Going off-topic today…
For four years, Kay and I have been foster caregivers for kittens for the local animal shelter. We call ourselves the Mackenzie Finishing School for Felines.
However, we usually have a hiatus between December and April, because cats just seem not to have kittens then. We’re dog people too, so this year for the first time we decided to bring home a dog for foster care.
Besides being a dog, Peanut had a different back story. He was hit by a car in January and fractured his pelvis in four places. He couldn’t even use his hind legs. Apparently his former owners felt that they couldn’t afford or weren’t able to give him special care, and they turned him over to the shelter. After a week he was mobile enough to walk around (slowly), and the shelter gave him to us for cage rest and TLC.
When we first brought him home, Peanut (a 1-year-old Corgi/chihuahua mix, we think) was still tottering along like an old man, swaying from side to side on every step. Now take a look!
You can watch a larger version of the video, if you want, by going to my YouTube page.
Hopefully Peanut’s story will have a happy ending soon. Kay and I are going out of town this week, so we have to take him back to the shelter. The veterinarian will examine him and decide if he needs more foster care or if he is ready to be adopted. If he needs more foster care, one of the other volunteers has already agreed to keep him until he is ready for adoption. With such a cute face and such a can-do spirit, how can he miss?
P.S. The title of the video is a little joke. Back when Kay and I had our own dog, Willie, he would sometimes have these short spells of racing around until he got dizzy or exhausted or both. We called them FRAPs (Frenetic Random Activity Periods), because Kay had seen that in a book.
When you post a video on YouTube, it always prompts you for tags. Sometimes it will make suggestions, based on the title. For this one, it suggested “Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching”!
That made me wonder, what would be the title for this video if I wanted it to sound pseudo-scientific? I decided that “Mobility Recovery After Pelvic Fracture” would be perfect.
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An off-topic comment for the off-topic blog:
(You probably got this information from somebody already, but in case you didn’t …)
The Heidelberg Laureate Forum turned their video material into a movie:
http://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/blog/video/image-film/
And it seems like there are going to be 15 travel grants for journalists, though unfortunately it seems to me the application deadline has already expired. Anyway it might be something to keep in mind.