Season 6 Episode 4: Fusion Power, Fish Tanks, and The Heart of Veterinary Care with Dr. Melanie Butera

Have you ever wondered about the emotional depths of your furry companions or the latest in scientific breakthroughs?

Join us on a heartwarming and intellectually stimulating journey where we bridge the gap between the compassionate world of veterinary care and the cutting-edge advancements of science. This week, we're sharing the stage with Dr. Melanie Butera, who brings the touching story of a deer named Dilley to life, a tale that captured hearts worldwide and emphasizes the profound connections between animals and humans.

Our conversation with Dr. Butera delves into the realities of being a veterinarian, the emotional rollercoaster of saving lives, and the unforgettable Christmas Eve rescue that will leave you reaching for the tissues.

But it's not all tears—we're also unpacking the thrilling success of the National Ignition Facility's fusion experiment, equipped with diamond capsules and an army of lasers. And for a lighter note, find out how even a simple workplace fish tank can have a surprisingly soothing effect on your day.

Expect laughter and perhaps a new perspective on the world around you as we recount Bunsen and Beaker's adventures in and out of the classroom, revealing the untold benefits of dogs in educational environments. From the poignant to the peculiar, this episode is a tapestry of stories that celebrate the spirit of discovery and the unbreakable bond we share with our pets!

Dille the Deer
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Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:08

Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zekowski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold onto your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. This is episode four of season six.

Speaker 2: 0:41

We have had a super busy week. Last week was well, it was just very cool. Chris and I co-presented about dogs in the classroom at a huge teacher's convention. Our session was full and Bunsen and Beaker got to come to Calgary, they got to come to the hotel, they got to be part of the presentation. It was just so much fun. The dogs were great and the people loved it. The teachers had great feedback for us. So that's what we did last week and we're actually redoing that presentation at our local teachers convention. That's really cool and all. But you're here for the podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:19

So what's our agenda today? We are going to break down how that team at the National Ignition Facility started Fusion. They actually had a couple papers in some peer reviewed journals that went through the process and it's bananas level wild and I think you'll all be interested in it. In pet science, we have a fish study. That's right. We're going to break down a study that looked at workplace fish tanks. Isn't that amazing? Our guest and ask an expert is it's an amazing guest. Her name is Dr Melanie Butera and she's a veterinary doctor, but she also had a deer that caught America and really the world's heart. Such a good conversation. Okay, the bad joke. And since we're talking about fish, there are all manners of bad fish puns and jokes let's do a couple. Did you know that when a fish meets the love of its life, they say they've met the gill of their dreams? Here's another one. When a fish tries to make you think you're crazy, tell them to stop bass lighting you. That one's bad.

Speaker 2: 2:39

On with the show, because there's no time like science time. This weekend science news, let's take a look at how that team at the national ignition facility achieved fusion. You might remember well, if you listen to our show, you will remember I was gushing back in December of 2022 about this team of scientists. It was actually all over mainstream media and news how they had produced fusion by fusing atomic nuclei together and, while the jury is probably still out, as if this can be ever scaled up to something that humanity could use, it was like the first time that quote unquote more energy got out of the reaction than was put in. There's a little bit of a disclaimer there, because that didn't include all of the energy that were in the lasers. It was just like the energy within the whatever was fused, and we'll get to that more energy came out from the fusion than was there to start with. And that's the whole idea is you want something to release energy, and if it's anything like most of the energy production, we need something to get hot, to boil steam and turn turbine, and then buff was soon. As you can turn a turbine, we all have electricity. The great hope of fusion is that it would release incredible amounts of energy from a relatively small fuel source, thus ushering in an era of infinite electricity for practically pennies.

Speaker 2: 4:11

Let's break down the study. Number one cool fact they used 192 lasers laser Now that's. They aren't like laser pointers. It's not like they went to staples and got a whole bunch of laser pointers. These are seriously powerful lasers, remember they're trying to cause the same reaction that occurs in our sun, a star. So the whole experiment set up sounds like something from science fiction.

Speaker 2: 4:44

To start with, they had a diamond capsule and within that capsule there was deuterium and tritium, which are types of hydrogen that have more neutrons than hydrogen normally has. Hydrogens, molar mass or mass numbers around one. So normally hydrogen regular hydrogen has one proton and actually zero neutrons. Deuterium and tritium they have neutrons that regular hydrogen doesn't, and it's those neutrons that give it the extra mass. And it was heated to 3 million degrees Celsius with X ray emitting lasers.

Speaker 2: 5:27

Now the wild thing was that while it was using X ray lasers and it got so hot that the diamond capsule on its own started to make its own X rays. The diamond capsule it was called a X ray oven. The idea was like X rays that can come in but they can't escape. So by giving it this extra energy, the X rays it was emitting were trapped. It got so hot that all of this radiation vaporize the diamond capsule shell and that caused the fuel to implode like rapidly collapse on itself at speeds of over 400 kilometers per second, and if metric isn't your jam, that's about 250 miles per second. Now think how fast you'd have to be traveling if you were covering 250 miles in a second. How long would that take you to drive across North America? I can't like 10 seconds. I don't know. I'd have to Google it. All of that energy was calculated and the energy that was going into the diamond capsule from the laser pulse was 2.05 million joules. Previous attempts didn't really work. The previous energy of all the lasers was 1.92 million and it just didn't cause the same kind of like implosion factor.

Speaker 2: 7:00

Okay, so I think we can all agree that this is an incredible amount of startup energy, and the fact that it lasted for a split second and burnt itself out means that the future of using this as a practical power source is not going to be tomorrow.

Speaker 2: 7:20

And yes, it is true that that little diamond capsule and the in the tritium and deuterium inside of it released more energy than they themselves had. There was far more energy put into the system from all of those lasers than what was got out. The efficiency of this was abysmal. And then they guess that's why fossil fuels and nuclear power still do so well is because they're compared to other stuff that we use to make thermal energy and then heat up water and spin turbines. And I'm not talking about wind, solar and water, I'm talking about fission reactors and natural gas or coal plants. The efficiency is good compared to other forms of energy. Yes, it's not amazing, but fusion is going to have to come a long ways before it can start knocking knocking on the door and letting us charge our cell phones from it.

Speaker 2: 8:15

Even though the practicality of this isn't there, the fact that it happened at all is a massive, significant stride, because decades ago, this was a pipe dream. This is like oh, maybe we'll get it to work. Well, it worked, so I guess the next step is increasing it more power.

