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 »
Daily Life
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
Who do you remember?
I remember this about September 11, 2001: I felt very lonely. It was my senior year of veterinary school. My husband, who had only been my husband for about 2 months, was far away in San Diego. My mother was the one who called me, waking me up to tell me to turn on the news. She was alone too, as my father was on a rare business trip in Texas, one he ended up having to drive home from. We held the phones to our ears together until there was nothing more to do, so I said, well, I guess I ought ... Read more »
I take back everything I’ve said about writing being fun and easy
There is nothing that will make you gain an appreciation for a creative process more than attempting to do it yourself. You know, like those people who scoff at the museum and say, "A kid could do that!" and then go home and paint something absolutely horrid. Or those people who look on Pinterest or food blogs for new recipes. This is how I feel about writing a book. "I write a blog," I said. "I have a command of basic English," I said. This will be a piece of cake. James Patterson ... Read more »
The best day of the year is here!
It's National Dog Day, a day to celebrate the love and bond we share with our canine companions. It's hard to top. What could possibly be better than National Dog Day? Having your birthday fall on National Dog Day. Especially if you've always proclaimed that dogs are pretty much the best thing ever. It is also, in a strange twist of fate that I cannot tell if it is coincidental or not, is also National hot dog day, which is a fact I'm not as excited about so I will choose ... Read more »
Pet insurance- the good, the bad, the somewhere in between
I admit I am biased about pet insurance. I like it, mostly. Clients who had it were, in my experience, much more likely to approve necessary treatments. That dog with a case of happy tail who wagged it so hard and so fast he got a nasty deep infection that ended up necessitating a partial tail amputation? Insured. Hit by car? Insured. From my perspective, it allowed owners to focus on the pet's immediate needs and get them taken care of. I also liked it because I didn't have to do anything to ... Read more »
Phenomenal Cosmic Power
A week ago, I called my husband on a business trip in China for the urgent assistance in locating my DVD of Aladdin. "Why do you need it this very second?" he asked. "You haven't watched that in like 15 years." "I know," I said, "But our daughter is singing a song from Aladdin in summer camp this week and she really, really needs to see this movie." She'd seen it once before, years prior; my son hadn't seen it ever. It was an unforgivable omission, one I felt an almost irresistible ... Read more »
Clean bill of health…
Can we talk about the fainting schnauzer video? We need to talk about it, because if there's one thing I don't get in this world, it's the current trend for pets with a myriad of medical malfunctions or genetic issues becoming internet sensations. You've seen the video, I imagine. A dog is surprised by the owner she hasn't seen in a year or two, and after freaking out for a few seconds she loses consciousness briefly. Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the ... Read more »
