The Horse Doctor

Beth has for years written a Christmas letter that documents the ups and downs of the Weldon household. The mailing list has become quite large due to it's popularity so this year I thought I would post it for those that might think it was worth the read. It's a bit long but pretty funny. The Christmas Letter Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! All are well. Mom turned 75 and she and dad went on the QE2 for 16 days to celebrate. Dad still practices part-time and plays tennis on Monday nights occasionally. Both have some health issues but are still quite active. Alan’s family is doing well but his parents also have health issues. All 4 kids are at Episcopal and though the monthly tuition check is painful it is nice having them at the same school with many cousins and an aunt, as well as each other to keep me apprised of “relevant” (like Polly, who hates peas, donating every can of peas in the house to the food drive) developments. My boss of 16 years sold th...

We really don't get to do this very often but squeezed it in this year. When the kids finished their exams ( I should say I finished their exams, didn't think I would be doing Chemistry, History, Physics and Biology at this stage in my life) we bugged out for North Carolina . It's a 7 hour drive to Cataloochie and while not the best skiing it was great for the kids. All of their cousins went as well, Katie,Anna, Sally, Tucker and Meg as well as the Stiefels. We had 17 in all. What I learned. 1. Sarah is cautious 2. Murphy likes to get air 3. Polly hates wearing a helmet and 4. Mac is fearless and goes real fast. We got to ski 10-11 hours on Wednesday and nobody got hurt. we only did a 2 day trip and made it back for work on Friday. The bad thing is that since I'm such a last minute shopper it really cut into my Christmas shopping time......but it was worth it.

I didn't believe it when i saw this, but.......seeing is believing. A group of South Korean scientists led by Kong Il-keun, a cloning expert at Gyeongsang National University, produced three cats possessing altered fluorescence protein (RFP) genes, the Ministry of Science and Technology said. The plan is to be able to manipulate the genome so that certain genetic diseases can be eliminated. I suspect the fluorescent protein gene was added from fish that possess a similar gene but it didn't say in the report. "This technology can be applied to clone animals suffering from the same diseases as humans," the leading scientist, Kong, told AFP. "It will also help develop stemcell treatments," he said, noting that cats have some 250 kinds of genetic diseases that affect humans, too. The South Koreans were discredited several years ago when one of their scientists was found cheating on his cloning studies, he is now standing trial. The North Koreans tried to...

While it's been a while since the 9-11 attacks, it appears that the jihadists are still trying to penetrate our airline security. It doesn't receive a great deal of press but there have been repeated "dry-runs" that the TSA have reported and have been acknowledged by the White House. Number 177 is interesting and was recently published on PatDollard's website. I wonder why they have not gone after a less guarded set of targets and remain absessed with commercial airliners. Perhaps the spectacular nature of their prior success. Regardless.....they don't seem to have stopped trying. Suspicious Activity On board Flight to Milwaukee On 24 October 2007, crew members aboard a Reagan-Washington National to Milwaukee General Mitchell International Airport flight reported to a Federal Flight Deck Officer (FFDO) flying in non-mission status that they noticed suspicious behavior by four passengers. One of the subjects entered and exited the rear aircraft lavatory th...

Every year Jacksonville has a wonderful Veterans day parade and this years was today. We have made a point of taking our kids to each one since they were in strollers . Now I have to take them out of school....all schools were out today EXCEPT Jacksonville Episcopal High School. They get out for almost any possible holiday except for the one that guarantees the freedom to celebrate all of the others. I must say that all of their teachers were in favor of them going so good for them. Jacksonville is a big Navy town and was the birth place of the Blue Angles so there is always a huge Navy and Marine presence in the parade. I always look forward to the few Pearl Harbor survivors that march in their Hawaiian aloha shirts but the numbers get smaller each year. This year there was a Veteran Tuskegee airman and a USS Indianapolis survivor( the ship that carried the atomic bomb to the Pacific that was torpedoed afterwards and many of the sailors were killed by sharks). WWII veterans are dyin...

