Working at the Animal Clinic ~ Ch 3

Susan hadn't stayed at the bar that long the night before. Susan's binge drinking sometimes led to actions she regretted later, but she hadn't seriously binged in many months.

As she arrived at the White Rock Animal Clinic, she turned off the ignition, pulled the keys out with a little extra rattling, grabbed her purse, locked the car door, and prepared to enter the clinic. Though she had never set off the alarm, every time she opened the clinic by herself she feared she would.

Dr. Martinez believed that any competent human being could unlock the front door, open it without letting the clinic cats out, pass through the barrier door (which sometimes stuck), and round the corner to enter the numeric code within 7 seconds.

"Maybe it's 10 seconds," Susan wondered aloud as she took a deep breath, turned the key, and started counting.

She pushed the heavy glass door open, hissing in order to distract the loose clinic cat. She shut the door firmly behind her, as a high-pitched sound pierced the silence. Quickly through the reception area door, she rounded the corner to the left, and punched in the five-digit code in the alarm box on the wall.

Rewarded by silence, she set her keychain and purse under the receptionist's counter, and mentally prepared herself to feed, water, walk, and medicate the overnight kennel guests.

The dogs had begun a noisy welcome at her first sounds. Susan retrieved her purse and felt inside until she located her handy little bottle of aspirin. She dumped three into her hand.

As she continued toward the rear of the clinic, Susan grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator in the lab. She popped the aspirin down as the passed the third and final door which divided the clinic from the kennel.

Susan thought the vet was overly cautious about keeping the animals from escaping. There was always a door keeping some pet in or out. The vet was always harping about keeping the doors closed. Therefore, she usually did. He had a real fit over open doors. However, he was seldom at the clinic on Sunday. As long as a dog didn't slip out of a leash, everything would be fine.

"Hey Guys! Breakfast is coming. Stop with the barking, will ya?" She petted the cold wet noses poking through the holes in the chain link runs.

There were only five dogs boarded, and none required medication. She slipped on a blue scrub top, and took the six-foot red heavy canvas leash used particularly for outdoor walking. Opening the chain link gate of the first run, Susan slipped the choke chain collar around the neck of a large brown and black German Shepherd and transversed the length of the clinic, sans door shutting.

Past the heavy glass front door, Susan and the dog sprinted across the parking lot to the grass parkway.

"You're the first to Grand Central Station today. Do your duty," she urged the dog.

Susan had learned in her intro vet class that dog's noses are much more sensitive than humans'. Canines pick up information about each other from smelling feces and urine. They're social animals on a pecking scale. Alpha always wins. Whoever was there last is obliged to leave his personal signature so the next will know where he stands. It reminded Susan of her old guy college friends who would get together, drink too much beer, and start bragging. She smiled at the image.

As long as the dog didn't get right on top of what he wanted to smell, he could "have a day at the mall" in a ten minute walk, from Susan's point of view. She kept the dog on a tight leash, but they walked at a leisurely pace down the grass parkway, then back across the parking lot and down the sidewalk in front of the closed stores. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, and a gentle breeze occasionally rustled the few leaves remaining in the trees. It was a beautiful day to have an outside job.

After returning from their morning walk, each dog received his measure of dry food and a fresh bowl of water. Susan spilled as much water as she kept in the bowls, and ended up mopping the entire kennel before she finished with the canine clients.

After fluffing and changing the dogs' bedding and distributing treats and toys as directed, Susan carried her almost empty bottle of water to the cat area in the lab.

Only four cats for her to feed and litter boxes to change, plus the two clinic cats. "Mama Kitty" and "Lucky" were supposed to be caged when the clinic was closed. Someone last night had left the cats out.

She looked across the shelves full of bottles of medication in the lab area. Nothing had been knocked out of place, so no harm done. Leaving cats out was as bad as leaving doors open as far as Dr. Martinez was concerned. His pet peeves became Susan's obsessions. She aimed to please.

One white longhaired cat required medication. Luckily the cat got a dose in the mouth of “pink stuff” from a dosing syringe, and the cat cooperated. Liquid antibiotic was relatively easy to get down. Even after months of experience, Susan still found it difficult to pill a cat.

