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Rick LeCouteur
Inviting young readers to marvel at the wonder of nature's creatures
Rick's Blog
#bunyipsbooksbeyond
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Dopamine Demystified: Movement, motivation, meaning (#393)
If you’ve heard that dopamine is the brain’s feel-good molecule , you’ve only got the movie trailer, not the full film. Dopamine is less...
Rick LeCouteur
Aug 17, 20253 min read
Teaching Vet Med Like It’s 2025: Why 2010's methods don’t belong (#392)
Vet school lectures are seldom attended by Gen Zers, who prefer to learn via digital platforms in their own time Fifteen years ago, I...
Rick LeCouteur
Aug 16, 20253 min read
From Data to Wisdom: A veterinarian’s guide to smarter decisions (#391)
Modern tools and timeless judgment shape better patient care. In veterinary medicine, clinical decision-making is rarely about a single...
Rick LeCouteur
Aug 13, 20254 min read
Street Photography: Presence, permission, and the unscripted moment (#390)
Street photography is the making of unstaged photographs of everyday life in public spaces , using observation and timing to reveal a...
Rick LeCouteur
Aug 12, 20252 min read
Contextualized Veterinary Care: Matching medicine to context (#389)
Conceptual diagram of the complex iterative processes involved in practicing contextualized care, acknowledging the involvement of...
Rick LeCouteur
Aug 11, 20254 min read
When Veterinary Teams Fracture: Mistreated allies become foes (#388)
In veterinary medicine, as in all professions, the strength of a leader is measured not by the title on the door or the number of...
Rick LeCouteur
Aug 10, 20253 min read
Mr. Tom Puss: The ship’s cat of the First Fleet (#387)
In 1787–88 the First Fleet , eleven ships under Captain Arthur Phillip (two naval escorts, six convict transports, and three store...
Rick LeCouteur
Aug 9, 20254 min read
Veterinary Leadership: The Peter Principle explained (#386)
In 1969, Dr. Laurence J. Peter introduced a painfully humorous yet alarmingly accurate concept in his book The Peter Principle: Why...
Rick LeCouteur
Aug 8, 20253 min read
How Vets Make Decisions: It’s not just about logic (#385)
When the day gets busy, or fatigue sets in, the first casualty in a veterinarian’s schedule is often thinking time . To stay afloat, we...
Rick LeCouteur
Aug 5, 20254 min read
The Spoils System: Mark Twain’s perspective (#384)
The term spoils system often conjures images of a bygone era in American politics, a time when public offices were distributed as...
Rick LeCouteur
Aug 5, 20253 min read
The Fragility of Freedom: Lessons from 1933 (#383)
Burning of The Reichstag, 1933 “To know your future, you must know your past” George Santayana (1863-1952) Adolf Hitler’s rapid...
Rick LeCouteur
Aug 4, 20254 min read
Silent Stories: Rethinking narrative medicine for animals (#382)
In human healthcare, narrative medicine emerged in the early 2000s as a response to the increasing depersonalization of modern medical...
Rick LeCouteur
Aug 3, 20253 min read
The Great Hedge of India: How empires enforce borders (#381)
Long before the Berlin Wall or the US–Mexico border fence, the British built a living barrier across the heart of India. A hedge so vast...
Rick LeCouteur
Aug 2, 20253 min read
Obesogens: What veterinarians should know (#380)
While diet and exercise are often blamed for rising obesity rates, accumulating evidence points to a less visible culprit—...
Rick LeCouteur
Jul 28, 20253 min read
Rethinking Outdoor Cats: The invisible toll on Nature (#379)
Cats are among the most cherished companions in the modern world. Their independence, elegance, and comforting purrs have earned them a...
Rick LeCouteur
Jul 27, 20254 min read
Infuse, Don’t Impose: A model for sustainable change in veterinary culture (#377)
There is no exact match in existing leadership literature that mirrors the biomedical precision and internal diffusion principles of...
Rick LeCouteur
Jul 21, 20252 min read
Convection-Enhanced Leadership: Deliver change where it matters (#376)
A conceptual illustration of convection-enhanced leadership in a veterinary hospital setting, translating a clinical metaphor into an...
Rick LeCouteur
Jul 21, 20253 min read
Managing Problems from Within: Convection-enhanced leadership (#375)
What can the treatment of brain tumors teach us about leadership in veterinary medicine? In the mid-1970s (Yes – 50 years ago!), I found...
Rick LeCouteur
Jul 21, 20254 min read
Evolution Explained: Separating fact from fiction (#374)
Giraffes didn’t evolve long necks just to reach high leaves – though that may play a role. The more compelling evolutionary explanation...
Rick LeCouteur
Jul 20, 20254 min read
Rethinking Peer Review: Who pays? (#373)
Reviewing a manuscript for a scientific journal used to be considered an honor – an act of collegial duty, a reciprocal obligation to the...
Rick LeCouteur
Jul 19, 20254 min read
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