The Instapundit has a post up today about The Worlds Tallest Horse. The horse is named Tina and is a large English Shire......and get this .....she is 20 hands tall ( 4" per hand). Thats 6'6" at the withers and a long way to the ground from the saddle. From the Knoxville News- Tina, the large English Shire who recently became the tallest horse in the world, has now been certified by the Guinness Book of World Records. Owners Marge and Jim Williams have received the official papers from the organization after Tina was measured last summer for the record at 20 hands (80 inches) at her withers. I have worked on a lot of tall ones over the years but I bet that one would be a real bugger to pass a stomach tube on.

If horses could talk

I don't delve into politics on my blog, but this really pisses me off. I hate it when clients want to dump pets. I've seen it throughout my career where owners get tired of the responsibility of a pet. I hear " he/she will require to much effort or expense or the child is now gone to school "and get this ....they ask me to put the horse down, or who can I "donate" them to. To me it's the "you broke it-you bought it" thing. You ARE responsible for that pet. So when I read this article from " The Times Online" it got my blood boiling. I remember Socks the cat from the Clinton White House which was new....usually it's the White House dog. It now looks like that was just a political move as Socks was dumped on Betty Currie when they left the White House. We have 3 cats in the Weldon household....one of them was a "dump offs" at my wife's clinic that we took in. One found it's way to our house after my si...

I'm sure you have heard alot on the news about the new "super bug"( here ) . It is a drug resistant strain of Staph Aureus or a Staph infection. The bad thing about this one is that it's resistant to antibiotics. This really isn't new, it's been coming for some time now. There has been numerous reports of MRSA for years and we probably created it by our over use of antibiotics, in animal feeds, treating kids ear infections and allowing the over the counter sale of antibiotics to farmers and horse owners. Now we have a problem, it is quite likely that we will see more of these with other bacteria. The resistance can be transmitted between organisms via plasmids fro bacteriophages. These are viruses that attack bacteria and can transport the genetic component that is responsible for resistance.

There are interesting reports that the Global Jihad movement may be splintering. The American Thinker is reporting on this now. "In March and again in May of this year I reviewed relevant South Asian media reporting to predict that the global Islamic jihad movement was cracking up. That theory focused on a split between the leadership of al Qaeda and the jihad groups that secure them in Pakistan such as the Taliban.". It appears that the U.S. used this split to set an elaborate trap in Afghanistan. Acc ording to the UK Telegraph... But an observer may wonder why, if al Qaeda had to vacate the camps, didn't they just go to other hideouts in Pakistan? According to this article in the Telegraph : The Uzbeks are a surviving remnant of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an al-Qa'eda affiliate that fought with the Taliban against the Americans in 2001. Its surviving members fled into Pakistan's lawless tribal belt where earlier this year their hosts turned again...

Screwworms were eradicated in the US years ago by using a unique method. Male flies were irradiated to make them sterile and then released into the wild making breedings infertile. Now there is a report of screwworms being found in Mississippi. Here's the USDA report. "Dr. Henry Moreau, State Veterinarian, reports that Screwworms were confirmed in Mississippi on September 21, 2007 in a dog that was imported from Trinidad. Screwworms are flesh-eating larvae (maggots) that can infect any warm-blooded mammal, and if untreated can be fatal. Screwworms are on the list of OIE Foreign Animal Diseases that have been eradicated from the U.S., Mexico, and Central America, and economic effects would be devastating to livestock if a re-infestation were to occur in the U.S. Veterinarians are the first line of defense against FAD's, so please be on the look-out for these parasites. Attached is a fact sheet on Screwworms, and please call our office at 225-925-3980 to ask questions or to...

This video is hilarious, stupid but hilarious. I've seen owners and a few Veterinary students when I was a resident that could give this lady a run for her money though .

A meteorite exploded near a village in Peru monday causing many inhabitants to become ill. It left a 100 ft. wide crater that had boiling water in its center. They complained of chemical smells and sulfur , likely Hydrogen sulfide gas. Around midday Saturday, villagers were startled by an explosion and a fireball that many were convinced was an airplane crashing near their remote village, located in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia . "Seven policemen who went to check on the reports also became ill and had to be given oxygen before being hospitalized, Lopez said. Rescue teams and experts were dispatched to the scene, where the meteorite left a 100-foot-wide (30-meter-wide) and 20-foot-deep (six-meter-deep) crater, said local official Marco Limache. Video link - here

