This time of year. It’s a great sigh of all the world before a long winter, it’s crisp mornings with pleasant afternoons. It’s the smell of must as leaves begin to fall.

It’s also the time for first exams at university.

Coming into October I would be settling into the rhythm of the semester and going through that first round of biology, chemistry, and anatomy testing.

It’s a feeling of knowing many things, but not quite enough.

Once I had a dissection kit and a preserved frog, now I have surgical packs and as many living patients every morning.

How did all that change?

In those days, studying, eating, living in such close proximity to friend’s, it felt like it would go on forever. But it didn’t.

Like the leaves born of this spring, flourished through the heat of summer, and now old in autumn – so many of those relationships have gone away.

The days of first exams are done, and we’ve all moved on. Families, fortunes, and failures have visited many of us, and we’ve all changed.

4 years ago, my first born arrived healthy and screaming in the Kahweah Delta labor and delivery room in Visalia CA. It was sometime late Sunday night, sleep was minimal that night, and the next, in the hospital for all of us. The hospital sent my wife and new baby home on Tuesday morning and all was well.

I decided that my wife and mother-in-law had everything handled well at home, and we were so busy that summer at work, that I went back Wednesday morning.

Just after finishing vet check, with the herdsman I had been working with for 2 years, the owner of the dairy called me and gave me a grevious reprimand about how we were never available for him like we used to be (because we were doing his work on Saturdays instead of weekdays), and that we better do more for him or he was taking his business elsewhere.

I was stunned. I had just left my wife and brand new baby the day after we left the hospital, and he was mad because I didn’t prioritize him enough.

I referred him to call the practice schedule manager, and that we would take care of him as best we could.

He fired me a couple weeks later.

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Four years later – I don’t miss working for him.

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Now I am working in companion animal services, and last week was my daughter’s 4th birthday. I took Friday off so we could celebrate, and we went camping for the weekend in Bay City State Park, had an absolutely wonderful time.

When I got back to work this week, I heard a long time client had called Friday needing an urgent prescription, and when the office referred them to the emergency room because I was out-of-contact, they said they would look for care somewhere else.

That’s fine.

I hope they can find the urgent care they need. With another veterinarian, or practice, I’m happy they get the service they are looking for. So many people are rude and demanding about their urgencies, and I hope they weren’t that way.

I can’t do it all. I can’t see every single patient, meet every client need, and still have time for my family.

Some relationships must end for others to flourish.

There’s really no place for worry.

So much of my time is spent fighting the inexorable march of destruction.

Every new puppy gets older, and the patient with heart failure we helped with medicines, may die or kidney failure in a few months anyway.

Having the transmission rebuilt, the entire AC system, the front shocks, wheel bearings, calipers, brakes, rotors, and tires on your work vehicle – means the alternator can fail the same night a thunderstorms take out power and water at your home.

My back has recovered from the herniated disk I experienced in May of this year. I make sure to walk everyday after work.I am managing my weight. Now I need to buy new shoes, because I’ve worn out the leather uppers from all the extra walking.

I read and study more, to better understand the practice of veterinary medicine, and I can only do that so long now (because I have to walk and care for my back).

It’s all smoke and emptiness.

But I think it’s still true that we can find beauty even in the most dire of circumstances.

Like Galadriel’s phial, still alight in the heart of Mordor itself, we’ve been given enough to keep taking steps through the bleakest and lonliest of nights.

The summer of 2014 was an incredibly important time for me, and I was not aware of it.

It started with a greyhound bus trip to Visalia California. I spent two weeks externing at Mill Creek Veterinary Service in the month of May. I palpated a lot of cows in that time, ate good mexican food, and had an overall fun time. My dear family drove all the way out there and picked me up. We stayed a night in the Big Sur and woke to the glorious Pacific ocean. We drove the Beartooth Highway as it had very recently been opened, and we bathed in the heated sulfur pools of Thermopolis Wyoming.

