First, the phone call: "My cat has red bugs. What are they?" After several minutes of trying to figure out what the person was talking about, we told him to come in. My tech went into the room to look at the bugs in question, which had been extracted from the cat and gingerly placed in a Tupperware bug habitat. "Those are scabs," she told the owner. "What do you know?" retorted the owner. "You're not the doctor." So I go in, and confirm to the owner that yes, those look like scabs. I ... Read more »
Nutro cat food recall
This one is flying somewhat low on the radar, but Nutro has recalled several types of dry cat food. Here's a snippet of the press release linked above: " Franklin, Tennessee (May 21, 2009) -- Today, Nutro Products announced a voluntary recall of select varieties of NUTRO® NATURAL CHOICE® COMPLETE CARE® Dry Cat Foods and NUTRO® MAX® Cat Dry Foods with “Best If Used By Dates” between May 12, 2010 and August 22, 2010. The cat food is being voluntarily recalled in the United States and ten ... Read more »
Or, maybe not
I received a fax from our emergency center yesterday morning (yes, we were open Memorial Day) about a dog who had died over the weekend. His littermate had died earlier in the day with bloody diarrhea, and he presented to the emergency clinic with the same. He didn't make it. A 2 year old dog, dead of parvo. Make that two 2 year old dogs, dead of parvo. Adult parvo deaths are uncommon, but not unheard of, especially in undervaccinated or immunocompromised dogs. The owners stated their dogs ... Read more »
In memoriam
On this Memorial Day, when we're honoring the men and women who have given so much in service of their families and neighbors, I'd like to also recognize the thousands of canines who have given the same. Although dogs have been used in military actions for as long as someone has been around to record it, it wasn't until World War II that the United States officially recognized the use of dogs in war through the creation of the "Dogs for Defense" program. Interestingly, the breeds initially ... Read more »
When I die…
Please let me come back as a dog that lives in Carmel. I just got back from a most wonderful mini-trip to see a friend (if you read this blog from day one you would remember my mention of Candie from vet school) who is now an emergency vet up in Northern California. She mentioned that she has been to Carmel a few times and suggested we go grab dinner there one night and try to spot Clint Eastwood. While I didn't see Dirty Harry, I spotted a good 50 dogs in a one block radius- in and out of ... Read more »
Daily graffiti
Yesterday my receptionist came out of the restroom with the most perplexed look on her face. Imagine her surprise when she entered the washroom, only to be greeted with this: For those who can't read graffiti scratches, it says, "(name of our clinic) bitches are ugly". Aside from the annoyance of having graffiti in our bathroom that we now have to deal with, it's an odd choice of insult. Our staff is, all things considered, quite attractive, so it's not much of a blow. Are they instead ... Read more »
Allergy sufferers rejoice
I've spent a couple of entries deconstructing pet food, but I wanted to take a moment to specifically mention a brand that has done something really good. When we suspect a pet of having a food allergy, it can be very difficult to get to the root of the problem. Pets can be allergic to anything, but usually they have a reaction to one specific protein or carbohydrate. Trying to figure out what it is- fish, beef, chicken, wheat, corn- can be difficult. If you read the labels on your pet food ... Read more »
OK, you first
I had a client complain about me this week. To back up a bit, he had come in a month ago with his dog, whose left side of her head was swollen to about twice its normal size. "It's an abscess," he told me, and wanted me to 'stick something in it and drain it.' I do what I always do, and come up with my list of differentials- all the things it might be. You just can't assume it's the most likely thing, even though it probably is, because sometimes it's not, and if you aren't keeping all the ... Read more »
Friday frivolity
It's amazing the weird, innovative, useless, and useful you can find on the internet when you actually look. I'm not sure what category this one falls into: The Porch Potty, a self-contained patch of grass that waters itself. A mini yard for your mini dachshund. Emmett would destroy that with one big pee, so clearly this is intended more for the toy chihuahua apartment dwellers. If I lived on the 5th floor of a walkup in Manhattan, this would seem a very viable alternative to schlepping a 4 ... Read more »
Good news!
