Five mornings a week, Dr. David Slotwiner, Head of Cardiology at Newyork-Presbyterian Queens Hospital, can be found by tending to human hearts.
But on Sunday mornings, it is located in a field covered by grass on a farm farm on Hackettstown, NJ, standing between half a dozen sheep, hand in hand, teaching the border of Collies Cosmo and Luna in the flock.
“It helps me think about what it takes to be an effective leader, although doctors do not respond very well to the whistles,” said Dr. Slotwiner, 58 years old, who specializes in cardiac electrophysiology.
He began to come to the farm during the Coronavirus pandemic, after Cosmo began to show aggression and cut his wife, Anne Slotwiner, 60.
Dr. Slotwiner shares a three -bedroom house in Pelham, the oldest city in Westchester County, with his wife, Cosmo, Luna and a 15 -year -old American rescue Eskimo, George. (He has two adult sons, Harry, 28, and Peter, 25.)
Sleeps in, kind During the week, I get up about 5am, but on Sundays, I will sleep until 6:30 am. I’m not a morning man, but I had to be a morning man. I’ll start the day reading the New York Times on my iPhone in bed.
Rise and ride I go to a class of 7:30 am In Bronxville. It is always timed to the rhythm of music, which makes it different from other rotation classes. Before the pandemic, I often take six classes a week, which was not healthy.
Morning meeting About 9am, I meet my wife for breakfast at Caffè Ammi in Pelham. She will have dogs in her car because my car is not big enough to get them to the farm inside. I will get a large whole Latte milk with a sugar and a hot cinger and-if I feel decadent-an almond crust.
On the farm I drive about an hour and 15 minutes on the farm. I will hear a podcast on the street-like “Hard Fork” and Newyork-Presbyterian Podcast “Health Matters”. And I really enjoy John Mandrola “this week in cardiology”. It’s a part of a Curmudgeon and it’s always too late to adopt new technology, so I like to hear its critical prospects. I tend to be a little bit of adopter, but I like to hear the science of both sides.
Whistle while working We get to the farm around 11am, and grab my whistle and put my headphones – the distances are very long throughout the field, so I can hear people train me – and head to the court with Cosmo and Luna.
Gene Sheninger and Teri Rhodes, who own the farm, train people at the highest level of competition internationally, but will also take beginners. There are other breeding breeds, but border pumpkin tends to be the most common and tend to be the best for sheep.
Steps The first thing you teach them is to go clockwise, called “come”, or counterclockwise, “away”. And then you teach them to lead the sheep to you in a straight line, in a controlled manner, so that the sheep do not push so fast that they are scattered. And then you teach them to push the sheep beyond you, which is one of the most difficult things to do, because border pumpkin want the order – they don’t want the sheep to escape.
The final challenge is to teach the dog how to divide the sheep into two groups, because sheep instinctively want to stay together as a flock.
Tools of trade Once you are a certain distance away, you need to give commands using a whistle. In competitions, sometimes you do this over 800 or 900 meters, where you can’t even see the sheep. But dogs learn to trust you so much that they know that if you give them the command to go clockwise, even if they do not see the sheep, they will go clockwise to the edge of the field and continue to run and run and run until they find these sheep and then bring them to you.
Nostalgia It’s great to be a beginner at my age, because I teach everyday students and residents. I teach to watch cardiologists how to do invasive procedures. It is refreshing to be a beginner in something, to remember what it is like to learn as I teach people.
To take in the zone I will pack around 12:30 pm Or at 1 pm, then I will go to the car and finish my medical podcast on the road back to Pelham. It helps me get to mind for work.
Pastry If I am on a hospital call, which I am every quarter weekend, I will head to the city center to catch a bite for food before my shift. I love soup pasta in Juqi.
Dr. Bow-Tie will see you now I arrive around 2 pm And I’m changing it rubbing you. I will usually have four or five patients to check and then take care of some bureaucracy or review a manuscript or two.
I usually shake a tie. Fifteen years ago, a patient gave me one, and I decided I would try it. It took me a while to figure out how to connect them – there were a lot of YouTube videos – but then I’ll wear it occasionally, and my patients really liked them. So I went all in arc bonds. I have over 50.
Dinner date At about 5 or 6 pm, I will return to Pelham to lift my wife and meet our son Harry and our bride for dinner at Williamsburg. One of our parts is Ringolevio. If I’m full, I’ll have a skirt steak and a glass of red wine. Or I could meet my parents, who live in the battery park, in a Greek restaurant under the block of them, Anassa Taverna. I love roasted branzino, with white wine.
Fun with Frisbees You can’t just go back to the Collies border house and say, “Okay, it’s time to go to bed.” They have rolled for one hour and a half to two hours, and work hard. So I will come home and play Frisbee with Cosmo and Luna for about half an hour. Cosmo is very motivated. Luna wants mostly love and interaction.
Ignition time I will go up to bed around 11:30 pm And I will read for half an hour in my Kindle. At the moment I am reading a French novel Tana, “Faithful Place”, which I enjoy. It’s a book to clean my brain. I’ve also finished another book I really like, Barbara Kingsolver’s “Demon Copperhead”. I love the feature where you can activate between reading in Kindle and listen to it, because when I move, whether I am going to work or on the farm, I can continue it.
Out like light I usually sleep near midnight. I’m a night owl. But I’m not going to Soulcycle Monday morning, since I had all the weekend to exercise, so I don’t have to get up until 6.