I believe that was the trip that we found ourselves out in the wilderness with a flat tire, and a seized rim, so my brother and dad and I had to use stones and logs to pry and hammer the old tire free. It was fun to work together.

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I went to Orrville Veterinary Clinic soon after returning to Ohio, and I spent 5 weeks learning from the wonderful veterinarians. Mel Wenger, Gabe Middleton, and Bill Yost became mentors to me both in life, and in medicine.

I made many friends there, including a kindhearted, hardworking, and absolutely cute RVT.

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Yet later that summer I was fortunate to travel to Somerset Michigan and spend two weeks with the team at Countryside Veterinary Service. I stayed with Dr. Greg Crosley and his wife Diane. They were kind and caring and full of wisdom.

I remember getting back early from one day in the field, and asking to spend some time in the companion animal side. They told me I was too stinky, with my coveralls and muck boots, from the morning spent on dairy farms, but they would be happy to host me if I wanted to spend a full day with them. I did not take them up on that offer, instead just riding with the equine and bovine vets each day.

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All of this occured in the summer of 2014, and little did I know how much those choices would echo through my life.

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One day I would be an owner of Mill Creek Veterinary Services, in Visalia California.

12 months after finishing my externship with Orrville, I would marry that technician I met there.

8 years after that summer, I would move to Michigan and join the crew at Countryside Veterinary Service – as a companion animal veterinarian.

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All this to say that we really don’t know the way our choices will turn out. So play the cards you’ve been dealt, plant the seeds provided to you, and be amazed at how things may turn out.

There is magic in the crisp autumn air and the leaves ablaze with crimson and orange.

There is an infinitely complex rhythm from the ten thousand drops of rain, battered and blown by the gales of a summer thunderstorm.

There is a a haunting beauty in the icey waters of a winter river.

Somehow I find it’s easy to miss these things in the grind. In the neverending quest for more, we may overlook the unbelievable gifts already given us.

Moving to Michigan has changed many things in the lives of this Davidson family. We welcomed a third child into our family (Victor was born the end of February) and I made a major transition in my practice of veterinary medicine – to now care for cats and dogs in leui of dairy cattle.

I just wanted to share today how surprised I have been at the value I’ve found in medical records. I’ve often considered medical records to be of little value for personal use, something more to do with covering onself for insurance purposes rather than a utility of care. Sure they are valuable for transitioning care from one provider to another, but otherwise they never really seemed important.

Over the last month of practicing companion animal medicine, I’ve found them to be incredibly helpful to me personally as more than a way to record my findings, but actually as a way to organize my thoughts. The very act of writing down my thoughts has been unbelievably helpful in organizing those same thoughts. This blog has been useful for the very same reason, so the function of finding clarity through writing medical notes should not have surprised me. Each day is a new adventure and a chance to learn and grow more. Each physical exam is a chance to learn a little more about a patient, and each medical record is a chance to grow in the art of communication and the mastery of elegance.

That was the message of what might, or might not, have been the very first class lecture in my time at veterinary school. It’s possible there were other lectures before it, but that was the most memorable lecture of the early days.

Like most other lectures, this one began with a PowerPoint show, unlike other lectures it was a quick succession of pictures. Dr. Jim said he would share with us the secret to success at veterinary school.

First picture up was of Fabio, in all his extravagance, and Dr. Jim said “if this is your boyfriend, break up with him”.

Then a picture of a Black Lab, “if this is your pet, get rid of it’.

A picture of a nice suburban home, “if this is your home, sell it”.

Finally he put up a picture similar to the following.

“This is what your life should look like. If any of your classmates around you recognized immediately what that picture is, beware of them, that is a prison cell. And that is exactly what your life outside of veterinary school should look like. Nothing extra.”