Emmett is in remission! He's in his third week of chemotherapy. He will continue the weekly regimen until about 8-12 weeks, when it starts to decrease in frequency. After 16 weeks it is done once a month, hopefully for a long, long time. We also typed his lymphoma. There are 2 types, B cell and T cell. I remember learning in school that B=Bad and T=Terrible, as in, neither one is good, but T is the worse kind to have. The median survival times are markedly less for T cell lymphoma. And Emmett ... Read more »
Tip of the day
Here's a helpful tip for everyone: 1. If you have a brachycephalic breed dog (pug, bulldog, Boston terrier, etc) you need to be very careful with their eyeballs since they are particularly susceptible to eye injury. 2. This means, you probably shouldn't let them roll around in the sandbox. 3. If they do roll around in the sandbox, and you notice a ton of sand in their eye, instead of wiping it out and thus dragging it all over the eyeball, rinse it out with saline. Better yet, call your ... Read more »
Here’s how you can inspire confidence
I saw a dog in today who had something funny going on with his eyeball. The medication that I would normally send home is one we don't use too often, and when I grabbed the last remaining box on the shelf I saw it had expired sometime last year. Great. So I asked my tech to bring the dog back to the owners while I figured out what to get for them. I don't script out eye medications too frequently so I wanted to make sure the prescription I wrote was for a human drug they would be able to fill ... Read more »
Why dogs are better than people, part 32
Before I had kids, life was much more exciting for Emmett. We went to dog park all the time, I bought little dog cookies from specialty dog bakeries, I used to nap on his belly. Life was good. Then I had my daughter, and things got a lot more boring. We hung out at the house. He had to eat grocery store treats. I napped with the baby. It wasn't that Emmett was less loved, or less important, or even that I thought things like specialty dog cookies were unnecessary now that I had a real kid. ... Read more »
Happy Mother’s Day!
To all the pet moms out there: We ply them with food and treats and toys, spend hours grooming them and rubbing their bellies. We may not get any handmade cards or macaroni necklaces in return, but we do get this: pure, unadulterated, unconditional love. It's the best gift they can give, and the primary joy of having a pet. Have a Happy Mother's Day! ... Read more »
That sound you hear is my heart breaking
I was a very sensitive kid. So much, in fact, that my mother only got through "Rock a Bye Baby" one time because I cried so hard at the idea of "down will come baby cradle and all." What a mean lullaby. I couldn't watch Road Runner cartoons because I was so sympathetic to the coyote- he wasn't evil, he was just a carnivore. He just wanted to eat. And Tom and Jerry? Awful. Poor Tom. I'd cry every time I had to watch him get disemboweled, electrocuted, or decapitated. Man, that was a sadistic ... Read more »
Least favorite things
I could lie and tell you of all the things I do at work, I like them all equally well. Sadly, I'm a crummy liar. I have definite preferences, as do most vets I know. If you figured those preferences out early on and don't mind putting yourself through the wringer to be able to do just that for the rest of your career, then congratulations, you're a specialist. The rest of us have to muddle through the stuff we don't like in order to do the things we do. If you're really lucky, you end up working ... Read more »
The cat food experiment, Part 2- or, uh oh
So the last you heard of me and my cat food experimenting, I had to give all the freeze dried food to Emmett and was tackling my bag of raw food patties. The Nature's Variety brand makes feeding raw food very convenient, if you're not into preparing all that stuff yourself. It appealed to me for several reasons: 1. You can buy it in little 1 ounce medallions, or larger 3 ounce patties. 2. The meat is ground up, so you don't have big bone chunks floating around in the stuff. 3. They actually ... Read more »
A new reality
I am very fortunate to be in the position that I am, as a veterinarian, with a sick pet. I know I have more access than most to specialized care. I am very grateful to my colleague and boss, one of my clinic's owners, who also works at an internal medicine facility and is both a very confident diagnostician and very good to his friends and colleagues. On Friday at 4:30 pm, the lab faxed over the pathology results: DIAGNOSIS: LYMPHOSARCOMA. There's never a good time to get that result, but of ... Read more »