Speaker 2: 8:37

That's science news for this week. This week in pet science, instead of looking at cats and dogs, we're going to look at fish. Normal. We talk about how the evidence for bringing pets to school or to a workplace has a lot of benefits associated with stress reduction and lower anxiety, all of that kind of stuff. But the problem with both cats and dogs is they are relatively high need animals for the most part, unless you have a very, very well trained service animal or I guess cats don't really do a lot. The point is is that ornamental fishes like fish tanks or having fish have a much lower risk than other companion animals like cats and dogs for things like allergies. And also fishes are kind of like set it and forget it. Once you have it set up, they are there to be watched and you feed them and then you're good to go as well. There's there's a lot of workplaces where having a dog or cat is maybe not safe for the dog or cat and you could make the argument that it is safer to have a fish tank. The whole point of that is are there pets like fish, or would having a fish tank have a similar effect on a workplace in reducing stress, and that's the study that we're going to be talking about today.

Speaker 2: 9:53

The participants within the study were university employees and research students, and they participated during their work day, before the work day, during the work day and after the work day. All of the people within the study were assessed psychologically, physiologically and cognitively. The psychological assessments were questionnaires that asked them to rank things like their mood right, how are you feeling? Kind of questions. The physiological assessments were measuring heart rate, blood pressure and saliva samples to measure cortisol, which is a stress hormone. Cognitively, folks were measured on their ability to do this digit span test it's like a short term memory thing and they were also tested on something called the strupe color word test, and that's a speed and selective attention test Like do you do better identifying colors? Basically, all of these tests together paint a pretty good idea of like how is the subject of the study doing before? How is the subject of the study doing during and after?

Speaker 2: 10:57

The idea was is that perhaps having a fish tank in one working environment would be beneficial in any of these areas, and then not having a fish tank in another area would show some differences. Now, what was really interesting in the study, which I thought kind of cool is there was there's a one track that they called trial a and one track that was called trial B, and they were actually kind of different. Trial B is probably the easiest to wrap your head around. The people in trial B were put into three different groups. One group watched the fish tank, one group watched the videos of a fish and one group quietly rested as a break period during the day and, of course, they were assessed on all of those things I just spoke about. In trial a it was kind of like immediate. So after watching fish they were assessed after and then, after that was over they were, they were assessed watching a fish video and then they were assessed resting quietly. So instead of engaging in only watching the fish or watching a fish video or quietly resting, in trial a they did everything and the idea was could they compare the results within trial a to within trial a?

Speaker 2: 12:12

Unfortunately, the results aren't going to be pro fish. Well, there was some slight increase in, maybe, wellness from watching the live fish. There was not really any statistical difference between that and watching fish videos or resting quietly, and that was within trial a and trial B. What they found was is that allowing people to take a break, regardless of the type of break watching a fish video, watching fish in real life or quietly resting probably was the greatest benefit to the study. Qualitatively, the data seems to show that the live fish were perceived to be much more engaging, but unfortunately that didn't translate to the physiological findings or any of the testing. One interesting thing perhaps is that if you put the fish tank in the office instead of like a break room, it allows people to have a micro break where they would have a small break from their work. You know, engage with the fish for a bit and then get back to work. But that was just more of a postulation rather than anything from the data. So unfortunately, putting fish tanks everywhere from this study doesn't appear to be super helpful. But what is super helpful is taking a break every so often during your busy workday.

Speaker 2: 13:26

Okay, that's pet science for this week. Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the science podcast free, number one in our show notes sign up to be a member of our pop hack plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun. Also, think about checking out our merch store. We've got the Bunsen stuffy, the beaker stuffy and now the ginger stuffy. That's right, ginger. The science cat has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And, number three, if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen to.

Speaker 2: 14:19

Okay, on with the show. Back to the interviews. It's time for ask an expert on the science podcast and I am thrilled to welcome Dr Melanie Butera to the show. Doc, how are you doing today? Fine, thank you, yay, where are you in the world? Where are you calling into the show?

Speaker 3: 14:38

from. I'm in Northeast Ohio, about an hour south of Cleveland.

Speaker 2: 14:42

Okay Now. Have you lived there your whole life or have you ping-ponged around the globe?

Speaker 3: 14:49

No, I actually grew up here, okay, so came back here after vet school.

Speaker 2: 14:56

After vet school, Cool. So that's kind of my next question. I introduced you as a doc. You are a vet. What kind of training do you have as a vet? What did you have to go through to become a vet?

Speaker 3: 15:11

You have to do your undergraduate, you have to get your undergraduate degree in some type of science, and then you do four years of vet school and we don't have in our profession, like they do in human medicine, a required residency. So right after vet school you can go right into work.

Speaker 2: 15:29

So Okay, when you were young, were you a science kid like back in the day, before you decided you were going to be a vet, or were you that kid that was? You know you're always checking up the cats and the dogs and the frogs and the horses around you.

Speaker 3: 15:47

Well, both really.

Speaker 3: 15:48

And that was what drew me to the profession in the first place. But yeah, I come from a family of scientists. My brother actually is one of the most renowned HIV researchers in the world and actually graduated from vet school with me in 1985, but went on into a research career and landed in the middle of the HIV research. And my two other sisters or two of my other sisters are doctors as well. One's an eye surgeon, Tina, and one is an ophthalmologist and, I'm sorry, optometrist but does like research and everything. And my last sister is a retired attorney. So we kind of all went into professions so, but I was also the kid that was feeding the baby birds and rescuing the you know, the baby bunnies that that were injured and that was me too.

Speaker 2: 16:52

Did you have it in your heart that you had a calling to be a vet? I've heard that before by some people who go to vet school.

Speaker 3: 16:59

Yeah, definitely for me. That's how I described that too, because I knew that was what I wanted to do before I even knew it was a profession, before I even knew what the word for it was. And I remember being in first grade and they had some brochures there of what do you want to do when you grow up, kind of brochures. And one of them was from the AVMA and that was like I want to be a veterinarian, and at the time I didn't even know what the word was six years old and I did it. In the brochure it listed, like, all the things you had to study, like helmetology and parasitology and bacteriology, and la la la. And I remember so clearly taking that brochure home, highlighting every word and looking it up in our world book encyclopedias.

Speaker 2: 17:46

What is?

Speaker 3: 17:46

this you know six years old and you know we did have Google back then, so you have to use the book.

Speaker 1: 17:52

That's right.

Speaker 3: 17:53

Yeah, so that was when I knew that that's what I wanted to be was. You know? I finally knew the word for it at that time.

