Gross Things In Your Life: Rated for Gross Factor: Warning

You know, out of all that, what grosses me out is people being too dumb not to know how dangerous it is to do surgery when the subject of said surgery has eaten.

Do vets not explain properly WHY not to feed the beasties? Is the average human so dumb they can't take it in?

(Rant warning)

It reminds me of the utter frustration followed by rage I felt at a one-time housemate who had regular bouts of some pelvic infection or other.

I'd be woken from time to time at some ungodly hour of the morning to ferry her into the local ER, in agony. I'd wait patiently for hours with her, tending to her vomiting and such. She'd be given antibiotics and solemnly warned to take the course. I'd miss whatever the hell I was supposed to be doing that morning....lectures/tutorials/placement.....no problem, I thought, friend in need and all...

Then, one day, a couple of weeks after the latest bout, I was chatting to her in her room, and happened to see a half-used packet of antibiotics sitting on a prescription.

You guessed it....**** for brains (who had been a teacher until she ran off with her Principal's husband....may I say my friends seem to have a penchant for such things...I have another friend who also ran off with HIS Principal's husband, thus becoming a legend to every gay male chalkie in my state's education department, but I digress...) had taken half the first course, and not bothered to fill the prescription for the second course.

Upon questioning, I discovered that this was her normal behaviour. I explained to her the problems associated with such behaviour and was dismissed with a wave...."I take them until I feel better". I explained again, adding that the episodes of agony and such would continue, and likely get worse.....no effect.

I never could refuse to take the wretched being to hospital when she needed it, but I was silently cursing her and hoping her ovaries rotted, because she ought never to bring forth children, being so dumb and all.

Vets? We don't have time to talk to the people. Seriously. I show up at 8 and work without break or sitting down except to look into a microscope for the next 10 hours. My boss works longer hours. 'Tis the nature of trying to minister to run an open-admission shelter and perform about 50 surgeries/week at very low cost for the poor and the parsimonious. But I've overheard the phone conversations, and they are clearly instructed on what to do.

The issue is that we are not generally dealing with conscientious animal owners -- we frequently discount our already rock-bottom services for services as a means of persuading owners who are on the fence as to whether to have their animals sterilized; pit-bulls especially are discounted, as unwanted pits represent about a third of the dogs who come through our doors -- or with people who are especially suited to following directions or remembering things. Our city provides a lot of services to people who are ill-equipped to take care of themselves, and for better of for worse these folks frequently have animals who require our services in one way or another.

That said, it's really not as bad as it sounds. Months go by without an animal vomiting during surgery, and those that due almost never suffer consequences (on account of breathing through an endotracheal tube with a properly inflated cuff that protects their airway even more effectively than does a functioning epiglottis). Dogs who aspirate tend to have an esophageal motility defect and do so when they are not anesthetized. Still fasting is good practice, and it's ever-important to cover one's ass.

I'd rather their critters be puking in our kennels than out ******* each other and making the next bumper crop of abandoned puppies and kittens.

Oh, I am not arguing that desexed beasties, especially with dim bulb owners, are better.

I am simply decrying human stupidity.

I'm in a bad mood today, and I have to go to work and deal with the munchkin casualties of such.

If I were a cat, I'd have my ears flattened and my tail fluffed up.

Mice, watch yer bums!

The grossest thing ever was my dog Shannon eating snacks out of the cat's litter box and then puking all over the floor. I haven't been able to eat a Baby Ruth since.

Recently, the big roaches began invading my home. None stayed too long, because they were easy to kill off. My dog loves to torture them to death, saving me the trouble, for the most. Then I discovered a few young ones, meaning, some had made a permanent home. I took about three parts cornmeal, three parts sugar, and one part boric acid, mixed it up, and set it in places we and the dogs never touch. Wihin a day, the roaches were gone.

Pdog - it's not just poor and uneducated pet owners who do dimwit things. A family member has 2 dogs and two cats, they both feast on trash and cat poop. They finally have a set up that bars the dogs from getting into the cat box (unless there's a thunderstorm. Somehow only then can the pointers fit through the cat door to the basement). And they do cover the kitchen and bathroom bins. Incomprehensively, they don't have covered trash cans in the rest of the rooms (bedrooms). The dogs routinely get into the trash and eat plastic bags, tissues, and other nasty bits of trash (like diapers when the kids were babies). They generally don't throw it up, but the back yard is interesting to poke around in.