So many times we are distracted and not focused. We are trying to do many things at once, and not doing any of them as well as we want. If that’s the case, maybe we should take Dr. Jim’s advice and trim out the fatty things holding us back.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us

Hebrews 12:1 ESV

James Bond stories are so much fun. I’ve never read the books, but I enjoy the films. However, it seems the more I think about them, the more I think that they aren’t really anything special.

Let us briefly consider, from an exegetical standpoint, the films Tomorrow Never Dies and Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. A man well trained, in both social and martial arts, faces off with a very wealthy villian bent on world domination. Hostages are taken. Ruses and double crosses abound. The villain is at the very brink of acquiring the coveted resources, but at the last moment our hero defeats the malefactor in hand-to-hand combat and the world is saved. These two stories (and inumerable others to boot) fundamentally share a common structure, but they take place in very different environments.

With James Bond, we have a British MI6 agent that gets romantically involved with every woman in reach. China and Russia are major players. Advanced digital technology is the coveted resource. Naval and air warfare are backdrop for the conflict, and our hero has all manner of gadgets at his disposal.

In Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, we see a man who gets into a lifelong romantic relationship (against his mentor’s advice). The Confederates States of America and the Union are the teams. Silver is what everyone wants. Steam engines and horse-drawn carriages are popular, and we have an ax that turns into a shotgun.

So all this makes me wonder how many other stories are simply re-cloaking of the same ideas and fundamental struggles? The protagonist could be faithful and good-natured, Lincoln, and a part of us longs to be like that. Or the protaganist could be reckless and a playboy like James Bond, and we are fascinated by his response.

Many relationships have ended with a crumble rather than a fire. Not romantic relationships, but friendships. People I shared meals and classes and events with. Our connection often just faded out.

Weeks apart turn into years without talking, and then so much has happened in both lives that it is hard to find that shared common ground we once had. No animosity, no malice, no ill will…just a changing of the times and a divergence of life paths.

In the multitude of varied riffles and eddies in life’s current, be like the sea otter and hang on tightly to those you don’t want to lose.

I recognize now that I have uncaringly offered “assistance” many times in my life experience. People didn’t always need my help, they didn’t always want my help, and sometimes my help wasn’t truly helpful. It was actually a way for me to get my way. At the deeper level, my help was making the situation go faster and therefore getting those things done my way for the outcome I wanted, I think true genuine help could be about helping them achieve the good outcome they desire.

Maybe I wanted so bad to plant some rows of sweet corn, when all along….they were looking for a cabbage patch.

I was in the Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine class of 2016. I spent four years in those ivory walls, studying and training day after day. From August of 2012 till May of 2016, I was dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge.

But this post isn’t about veterinary medicine, or the four years I spent there…this post is about the Davidson family. About these last four years of our lives.

On June 27 2015, Tiffany Marie Fritz married me. She even changed her name to Tiffany Marie Davidson. Now we’ve passed four years since that date.

I’m astonished at how much has happened, in our lives, in that time. Baby, new friends, jobs, a home, and pains too. Unexpected deaths of old friends and also our miscarriage.

I don’t know what the next 4 years brings, but I know Father will lead us all the way, and I’m glad to be going into those years with my lovely wife.

Storms will always be a part of our lives.

In Ohio we occasionally had late summer thunderstorms, in Utah it was the sandstorms from wind cutting at the red rock mesas.

The low tide rolls in right now, wave upon wave, breaking over the rocks and offering up white foam on each instance. The crashing of water on stone is relentless and predictable.

The changing tide doesn’t even seem possible. How could it? Those waves are incredibly powerful and I can’t see any difference between this one and the last. The next one will also look just the same as this one.

And yet the entire ocean/land interface will have moved by more than a few feet in a short handful of hours from now. The tides will change. The ground we have now will be buried in a short while. We can’t stop the changing of the tides, but we can decide where we will stand when the higher waters come calling.

It seems more prevalent today to be unashamed about living for yourself. Something recently on my social media feed said the following.