Speaker 2: 18:01

So I love that story. I'm a high school teacher my day job. I teach chemistry and general science.

Speaker 1: 18:09

And yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:10

So I was talking to my students I'm like what's, what's this word? And they're like we don't know. And one kid started to Google it and I was like, hey, you know, when I went to school, if you didn't know a word, you had three choices Just never know what that word meant. Go to the library and look it up, or hopefully somebody around you knew the answer. And I had to like try and explain to this little grade nine guy what going to the library was, because our library, our library, is now called the learning commons. It's really not even a library anymore. And I was like, yeah, there's these things called encyclopedias and they're all alphabetical. And if your word was like parasitology and somebody had the P one, you were just totally out of line. That's true, you didn't know any of the P words because somebody had the P book out.

Speaker 3: 19:02

My mom kept our set of encyclopedias in my sister's of my bedroom, so I had the whole set in there. The whole set.

Speaker 2: 19:10

We got a set of encyclopedias for eldest son. Actually I found out it was a bad choice because rate about then was when the internet exploded. They lived about two years. They became kind of obsolete.

Speaker 3: 19:22

Yes, they are.

Speaker 2: 19:25

I was wondering did you become like a general practitioner as a vet I don't know if that's the right word or did you specialize in something?

Speaker 3: 19:34

Well, in our profession there's, you know, to say you're a specialist, you have to be board certified in it, which means you have to do a residency and everything like that.

Speaker 3: 19:43

And there aren't that many available. You know, right out of school when I graduated, my family was going through some difficult times, like my mother, so I didn't go on to go off to another school. I came home and I started at a regular general practice and then, just kind of by accident, I ended up in an emergency room emergency for dogs and cats you know better names and that was like I was in heaven. That was it for me. I got the bug and at that time there was no specialty in emergency medicine. There is now, but there wasn't back in 1985. So I actually spent 20 years in an ER and ended up owning it and it still is a lot of my life the medicine is. You know the trauma and drama of the ER, but I'm not 25 anymore and I mean I did a hundred hour shifts, literally 100 hour shifts you know, and I was owner operator, office manager, orderer, you know, and vet and it it.

Speaker 3: 20:57

It aged me rapidly. So, so I actually sold that business in 2004. And it's still an operation today. It's still actually booming today. They do like even more business today than when I sold it. But I started a retirement job semi retirement so instead of working 100 hours a week now I work 40 to 50.

Speaker 1: 21:21

I just a little bit.

Speaker 3: 21:24

Hey, yeah, just a little bit, but it's seven days a week, literally seven days a week, but not long stretches. And I actually, you know, I'm at home at night, which was for the first 20 years of our marriage, and my husband and I, you know, barely were in the same house at night ever so so, but yeah, so so I still really love that that medicine of the ER.

Speaker 2: 21:48

Was it like a I'm trying to just like picture this ER? Was it like a pet hospital, like you were open 24 hours, kind of thing?

Speaker 3: 21:58

Yeah, In the early days of it, we were open just six at night to eight in the morning, but by the time I sold it, it was the 24 seven, and in COVID, with COVID, all the emergency clinics were super, super, super busy and, yeah, and there were people waiting like 18 to 24 hours to be seen. You know, you had to see the most critical ones, yeah, First, of course. So the emergency clinics have even taken on greater significance in the profession since COVID, but we were the only emergency clinic in this community at the time, and you know you see cases from all over, and you know, middle of the night and Christmas day, and you know, whatever you know, you just have to always be there, and the medicine, though, was so fascinating. So there's a lot of sadness, of course, a lot of tragedy, a lot of drama, but there's also a lot of really amazing people that you meet and you get that great satisfaction of when you have a difficult case and can save the animal, which you can, unfortunately, always do, but it's always so rewarding. Private practice has its own joys as well, though, that I discovered.

Speaker 3: 23:19

One of the things I really discovered when I moved from the ER was the connection that you have with your clients. They become part of your family and you become part of their family, and especially here in this. I live in a town of 5,000 people and you know, you know everybody. You go to the grocery store and they're like hey, Doc, how you doing you know, and it really is a totally different experience than the ER. The good part about it is, like I said, they're like your family and when I went through a battle with cancer 12 years ago they were all there for me.

Speaker 3: 23:53

The clients were just, they were amazing to me, Like they. The one time at Christmas time they came in my husband let them into the hospital and they put up a Christmas tree and they had made handmade ornaments with all these little different patients' faces and like put on back, thanks for saving me, Doc, and everything they did that for me and I'm going to cry just thinking about it was so moving. And that's the kind of thing you never see at the ER, because the ER they come in there and they're like you know, well, I don't really trust you because you're not my doctor and you know I'd rather see my doctor and it's like well, you know, I've been doing ER work for 20 years. Your regular doctor doesn't even know what an antifreeze poisoning looks like. I'm sorry, because he just never has seen one, you know. So it's just a totally different experience, and that personal connection is something I never really appreciated until I did start the second half of my career.

Speaker 2: 24:52

So you, you, you do have a book that explains some of this, Is that? Is that correct?

Speaker 3: 24:58

Yes, I actually started a book the day I was told I had six months to live in, december 12, 2012. 12, 12, 12. Lucky number, not really. And I actually started writing my own obituary and as I was doing so, I had this, which we haven't really talked about yet, but at that time I had my beautiful celebrity, deer Dilly that we'll talk about, I'm sure and as I was writing my obituary, she came in and laid her head on my lap and consoled me you know, really consoled me and I just looked at her and I thought, you know, here is this little animal that has no reason to even be alive, and there's people all over the world that know her and love her.

Speaker 3: 25:47

And it just really dawned on me that she was my legacy, that she was my obituary and that I should write a book of other people had written about her and I was like, well, maybe I should write about her. So I started writing this book, on that night actually, and it got picked up by a publisher and then they asked me to write some more stories about the vet world, to flesh it out a little bit more.

Speaker 3: 26:13

So I ended up writing about some of the experiences in the ER you know as well, so there's some in there. You know half the books about Dilly and kind of half the books about me, more or less so, and it's all about animals, of course. So Perfect.

Speaker 2: 26:31

We'll make sure there's a link in our show notes about to that book.

Speaker 3: 26:34

Yeah, it's still available on Amazon. I mean, it was published in 2015, but it's still available on Amazon, and we've done children's books on Dilly since then as well.

