The holidays are exhilirating.
Well, for most of us, at least.
Some find them merely exhausting.
While others use them as a time to indulge in the most ironic of activities, such as opening a “Good Dog” ornament from under the tree and chewing it up.
Indeed.
Hope you all had a great one!
I love Christmas. But I hated Christmas working emergency as a veterinarian.
I euthanized more pets in the two weeks surrounding Christmas than I did in the surrounding three months combined. This is a consistent, repeatable phenomenon common to all clinics- a combination of holiday stress, low funds, and the uncanny knack of pets to get very sick at the most inconvenient of times.
Yesterday, in a clinic in the Pacific Northwest, a woman went into the emergency clinic with her beloved dog, who hadn’t been feeling well. The dog developed a pyometra, which is a terrible, life-threatening condition if not treated immediately with surgery. The vet presented the woman with the estimate: $2,000.
And the woman just did not have that much money. She just didn’t. So she sat in the waiting area, sobbing over the reality that this Christmas, she was going to have to euthanize her pet. I’d like to say that this is an uncommon thing, but this is the reality that plays over and over in veterinary hospitals everywhere on this holiday.
Another couple was in the waiting area with their cat, who also needed to be euthanized. This is Christmas in the ER. It stinks. Not a happy place to be.
But this couple saw this stranger, and said to themselves, how sad that we both must be in this sad situation on this joyous day. And they said, well, we can’t save our cat.
But we can save her dog. And these anonymous strangers gave their credit card to the receptionist and paid for this woman’s dog to be saved, asking not a thing in return.
I have worked in the field for ten years, and I have heard of these stories, but I’ve never seen it happen myself. But I know this woman, and I know her dog, and this did, in fact happen.
The kindness of strangers, the love we have for our pets, transcends so very much. Every time I think I’ve just about had it with people, I hear a story like this, and my faith in humanity is restored. That kind of gift is something that boggles the mind.
I was sitting in the middle of a pile of wrapping paper when I heard this, my dogs licking my feet, the kids running around, and my curmudgeonly mind was utterly blown. A very Merry Christmas to you all, and I hope every day to have in my heart the kind of compassion these strangers showed to a woman and her dog (who is now at home, safe and sound.)
May your days be merry and bright!
I recorded my homecoming on Monday. I really did. I wanted to document the joyous reunion between me and my loving dogs. It went a little something like this:
Opening: My hand on the doorknob. Whining behind the door.
Me: HI GUYS!
cacophony
dogs running amuk
kisses
Me: I missed you SOO much! *looks up*
screams
And scene. (more…)
I’m here, I’m loving Orlando, and I’m sick as a dog. Which stinks, to put it mildly. So, I’m focusing my energy on things like standing up and walking, but the posts will come. Make sure to check out Facebook and Twitter as well, where I’ll be posting lots of candids. In the meantime, I have a post about a topic we got into a big discussion about a couple of weeks ago:
I loved Dr. Becker’s recent article about whether or not vets should offer spays for below cost. His answer, in a nutshell, is “no”. Mine is too. The responses ran the usual gamut of those who agreed and those who did not, but it got me thinking about the whole idea and how veterinarians are often caught in the middle when trying to explain to owners why prices are the way they are.
Myth: If a low cost facility can spay a dog for $50, you should be able to do it too.
Fact: To understand how a facility can afford to offer a procedure for such a low cost, you need to know what they do in order to make that economically feasible. Do the vets volunteer their time? Do they skip items like intravenous catheters, inhalant anesthesia, or post operative pain medications? If it’s the choice between having it done and not having it done, many people are fine with that. But in my clinic, if I’m taking a pet under my care, I feel obligated to do the procedure as safely as I can, and that involves pricier things like blood pressure monitoring and post-operative opiods. That’s expensive.
Not to say some low cost clinics don’t offer those things- they might. But many don’t, and it’s good to know what you’re signing up for.
Myth: Low cost = poor care.
Fact: Not necessarily. In fact, most of the low cost places I know in our area staff their clinics with the best vets. You have to be a good surgeon to complete that volume of surgery in a short amount of time. Less experienced vets are slower in surgery. They just are.
Many of these places subsidize their cost through fundraising and grants. I worked at a clinic that accepted county vouchers for $80 spays, and also performed spays for clients for the real cost of $250. The pets received the exact same high quality care with gas anesthesia, IV catheters, and dedicated monitoring, but one group received a subsidized cost. It was a 24 hour clinic that utilized the downtime by having the vet do those subsidized procedures at 2 am when nothing else was going on.
