickly regained some of his balance and coordination.

I can’t wait to get them back. The major issue for us right now is lack of a permanent place. This has been incredibly frustrating, but we are no strangers to lack of pet friendly housing options! The difference here though is that we don’t have anyone (parents!) to fall back on. We pick the dogs up from Byford on February 27^th, and we need a place to take them. We are waiting anxiously to hear about one place that would be perfect for us, and we will know by tomorrow. We have several strikes against us (I am a student and Iain doesn’t have a job yet, we have two big dogs, we’re younger than they would have liked, etc.), but the couple letting the place really liked us. We’ve done absolutely everything possible, so now it’s out of our hands. It would be nice though to get some good news for my first day of school!

Last Thursday, I had my vet school orientation, and met my fellow students for the first time. I LOVED it. Before it started I was a little worried that I would be a lot older compared with everyone else. In Australia, as with the UK, students can attend vet and medical programs almost right out of high school, after just one intensive year of prerequisites. Many of the international students, on the other hand, seem to be closer to my age or older. Age really doesn’t matter, either- I think that vet school is a pretty good equalizer! People are so nice, and I think that many of us had those “first day of high school” nerves. I have met people from all over Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, the UK, Canada, the States…it’s all very cool.

I will be joining some special interest groups on campus as well, including the wildlife, animal welfare, and veterinary surgery groups. I will also be joining the porcine and bovine groups, because I know less about pigs and cattle, relative to some of my other favored species. I will be taking things one day at a time though, and not taking on too much all at once. They keep greyhounds here at the teaching hospital, for blood donation (greyhounds are universal blood donors) and for student palpation/auscultation work. They adopt them out after they have been “retired”…uh oh! Greys are my other favorites, next to the pit bull breeds. Monday I start first semester off with a bang, at 8:30. I have an Anatomy lecture, but other than that, the day is pretty heavy on the Biochem. I have two hours of lecture-type stuff, and my lab. Looking at my jam-packed schedule, I haven't been in class this much since high school.

I just can’t believe I’m finally here. I can safely say that I will be thrilled when school is the major stressor…school stuff I can handle. Goodness knows I’ve been there before, at least to some degree. It’s the “hey, what about a house to live in?’ stuff that can wake me out of a dead sleep in the middle of the night. Still, we’ll manage, one day at a time!

The Antipodean adventure begins!