Oh good grief, does my dog like to get into the garbage! When we are not home, all the doors to the bathrooms and bedrooms are closed because dispite our best efforts (trash cans with lids) the dog still gets into them and I find long lengths of tissue and paper in the poo outside. What is the obsession with eating paper?? I don't get it.

Here's my gross out story.

We recently moved to a new house with a nice backyard. Once a week I go out and collect the droppings and put them in a plastic bag. Usually I take the bag straight to the garbage in the garage but this particular day I was running late and left the bag on the ground outside. Fast forward a week, hubby and I were out doing lawn work and I was again picking up the poo. He goes to move the bag and suddenly steps back. I look....there are thousands of maggots squiggling around in the bag. I have never seen so many little tiny wriggling things in my life. Of couse, I being the one with the iron stomach, pick the bag up and put it in another bag closing it tightly and taking it to the curb. They might not have lived long but they sure feasted while they did.

Maybe someday we'll talk about maggots in living animals.

Someday. Not today.

Oh god no!! Not flystrike in sheep!!!!

That's truly terrible.

Sheep? I don't know sheep from Shinola. Did have flystrike in the family sheepDOG when I was a teenager, though. But not what I had in mind...

I know from sheep.

Maggots get used for cleaning terrible wounds and such sometimes now...in humans.

They (or the species they use) only eat dead flesh, so they clean things up nicely.

Flystrike maggots seem to eat the whole caboose, though.

Treating the poor sheep is terrible.

Truly gross is having to shear them. Squashed sliced and diced maggotts, rotting wool and skin flying everywhere, into your hair, down the front of the Jackie Howe into your face eyes.

Hence the joys of crutching.

Then there is mulesing. Now THAT is gross

Never seen that anywhere.

Isn't it being outlawed?

I'm not finding anything about it being outlawed in my surfing.

Seems a wee bit harsher than dehorning calves but with the bonus that it actually serves a legitimate purpose (I've met plenty of folks with experience with horned and dehorned cattle who proclaim that the former do not present a greater risk to people, themselves, or each other then the latter).

yes.... ummm phased out under pressure from Scandinavian and European wool buyers might be a better description. It will take some 4-5 years to for young mulsed sheep to live out their useful wool producing lives.
All the big sheep stations might bleat about the damage flystrike does but it (mulesing) is definitely a cost cutting measure. ie They don't have to crutch twice a year and dip less often, combined with mustering costs that makes a BIG difference when your talking 20,000 sheep. we don't see much of it in Victoria as flock sizes are generally a smaller.

Speaking of grossssss, mulsed sheep are prone to skin cancers as well. I saw a few when I worked the Wagga saleyards. They came in from the west of the Riverina.

Well, it must be terribly painful...but the key thing is it became the focus of foreign animal right's activists (who'd prolly never seen the horrors of flystrike and had no idea of the size of Australian sheep stations and the difficulties of really being able to check stock frequently enough to stop them being tortured by that) and I think they threatened the overseas lamb and wool markets enough for the industry to respond.

As I said, I have never seen it being used, and crutching and good stock care seemed to do the job pretty well (sheep I saw with strike were kind of unwell, and had sort of wandered off a bit, and were harder to find.)

I cannot see any reason for a horribly painful option when a less nasty one and reasonable management practice does the job. I have heard that argued by sheep farmers...that mulesing is cruel and unnecessary.


RSPCA on it:

"15/10/2004
Subject STATEMENT FROM RSPCA AUSTRALIA REGARDING MULESING OF SHEEP.
Text RSPCA Australia does not endorse or accept mulesing as an essential sheep husbandry procedure.

In particular geographical locations, where there is a high risk of flystrike and it has been established that there is absolutely no acceptable alternative to mulesing, the RSPCA considers mulesing a necessary means of eliminating or minimising the pain and suffering caused by flystrike.