9 cases of human leishmaniasis have been reported in N. Texas. This disease is found in South America ,Mexico and the Middle East. It has also been called "the Baghdad boil" and is caused by the single celled parasite Leishmania. The infection causes large sores that look like boils and usually last six to 12 months. Doctors suspect human infection begins when a sand fly bites a rodent called the burrowing wood rat, which carries the parasite. When the sand fly later bites a person, the sores may develop. ( on line lecture-Dr Andrews bio-seminars link ) For those who contract Leishmaniasis weeks of hospital treatment with some very strong drugs is required. Nearly all patients experience side effects from the drug, which include debilitating fevers and headaches, incredible fatigue, and other conditions including chemical pancreatitis. The best drug for treating Leishmaniasis is called Pentosam, registered in Britain since 1978. This drug, which is based on the heavy me...

There has been an unusual event occurring in US bee colonies recently, it's called "Colony collapse disorder". This is very significant in that %50 of US bee hives are affected and they are needed to pollinate over 90 different fruit and vegetable crops estimated at $14 billion annually. There are 2 schools of thought about the cause (1) via SFGate .com A UCSF researcher who found the SARS virus in 2003 and later won a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" for his work thinks he has discovered a culprit in the alarming deaths of honeybees across the United States. Tests of genetic material taken from a "collapsed colony" in Merced County point to a once-rare microbe that previously affected only Asian bees but might have evolved into a strain lethal to those in Europe and the United States, biochemist Joe DeRisi said Wednesday. DeRisi said tests conducted on material from dead bees at his Mission Bay lab found genes of the single-celled, s...

There is a new Respiratory disease that presents like "Heaves" in the horse. This condition may have been around for a while but not identified as a separate clinical entity until now. "Equine multi nodular pulmonary fibrosis is characterized by coalescing nodules (scaring) in the alveoli of the lungs. Clinical signs include a low-grade fever,weight loss and progressive respiratory disease that is often mistaken for heaves or bacterial pneumonia, but doesn't respond to therapy". Dr Kurt Williams DVM Dipl ACVP at Michigan State University connected the disease with EHV-5 when he found viral inclusion bodies in cells obtained of the affected tissue. As of now it is not known if this is a new variant of EHV-5 or the common strain. Corticosteroids are the treatment of choice but an accurate diagnosis is required since steroids could make bacterial or fungal pneumonia worse. The diagnosis is made via a bronchial alveolar lavage (BAL) and percutaneous lung biopsy....

About 250 camels have died in a 4 day period in Saudi Arabia in the Dawasir Valley. From an Epidemiology standpoint....that's a lot in a short amount of time. The Saudi Government is pointing towards contaminated feed whereas camel owners/traders ( mostly Bedouin herders) think it's something infectious. There has been concern in the Middle east about the H5N1 "bird Flu" and it has been found twice this year. I always look at mass deaths with concern as was the case of the recent Foot and Mouth disease outbreak in England. In that case it was a security breach from a local lab and may have even been deliberate. It is still under investigation. I doubt this outbreak in Saudi was FMD as the animals died so fast, this points to either poison,toxin or a very serious infectious agent(ie. Botulism, Viral (encephalitis, influenza) . They are asking for outside help and my guess is that the CDC already has samples in Atlanta. With the rapid transit of pathogens I watch for th...

Had a great weekend but even with small waves the kids (and myself) had a great time. Polly is really getting her new board wired. Since it was breaking in fairly shallow water she really had to work on her bottom turn so she didn't eat it. We did a mini-surf camp with most of my nieces and nephews there. It turned into a 4 hour surf session. Beth's brother Robert got some great photos of them...some were quite funny.

A long time ago....I won't elaborate, I made my own surfboard. I mentioned this to my kids and they said we should do it again. I've had two Clark long board blanks in my garage for over 2 years and each year I resolved to shape them and for 2 years I got boo's on New Years day for not doing it. This spring I started doing one of them and took my time. After about 2 weeks of on and off shaping I had finished a 8'0'' longboard for my youngest daughter Polly. I then went after the other blank with a vengeance. In one night I shaped a 9'0'' noserider for my oldest daughter Sarah. Since they really turned out well I took them down to Drew at Inspired Surfboards and had him fiberglass them with Epoxy for me. He did a superb job and even put down the Hawaiian print fabric for me. I picked them up last Friday and headed to the beach and naturally it was flat....no surf but we stayed thru the weekend. On Sunday just after lunch the surf started to break on t...

