Rex, The First Animal Doctor

Rex, finally unwound his legs and stood up and walked toward the stage slowly. It was time to get my award, he said to himself and slowly climbed the stairs at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association. He realized that the spring in his step was just not there any longer. He felt just like an old dog, he thought. He stood as tall as he could as his long time friend introduced him to the audience. Of course, everyone there knew who he was. He was probably the most famous doctor in the history of the world. He felt a little funny about that. Not like Sabin, or Fleming, he imagined, but he let himself recognize that he did deserve some sort of acknowledgment and he had grown accustomed to this sort of thing and no longer felt uncomfortable with the praise.

The introduction went on longer than it probably should have, but it was nice and he remembered all the effort and the prejudice that came during his journey to become a doctor. At first no one thought he could do it, but of course, he did. People did not want to work with him and he could understand that. His voice did not sound quite right to his colleagues and never would, really. He had long ago adjusted to the use of the universal translator (UT). It had been invented just a few years before his birth and he was lucky that a family that not only loved him, but also believed in him and wanted him to be all they thought he was capable of had adopted him. In fact, at times, they had more faith in him, he thought, than he did himself and he smiled about that.

His confidence changed with time, of course, as he learned more and more and learned to trust the universal translator (UT) to be reasonably accurate and even quite inventive, at times. He had a lot of help from the research from the experts on English as a Second Language (ESL), although he was really very young when he came to be surrounded by English speaking people and that helped. He also worried a lot about the dexterity issues, but the adaptive devices that were being invented by engineers for the handicapped and for surgeons, like the old daVinci system, were immediately adaptable to his own situation and he made the most of them. Fortunately, they became more advanced and reasonably portable.

The research on universal test design was also very helpful and the speech he had prepared for this honor would address that issue and give credit to the psychometricians who worked with the multicultural educators to give him a real chance to demonstrate just how smart he was. Not just in terms of raw IQ, of course, but also how much more intuitive he was than most humans. He also had great skills that were often perceived by his colleagues as paranormal, but of course they were not. His skills were just greater than theirs because of his genetic advantages, and after a while his colleagues adjusted and grew comfortable to his surprising insights.

Rex was going to talk about using odor as a diagnostic tool, just like some Doctors did once in the 1800s. Liver disease, kidney diseases and diabetes were relatively easy for him to diagnose and he secretly smiled about his skills in those areas. He tried, of course, to teach medical students to do that and they were never as good as he was, although adaptive devices helped a lot. The Smellatron aided the students a great deal, when it came on the market and he was able to share the income with the engineer who helped him perfect the device. It had been a great team effort and they both deserved the credit and the income that derived from the patents. Sometimes multiculturalism really did work, even though usually it was just silly talk. In his case, he really was different and everyone knew it and most came to appreciate that fact, and he liked to think he was actually better.

He appreciated the differences more than most, since he was the source and made the most of his strengths and minimized his inherent weaknesses. Winning the Nobel Peace prize was one of the outcomes he took great pleasure in, even though by then, nearly everyone realized that the prize was not really as meaningful as it might have been if the standards had been kept up by the various committees over the years. He really had been a very effective spokesman for animal rights organizations.

He could tell it was nearly time for him to speak and he adjusted the UT and went over a few of the short jokes that always made his speeches very popular. He liked the joke about the CAT scan involving a real cat and the PET scan being a funny joke about limiting opportunities of the creatures on the earth. The one thing he never joked about was his own image, though. For example, he always wanted to get someone to throw a stick and he would go running after it. He felt it set the wrong image, like a Black man he once read about who refused to eat watermelon in public. He did adapt a device that had been used to throw clay pigeons so it would throw sticks and in the privacy of his own estate would take it out and enjoyed himself for a few hours. It kept him in shape and that was important to him back then. Now that he was getting old, he no longer did that, but he certainly missed the exercise. Getting old and getting too busy interferes with his having fun, but he knew it was just the way life is with its yin and yang.

It was now his time to speak and he moved to the podium that was specially designed for him. He started off his speech with his usual story about the puppy mill where he was born and the wonderful family that came and adopted him. He was one of the lucky ones, but he did work hard and deserved his good fortune. The Government once tried to own him and put him on a stipend, but he ran away and won the big court case that set the precedent for all the other animals resisting Government welfare. His family knew that a German Shepherd with a little Labrador Retriever mixed in was a great combination. Eventually he became, quite literally, the first animal doctor and life was good.