Happinesses is a simple thing. If what you’re doing doesn’t make you happy, do something else.

Where does that leave pain, and suffering, in this life?

What about the friend going through chemotherapy right now? They are sick, hurting, and taking small doses of poison week after week. Fighting their hardest to try and kill the cancer inside them before it completely consumes their flesh.

What about the single mother, working two jobs just to stay afloat? Exhausted, drained, and giving everything she can give for the good of her children. Then getting up the next morning and doing it again.

I think of women and men of renown, those that left legacies of hope and good, and I don’t often think of them as epitomes of happinesses. In fact, it seems they are often branded by suffering.

Happinesses just seems too shallow a target to aim for in this life.

I generally spend a few minutes writing these posts, a few minutes editing them and finally only a child minutes to publish them. All in all, it averages around thirty minutes for me to blog.

Thirty minutes isn’t enough time to write a eulogy for Dr. Thomas Bitterwolf. Every few months we’d email back and forth (Doc called them love notes – told all his students to send him love notes), I’d send him pictures of our family, and he’d give me some life advice. Doc always said we could come stay at the Bitterwolf Inn (he and his wife’s home now that their children had fledged) if we were ever visiting Idaho. Two years ago, I tried to make that connection happen when we went to Idaho for a wedding.

We never got to meet up with him on that trip. I didn’t understand why he didn’t return my calls, but later learned that he was ill and in treatment at that time. Even though our visit didn’t work out, we still emailed every once and a while. Until two months ago when I heard that he had passed on.

This side of eternity, we will never again have the chance for long conversations.

My grandma Elaine went to heaven soon after that, and it’s all the same thing there.

How can I describe her life?

How can I write anything that even gives a glimpse of the life she lived and the storms that she endured? No blog post can tell the story of ones life. Oh I look forward to Heaven. To see her again and talk for a good long time.

Tiffany, Katarina and I have suffered too. And even then, love has been poured out on us.

Puzzles are fantastic family games. Today we spent a couple hours on a thousand piece holiday scene, and I felt good about working on it together.

There are no complicated rules to puzzles.

You don’t need to have any previous experience.

You can’t really lose when you put together a puzzle, and you definitely don’t have to beat someone else to “win”.

I want to make puzzles a more regular part of my holiday tradition.

I packed a bag full of dice for our trip to Ohio without a clear plan for them. I figured using them for a game could be a decent way to pass some time in the layovers. That didn’t work because we were exhausted during our layovers.

Last night they came to mind at the right time. We met up with a good friend to have a nightcap at the hotel bar, and a nearby gentleman struck up conversation and we learned his daughter is interviewing at the Ohio State College of Veterinary Mebdicine right now.

A pick up game of liar’s dice, using only our hands to cup our throws, ended up being a terrific diversion and made for a lot of laughs all around.

In 2019, I am going to allow myself to write much shorter blog posts.

I’ve drafted many posts and never shared them because I didn’t feel like they were good enough, or because I wanted to flesh them out more.

Moving into the next year I am going to allow myself to share smaller, or even partial thoughts. Perhaps some my posts will be even just a single sentence. Trying to write more, and longer posts, hasn’t been working for me.

It’s time to be consistent, so whether its good, ok, or seemingly sloppy…I’ll be sharing here every day.

“Starting System Fault” – that was what flashed across my dashboard this morning.

It wasn’t difficult for us to understand that there was a problem in the starting system of my F250. We turned the key and the engine didn’t turn over.

We left the truck parked for a couple hours, and then it started beautifully without any intervention.

This happened once before to my truck. A similar thing has happened to one of our other work trucks multiple times. So far not to strange.

What makes it a head scratcher is that there events have been exclusively at one dairy. How does that happen?

Could it be because we often park on a slight hillside angled toward the passenger side?

Could it be because this herd is on a Monday-morning schedule and the trucks have sat idle for the weekend?

Could the herdsman (who is our driver while there) be starting the truck is such a way as to throw it off?