Myth: Complication rates are higher at low cost facilites.
Fact: Not necessarily. I don’t know of any specific data to show this one way or the other. It’s not about the rate of complications so much as what happens if there is a complication. If a pet has an adverse reaction to anesthesia- something that can’t be predicted- does the facility have the staff and resources to provide emergency care?
When your pet goes home that night and chews out the sutures, who do you call? If your pet licks the incision and it gets infected, who covers the cost of the antibiotics? Much of the time, owners are on their own.
The truth is, low-cost facilities perform an important service for people who cannot afford the more traditional costs associated with such a complicated procedure. They do this in a variety of ways, and for that I am glad. But that doesn’t mean a traditional clinic can take advantage of those same cost cutting measures and still stay solvent. It’s comparing apples and oranges.
So who should pay?
The one continuing refrain I always hear in these arguments, and this is the one that really gets to me, is “vets owe it to the community to take a bath on pricing, because they love pets/overpopulation is a big problem/the economy stinks.”
Now, it’s nice when vets offer their services at a discount- and trust me, every vet I know eats costs left and right for things they really shouldn’t because we feel badly and want to help. But is it an obligation? Many children suffer from a lack of proper dental care, but no one seems to be beating up on their local dentist for not doing more (nor should they.) Grocery stores aren’t lambasted for not giving food away to needy families. It’s easy to point fingers at the obvious target when someone can’t afford what they need, but there is a limit to what any one person or business can do. If there are no profits, there is no clinic.
One emergency facility I worked at had a list in the office of places people could call to ask for financial assistance for their pet. As the vet in charge of the case, I was in charge of helping people fund their care. I spent hours helping people try to find funds, and nine times out of ten instead of being happy, those people would be angry that they weren’t getting more. I consider myself a compassionate person, but I have to be honest: over time this sort of thing can burn a person out. It just does.
Low cost spay/neuter clinics have their place, and they do good work. I am glad they are there. But I could do without the idea that the provision of veterinary care is a right to all owners upon request, and an obligation of the provider to give said care without expectation of being paid a fair wage. The burden of care, at the end of the day, must lie with the owner.
What do you think? Have you ever used (or those in the field, worked at) a low cost clinic? Think it’s equivalent to a standard clinic?
As you’re reading this, I’m probably either getting patted down by a TSA agent or winging my way over the country on my way to Orlando. (By the way, no one tell my kids that Orlando is the home of DisneyWorld. I’m already in enough trouble as it is with them.) But I’m not going to see Mickey or the Harry Potter park (though trust me, it’s tempting) because I already have enough to keep me busy with the AKC/Eukanuba show to fill an average 36 hour day.
I printed out all the events that are taking place and I ran out of ink. It’s that big.
And it’s not just a conformation show, what you typically think of when you think “dog show”. That is a big part of it too, but there are two other national AKC events taking place at the same time:
This is the fifth iteration of the AKC Agility invitational, with dogs from Great Danes to chihuahuas bobbing and weaving their way through the course. I am actually fascinated to see a Great Dane run an agility course. How the heck do they manage to work that huge frame through the obstacles? It’s a mechanical miracle.
This is also the first year All-American Dogs (ie portmanteaus, ie mutts) have been invited to compete. I know this is a controversial decision, but I’m excited to see it, personally. Agility is such a cool sport, and it’s nice that anyone who wants to compete at this level, can. There are 592 dogs competing in this competition, nine of them the aforementioned All Americans.
This is ALSO the inaugural AKC Juniors Agility Competition, where accomplished kids from all over the country make me bemoan how behind I am on parenting my kids into more substantial accomplishments than “fished a grape out from under the couch before Brody found it.”
If any readers out there do agility and would like to do a guest post on the process, I’d love to have you. I love watching these dogs weave through the poles. Especially the little guys, who look like millipedes when they run. (more…)
My daughter had her first sleepover this weekend.
It was a long time coming. Her very best friend, a girl she has known since kindergarten, is near impossible to arrange any sorts of playdates with. Her mom works full time. Her dad, a retired police sergeant, is busy running the older son around to after school activities but has a rule that the daughter cannot have playdates without her mom or dad there.
Given this statute, let’s just say I didn’t even bother pursuing a sleepover with her. I’m sure we wouldn’t pass a background check.
