Jessica Hekman — LiveJournal

Jessica Hekman

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Jessica Hekman

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What I'm eating tonight: Baked squash	[Feb. 5th, 2010\|04:03 pm] Jessica Hekman
Recently, crism and I were at a restaurant which served us baked squash that was so good that we demanded the receipe. From what they said, plus input from RKt, this recipe was born. 1 stripey squash (Carnival) Vegetable stock Nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, water, butter Slice into quarters or smaller. Sprinkle with cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Spread with butter. Place meat-down in baking pan. Fill pan with 1/4" water. Add salt to water. Bake 300° for 60 min. Transfer to large skillet. Heat skillet. Add butter. When melted, add squash face down. Cook on medium heat for 2-3 min. Turn up to high heat and add vegetable stock. Cook for 5-10 min on high heat. Note: if you are stupid like me and cram way too much squash into the skillet, it won't come out as well. Don't crowd them. Use the skillet in two shifts if need be.
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Science blogging	[Oct. 22nd, 2009\|11:00 am] Jessica Hekman
For my birthday, my brother has purchased for me three years of The Open Laboratory, which are compilations of the year's best science blogs from scienceblogs.com. Yay! Reading science blogs is my latest obsession. But I'm finding myself enjoying the social ones the most -- not blogs about the social sciences, but blogs about the social aspects of being a professor, or graduate student, or whatever. ( More...Collapse )
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Research Day	[Oct. 8th, 2009\|03:27 pm] Jessica Hekman
Yesterday was Research Day at Tufts. It is the day when all the veterinary students who did summer research projects under the summer research program presented our findings. A few students who did projects funded by different programs also chose to present. ( More...Collapse )
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Oh the outfits	[Aug. 26th, 2009\|09:54 pm] Jessica Hekman
Morning of contract programming followed by analyzing a video of a dog and doing some writing for my research project: T-shirt and pajama pants Lunch on campus to conduct student club business: slacks and nicer T-shirt A few minutes in the hospital to leave a note in the file of tonight's dog: throw a white lab coat over the previous ensemble Home for a few hours, take the chance to mow since the humidity broke: tank top and shorts Back to the hospital to collect the sample from tonight's dog: scrubs It is like playing dress-up all day.
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The variety of veterinary careers	[Aug. 26th, 2009\|10:21 am] Jessica Hekman
A friend of a friend has been asking me questions about being a veterinarian, and I wrote up some information for her on all the different things a vet can be. I figured it would make a good post, because a lot of the people I talk to don't seem to know many more career options for vets beyond small or large animal clinical practice. ( More...Collapse )
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Numbers	[Aug. 15th, 2009\|11:02 am] Jessica Hekman
LPK wrote up a "goodbye to V'11" note to say goodbye to our old class of V2011, and let them know that we will not be with them as they start their third year of vet school in two days, since we will be doing our Master's year. She noted that in our two years with V'11, we have taken 63 exams together. (Of which anatomy exams account for six exams, but for thirty hours.) SIXTY-THREE.
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Finding study candidates	[Aug. 3rd, 2009\|11:49 am] Jessica Hekman
[This post was written on July 30 and typed in to LiveJournal later.] I haven't posted for a while, because I have been in a slump. It's hard to learn the ways of the small animal hospital! I am on the lowest rung of the totem pole, and I feel that I am constantly in the way. Many of the familiar faces belong to clinicians, whom I recognize from lecture, but who don't know me, or to the senior students, who come from the class above mine, most of whom I don't even know well enough to smile hello to. Figuring out how to dress "business casual" has been, in my roommate's words, a minefield; she kindly took me shopping, but it's awfully hard to find clothes that I'm willing to wear, the hospital is willing to see me in, and are affordable on a student's stipend. ( More...Collapse )
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Horse training	[Jul. 20th, 2009\|11:03 am] Jessica Hekman
I've wanted to learn more about horse behavior for a while, so recently I contacted a horse trainer whom I'd met at a club workshop last spring, and asked if I could shadow her for a while. This weekend, I watched her working with one client on Saturday, and attended a Parelli workshop with her as her guest all day Sunday. I had heard about the Parelli system in passing before, but didn't know a lot about how it worked. It is a system for working with horses in a positive and non-forceful way, and I'm not going to say too much more about it until I have had a chance to read some of the books that the trainer suggested. I was extremely impressed with watching her work with her horse; their relationship is lovely, the horse is attentive, and the work that she did on Saturday was all extremely relaxed and non-stressful to the animals. At Sunday's workshop, this trainer became the student, and along with some other people learned from a five-star Parelli instructor named David Lichman whom, I'm told, is "like Parelli royalty." I was able to observe for the day. David was an excellent