A perspective from the trenches
When we become Christians, we belong to God. He has placed an invisible brand across our foreheads, taking possession of His flock. He has placed His name on us. It is not enough to declare who we are, God expects us to show it. When we don’t act like one of His children, we blemish His name; thus taking His name in vain.
I pray that we let our light shine; and that we wear His name well upon us.
When I was very young, maybe around 4 or 5 years old, I would get angry with my mother and go out and sit in the street in front of our home. I might have been the first climate protester. My mother would come outside to pull me out of the street. I was too young to understand that sitting in the street was a stupid thing to do. Well, actually, maybe I did. I never once considered turning around and going back out into the street after my mother intervened. I had gotten her attention and I was good to go.
The problem with modern-day climate protesters is that no one cares enough about them that anyone, except angry drivers, would pull them out of the street. Once they have been pulled off the street, they get up and resume their spot in the roadway. I find myself asking, “Where are their mothers?” Would someone please love them enough to stop them from doing stupid things?
Sure, I want to breathe fresh air, but not from beneath the undercarriage of a passing motor vehicle.
That last blog reminded me of an incident involving controlled substances security. Sorry! A couple of employees came to me to advise me that our veterinarian had left our controlled substances unsecured. The veterinarian was on vacation and was the only person with the keys to the drug box.
While in the military, I spent a lot of my time studying. I usually studied criminal investigation techniques, but I would often break from that training to pick up other useful knowledge. As such, I learned locksmithing; to be more exact, I studied lock picking.
I simply picked the drug box lock and resecured the drugs. When the veterinarian returned from vacation; I explained to the veterinarian what I had done. It seems that the veterinarian only heard “lock pick” and “drug box.”
A few days later, I was visited by a trio of criminal investigators who were investigating me for breaking into the veterinarian’s drug box. Fortunately, they got a good laugh out of it. They went on to report my veterinarian to the State Pharmacy Board. I don’t know what the best lesson to learn here was: to pay more attention to locking your drugs, paying more attention when your Executive Director is talking to you, or just not being stupid (trying to get your boss fired without thinking it through).
Hiring a veterinarian can be the most challenging task that you might ever encounter. Your veterinarian will likely be your most expensive employee and the veterinarian position will be the hardest position that you will ever have to fill. During your interview with potential hires, you will keep asking yourself if there is any hope that you will get your money’s worth from that individual. Here is what you will encounter:
You need someone who can organize their time and be able to perform high-volume surgeries. But here is the kicker: they can’t be too fast or too slow. A veterinarian that needs two or three hours to complete a spay/neuter will be too ineffective on your staff; but, a veterinarian who completes surgeries within minutes will be taking shortcuts. I have witnessed veterinarians taking shortcuts in closing and substituting glue for sutures. I’ve seen organizations dealing with the bad press from people taking their pets home, only to complain about open wounds. And then the shelter has to pay for that person to take their pet to the emergency clinic to close the wound again. You can’t afford to be paying for many of those incidents. It is much cheaper to do the surgeries right, even if it takes a few minutes more.
Hiring a veterinarian is all about balance. That balance is very hard to find. As such, you need to think about “plan B.” If your local humane society operates a high-volume clinic, you might consider contracting with them for your surgeries. Some will even provide pickup and delivery services. “Plan C” is contracting with a local veterinarian who is willing to reduce their rates for a constant income source. Surgeries make up a small portion of a veterinarian’s business and you might find one who wants your business just to stay proficient.
A word of caution. Avoid “luxury veterinarians”; who might have worked at a luxury, government, or university clinic where that had unlimited resources. There are hidden costs associated with “luxury veterinarians,” because they are used to providing deluxe services. I discovered just how many dogs you can find with lime disease if you test for it. You are going to run up your veterinary costs if you treat every dog that comes into your shelter with lime disease. If you have the time and the money, go for it. If you are working with the same budget that I’ve had throughout my career, you have to stop short of providing luxury services.
Another word of caution is the handling of controlled substances. Although the shelter purchases the drugs, your veterinarian is the only one allowed to handle them. If you decide to fire your veterinarian, have another veterinarian in the wings to accept responsibility for the drugs. Come to think about it, you might want to schedule route drug tests for your veterinarian. I never did that and thinking back, I wish that I had.
I am going to get slightly off-topic. When I worked in Utah, employees who were in accidents when driving a government vehicle were immediately sent in for a drug test. At first thought, you’ll think that is a stupid idea, until you start to realize that the accident could have been caused by someone on drugs. Does meth make you drive a little more aggressive? I think that it might. Of course, back in those days, Utah had the third-highest meth use in the Country.
Just a small sampling of God’s promise to be with us:
Genesis 26:3
3 Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you, for to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father.
Numbers 14:9
9 Only do not rebel against the LORD. And do not fear the people of the land, for they are bread for us. Their protection is removed from them, and the LORD is with us; do not fear them.”
Psalm 27:1
1 The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?
Psalm 56:4
4 In God, whose word I praise,
in God I trust; I shall not be afraid.
What can flesh do to me?
Psalm 118:6
6 The LORD is on my side; I will not fear.
What can man do to me?