Anyway, we have other options. We have family friends who have a lovely daughter a year older than mine, and they have known each other for years. They are a little less picky about where they leave their kid, apparently, even going so far as to trust ME of all people with her. Fortunately for me. My daughter was delighted.
I had all sorts of activities set up- movies, popcorn, fashion shows, crafts, I don’t know, all that giggly stuff little girls do. But this little girl doesn’t have a dog, so of course Brody was the center of attention. Not that he minded.
Aside went the crafts, the popcorn, and the Barbie movie, all in favor of giving Brody some much craved attention and love. He was eating it up. He was eating everything up, including this girl’s pillow pet, her burrito, and some kettle corn. They are getting a dog next month. I consider this a valuable learning experience for her about living with a canine. I hope she realizes the value of that, someday.
.
Anyway, I heard them upstairs giggling and laughing and Brody tromping around. Then a squeal, and down the girls come, flying down the stairs. They had been playing tug-of-war with Brody. He has lots of toys laying about for this purpose, but in the interest of some semblance of order, I guess someone had put them away. So he improvised.
It took the girls a few minutes before they realized they were playing tug-of-war with a pair of underpants he retrieved from a hamper. Oh, dear god. At least it wasn’t the cop’s kid who was over. I would probably be in jail.
So if they are reading this, I swear, we do have actual dog toys around here and I don’t force them to use soiled undergarments for lack of better options. Promise. Please let your daughter come over again. She was lovely.
Here’s the thing about dog shows: They are a to-do.
I’m not the pro source about dog shows, as you know. I’m learning as I go, and the more I learn, the less I know. It’s fascinating, the work that goes into becoming a champion, the hours spent grooming and training and driving from place to place and competing in the hunt for titles. But at the end of the day, for me, it boils down to this: people who are really into showing dogs are absolutely, 100% nuts for canines.
And that I get. I took that love and channeled it in my own way, by learning how to take a sick dog and make him better, to cut out offending masses, make them happy, and keep them healthy. Others do it by funneling their time into rescuing abandoned dogs from shelters. And this group does it by taking their personal favorite breed and making them exceptional. But we’re all facets of the same die: people who believe that dogs are important, and worthy of our time and attention, and whatever path that means for you, I admire it. Because there is another option, and that is to be apathetic. And that, my friends, is the root of a lot of pain for our canine friends. (more…)
Among the many things I inherited a love of from my mother, such as books and weird medical cases, are Christmas ornaments and crafting. Every Christmas since I was little, we would get an ornament in our stocking, and when I moved out, I took my collection with me. It’s a lovely way to have a little nostalgia every December when we set up the tree. I have done the same for my kids, so when they are older they can survey their pile of Tow Mater and Barbie ornaments the way I look over my Garfield collection and have a smile.
I do the same for the pets, but they don’t get a new one every year. When I get a new pet, they get a stocking and an ornament that first Christmas. Each year I put it on the tree and I can be either reminded of how glad I am to have them in my life, or have a smile as I remember them fondly and reminisce about what Christmas decorations they destroyed.
Mulan died on New Year’s Eve, 2008, a couple of months before I started the blog. My mother, still coming down off her post-Christmas rush, spotted a Golden Retriever ornament at a post-Christmas sale and snatched it up, with a brilliant idea: I will glue feathers on it and make Jessica a Mulan-angel ornament. She painstakingly crafted this piece, then set it aside for the year.
As you know if you’re a regular reader, 2009 was a banner year for me in terms of “death, the gift that keeps on giving.” By the time the holiday season arrived, my mother retrieved the ornament from storage and realized geez, I had a whole lot of pets disapparate over the following months. Not wanting anyone to feel left out- glue and feathers are cheap, after all- she hit the stores.
So here is the scene: Christmas morning, 2009. Smiling expectantly, she hands me a beautifully wrapped box, which I assume to be my yearly ornament. I open it. (more…)
Let me preface this by saying it isn’t Christmas in my house until it looks like an elf exploded in the foyer. It doesn’t excuse what happened, but it’s important to the story.
On Saturday, my husband and I went out to dinner while the kids spent the night at the grandparents’ house. Before we left, I surveyed the mess that is “middle of Christmas prep” with some trepidation. There was trouble everywhere. Breakable ornaments, garland, boxes piled to the ceiling. Most of it is pretty innocuous, but tasty red wax candles can be messy, so I put them up high. Not seeing anything amiss, we left.
