Hi Everyone - Introducting Myself

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Hi Steemit. I arrived here about a week ago and am finally getting brave enough to post, though I hate introductions, and I hate pictures of myself more, so this is probably the only picture of me I'll be posting!

I saw this place mentioned, I think on Reddit, as a possible refuge from the massive social media opinion censoring going on in many other sites, like Facebook, Twitter and Google, and decided to check it out. I haven't been disappointed yet! The content I've seen so far here has been amazing.

I'm interested in everything from politics to food to spirituality to holistic medicine, and I hope to find some good people to follow who post on these subjects. As I alluded to above, I'm also very interested in alternative viewpoints in things like news, politics, and medicine, which I've been seeing all too often being squashed and brushed aside in our current corporate controlled state. I currently work in animal health - and yes I know this is going to sound cagey but I'm not going to be more specific in order to fend of a host of questions I know I can't answer. I do have a huge interest in animal behavior, and may write posts on that in the future.

I don't mind sharing pictures of my animals though!

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This is my dog, Merlin. He's way more photogenic than me. He what I lovingly call my "Mutant Sheltie". He was born a "Double Merle", or a Merle/Merle cross. Merling happens when a mutant gene causes a color dilution in a dog's coat, giving it a bluish or reddish appearance. If a dog gets one copy of this gene, they end up with spots of a solid color with larger areas of the diluted color, and patches of white. A normal merle usually looks like this:

Source: pets4homes.co.uk

A normal merle only should have one copy of the merling gene, because the pigment that gene forms is defective. If two merles have puppies, any that manage to get two copies of this gene don't form pigment correctly, if at all, and end up all or mostly white. The problem with this is that these pigment cells are important for forming other structures, like sensory cells in the ears and eyes. and so most double merle crosses end up blind and deaf. Shelties can also be born with a condition called microopthalmia, where the eyes are far too small for them, and Merlin has this defect as well.

So he's my mutant, but he doesn't care that he can't really see and can't really hear, and is far more willing to sit for pictures than I am, so I may just post more about him in the future.

So that's me, and my dog - mostly my dog - and my penchant for rambling about random animal facts. Happy to be here, and hope to find people to follow who can teach me even more random facts about life, the universe, and everything!