I took a shortcut - and got burned

In the 1970's, I was a pretty good bank teller at Citibank in downtown Syracuse. I remember the in-house auditors came in, and among the things they checked was that each of currency denominations in my separate cash slots was facing up, pointing in the same direction.

And Charlie Ciccarelli, one of the auditors, said, "Good job, Jerry. Don't take any shortcuts."

I have remembered and applied that advice for most of my days, although as a financial analyst working at Ford, I had to learn to deal with more estimates and less certainty. But when it comes to numbers that are clear, like balancing a checkbook, I'm still pretty disciplined.

Well, I took what I thought was a reasonable shortcut the other day, primarily to benefit me, and I paid the price. I was asked by my vet for a stool sample from my dog Maisie, to submit for a routine test.

I'm not overly squeamish about these things. Shoot, I've been picking it up and removing it for years. But the idea of following the dog around on a bright, bitterly cold morning and scooping up the warm sample, well, couldn't this be made just a bit easier?

I surveyed the front lawn by the edge of the road, one of her favorite spots, and scooped up a sample. The only conceiveable risk was that it belonged to another dog, but I discounted that.

I told no one one about what I had done, not the vet, not even my wife Jan. A day after I submitted the stool, I was told that Maisie tested positive for coccidia, a parasitic disease in dogs whose chief symptom is recurrent diarrhea, although I didn't know this when I got the phone call. Maisie, just so you know, does not have recurrent diarrhea.

Shoot, what was I gonna do? Begin to give Maisie the medication awaiting us at the vet, and treat her for an illness that she might not have? 'Fess up to my dishonesty borne of rank laziness, and collect a second sample to re-take the test, this time with a sample I knew to be Maisie's? Ignore it altogether, and tell no one?

By this time, my opinion of what I'd done had fallen pretty low on my self-assessment scale, and I decided to do, at last, the right thing. I caught Maisie in the act of relieving herself in the front yard, near the road. I walked to the area to pinpoint its location, and walked back to the house to grab a sandwich bag, and a quart-size freezer bag.

I dropped it at the vet yesterday and had to pay for another test. When Jan and I arrived home yesterday after a day out, we learned that the sample had tested negative, and that Maisie was fine.

That was too close a call for me. Henceforth, I will be more disciplined, eschewing the lazy man's approach to certain unpleasant, albeit necessary duties. Once burned, twice shy.