I now work for the Sheik.

I tell ya what folks, anyone who has ever thought that people who teach actually get a summer break is crazy.

These past two weeks at the Cal Poly Equine Center have been absolutely insane.  Like 80 hour work week insane.  No exaggeration, I swear. 

Which makes me all the more excited to TAKE A VACATION.  People, I have never been so excited in my life to go on a vacay (hey, look at me Hales…. I’m abbreviating!).

Where am I going, you ask?

To quote one of my favorite songs, I’m headed down south to the land of the pines, thumbin’ my way into North Caroline J

Why am I going, you ask?

Because one of my very best friends, miss Tamara, is gettin’ hitched to one heck of a guy!  And I haven’t been home in about year, so I am making this my “annual NC trip.” 

Why am I so excited, you ask?

1. I haven’t seen my dad or brothers for almost a year.
2. I haven’t seen my momma for half a year.
3. I get to hang out with some of my besties and catch up with so many people I love.
4. I get to spend a whole week at the beach.  Which means that I can get in the water without a wetsuit.  And go to all my fave places in ATLB and Beaufort.
5. Tamara is getting married and I get to spend all week with her!!!!
6. I get to go see Beamer (my show horse I left behind in the very capable hands of miss Jackie while I am out west).
7. I get to see Dakota (my family dog).
8. I DON’T HAVE TO WORK.

Beamer

Dakota

Beamer

Don’t get me wrong….I sincerely love my job.  A LOT.  I am so blessed to do something that I enjoy so much.  However, the past two weeks have been terribly busy. 

Why am I so busy, you ask? (p.s. I really have no idea why I’m doing the annoying blogger question thing, but I find it semi-quirky, so I shall continue.  Y’all are probably ignoring them anyway)

Because I now work for a sheik.  Two sheiks to be exact.  And a few very wealthy people in Saudi Arabia who are independent filmmakers.  Or are oil tycoons.  Or are drug lords.  I'm not really sure.  All I know is they have a BOATLOAD of money.  And they spend it on horses (see Landon.... I could be worse!)

Let me elaborate.  Here at Cal Poly, we are one of only three places in the entire world who offer a certain kind of embryo transfer technology for horses.  You non-horse people are laughing right now, thinking why in the world would someone do this???  The answer:  money. This is commonly used in valuable horses as a way to make them have multiple foals each year (common in Polo horses and high dollar show horses).  For example, each of the babies we make in these Arabian horses sell for about $250k-$500k at FOUR MONTHS OLD.

*nerd alert*
Y’all, I’m not a repro animal scientist at all.  I really have no interest in it at all.  All of my personal interest is in nutrition.  But let me tell you a little about what Dr. Campos in our lab can do with this stuff and it will blow you away (unless you are not an ag or science person, in which you probably won’t care at all, so keep scrolling down to the next paragraph).  Outside of standard embryo transfer techniques (we inseminate a mare, wait a few days, then flush the embryo out of her uterus and put it in a surrogate mother), we do intra-cystoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).   Meaning we take out multiple eggs from a horse (can be alive, can be from a mare who died and they sent us her ovaries….yes….this is my job….dead horse ovaries) and one sperm from a stallion (from either fresh or frozen semen, or from the epididymis of a dead or castrated stallion….again…. this is my job…. dead horse repro parts….) and put them together in a lab environment, grow a little two cell embryo, and surgically transfer it into a surrogate mare (by incision in her flank and inject it into her fallopian tube). 

The cool thing is that when that embryo is just TWO CELLS big, we can tell if it will be male or female (in most breeds we work with, females are much more valuable, so we won't transfer the embryo if it is male), if it carries genetic diseases that are common in some horse breeds, and we can make about 7 embryos per oocyte collection.  We can also do sexed semen (meaning we can make a male or female embryo at our discretion) and a whole mess of other crazy stuff.

Ok, nerdy part over.  Time for the cool part.  The horses we work with right now are Arabian horses.  Specifically, super fancy schmancy EXPENSIVE Egyptian bred halter horses owned by the sheik of Qatar and the sheik of Dubai.  We just made a Khemosabi++++// foal (horse people understand that this is a HUGE deal) and have another on the way.  Basically, I have about 60 million dollars in the shape of less than 10 mares in my barn right now, so the pressure is on.  I actually have nightmares about them dying sometimes.  True story.

  

But here is a good chuckle for you to end this story on: the most valuable mare was shipped to us directly from Saudi Arabia.  On the website of her home farm, her description reads (and I quote): “She is our most valued treasure, and her foals are like pink diamonds” (seriously people??!  It’s a freakin’ horse!).  The best part?  Her name is Ass Windi.  

Anyway, that is what has been going on in my life.  Spermies and oocytes.  But I'm going to peace out for now and go enjoy my time with my friends and family!!

-ap

Food for thought:

It's good to love your pets, but this is a little overboard

This goat should be in the olympics, I'm thinking hurdles.

Ryan Lochte. Make your own judgements, but this is how I feel exactly.