We came back several hours later. Someone had shredded a construction paper Christmas stocking. Oh well.
Then I looked more closely. My laptop bag, which normally lives in the hall closet but had been pulled out along with everything else, was tipped on its side like the crime victim it had become. Its contents spread over the floor like entrails.
I examined the evidence: a name badge, a Hilton key, a Newsweek. All chewed. No biggie.
Then I saw it: a gum wrapper.
Oh, !@$!@$.
I don’t normally chew gum, but my ears were bugging me so I grabbed a pack at the newsstand before my flight on the way out to Kansas. I have no idea what kind it was, even. It is possible it could contain xylitol. Xylitol, the toxic substance I had posted about not one week prior as a Really Bad Thing for dogs. I had no way of verifying its presence in this particular gum, as the packaging was no longer in existence. I don’t know how much was left in the pack, either.
In the chaos that was the afternoon, the hall closet had been emptied out. The laptop bag which normally lives there was out on the floor, hiding along with all the other stuff that’s normally tucked away. I didn’t even remember that it was out, or that I had once placed gum in it.
All I knew was that my dogs ingested an unknown amount of what might possibly be a xylitol containing substance, and one of the last things I had read before we departed that night was a story about a Great Dane who died of xylitol poisoning. So I panicked. Fortunately the dogs still looked fine, but hypoglycemia can strike out of nowhere, and for all the raving I do to my kids about not leaving grapes laying around, I just couldn’t fathom explaining that Mom accidentally poisoned the dogs two weeks before Christmas.
This is how I wound up out in the cold at midnight making my two indignant dogs throw up. Neither one vomited a gum wrapper. After watching me perform this with some distaste, my husband retired for the night, leaving me downstairs with two nauseated dogs and a pile of guilt bigger than the stack of boxes. So I went to Level Two.
I don’t know if you’ve ever administered activated charcoal to two less than thrilled dogs while you’re shivering and under the influence of a few glasses of pinot, but let me tell you, it’s not fun. Lesson learned.
Then I had to go to bed, but I couldn’t sleep wondering if I had killed one or both of them, so I woke up every hour to check on them. Have you ever done the “Are you dead?” poke on a sleeping dog? They don’t appreciate it. Brody woke up right away, but Koa snores and passes out like a zombie on a normal day, so each time she woke up with a confused “You again? What the heck? I’m fine, really. Stop poking me.”
They got full physical exams on the hour until sunlight, at which time all three of us got up, exhausted but physically fine.
My point is this: everyone makes mistakes, myself included. The vision of me chasing the dogs around the backyard with a bottle of Toxiban at midnight on a Saturday is only funny because it, thankfully, turned out fine. But man, that was not a pleasant reckoning for any of us. It’s stories like this that make me very sympathetic to owners who feel they need to apologize for being human when they have an incident like this- but it’s life. Mistakes happen to all of us.
I’m sure there are those out there who are perfect and never do stuff like this, and to them I say: congratulations. You are clearly handling life with a bunch of kids and dogs with more grace than the rest of us. Now go on and be perfect somewhere else and let the rest of us commiserate about the stupid things we have done and learn from them.
From now on, it’s Juicy Fruit for me. This beats the time Emmett ate a box of truffles on Christmas night with the same result. What’s the worst thing your pet has eaten?
Last year I had the pleasure of attending the AKC/Eukanuba National Championship. I felt a little bit like Alice in Wonderland while I was there. I had no idea what to expect, my world being that of cages and operating tables. Down the chute I went, past bedazzled leads and ornamental throws covered in Corgis. And there, on the other side of the door, I entered the surreal world of the dog show:
Here is the White Queen, windswept and amiable; (This by the way bears a striking resemblance to my own hair before I go at it with the straightener)
The Mad Hatter, bouncy and exuberant;
And of course, the Flower Garden, where no one’s petals are untidy and everyone holds still when they should.
I even met the Jabberwocky. “Oh my god,” I whispered to Bev last year as we passed a dog in the exhibit hall. “That’s the weirdest looking Chinese Crested I’ve ever seen. He looks like a gremlin.”
“I think that’s a Xolo,” she responded. By then we were close enough to the owner to verify the dog was, in fact, a Xoloitzcuintli, not that I could pronounce that today. But it was, and I now knew a new breed.