In these instances, the mulesing must be performed by an experienced and competent person.

Routine mulesing should be performed on appropriately restrained lambs of no more than 12 weeks of age. If it is necessary to conduct mulesing on an older sheep, it must also be properly restrained, an anaesthetic or analgesic administered, and appropriate post-operative procedures employed to ensure rapid healing.

RSPCA Australia strongly supports ongoing research into safe and humane alternatives to mulesing for the prevention of flystrike and encourages industry to treat this as a priority.

RSPCA Australia is an animal welfare organisation that works to prevent cruelty to animals by actively promoting their care and protection. It is not an animal rights organisation. The RSPCA is not aligned with any current public campaign by any animal rights organisation regarding the mulesing of sheep."



and

"Mulesing

In response to pressure from international retailers in 2004, the Australian wool industry unconditionally committed to end the practice of mulesing by 2010. It was a decision not taken lightly at the time, but was one that was essential to retain the support of international customers.

The overwhelming source of pressure on retailers was due to the activities, which often involved threats and misinformation, of US based animal rights extremist group People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

This commitment was made by a collective group of every major grower organisation in the country. This was a unanimous decision and there was no dissent.

The commitment to phase mulesing out was then formalised in agreements with the British Retail Consortium (UK) and the National Retail Federation (US).

The industry agreed to form the Australian Wool and Sheep Industry Taskforce (AWSIT) to manage the response. The Australian government, through DAFF, has been an observer on the AWSIT from its inception.

Wool industry research and development corporation Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) has continued to provide the British Retail Consortium and the National Retail Federation with quarterly reports on mulesing alternative research.

AWI has invested approximately $10 million between 2004/05 and 2006/07 into researching and developing alternatives to mulesing and this strong commitment is continuing;

Four promising alternatives are currently moving through the R&D process: breech modifying clips; intradermal injection; mapping of the sheep blowfly genome to identify potential vulnerability; and, genetic research to breed sheep with barer breeches.

Further information:
Australian Wool Innovation

National Wool Declaration
From 1 July 2008 all wool being sold through the auction system will be required to have an accompanying National Wool Declaration (NWD). This document will include information on chemical use, dark fibre risk and most importantly, mulesing status.
The NWD was developed through a rigorous process as part of the AWEX Industry Services Advisory Committee (ISAC), which advises on such aspects of the auction system. ISAC has a wide input from key wool pipeline stakeholders including growers, brokers, exporters and processors.

The declaration asks growers to indicate whether they have ceased mulesing or if individual mobs (or even the entire clip) have not been mulesed. It also allows growers to declare if they used a pain relief treatment during the procedure.

The NWD was not designed to disadvantage growers who are still mulesing.

While it does offer choice to those customers who have already indicated that they are seeking wool from farms that no longer mules, most importantly the NWD gives confidence to retailers that the industry is responding to their demand for change.

A key feature of the NWD is that, over time, it will provide evidence to retailers of an incremental increase in the amount of wool available that is from unmulesed sheep or farms that do not mules.

Phasing out mulesing will be without doubt much harder for some than it is for others. But if we can send the message that as an industry we are unified and embracing change, we will go a long way to ensuring that our customers stay with wool.

At a time when mulesing is causing much debate in the wool industry, the NWD is a very positive initiative that all sections of the industry should embrace."


http://www.woolproducers.com.au/policy-and-issues/health-and-welfare/mulesing/


The US animal rights people often talk out of their bum in my experience, being ignorant of the situation on the ground and such, but I also think a lot of casual cruelty is done to animals for no reason......like, if anaesthetic sprays are available, ok, it adds to cost, but causing unnecessary pain to other creatures is anathema to me.

I am obviously used to practices in drier areas...hence never having heard of mulesing until it was raised as a cruelty issue.

Hmmmm.....they had flocks that size where my station people are....and crutching and dipping were just seen as what you did.

Mind you, we kids were damn cheap labour, the horses didn't cost a lot in fuel and repairs, and neighbours helped each other in turn.

I had sort of assumed in my reading that this was a practice at very remote stations where people-power had to be maximized in every possible way.