We may never know the answer, because the problem occurs so rarely and it is difficult to isolate and test variables when you have an interlude between problems of a couple months, but it’s a fun guessing game.

It reminds me of seizure investigation in neurology, or syncopal symptoms in cardiology.

I used to watch for the maple flowers when I walked, or pedaled, to the UI campus in early spring. I spent many late nights at the arboretum, walking among the evergreens, listening to the songs from the many creatures of the night.

Now I hurry from project to project. I’m always playing catch up on the laundry list of work items, and yet many times feeling like I haven’t made real progress.

Where are the wild things?

Some part of my soul cries out to hear the sweet summer song of a whippoorwill, to smell the must of rotting leaves in early spring, to see the full moon silhouetting a thousand barren and cold oak, hickory and ash branches on a cold November night.

How did I get here? Living within a thousand artificial machinations, and it all feeling rather drab compared to a single forgotten forest ravine.

My recent life experiences have shown me plainly the need to say no, the need to prune my life, the need to say goodbye and move on.

Frozen’s iconic song has taken on a new meaning for me. It stood for forgiveness, for rejecting someone else’s expectations on your life, and ceasing to wear a mask – at least that was my take on Elsa’s performance the first time I heard it.

It means more than that to me now. I am face to face with the fact that you must “give up to go up” as John Maxwell says. I have to let go of ok things, even things that were good at one time, to grab hold of the best things.

It’s painful to say goodbye to sunk costs. It’s humbling to walk away from a bad investment. It’s scary to cut something off from our life.

Jesus told us, as written in John 15, “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

Bear more fruit. Yes spiritually, and also at work.

Isn’t that what I truly desire?

Pruning must be a regular part of my life for me to bear more fruit. I don’t look forward to the pruning, but I rejoice in what it will bring forth through me.

My news feed has overflowed recently with discussion on the “banning” of the song Baby, It’s Cold Outside.

Many of my friends are raising a ruckus and complaining that people are too sensitive today, and that it is a shame that the song is not being played in their cherished Christmas radio routines.

It’s ok if the radio stations don’t play your favorite song.

The radio stations aren’t obliged to respect your traditions. You are welcome to play the song yourself, if you believe that playing that song is a good thing to do.

In the words of Elsa’s song “let it go, let it go!”. Don’t let it offend you when people protest your traditions, take the chance to learn from them, and in doing so you might gain a new point of view, our even better yet a new true friend “from the other side”.

Maybe after it’s all said and done, you’ll decide to keep your traditions anyway.

The last month already.

We are barely beyond the wonderful experience of Thanksgiving, and close living conditions for several days, with family.

I took off work early yesterday afternoon, packed my bags, picked up Princess Katarina from daycare and got ready for our trip. Tiffany got off work a little early too, and she had prepared ahead of time, so we left Tulare around 6pm and headed for LAX.

Tiffany drove all the way, I slept a decent portion of the drive, and Kat passed out only a half a mile from our home and slept soundly.

After some thick and crowded SoCal traffic, we made it to the airport at 9:30 and picked up my mother-in-law. Soon after we checked into our hotel and Katarina woke up. We fed, changed, and played with her a while.

Around eleven we went to dinner at Casa Gamino, a small nearby Mexican joint. Even though we were tired, we shared many laughs and ate some excellent, camarones, carnitas, arroz y frijoles.

We got back to hotel at after midnight and soon passed out. Susan was very kind to feed and change Kat in the night, and to rock her back to sleep. Around five thirty this morning, the lovely girl woke up and wanted to play. So naturally we were all awake.

I got up sometime after six and took her for a walk in the hotel, in my pajamas. The lobby had quite a few people already who were waiting for breakfast. Kat was just a star in their eyes :).

We met the lovely night manager, Andre, whom Katarina was delighted with and smiling at. Andre told me to enjoy these moments and be grateful, and he told me about his 14 month old granddaughter.