Speaker 2: 26:46

Before we get to Dilly Doc, if you're comfortable, could you tell us a couple stories from your time in the ER that are memorable to you?

Speaker 3: 26:56

Yes, definitely.

Speaker 2: 26:58

Good, bad drama, I don't. Whatever you feel comfortable sharing.

Speaker 3: 27:01

Yeah, there's so many so, and I have your one. This happened on Christmas Eve again about 20 years ago, because I was in the ER and a little old lady comes in. She's in a house coat, it's winter, it's Christmas Eve, she doesn't even have a coat coat. She comes in like you know, like my grandmother used to wear yeah, she's not adult, yeah, normal immemorial property. Yeah, not even like a robe, but these cotton like dress coats that little old ladies back then would wear around the house.

Speaker 3: 27:36

And she didn't drive, she was brought in by a cab and she has this cat that was laying on the table and completely comatose, just completely out, and her cat's name is Millie, which was my grandmother's name. Just, I'm named after her, and so that's very clear in my mind. I remember that, and the woman that looks like my grandmother. And so she starts telling me how her cat's been throwing up for several days and not herself and not eating. So I look inside the mouth and I see there's a red thread underneath this cat's tongue which is, you know, linear foreign body, a string foreign body is a very, very dangerous foreign body in cats. And I said to her you know, have you been sewing? She's knitting and she said yeah, I'm crocheting a blanket for Millie. And it's like well, this is what the problem is. She's got this, you know, under her tongue and we're going to have to do surgery on her. She's going to have to get some fluids and she's going to have to do surgery.

Speaker 3: 28:42

And as soon as I said that, she just started to cry and she's like I don't have any money, but I'm good for it, I'm good for it, I'll pay you, I'll pay you, I'll pay you. And I'm like you don't understand. You know, back then even it wasn't, you know, $1,200. Today it would be like 5,000. And she's like no, I'll pay you, I promise, I promise, I promise. And I've heard that a lot of times, and people just don't ever, usually, pay, and I kind of had an unwritten rule that if any of these clients actually did pay, I would like cut their bill in half. You know, and they never, never, do you know?

Speaker 3: 29:16

But it was Christmas Eve and the cat's name is Millie and she looks like my grandmother and she has nobody else in the world. She's telling me she has no family. I'm like and you, do you have friends that can loan you? No, I don't have no friends. Do you have family? No, everybody's gone. You know I have no children. You know it was a really heartbreaking. It was Christmas Eve, so. So I said you know what? We'll, we'll figure this out, we'll go ahead and take care of it and you, you can pay us later, you know. And so I took her in back and we started working on her, and my colleague that was working with me today was he was all on board with it, he was very sweet about it and he actually offered to do the surgery and and and everybody, my whole team. I had a great team and some of them are gone now too, but I had a great team and and they were all on board with it because we were.

Speaker 3: 30:06

You know, it was Christmas Eve. You know, what are you going to do, you know, little old lady, you know. So we saved the cat. She came and got Millie a couple of days later and everything was great. A week later she sent us four quarters on a post card, post card, and thanked us with a little note Thank you for saving my angel, you know. And a week later we got another card with four quarters taped to it. A week later, we got another card.

Speaker 3: 30:35

So at that point she had paid $3 on her $900 bill and but she was so sincere about, you know, I promise you I'll pay that she actually kept her promise, which clients just never did that, you know. So I had my husband call her and say, you know, you don't, we're waiving the rest of your bill. And she said, oh no, I'm paying and don't do that, I try, I'm trying, I'm trying. My husband's like no, you don't understand. It means you don't have to pay anymore. We're we're waiving it, meaning we're, you know, making it zero. And then she was, you know, understood. So we got one more card from her with no quarters on it but just a note, saying, you know, thanking us and telling us we were all angels and and I still have that card, it just it meant that much to me.

Speaker 3: 31:20

So so I only made $3 on that case, of which 30% I had to pay to my colleague. But you know, it's still the number two memorable case in my whole career. So so, you know, I try to tell that story to new vets coming in, because we're so involved in making money now, you know, and we're actually making more in our profession than I ever dreamt we would. But it can't just be about the money, otherwise it's just empty. You know it's once in a while you got to just you got to save a cat and Christmas Eve, you know, once in a while you got to do something. Because you can do it, you know, and it'll make you feel a lot better about your profession and your career.

Speaker 2: 31:59

Wow, that's I am just. You are a great storyteller, by the way, oh my goodness.

Speaker 3: 32:07

I just saw so much in my life. You know, I just, I'm just so much.

Speaker 2: 32:11

These are powerful stories, wow. Melanie, thank you so much for sharing a little bit about your, your practice. I'm just a little, I just need a second here to regroup myself. Wow.

Speaker 3: 32:27

Yeah, there's, we've seen all you know. I mean I could fill up 10 volumes of stuff. I certainly won't want to bore you with all of them. No, I wouldn't. Yeah they're. No, we wouldn't report it all.

Speaker 2: 32:35

I do have to say that I have. You know we have. We have Bunsen and Beaker and now a cat, and vets are just like the unsung heroes of our life. Well, thank you yeah.

Speaker 3: 32:49

Most of our clients aren't like that. I mean the clients that appreciate us. We love them but, I'll pay with COVID. I don't know what it's like in Canada, which is always the great polite North, as we say, but the clients since COVID are like wow, there's everybody's in a bad mood for the last five years.

Speaker 2: 33:06

It's like I'm so sorry to hear that. You know it's difficult. We, the pet community that follows our big social media accounts that are very, very pro vet.

Speaker 1: 33:16

Good.

Speaker 2: 33:16

Yeah, and, like you know, bunsen's had to go to the emergency room a couple times. He had to run in with a porcupine three years ago, oh yeah. It just came out of the bush and he, he actually kept Beaker from it and I was like running over there to stop right, and it was way too. And he had just quills down the back of his throat and through his tongue and all through his chest, oh my.

Speaker 2: 33:45

And yeah it's like you know, if you had five or six you could probably pick them out yourself. But I was like, no, this is a disaster yeah.

Speaker 3: 33:52

And they don't just come out. You have to like, you know, you have to like you know you know your event.

Speaker 2: 33:57

What am I telling you?

Speaker 3: 33:58

Yeah, Fortunately we don't have. We don't have those here in Ohio, fortunately.