instructor; he is quiet and centered and radiates an air of stillness, but when he talks, he is always very worth listening to. Contrasting him with my own style of talking about animal behavior by waving my hands in the air and becoming very high energy was enlightening. I wanted to show some of what I saw on Sunday, so I poked around on YouTube and found this video, in which someone I have never met does some work with her horse that is similar to what I saw. I wish I had access to videos of what I saw yesterday, but this should provide a good example. It is easiest to learn this sort of thing by doing. While I can't fit a horse into my life right now, I am hoping to be able to work with this trainer with some shelter horses later this summer to get some hands on experience. It was so nice to talk with someone who felt about animal training the way I do, but had the perspective of a different species!
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Project status	[Jul. 13th, 2009\|12:54 pm] Jessica Hekman
I've been doing a lot of setup work for my study this past week. Earlier, I had been mostly reading about cortisol and spit and dog stress studies. Now I'm on campus more, doing things like making sure our A/V setup works to film dogs. There was a lot of carting of equipment back and forth between where it had been stored previously and its storage spot in my mentor's office in the hospital. I think I went back and forth four times one day, each time realizing I needed one more piece of equipment. To test stuff out, I brought my dog Jack in to the hospital, stuck him in the cage we'll be using, and set the camera running, then left him for thirty minutes. He thought this was pretty appalling, so I got decent footage of a stressed dog (which of course then stressed me out in turn to watch). I'm learning things like "the dog may be whining but you can't tell if it's the dog in question or someone else" and "the power cord is likely to fall in front of the camera." But no one moved the camera, so that was good. (It's pretty much impossible to find an out of the way spot in the hospital.) I've also written up a rough draft of my script to use when calling owners to ask if I can enter their dogs in my study. Cold calling people is the scariest thing ever! I am trying not to think about it. I'm also trying to write up an FAQ to answer any questions they have so I am not too much on the spot. The question I'm most dreading is "but I really want to talk to my dog's doctor! Why haven't they called yet to answer X question? Will you talk to them and get them to call me?" No, I have no pull with clinicians, unfortunately. Most interesting thing I learned recently from the little bit of reading I am still doing: you can also look at alpha-amylase levels in human saliva for a different look at stress levels (alpha-amylase for the sympathetic-adrenal-medullary axis, cortisol for the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis). But you can't do it with dogs, because they don't have alpha-amylase in their saliva at all. Bummer.
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Puppy mill delivery truck bust	[Jul. 10th, 2009\|09:11 am] Jessica Hekman
Puppy mills are just one of my favorite topics. Yesterday, the driver of a delivery truck with 51 puppies in it was arrested for animal cruelty outside of Elite Puppies in Webster, MA (read more here). My roommate, who encountered some of the puppies recuperating in Tufts' hospital, reports that the store that was receiving the deliveries is being boycotted. This is hearsay, but she says people had previously asked the store where it got its puppies from, and the store said that they only supported local breeders, but now people are realizing that that isn't true. (The truck was coming from California.) Whether or not this particular store did tell people that it got its puppies only from loving, local homes, I have heard before that stores will tell people this, and that it's hard to trace the actual origins of pet store puppies. It makes me consider how to make pet stores more accountable, because I really think fewer people would buy from them if it was more obvious where the puppies came from. Legislation requiring stores to provide names and addresses of their suppliers (the original breeders, not the distributors)? Would that be an invasion of privacy for the suppliers? Possibly, but it occurs to me that part of the definition of a responsible breeder is someone who is willing to take their puppies back at any point in their lives, if the animal needs a home. I'm a big believer in being able to track where things come from in general -- maybe part of the price of entering the world of commerce is losing some privacy. If you want a corporate front so that you don't have to reveal your home address, that's fine, but it would make it easier for consumers to tell that the puppy doesn't come from a "home" -- right? It will be ironic if I end up thinking this approach is a good idea, because I'm so violently opposed to NAIS. I need to do some thinking about how it is different to insist on traceability of puppies versus livestock, I guess. Oh wait, here it is: government insistence on traceability makes it harder for small producers to sell things. I want to support small farmers, so I don't want them to have to provide government-mandated traceability which was designed to be more convenient for large producers. But I don't want to support breeders who sell dogs to distributors, so I am happy to make their lives more difficult. Anyways, I'm just thinking out loud. I wish we as a society could come up with a better way of dealing with the puppy mill problem. It seems like it ought to be so solvable.
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