Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 2, 1994                   TAG: 9402030021
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

KEEPING NEAT FILES HAS TURNED INTO A PET PROJECT

It may appear to some that when I watch the ``Monty Python'' show at the rather odd hour of 4 p.m. I'm idling the hours away.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. I watch ``Monty Python'' because I'm a well-known expert on British accents and comedy. No kidding. This is work for me.

My book's coming out any day now.

The other morning - after finishing the weights, the rowing, the leg lifts and the strenuous three minutes on the jogging trampoline - I became desperate for something to do.

This was solved by the greatest station wagon driver of them all, who was off to get dog tags for Millie and Skeeter and needed their rabies vaccination certificates.

I also have this compulsion to be orderly, and that's why my pet files could be used as course material in your average business college. I have no idea why, given this precision, it took me two hours to find the certificates.

I also found that our pet medical files are more homey and human than our own.

The time our dog Millie had surgery, they sent her home with a personal, computerized note that said in part: ``Millie did well in surgery today, but she was slow waking up in recovery.''

When Skeeter had his eye operation, the record shows that he had to have an ``Elizabethan collar,'' which he wore with some dramatic results not mentioned in his records. These are sensitive people. I've never seen them put the fact that Skeeter is insane in his records.

Generations of Beagles to come can look at our cat Judy's medical file and find that she was close to expiring from hyperthyrodism and that the surgery to correct it went rather well.

All they will find in my file are long lists of charges for various procedures - like the time my allergies nearly killed me and I had to go the emergency room. But nobody wrote; ``Bennie came in today, hacking and struggling for breath and wanting to know if he was in heaven yet.''

I'm kind of glad doctors don't write things like that.

I've always worried about how I behave in recovery rooms, and I wouldn't want to see the following in my record:

``Bennie woke up in recovery and was very profane and fresh. He called all the nurses `Toots' and wanted to know if they wanted to go out for a quick drink at the bar across the road.''