About an hour after she had arrived at the clinic, the animals had received the necessary care. Susan shut doors behind her, and picked up her purse and keys. She set the alarm, and walked to the heavy glass front door. Leaving the security system on when she left the clinic didn’t bother her like coming in and turning it off. She had this image in her head of the police showing up and accusing her of breaking in. She’d never do anything like that, but she’d known people who would.

Susan headed home to study. Her morning reading consisted of memorizing names of muscles: trapezius, latissimus dorsi, deltoideus, triceps brachii, brachiocephalicus, omotransversarius, and the list went on. After memorizing all the names of all the bones of cats and dogs and cows and horses, now she had to memorize all the layers of muscles and connections between them.

Susan thought that she might as well be studying human nursing. Her anatomy textbook was the same one the nursing students carried around on campus. The classes couldn’t be much harder. However, nurses had to deal with sick people and their attitudes. Susan decided she preferred barks and meows she could interpret in her own fashion.

Around noon she pulled out the newspaper ad her mother had given her. She laughed to herself remembering how little memorization she had required of her own students during the days she had been the teacher.

“Memorizing is becoming a lost art,” Susan mused to herself. “I may have obsessed myself into memorization, but maybe I should write down what I want to say to this person about the teaching job. I don’t have to memorize, but I should be prepared to speak well of myself. That may be a challenge.” Susan was tired from studying. She wrote herself a script.

She dialed the phone number, and was relieved to be greeted by an answering machine. She took a deep breath and waited for the beep.

“Hello, my name is Susan Carpenter and I’m calling about your ad for an English teacher. I have ten years of experience teaching in the Texas public school system. For three years, I taught English as a Second Language to teenage students from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Peru, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Mexico. I’d be interested in speaking to you . . ..’’

“Beep.”

Susan had spoken extra slowly thinking that the person who received the message was probably not a native speaker of English. When dealing with a second language, slow is always easier to understand than fast. She knew that from her own grasp of Spanish. The answering machine was set for a timed recording, and Susan ran out of time.

“Damn!”

She immediately called the number again. She waited for the beep again, tapping her fingers nervously against the handset of the phone.

“The phone number for Susan Carpenter is (214) 793–7140. My years of ESL teaching experience could certainly be of help to you. Thank you for considering me for your teaching position. I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you. Goodbye.”

Susan set down the phone and reached for her cigarettes that were at the bottom of the pile of papers and books on the table. She knew she had to sound enthusiastic and confident to be considered for the job. However, did she want to be considered? She felt her headache coming back. Where was that pack of cigarettes?

She’d made an active effort. Her mother would be happy. Whether or not she really wanted the job depended on the student, and the situation. Susan did feel confident about her ability to teach ESL, but she felt that she’d somehow get too personally involved. She always did.

With the initial contact behind her, she placed the newspaper ad under the telephone, amidst various papers and books piled on the table in front of her.

“Just add water and watch it grow! There’s so much fertilizer on this table you’d think a cow’s been though here!” Susan looked menacingly at the overgrown mess her study area had become.

As she crushed the fire from her cigarette butt in the ashtray, she began rotating her neck, rubbing it, and scrunching her shoulders. She rubbed her eyes until she saw spots. She stared blankly at the living room wall. When her eyes could again focus, she admired the project she had stapled to the living room wall.

Her representation of the bones of a dog, larger than life, overwhelmed the otherwise drab walls of her apartment. Susan had drawn, cut, connected, overlapped, and stapled 256 bones of a canine from many colors of construction paper. The dog’s bones covered an area over six feet long and three feet high: from the cranium to the scapula, all the little metacarpal toes, the pelvic structure, and 26 vertebrae representing a long tail. She admired her study dog, though it looked like no dog ever seen on the face of the earth. Some of the proportions were off. She had spent many hours on that self-assigned project. She took pride in it.

Susan had learned study skills as well as taught them. This type of studying was difficult for her, and she needed all the learning tricks she’d ever known. The hands-on process of drawing, cutting, and building her wall-dog helped her remember. She knew she was a visual learner. She could remember if she could see it in her head. She’d done very well on the bone exam. However, that test was history.

She stretched, reaching for the ceiling, her back cracking as her neck had done earlier. She showered and changed into school scrubs. Then she sorted through her study pile, collecting the books and notes she would need for the anatomy study group that afternoon.

During the 40-minute drive to school, Susan re-lived her “last straw” experience teaching in public school. It should have been such a wonderful interdisciplinary lesson.