Speaker 3: 34:02

I've never seen, but just next door in Pennsylvania it's a. It's a big problem, but I'm sure if you get down into the more southern areas of Ohio, they, they I mean we have porcupines here. Yeah, it's just, I've never actually had a dog that's been exposed to one in my career up here in Northeast Ohio. But we're seeing species of animals, a pure wild animals, that we didn't used to see 20 years ago, like right here in my yard. I've got every day I've got 30 wild turkeys. Never used to have those around here. They're so funny I love watching them.

Speaker 3: 34:36

We have, of course, we have coyote now, which we didn't used to have, and there are, of course, a big problem, big problem with those guys. I had a cat come in. That was a feral cat that someone trapped outside was injured. They didn't know why it was injured, it was just bleeding. And she brings it in, opens the carry in the cat, jumps over my head and then jumps onto the curtain rod and it's hanging from the curtain rod, just bleeding everywhere.

Speaker 3: 35:01

We have to collect it off the curtain rod, get it back in the carrier, get it sedated. And once we got it sedated and laid it out, we discovered it had the bite patterns of a coyote on each limb, the entire dental chart, canines, molars, pre-molars of four different coyotes on one on each limb, and he was missing tissue out of the belly area. So it's like no wonder this cat was freaking out. He was trying to be torn apart by coyotes and she ended up adopting a cat and keeping it after that. So yeah, so yeah, they're a big problem we have. I saw an otter here.

Speaker 2: 35:42

Oh nice, Well, otters are okay.

Speaker 3: 35:45

Yeah, my husband will laugh because I saw this otter like five years ago and he's like, don't tell the otter story. And I'm like I mean, I was like thrilled. I never saw an otter except in Upper Peninsula, michigan, or my husband's from Oregon. I've seen him there, yeah, and in Canada, ohio is like what. So, yeah, it's amazing how the wildlife is adapting to urban and rural. You know I'm more suburbia than rural, but 20 minutes from here is Amish country. So you know, seriously, literally 20 minutes, we're right outside of Amish country. So so it gets. It gets more rural as you get further south of us.

Speaker 2: 36:23

Yeah, Well, just to finish up my porcupine thing and then we'll move on. Is that? The reason I brought that up was we took Bunsen in a panic, right, cause we love this dog with all our hearts, right? He's a big Bernie Spong dog, he's our hero, um, and he's like a good boy. He's like I don't know how much pain he was in probably a lot like a ton of pain, um. And we took him to the emergency room and the vets like, yeah, no worries, we'll just get him all cleaned up. Like 45 minutes later, bunsen's back out completely clean of porcupine quilts.

Speaker 3: 36:56

Oh wow, that's pretty amazing.

Speaker 2: 36:57

Yeah, they had to like slices. Uh, they had to slice into his chest a bit to get some of the needles out is probably longer than 45 minutes, maybe an hour and 45 minutes, but it was fast and we just have so much respect for you. That's like thank you.

Speaker 3: 37:13

Thank you so much. Appreciate that, yeah, and you know, sadly, our profession has a very high rate of suicides and it's becoming a, uh, a national issue among the profession. Uh, where it's really being trying to be. They're trying to uh get people help and prevent, you know, suicide prevention and even with their new grads it's a big topic to try to intervene and everything. So so, believe me, it's, it doesn't. Your appreciation does not go unappreciated. Believe me, uh, we, we really need it in our profession, for sure.

Speaker 2: 37:49

Well, well, thank you for mentioning that too. Um, we do have lots of people listen to the show. So I think if you do have a pet and you are listening and you resonated with some of the doc stories, like the next time you're with your vet, just tell them how much you appreciate them right before you leave. That's what we do. That's great, um. So the next question I have for you doc it might be I know you mentioned this might be a bit of a hard discussion, um and that's about Dilly the deer, this viral sensation. Um, and it is a deer and her name her name was Dilly. I was wondering if you'd talk to us a little bit about Dilly.

Speaker 3: 38:29

Yeah, looking at a huge picture of her. Right now I'm sitting right where she used to lay down at night. Actually, dilley was brought to me at the emergency clinic. She was three days old. She's born on a farm, the deer farming. I don't know about Canada, but deer farming is a big big thing in Ohio, especially back then. In fact the back then it was the number one growing business in rural Ohio and the Amish are really into it. So there's a lot of deer farms around here.

Speaker 3: 39:02

So she was three days old and her mother had pushed her aside. She was born blind. She was a triplet and her two brothers were strong, healthy, but she was a runt and she was born blind. The mother pushed her away and never nursed her. So after about three days of having no nutrition whatsoever, the farmer decided to bring her into my emergency clinic about four in the morning, never met him before. I have no idea why he chose to do this, but he did. He was an Amish. He was met a night, which, if you're not familiar with that, it's like Amish, but they have a little bit more liberty, they are able to use cars, for example.

Speaker 3: 39:52

So he brought her in and she's comatose and I expected him to tell me he was going to euthanize her, because he started to say well, doc, here's the thing, she's of no value to my farm and I really don't want to put any money into her. Which is usually the precursor before they euthanize him. And then he says but I want to give her to you and I want you to give her a good life. I'm like what? Oh my goodness, excuse me, oh my goodness, and my husband and I do wildlife rehab and stuff, and I really didn't expect her to live, because she was almost dead. Her body temperature didn't even register on the thermometer, which usually means they're dead.

Speaker 3: 40:42

And while I was talking to him, my staff had gone ahead and put a drug in her in the neck vein and was doing life-saving treatment. And so he signed her over to me and we started treating her and by morning she was able to open her eyes. We were feeding her through her IV line, basically. And my husband he looks like a Sasquatch but he's a big gentle teddy bear he fell in love with her when he met her that morning. He came that morning to pick me up and then from there on they were inseparable and so we bottle-raised her on canned goat's milk because regular goat milk did not agree with her. So she had a canned goat's milk. At one point she was on like $30 a day in canned goat's milk. She was not cheap to have.

Speaker 3: 41:35

Our intention was to put her in the barn. We had a barn and at the time we had two horses in there. But she was terrified of the horses I mean terrified and she would run and hit the wall and she couldn't see them. But she could sense them and she would just slam into the wall and then turn around and slam into the other wall. So we brought her into the house. She was only like seven pounds and we brought her into the house and she bonded immediately with our standard poodle at the time, lady, who was about 10. And one day we came home and realized that she had come upstairs on her own and was laying in the bed with dog.

Speaker 2: 42:15

No way.

