My clients gave to me: 3 Dead Pens 2 Blown Up Gloves And a linear foreign body! Thank you to Jessi J for the radiograph! She writes: "Boo ate a leather drawstring bag, and my only clue were a few remaining pieces of string. The radiograph was our confirmation..." ... Read more »
On the third day of Clinics…
On the third day of clinics, my best tech gave to me: Two blown up gloves And a linear foreign body! Seriously, the agony of a stack of dead ballpoint pens when you just want to finish your records and go home still haunts me. ... Read more »
The Second Day of Clinics
On the second day of clinics, my best tech gave to me: And a linear foreign body! ... Read more »
The Twelve Days of Clinics
I miss singing the 12 days of Christmas with you all, so I'm working through the 12 days of Clinics from a clinic perspective. Feel free to toss me ideas- we have 12 days to work through after all. Shall we begin? On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Tinsel never looked so sinister. ... Read more »
A Veterinarian’s Holiday Wish
It's the holidays, and that means lots of things: peace on Earth, goodwill to men! Just kidding, it means cranky people fighting in the parking lot, someone getting shanked over the last PlayStation, and passive aggressive fruitcake gifts. I wasn't always this cynical. I, too, was once a merry-eyed elf with stars in my eyes and garland round my neck, until I worked long enough in veterinary medicine. Then I began to dread the month of December. It is a month of ill portents: Too ... Read more »
The greatest Thanksgiving ever
I grew up in New England, a place where tradition runs supreme. Holidays were a big deal, and we spent most of the major ones shuttling from this aunt to that grandmother and back again, enjoying the camaraderie only a large and extended family can afford. Those were the halcyon years, when my mother could still get away with dressing me as a doily. When I was eight years old, we moved across the country to Southern California, and those days came to an abrupt end. We still celebrated ... Read more »
The Long Dark Twee-Time of the Soul
As you probably know, I have a bit of a complicated relationship with the PTA moms. Not moms in general, mind you, just the small subset of Pinterest loving, glue-gun wielding domestic lifestyle experts whose expectations I can never, despite my best efforts, seem to live up to. It doesn't matter what school we're at, it happens every time. First it was the art project/pooper scooper incident in kindergarten. Then it was the Have a Very Agro Valentine's Day episode. And now it's crudite, crudite ... Read more »
Rumble in the Doghouse: Evil Breeders vs Crazy Animal Rights People
There was a time, back in a pre-internet era known as the Good Old Days, when two people who had different opinions on a topic could talk about it and, even if they did not come to an understanding, could at least part ways with a better grasp of the other person's point of view. People with different opinions were still, at the end of the day, people. I'm not entirely sure that is the case anymore. Lest anyone doubt me, proof enough should be the fact that we've just come off an election ... Read more »
Halloween has hit rock bottom
Things were simpler back in the 80s. We only has three things to do the week before Halloween: 1. Watch the Great Pumpkin. 2. Carve a pumpkin. No one helped. If you cut your finger off, oh well. 3. Run to Woolworth's and pick out your plastic costume that tied in the back like a surgeon's gown and suffocating mask you could only see out of one eyeball at a time. Trying not to kill yourself tripping over the pavement was half the fun. And that was it. Our biggest worry at ... Read more »
I do not have Ebola (I think)
Back when it was just a foreign concept whose name was limited to public health journals and the occasional horror movie, my sister and I used to joke about Ebola. Every time we got the flu and felt like garbage we would text each other "Ugh, I have Ebola." It was shorthand for "I feel very under the weather at the moment." But now that it's finally happened, this snaking into the global population that public health experts have warned of for many years, we stopped joking about having Ebola ... Read more »
The midwife at the end of life
Like many of you, I’ve been mesmerized by the bravery of Brittany Maynard, a 29 year old woman who is dying of Stage IV brain cancer. After hearing the course of the disease progression from her doctors and considering what the end of her days were likely to be like, she made the incredibly difficult decision to move to Oregon, one of a handful of states in which assisted suicide is legal, and choose the day and manner in which she will die. While her story is compelling and ... Read more »
Low Stress Week: Dog Approaches
I have an idea. Let's make this a week where we all walk away with at least one new idea, one way to make things better for the animals we work with and/or love. ETA: I'm actually going to pause and take a little more time with this idea, and hopefully get more ideas and more people involved! Stay tuned!! Today, I want to remind everyone of the best way to approach a nervous dog, featuring a short clip from Dr. Yin: I chose this for a few reasons: 1. I don't know any people who ... Read more »
Knuckle cracking real-time talk here.
This is not about Sophia Yin. I feel the need to say that before launching into a discussion about suicide and depression in the animal community, because the horrible news that she took her own life and the ripples it is causing in the veterinary world is the reason I'm talking about it today. But it's not about her or her situation, which none of us will ever really know; Dr. Yin's legacy is the work she did during her life, and it should remain that way. This is not about one ... Read more »
Then there was that time at the bordello with Dr. Lorie
This has been an almost unbearably terrible week for those in the veterinary profession, and those who love animals. First the awful news that Dr. Sophia Yin had passed away, and then not one day later, we learned of the passing of another tremendous voice and educator, Dr. Lorie Huston. Like many of you I considered Dr. Huston a friend. She was extremely well regarded for her work online as the Voice of Pet Care with the Pet Healthcare Gazette, her many contributions to various ... Read more »
Thank you, Dr. Yin
When I was in school, I accumulated a lot of textbooks. Books from the titans, the Nelsons and the Feldmans and the Fossums. I stood in line at the bookstore with these heavy tomes weighing me down, and noticed every other person in line with a tiny mahogany text balanced on top of their piles. "What's that?" I asked. "The Nerdbook," they said. "I heard you can't make it through vet school without it." They were right. I spent many hours in rounds with my Nerdbook balanced on my ... Read more »
3 ways to save money on pet care
If you were awake at 7:50 this morning and happen to have been watching San Diego 6, you'd have seen me trying with varied success to get a very sweet and nervous Saint Bernard to eat some treats. You know what they say about pets and kids. But that's OK, because Gabana was still a precious prop to our perhaps less entertaining but still very important topic, saving money on pet care. Here's the tips I shared: 1. Don't skimp on preventive care. Pop quiz: what is more expensive- Regular ... Read more »
An Open Letter to My Veterinary Colleagues
Please share far and wide because we only have until Monday to get our voices heard. Dear veterinarians, I imagine you have noticed things have changed a bit for us in the last ten years or so. A decade ago, you could look in the "Help Wanted" section on VIN or AVMA classifieds and have your pick of positions. This is good, since most of us carried modest student debt we needed to pay off. Being a new grad was exhilarating, a little nerve-wracking, but thrilling. Now? The ... Read more »
Guess I don’t love all the animals
My first year of practice, I was talking to an owner in an exam room when I saw her eyes go wide and she yelled, "SPIDER!" I looked down and saw a large arachnid crawling across the table towards her poodle. Without missing a beat, I grabbed a large drug compendium and put an end to the assault. The lady looked up, cocked her head, and said, "I guess you don't love all the animals, then." I felt terrible, actually. My grandmother would not have approved. She would capture daddy longlegs in ... Read more »