The show is, to put it mildly, a huge deal. From the AKC press release:
A record 3,938 dogs will compete for more than $225,000 in cash prizes at the eleventh annual AKC/Eukanuba National Championship (AENC) on December 17 and 18, 2011 in Orlando, Florida. The two-day event is held in conjunction with the AKC Agility Invitational, the AKC National Obedience Invitational (with entries of 592 and 146 respectively including our first-ever All-American Dogs), the Juniors events (159 conformation + 47 obedience + 50 agility entries) and the Eukanuba World Challenge (44 participants), making for a record-breaking combined entry of 4,976 for all events.
The Xolo is one of the newest breeds to be competing there, along with Finnish Lapphunds and Entlebucher Mountain Dogs. What are they? I have no idea either, but I intend to find out, since I have been lucky enough to be invited once more despite my lack of intimacy with the breeding community. I’m working on it, promise.
I see myself as an arbiter of the interests of the common man, you know, the one who can ID most of the more common breeds but has no clue that the Canaan dog is the national dog of Israel. The one who asks the obvious questions, such as, “How the heck do you groom a Komondor?” I don’t mind. I’ll be that person.
I’ve got lots of ideas as to how to tackle this show, but it will be hard since there is so much to see on top of the conformation portion- Agility! Obedience! K9 Military Detection Competitions! It’s a dog-a-palooza.
I do have to point out something that I take as a sign, however:
Of the 173 breeds entered to compete in the National Championship, guess which one posted the highest number of registrants? Just guess.
Yup. The Bostons. HELLO. Fate is conspiring to put me in the same room with 64 of the finest examples of the breed, and I intend to take advantage of that. I have no idea how, but I will. The plan may or may not involve a maternity shirt, a pocket full of peanut butter, and a Snugli. It will be glorious.
But it’s hard to find a dog I don’t like, and part of my mission while I’m there is going to be to hunt down as many awesome dogs as I can at the Meet the Breed booths and get a little insider info on them.
Here are some of my other goals:
This will make for compelling blogging.
I will have a little more access than is usual thanks to Eukanuba, so I’m opening it up to the crowd here: Here is the list of breeds that will be there. I’m already hitting up the Boston booth and the Golden booth, but other than that I’m open. Any particular breed you want me to interview/love on?
And for fun, here’s the pics from last year in Long Beach:
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
When I saw the box of popcorn chicken sitting all alone on our still undecorated Christmas tree, I was befuddled. “Is that a KFC Christmas ornament?” I asked. The kids shrugged noncommittally, which I took as an affirmative. How would I know? I haven’t eaten there since the Clinton administration. This was Grandparent work, make no mistake.
It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized that it was not a KFC box-like ornament, but an actual empty box, trash, that one of the kids had stuck on the tree for reasons unknown.
Which of course a dog plucked off the tree as soon as they had 10 minutes alone with it. (more…)
“Come to my store!” exalted my daughter, pulling me up the stairs. I obliged, wondering which of my possessions she was going to try to sell back to me this time. That one has always been possessed of an entrepreneurial spirit.
” I have bracelets,” she said, gesturing to an array of beaded items she had crafted using the bead kit she got for her birthday. “And neck-a-laces,” picking up a pair of Mardi Gras beads she inherited at some point.
I picked up a bracelet. “How much?” I asked.
“5 cents,” she replied.
“I think you should up your price structure,” I told her. “To at least a quarter.”
“OK,” she said, taking my quarter and depositing it into a paper bag.
“What does that say?” I asked, squinting at her writing.
“Money for the pet store animals,” she said.
“You mean shelter?”
“Yes,” she said. “I want to donate all the money to a shelter.”
And oh, when she said that, my heart melted into a million little pieces and I realized I could die happy. I’ve never instructed her to fundraise, not for pets or for anything, really, so to see her do all of this out of the goodness of her heart just made my Grinchy heart swell two sizes.
“I have twelve dollars so far,” she said. Apparently before coming to me she had shaken down my husband, my son, and both sets of grandparents.
I gave her a dollar. ”Thanks,” she said, pocketing the dollar. Then she eyed me furtively. “You ARE letting Santa know I’m doing this, right?”
Ah. It all makes sense now.
In the corner, Brody eyed all of this while chewing on a 50 cent bracelet. Despite his proclivity for naughtiness, at least he is pure of heart in his intentions. Nuaghty, nice, or somewhere in between, whatever he engages in, it’s with the most direct of intentions. I wonder if Santa cares about intent.
Actually, it's Jessica, followed by a long last name that no one can ever pronounce. read more »