Speaker 3: 42:17

Yeah, on her own she climbed those stairs and she was probably maybe four no, not even four, she's probably only 20 pounds then. So then we realized she was going outside with the dog and coming in with the dog and she's following the dog around all the time. So we realized, well, she's kind of like just having a dog and she's not comfortable in the barn and she's no more troubled than the dog is. So we'll just keep her in the house. And so she actually slept in our room with the dog and two cats and me and my husband and neither of us are small and I had this little tiny space in the corner and the animals took up the rest, and sometimes she would just take her hooves and just push me off that bed, oh my goodness. And then one day one of the cats discovered we had a guest room with an empty bed and the older cat decided, well, I'm going to sleep in here by myself. And then all the animals saw that and they all moved over there. So we finally had our own bed back.

Speaker 2: 43:15

Oh, that's good.

Speaker 3: 43:16

And that became her bedroom. So when she was nine, well, as a baby, she grew. They lose their spots about September and she got to solid food about September and she liked to swim. We have a pool, we have five acres and she had to be permanent. She was legal. She wasn't a wild deer, which is illegal in Ohio to have as a pet. So she had to have a permit and she has to be within a fence. So we had a fence in our acreage, which we did, and she just lived her life here. She was loving it. When she was about nine, one of the delivery people left the fence gate open and scared the life out of us because we came and the fence was open and she wasn't here. And in Ohio, if a domestic deer gets outside the perimeter for more than 24 hours, they have to be destroyed. That's the law because of the chronic wasting disease problem Right, ok, gotcha, because of the release.

Speaker 3: 44:25

So we were panicking and looking for her and couldn't find her and about an hour later she's just standing on the front porch going where's my dinner, so? But I was like I'm not going to let that happen again. I'm going to get a GPS device for her. And in those days the GPS devices were primitive and there weren't many choices. So there was one out there called Zoom Back, which was about the size of an old style pager.

Speaker 2: 44:51

OK.

Speaker 3: 44:52

And but it could fit on her collar. She was at that time 170 pounds.

Speaker 2: 44:55

It would fit on her collar. It's like nothing to her then.

Speaker 3: 44:58

Yeah, wasn't anything to her, and so I got that and my husband, who's like a skin flint he was like you spent $99 on that. That's ridiculous, I'm not going to use that. So when I signed up for the service, it says we're having a contest Show us how you use your GPS device in a video and you'll win $1,000.

Speaker 2: 45:19

No way, oh, I love this so. I'm like I am going to win this contest and I'm going to show him it's going to be a profit, not a loss.

Speaker 3: 45:29

It's great. And so I started putting a video together. And I'm a daughter of an advertising agent, so I have lots of experience making commercials and stuff and grew up as a family business of advertising and so I put this video together and I'm just almost done and the deadline is at 11 o'clock the next morning, Because that's how late in the game I found out about this video. And five minutes of getting this video done and my computer just died, Just died and I'm like, oh, so I'm like I'm going to go down to work and do it on my work computer and I get down to the office and the power's out so I'm like I give up. So I come home and Steve's standing at my house office door with a package from Apple Computer. I forgot that I had ordered another computer for the office.

Speaker 2: 46:23

Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 3: 46:24

And here he is with this brand new computer. I'm like, give that to me. So boom, I put this video together. I stayed up all night making this video, 10 minutes till 11, I submit it 10 minutes after 11, they call me and say, oh, you won, you won, you won this video. And then it's still on YouTube out there somewhere. Because I was like, what do you do if your loved one is lost and blind and they can't get back to you? You have to use your GPS. So he won that and besides the prize, they do a press release, because that was the whole point of the contest was to generate business for their company Exactly yeah, yeah, right.

Speaker 3: 47:06

So next day we have CBS trucks in our driveway and we're on live on Harry Smith's show whatever that show is Sorry, I don't watch regular television, I don't know it's so good. So we're on live. And then Fox called us, fox News called us and they wanted to put a webcam on her. And I'm like what are you crazy? She just sleeps all day on her bed and it's like people will love it. And they did, which I never thought in a million years that they would. But that's what started everything. So she started. Then you get, oh my gosh, you get calls from Russian newspapers, south Korea film crews, japanese film crews. There's just so much out there that people are looking for these feel good stories.

Speaker 2: 47:52

Oh, yeah, they're so important yeah.

Speaker 3: 47:55

Yeah, and then we realized that she's doing good. She's doing some good here, she's touching people. People just show up at the house and I kept thinking, boy, we have like, on the scale of 1 to 10, our celebrity is like 0.007. But how would you like to be someone like Madonna, prince Harry or whoever? And it's like, oh my god, they just show up at your house.

Speaker 3: 48:24

But the good part was that we got some really wonderful people and I mean we met some celebrities, I mean, but it was just the everyday people, like the 90-year-old woman that came over here and insisted on crawling up the steps on her hands and knees to go up and see her bedroom, and just these wonderful people. And they've got to be friends with each other through Facebook and other things and have really helped each other out through many difficult times. And then when I was fighting cancer, I mean they were there for me every day. There's one lady sent me roses every time I had chemo. I had 27 chemos. She sent me 27 dozen roses. It's like amazing, these people. They're so kind and these are animal people. These are what I call animal people and if you are one, you know what I mean. If you're not one you'll never know. You know, I mean she, dilly, on her birthday would get dozens of roses and flowers. She would get mail just addressed to Dilly Canal, fulton, without the address you know. And she lived to be 18. She passed last year. She's buried here and we still have people come visit her grave and bring her flowers and send her things and they're all still friends with each other. We've lost a few of them as well and that's really sad, but you know, that's life. And then you know she had lost.

Speaker 3: 49:55

We had lost Lady when Lady was 18. And she and Dilly were so close that Dilly was very lonely after Lady passed. So about a year after we got another standard poodle that looked a lot like Lady and of course Dilly was blind, she couldn't really see her. But if there was another strange dog in our vicinity Dilly would freak out. But this standard poodle came in to visit us for us to decide whether we were gonna she was a rescue actually to see if we were gonna adopt her. And Dilly went over her and licked that fur and you could just see the look on her face that she thought it was Lady again and from that time they were inseparable.

Speaker 3: 50:35

So Dilly passed in April last year and Willie the dog Wilhelmina. She died in June of pancreatic cancer and when Dilly passed we didn't even know that Willie was sick. So they're buried together in our yard right under the cherry tree. That was Dilly's favorite cherry tree, cause she would nibble that cherry tree so it looked like a palm tree. It was supposed to be a weeping cherry tree. We called it the weep no more cherry tree, cause she would eat it down to the buds. You know, and yeah, so, unfortunately, that's the heartbreak of being a pet owner is that you know their lifespans are so short, but 18 years for a deer is quite remarkable actually.

