Hands "You have surgeon's hands," said Mr. Veri, and I believed him. It was one of the few things my Jon Lovitz-esque physics teacher had said to me all year, and I had no idea what prompted it or what level of experience he had with hand divination, but it sounded like a kickass thing to have, and I held onto it. He saw my hands, but he didn't know my heart. I didn't either, so I can't blame him for setting me up for crushed dreams down the road. I went into veterinary school sure of two ... Read more »
Daily Life
3 Easy Ways to Ruin Your Dog’s Summer
It's summer, hooray! Now that everyone is out with their dog enjoying the sunshine, it's time to revisit some of those top causes of mid-summer angst. Go forth, have fun, and if you want to have a stress free season, avoid my Top 3 Ways to Ruin Your Dog's Summer. 1. Forget to bring enough water I'm working on a pithy catchphrase about the dangers of summer heat. (I think I have it.) We all know that leaving the dog in the car is a Very Bad Thing, but there's many more subtle things we do that ... Read more »
In the Game of Boys, you win or you die
Every once in a while I find myself remembering just how similar we are to our primate relatives; how, when the trappings of modernity are removed from our dextrous fingers we regress to our most primal of behaviors with nary a glance backwards. You don't even need to travel to a different continent to explore indigenous tribes or venture out with an anthropology researcher intent on dissecting human behavior. You just need to go camping. Preferably with a large group of young boys. When ... Read more »
Don’t Fitch the Homeless
I've never bought a piece of Abercrombie and Fitch clothing in my life, so to say I'm not going to in the future wasn't a big loss for me. I'm with everyone else who was disgusted with CEO Mike Jeffries' recent statement about their painfully shallow approach to marketing: "Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people," he said. "We don't market to anyone other than that." And so on and so forth we only sell small sizes and ... Read more »
Spiders till proven otherwise.
Deep in tender recesses of our cranium lies a small chunk of neural tissue that, should I prove its existence, will explain a lot about human behavior. I believe we all have this structure, though it may lie dormant for many years, perhaps forever. It's the arachnobellum. It's a small, primitive bit of grey matter tucked right in the center of the brainstem, that area that controls our deepest, most primal instincts. It's the part of the brain that blames all maladies, no matter how big ... Read more »
Hi, I love you, yep
Yesterday, I went on a field trip with my daughter's class as a chaperone. I was reminded, yet again, of why I became a veterinarian. The teacher is an angel on earth and I do not, for one second, think I could do what she does. I watched one nine year old dissolve into an inconsolable heap of tears because she lost during a game of Red Rover. I watched another child, who was walking barefoot on the park grass, get called over by her mother and told to apply hand sanitizer to her feet at ... Read more »
It’s not what it looks like
Someone said this to me the other day: "You have such a glamorous life." And I laughed, because I assumed it was sarcasm, but she said it with such sincerity that I paused and said, "Really?" And she said, "Oh, you know, maybe exciting is a better word- all the travel and....well, the trips and stuff you talk about." She paused, tilted her head to the side, and realized she was talking to a person holding a grocery bag full of mops and Zero Odor. I was, in fact, on a trip as we spoke. To ... Read more »
There goes the neighborhood (again)
After several months of leading the kids around our new and blessedly quiet neighborhood hoping to find some children running about, the spring temperatures have brought them out of hiding like little hibernating bears. We have both two little girls and a little boy within the block, and now the kids self-eject from the house as soon as their little feet can take them in the morning to go bike riding. As an added bonus, the little girls have a 12 week old Golden Retriever who comes by on his ... Read more »
Mountain biking is a lot like veterinary medicine
When I first began practice as a veterinarian, it took all of about three months before I got tossed out on my own. This was not by choice, mind you. My clinic had opened up a satellite office and sent my ‘mentor’ over to staff the place, leaving me at the main clinic with a couple other part time vets. To be frank, I was glad to have a break from the guy. He was a nightmare. Within one week the entire staff at the new clinic threatened mutiny if they were forced to work with the vet in question ... Read more »
I think I need to break up with Disneyland and its 999 Happy Haunts
I spend a lot of time thinking about customer service, and how we as veterinarians are sometimes so focused on being amazing clinicians we neglect to remember the fact that we are in a customer service industry. You can be the most astute diagnostician in the universe, but if your front desk staff or technician (or you!) is rude, ambivalent or just generally unpleasant, it ruins the whole client experience. It doesn't take much to be minimally pleasant, but I'm amazed how uncommon that has ... Read more »
Death Match: Social Media vs. Rotary
Two weeks ago, I had the honor of speaking at the AAHA National Convention as a part of the BlogPaws veterinary social media track. In a fit of what I can only imagine was perhaps a hypothermia-induced lapse in judgment, Bill Schroeder invited me to co-present for the day. For those of you who don't know, Bill helms In Touch Vet, a veterinary marketing company that works with 8,000 vet clinics across the country with website design and social media. And I, well, I manage one site, which ... Read more »
Minimizing the Stress of Euthanasia
I can't believe Koa's been gone over a month. Sometimes I still look for her around the corner or find some black fur stuck to a sock buried in the laundry pile. We are still adjusting. I did a quick Google Hangout video talking about some of the lessons I've taken from my own dogs as well as my experience in the clinic. I hope it has some information people find useful, especially to those who have never been through the process before. ... Read more »
Gaming the system
Raising kids is a lot like raising dogs. There's a lot of responsibility, a lot of poop, ridiculous amounts of cleaning, and no small amount of frustration. Regardless, the benefits far outweigh the costs, and with a little consistency and training, it's all good. Training being the key component. My son likes Legos and chihuahuas, two things I kind of like but wouldn't really say are my "thing". He is his own kid. I realized he was fascinated with mechanical devices more than biological ... Read more »
I want to go where they went
I do not profess to know what happens to us after we die. Even those who have strong faith in what will happen to us after we go are sometimes unsure of what happens to our beloved pets. And to them, I quote the great Will Rogers: "If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went." When someone close to me passes on, be it person or pet, I have a dream about them a week or so later. I don't know why, if it is a quirk of my subconscious or an actual visit or who the ... Read more »
Dr. V, Mega Commuter and Expert Snake Avoider
I read in an article on CNN the other that that a scant 8% of the population is comprised of 'mega commuters', that unlucky club whose commute consists of 90 minutes each way, three hours on the road a day. I felt sorry for them, until I realized I was one of them. When we moved in December, in search of better schools and a better commute for my spouse, I hadn't taken into account what we would do if our home school district didn't have space for us. Of course they would, right? Except they ... Read more »
Muscle Memory
Scientists have long been fascinated with the concept of "muscle memory", that subconscious part of our brain that controls movement without us having to think about it. It's what allows us to do complicated tasks such as riding a bike or typing "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" without having to stop and say, OK, I need to contract my left hamstring while extending my right quadricep and all those tricky things that go into motion. It's what allows me to tie a knot during surgery ... Read more »
Why Dogs are Better than Boyfriends. :)
Two of my favorite forces- The Honest Kitchen and Lili Chin from Doggie Drawings- teamed up for this awesome little V-Day nugget. Enjoy! ... Read more »
Tip Number One in the Grieving Process: Get Takeout
Everyone processes grief differently. From those who wear it all on their sleeve to those who bottle it in and let it slowly eat them up inside to those who tackle an entirely unrelated project with distracted abandon, being sad is a universal condition we all have to figure out how to deal with. I grew up in New England. We're taught from an early age not to show sadness. Or happiness, or anything, really, other than a mild general irritation with other human beings. "Be like a cement ... Read more »