This year the historic running of the bulls in Pamplona Spain turned tragic for someone other than the bulls this time. While the running of the bulls takes place in many Spanish cities, the one in Pamplona is the most well known. The tradition dating back to 1591 follows the release of the bulls from holding pens on one side of town and the herding of them through the streets to the stadium where they will be killed that night during the bull fights. Historically young men and boys would jump down onto the street and run among the bulls to show their bravado. This year there were 9 injuries including 2 American brothers trying to do the same. "A bull that broke from the pack seriously gored two American brothers, catching one on each of its horns during the running of the bulls festival in Pamplona, but both were recovering Friday in the hospital. Lawrence and Michael Lenahan were gored simultaneously by the bull, ( one in the leg and the other in the "buttocks") w...

There was a tragic accident this past Friday in California when a Tractor trailer carrying goats overturned and more than 240 died. Now that sounds bad enough but the circumstances surrounding it are much worse. Many of the animals, en route to clear vegetation in Mill Valley, suffocated when the rig overturned near Irene Street on "The Loop" traffic route, police said. The truck, owned by Orinda-based Goats R Us, was transporting about 400 animals from Milpitas to the Golden Gate Theological Seminary when the driver pulled off the freeway for a cup of coffee, police said. Dead goats were spread across the road about 10 deep beside the tipped vehicle as emergency service officials spent more than an hour digging through the piles of animals, many pinned under loose metal shelves. The animals were stacked four deep in tiered shelving units in the 13-foot-tall truck. The steel shelves separating the animals were strewn through the wreckage. Officials from the Marin Humane S...

Last week when Islamofascist's rammed a burning Jeep bomb into the Glasgow airport terminal there was an airport baggage handler there who is now something of a National hero. His name is John Smeaton, the blogosphere has dubbed him "Smeato" and his face is all over t-shirts with his face on Rocky, Superman, Shaft, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Braveheart. One even has a picture of Bin Laden saying " You didn't tell us John Smeaton worked on Saturdays" " He is the guy you saw giving interviews after the attack as he ran after the burning terrorist who was swinging at the cops and decked him with a kick. His message to terrorists is classic Scot " You come to Glasgow, we don't stand for it, We'll just put aboot ye" (translation: We'll kick your ass). A programmer has set up a website www.johnsmeaton.com and people are donating money to "buy John a pint" . He now has enough to buy 1000 at the airport bar but has yet to show up "...

Saw this one today as I following the Muslim doctors and their terror plots in London and Scotland. Since I live in Jacksonville and surf within eyesight of the Mayport jetties......suffice it to say.....I was alarmed. My in-laws live just down the road for goodness sake. You don't like it when your home town shows up on some islamist website. UK Terror Investigations - News Roundup - July 5 By Jeffrey Imm July 5 news roundup of UK terror plot investigation activities and related news: -- 45 Muslim doctors planned US terror raids . Daily Telegraph reports that "45 Muslim doctors threatened to use car bombs and rocket grenades in terrorist attacks in the United States during discussions on an extremist internet chat site". Police found details of discussion on the British Jihadist web site run by Younis Tsouli ("Terrorist 007"). Jihadists stated "We are 45 doctors and we are determined to undertake jihad and take the battle inside America.The firs...

In case anyone has forgotten, there are still a lot of Jihadists out there that want to kill people. There was a report/video several weeks ago of Terrorists "graduating" from terrorist school and were being sent to Europe and the United States......I don't think it was for post doc study. Now we have 2 car bombs found in London ( during Wimbledon) and today a car bomb driven into the terminal in Glasgow Scotland . Not long ago during the debates for the upcoming Presidential elections candidate John Edwards said " the War on Terrorism was just a bumper sticker slogan" yea-right. NEW YORK — Democratic White House hopeful John Edwards , in a major foreign policy speech Wednesday, minimized the Bush administration's War on Terror as nothing more than a "bumper sticker slogan" used to justify the war in Iraq and "bludgeon political opponents." Power-line is now reporting " Meanwhile, the Scotsman says the authorities are looking f...