Speaker 2: 51:21

So I could listen to you storytell for hours and hours. Thank you so much for sharing a little bit about Dilly. I totally get why people became infatuated with your deer. I think when you turn on the news, the news is not something that makes you feel better about being on planet earth. And I think if you turn on the news and you see a story like yours about Dilly, I think that just changes your perspective. If you've had a rough day so yeah. What a wonder.

Speaker 3: 51:59

For sure.

Speaker 2: 52:01

So that will live on far longer than all of us on this earth is just the good feelings, if we can put them out there.

Speaker 3: 52:08

Yes, yeah, and I'm looking right now. I'm looking at a quilt that was sent to me by a total stranger. It's six feet wide. It has her picture quilted in the middle. That's about two feet wide and has pictures of deer, all around it, all embroidered, little hoof prints, her name. And this total stranger sent it to me and we opened it up and we just started crying. This was why she was still alive and I had it framed and it's here in this room with me. It's just right where I am right now.

Speaker 3: 52:43

And she was such a beautiful girl and such a loving, loving animal. I mean, I always called her Love on Hooves because she was just, she was the gentlest. So we were on, or the clip of her was on Bill O'Reilly and Bill O'Reilly was like pinheads. Don't you know? She's going to kill you in the middle of the night. I'm like she's an herbivore. What's she going to do? Nibble my toes to death. And then I go to work and I've got a rottweiler trying to kill me. I have a wolf hybrid that tried to take my arm off. It's like maybe we should rethink this carnivore herbivore association thing.

Speaker 2: 53:22

Yeah, you just have to look at the dog's teeth and you're like, yeah, they sleep in the same bed at us.

Speaker 3: 53:29

And our teeth are kind of sharp you know yeah yeah, and she, I mean, she was so gentle and after she passed we took the fence down so we were not tempted to have another. I mean, she was with us for 18 years. That's a big chunk of our lives and, you know, I just miss her so much, miss them all, miss them all. But we remember them all too, you know, and she brought us so much joy, all of the things that she used to do. Every time I take a bath every morning and I take a bath, not shower, because that's my moment of meditation Every morning she'd come in and put her head down in the sun. You know, turn on the faucet, turn off the faucet. Turn, you know, and it's like it would annoy me. And now I think about it and just smile how much I miss her so.

Speaker 2: 54:18

I love that story. I think we don't give non-domesticated animals enough credit. You like the herbivores, especially like you see people who have pigs, for example. Right yeah, pop bellies, pop bellies. You know like they're great pets. I'm not advocating that you go out and get a pig as a pet. No, no, you're just loving and kind and cuddly as a golden retriever, you know.

Speaker 3: 54:49

Right and we told everybody you know, do you recommend we get a deer as a pet? No, no, absolutely not, because unless you're prepared to do whatever you have to do. For 18 years, I mean, we changed our life plans for her. We were going to move to Idaho. We had land in Idaho when I sold the emergency clinic. We sold the emergency clinic the summer. She came to us. So our plan was to sell and move to Idaho. Well, once she was with us, we couldn't move. So I mean, if, unless you're willing to go the distance for them, then don't do it, because you're not doing anybody any favors.

Speaker 2: 55:21

And that goes for any pet. Right, like that's the ownership is like oh my gosh, if you're not prepared for going the distance, then do not get a pet.

Speaker 3: 55:31

They're not part-time, one day a week. I go to rescue, big rescue here. No kill shelter, a sanctuary I want to call it sanctuary, not a shelter and phenomenal place called one of a kind pet rescue. And they are suffering from doctor shortage like everybody else in the country right now, and so I go up there on Sundays and help them out. And the things that you see I mean the people that bring these 15 year old dogs in and abandon them. It's like 15 years old, that dog's been with you for 15 years. How can you turn your back on that dog? But you know it's there's. You see the worst part of people in this profession, but you also see the best part of people you know which.

Speaker 3: 56:16

Fortunately fortunately, even though there aren't more there are more good people than there are bad. As far as animals are concerned, the few that are good make up for all those bad ones, if they really do. But you know, when you have an exotic animal or an animal that's not your usual pet, you got to know what you're doing or you got to be willing to learn. I can't tell you how many exotic animals I've seen where the people had no clue even what to feed it. I saw a tortoise land tortoise that was being kept in an aquarium as an aquatic turtle For two years. They had this thing in an aquarium. The thing is treading water, trying not to drown for two years. And I mean read a book, open Google, do something. I had a girl, a young girl, bring in a mini pig in an aquarium with a wheel and say he's not using his wheel. It's like this is a pig. This is not a guinea pig, this is a pig. This animal is going to be 90 pounds.

Speaker 2: 57:24

Yeah, it's bigger than a dog.

Speaker 3: 57:26

Yeah, she's like what. And then I picked it up. This is a true story. I picked it up and it starts if you've ever worked on pigs, they're louder than a 747. They're very loud. So I picked this little piglet up and it starts to squeal. She puts her hands over her ears and says can't you take that squeaker thing out? I swear to God, I am not making that up.

Speaker 2: 57:49

Before we close, we always ask our guests for a super fact. It's something that they know that kind of blows people away. Do you have a super fact you could share with us?

Speaker 3: 58:00

Yes, I thought about this for a long time and the one thing I have personally witnessed and I would think every animal person has witnessed is that animals grieve. We don't give animals enough credit for the emotions that they actually have. We always think, oh, they're just dogs, they're just cats, but they actually have very complex emotions and they grieve. And I witnessed that with Dilly. I've witnessed it with patients, stories that clients have told me. But with Dilly, when Lady passed away, we buried her in the yard. Dilly did not witness any of it. Dilly's blind. She couldn't have seen it even if she had been outside. But she goes outside, she goes right to that grave. She stands on that grave and she stood on it for hours and hours and hours. It started to rain like poor rain and she's still standing on it. I was just bawling inside. I finally had my husband go and get her and bring her in, and I've witnessed it with other animals that we've had.

Speaker 3: 59:09

We had a pet raccoon at one point and our dog passed away and the raccoon did the same thing. It went from window to window to window just making the weirdest screaming sound and the next day never again did that. And I hear that from clients all the time. One dog passes away, the other dog carries the collar around for months, or a client passes away and the dog won't leave the bedroom where the client was. So I think we have to. It's not just anthropomorphizing, like applying human emotions to the animals. I think we have to recognize that they truly do have emotions.