We video-chatted with Uncle Caleb and took a walk in the flower garden.

After a warm bottle of milk, Kat went back to sleep and I am the lobby having breakfast and reading Musashi.

No coffee this morning.

I broke our cute 4-cup carafe yesterday morning, and I haven’t yet ordered a replacement. I went to Mr. Coffee’s website last night and I wasn’t easily able to order, they wanted me to contact them during their business hours (eastern time hours).

I worked behind cows for a couple hours and I missed that rush that comes from morning caffeine. It’s a beautiful flow of energy and focus, and all very jittery.

I felt instead that I was underwater as I worked. My arms were slightly delayed when I reached for a cow’s tail, or a piece of chalk. My legs didn’t move forward like I expected them when I stepped. Even the sounds around me seemed a little dull.

I did however see the larger picture of the dairy more readily. The individual
pieces were hidden from me, but the overall experience came clearer.

I think I will play with this some more, titrate my caffeine and sleep and see how it influences my work.

Last night were the good-byes. After a wonderful full week of family staying with us on Auburn St, it was painful to see them drive off. We had a week together of old stories and new memories, of conflict and resolution, of honesty and surprises, of mirth and tears.

Katarina went to sleep. Tiffany was still at work, and the house was now unbelievably quiet, and a little chilly. I made some lemon herbal tea and put on a fluffy flannel blanket to warm up. I turned on classical instrumental Christmas music and a fireplace on my TV and read from Musashi.

It was very relaxing.

Tiff smiled when she got home and as she was taking care of Katarina, I told her I was living like a 70 year old and I hoped she was ok with that.

She is ok with that. We are both old souls.

I’m a fan of vaccines, a real big fan of them. They’ve helped our dairy cows for decades and saved millions of human lives. But this post isn’t about vaccines.

These thoughts post are about a lesson I am learning today of the risk to an entire herd by extension of it’s most at-risk member.

YOPI – Young, Old, Pregnant, Immunocompromised. This is the term we use when we are discussing populations at highest risk for contracting an infectious disease. My baby girl Katarina is very young and that means we have a YOPI in our home.

Anyway, our dear little YOPI contracted scabies (sarcoptic mange) sometime in the last couple weeks, and she exposed her herdmates (mom and dad) to it.

Thankfully the spiteful little mites are easy to be rid of. As obligate parasites, they can’t live for more than a couple days when away from their human hosts. They cause a raging itchy rash, but they are sensitive to permethrin, and a single treatment is curative.

We took the oily white paste (texture of sunscreen with a metallic smell) and rubbed it all over our bodies. Between every toe and finger and including every other place where the skin folds over itself.

My awesome wife attacked the environment with vigor and washed all expoed surfaces in our home as well as about a dozen loads of laundry in a couple days.

No more mites. The herd survived, and our little YOPI is ok.

I had a perfect plan this past Wednesday.

My schedule was empty for part of the afternoon, and I was going to be extremely productive during those three hours and catch up on my backlog of papers and reports.

Woohoo! It was going to be a great feeling to be rid of those nagging reminders, and to have those deadlines out of my mind.

Then an emergency calving came. I didn’t feel defeated and it would yet be ok… because the emergency took only an hour. I still had an hour and a half of the precious free time (after factoring in the driving to-and-from the dairy).

I was feeling good as I sat down at the computer and made my first phone call. That shiny feeling left me when I heard my name called only 5 minutes later. There was now an emergency prolapae holding at the same dairy I had just left.

The adrenaline started to flow, and I felt more like fight than flight. I went and took care of the prolapse and was hoping I could find some more time to get my work done. I called the office and heard a loud crunch as I was turning and backing out.

The passenger side quarter panel met a strong iron stake, and the thin panel didn’t fare well.

I spent the next two hours, back at the clinic, bending the panel back out so that I could open and close the passenger door.

Time was all gone.