Light at the end of the tunnel?

Now that it's starting to feel like spring, the doom and gloom and anxiety that tends to hang over school through late winter is starting to lift. We're also wrapping up some classes in anticipation of starting surgery in just over a week (!!!). This year, we'll be doing spays and neuters on shelter dogs and cats, although you don't know until the day of surgery whether you have a dog or a cat, or a male or female. The cat neuter is a really simple procedure, while the dog spay is usually the hardest, so there are people wishing for either end of the spectrum depending on how confident they feel about surgery. I think I'll be happy with whatever animal I get- I just want the surgery to go well...

Yesterday, we got a nice break from the recent string of downer Professional Skills lectures (animal abuse, child abuse, compassion fatigue, and how to not lose your license among them) with an elective class called "Vet Med and Literature". It's basically vet book club, where we talk about a selection of readings that have something to do with being a student or doctor. It was good to feel semi-human again after a long week of classes. This was my favorite reading:

Mark Doty
Beau: Golden Retrievals

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention
seconds at a time. Catch? I don't think so.
Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who's -- oh
joy -- actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

I'm off again, muck, pond ditch, residue
of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?
Either you're sunk in the past, half our walk,
thinking of what you never can bring back,

or else you're off in some fog concerning
--tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work:
to unsnare time's warp (and woof), retrieving,
my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,

a Zen master's bronzy gong, calls you here,
entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.

--Beau