Speaker 2: 59:48

They're mammals. How could they not? They have similar brains to us, right?

Speaker 3: 59:53

Yeah, and I mean we all acknowledge that they are capable of fear. Well then, if they're capable of fear, they're capable of joy. And you see a puppy playing with a toy. You know they're capable of joy, especially a golden retriever, right? Oh my God. Yeah, they're very joyful. You can't be sad.

Speaker 2: 1:00:10

You could be having the worst day ever and then you just watch a little golden retriever puppy. That gets the cure to sadness right there.

Speaker 3: 1:00:17

Yes, for sure.

Speaker 2: 1:00:19

So I hope that's okay. That is a great super fact.

Speaker 3: 1:00:22

Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:00:24

Melanie, thank you so much today for giving up your time. This has been a very moving discussion. It's audio only, but I think like I've had tears in my eyes listening to you Storytel. I'm sure people listening might have the same. Thank you for giving that part of your life to us as a guest on our show, With a really good message of the interspecies relationships that we have with these animals.

Speaker 3: 1:00:55

Yeah, and thank you for doing what you're doing. The teaching is just so important, so important.

Speaker 1: 1:01:02

All right, it is time for Storytime with me, Adam. If you don't know what Storytime is, Storytime is when we talk about stories that have happened within the past one or two weeks. Dad, do you have a story? I do.

Speaker 2: 1:01:13

I'm going to be kind of a rehash of what we talked about on pet chat, and I'm sure Chris might chime in if I forget some things, but we were so busy last week we didn't have the family section on the podcast and a lot's happened. We have actually presented to teachers twice now, and Bunsen and Beaker were part of the presentation, and last week we presented in Calgary and this week we presented in Red Deer, and the whole presentation was about how powerful it is to mix in dogs with kids and some of the maybe challenges and some of the resources. The stars of the show, though, were Bunsen and Beaker, who did really good. Bunsen was not maybe as good the first time, and the second time he was a rock star, and it was kind of opposite for Beaker she was a little wanting to go around and see people and chase the light on the floor the second time around, but they were definitely the stars of the show and super friendly with everybody. Everybody loves to pet Bunsen because he's so fluffy, and Beaker so friendly. It was really heartwarming to see the smiles and get to share Bunsen and Beaker with people, because, like, bunsen and Beaker are our dogs they we live on a farm outside of town, so they're not really mixing. When we take them for walks, we're not walking them around other people and it's just kind of cool to see them interact with the public in that, in that fashion, because, like, they're just so friendly and and they do such a good job.

Speaker 2: 1:02:52

Bunsen today I'm speaking about today because we presented today. It was really. He was just such a rock star, with everybody so happy he would get right into people and they'd like to grab his face. I don't know what it is about his face. They'd like to grab his face. People like to grab his face and look into his eyes and I don't know if that's his favorite. But then he kind of like turns around and he lets them Scratches, but that's that's his favorite. But he went from person to person, the person it's. That's pretty cool. Anyway, that's that's my pet story.

Speaker 1: 1:03:23

I have a story. It's it's not my actual story, but it's something that just happened. Beaker picked up an almond off of the ground and One thing that I just noticed is that the dogs look so suspicious when they have something in their mouth. They act completely different than when they don't have anything in their mouth. Beaker will act suspicious and look away from you and then look at the ground and then when you try to like grab her mouth, she'll push your face more into the ground and then Bunsen will hide it with his paw. If anyone remembers, he'll like put the thing that he has in his mouth under his paw and hide it from you, and then he's gotten away with it multiple times where he's had something where he's that he's not supposed to have, and then he puts it under his paw. Anyway, my story is about ginger.

Speaker 1: 1:04:07

I have had the week, the week off, and mom and dad have been Intermittently in and out of school, but dad's like been been home for the most part. But ginger's been my friend. She's been my, she's been my very good friend this whole week, and Bunsen and beaker have always been excited to see me when I come upstairs, which is something that happens when, when, when no one's home, like today. Today no one was home. So Bunsen and beaker were very, very happy to see me when I come upstairs, because they don't have any friends upstairs, but ginger was.

Speaker 1: 1:04:37

Ginger's been my friend and been all around the house because she can come downstairs and the dogs can't. But she likes to be my friend downstairs where the dogs can't Disturb us, because Bunsen and beaker get very jealous and ginger doesn't like it when they're all up in her business, but she gets all up in their business all the time. So I mean, I guess it's, I guess it's a An eye for an eye. But yeah, that's, that's my story. Is that ginger's been my friend and beaker picked up an almond? Mom, do you have a story?

Speaker 4: 1:05:04

I sure do. My story, I guess, is piggybacking off of Jason's story of Taking the dogs today and presenting in our hometown. So I was a little nervous because I thought I might recognize people and it's a little unnerving Presenting to your peers but in Calgary I didn't know anybody.

Speaker 2: 1:05:26

No, nobody.

Speaker 4: 1:05:29

And that was great. And then today it's like, oh, what if I see someone I know? And it went really really well, like there were people in our session that I did know and they were very receptive to the Information that we shared. And of course, bunsen and beaker were on their very best behavior and I just loved them to bits. Here's Brunson, yeah. So other than that, we got to enjoy a nice walk today by the creek and Bunsen got groomed this past week, as did beaker. Well, not groomed, I took them for a wash and a blow dry, so they were all kind of a little bit, I guess, proof step for the presentation. I want them to look their best and, yeah, so now I'm not worried about them looking ragamuffin because their presentations are done, but they do look so cute and when they're so fluffy and coiffed and Ginger really likes to hang out in Bunsen's bandana when we took off his bandana- oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4: 1:06:40

She's like rolling in it like it's catnip, but it's not. It's like Bunsen smell. It's very funny, very comical, and it shows that she wants to smell like oh the dog, which is super cute. So that's what's been happening this week in our shenanigan Household.

Speaker 1: 1:07:00

All right, that's it for story time. Thank you so much for tuning in to this podcast episodes and sticking around To my section, and I hope to see y'all the next podcast episode. Bye, bye.

Speaker 2: 1:07:11

That's it for this week show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to the science podcast. Special thanks to dr Emily butira Make sure you check our show notes for some of her links and a big thanks to the pop-hack. That's the group of folks that support us, and one of the perks of being a top dog is you get a shout out at the end of the podcast. Take it away, chris.

Speaker 4: 1:07:35

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