Psalm 129:2
2 “Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth,
yet they have not prevailed against me.
Proverbs 20:22
22 Do not say, “I will repay evil”;
wait for the LORD, and he will deliver you.
Isaiah 43:2
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
Jeremiah 1:6
6 Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.”
Jeremiah 1:8
8 Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
declares the LORD.”
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 26:3–Je 1:8.
I’ve always been impressed by the faith women shown in the Bible. Their quickness of the spirit left the men around them in the dust, especially the women who appeared around Jesus. Although men carried the faith around the world, women seemed to be the first to be sensitive to the Spirit. Thank you Lord for the women that you place into our lives.
Just like tipping, survey requests have gotten out of hand. I am constantly being asked via email for my opinion. I’d like to think that someone wants to know what I think on a particular matter. But, before I get a big head, I realize that they really are not interested in my thoughts, but my money.
At the end of the survey is a request for money. In most cases, you can’t even submit your survey until after you’ve donated. I’ve given up on taking surveys. I am not interested enough in my opinion to pay for it.
The curse with giving to “good causes” is that they spring forth with more “good causes.” The next thing, you start thinking about changing your email address. Surveys are the same way. One survey breeds another.
The trick is to create an email address just for this purpose; then you can focus your spam emails into one location and leave your other email addresses for more important purposes. I’ve thought about creating an email that is SPAM@davidflagler.com, but that might be too obvious.
When you become acquainted with the Bible, you find scriptures that draw you in. Proverbs does that to me. I find myself repeatedly returning to the words there. Thanks to the Logos App, I can engage in my own personal Bible study. I opted to use the Logos App instead of enrolling in Theological Studies at a university. Several things drove me in this direction: cost, the worry that colleges now have lost the root of knowledge, and I wanted a self-directed approach to study. I wanted to test the promises of Proverbs 2 to gain my knowledge.
My study today was understanding the people in that chapter. I was delighted to see that “a woman” was listed as a person of interest. On a lark, I hovered my cursor over the word, “woman” and found that a woman was defined as “an adult female.” The nice thing about the Bible is that it has been steadfast throughout the centuries; not given to woke nonsense.
As I see it, wokeness formed because people had become so distant from God. The further that they moved away from Him, the more they lost knowledge of Him. And lost wisdom.
I was watching a YouTube video of a school board meeting in Chicago in which a parent was complaining that their daughter was forced to disrobe in front of a transgender woman ( a guy with a penis who claims to be a woman (I just wanted to be clear on the issue)). When I said, “forced,” I mean that several women employees walked the girl back into the locker room and stood with her as she was forced to disrobed.
In the board meeting, attendees booed the parent for complaining. I was flabbergasted as to how far we as a society have fallen away from God. One of the speakers told the parent, “Don’t bring your white God in here.” I could hear the flames of Hell heating up. It is not too late to come back to Him.
Last night, I dreamt that a storm was coming and that the Lord’s children prayed that the storm waters would be blessed by God and become the Holy Water that washes upon the face of the earth to cast out evil that is in and upon it. The air would become pure and you could breath in the holiness of the moment.
I woke to find a fine layer of snow upon the ground and I pondered the dream.
Both the Old Testament and the New Testament promised to give old men dreams:
Joel 2:28 says, “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions.” Luke reminds us of this in Acts 2:17 when he writes, “And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”
But for the mater of interpretations, Genesis 40:5 says, “They said to him, ‘We have had dreams, and there is no one to interpret them.’ And Joseph said to them ‘Do not interpretations belong to God? Please tell them to me..” And yet, in 1 Corinthians 14:28 says, “But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God.” And yet, the memory of the dream remains.
I have discovered that I can’t leave the animal welfare profession even though I am retired. Last night I dreamt of working on a status quo budget.
The phrase “status quo” literally translates to “the existing state of affairs.’ In budgeting, it means a budget that reflects the current pattern and operational levels without any planned changes or increases. (according to Google)
In reality, given inflation, there is no such thing as a status quo budget; last year’s dollars will not present this year’s operation. So, even with a status quo level of budgeting, you’re forced to reduce areas of your budget due to rising costs of, say, pet food; unless you are prepared to provide cheaper food; which, might cause other budget areas to arise: due to indigestion.
The best insurance for your budget is developing a good relationship with your city/county commission. As I have mentioned in past blogs, in Florida I had a County Administrator hell bend to reducing Animal Control’s budget. But, due to our relationship with our Commission, they stopped him every year because the Commission receives a lot of animal-related complaints and we made sure that we responded promptly to them. The County Administrator never figured out our secret, because he never saw the big picture.
That same Administrator always had us providing cost-cutting budgets each year. In many of them, I would cut my own salary so as to meet the needs of the County. Although losing me was no sweat off the Administrator’s back, the Commission didn’t want to lose their contact person in Animal Control.
In last night’s budget, I was disillusioned with Animal Control agreeing to a status quo budget without thinking that it was really a budget reduction. So, if you think you are ahead by agreeing to last year’s budget, you are going to have to rethink your budget as a reduction. Just know that in advance and let me go back to sleep.