Pawcurious: With Veterinarian and Author Dr. V

Celebrating the truth that pets make people better.

Goofball Antics

Why I Tell People I Sell Life Insurance

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What do you get when you cross a Dr V with an Apple pencil? (Aside from bad art, but that goes without saying.) A new set of cartoons, that's what! When I was in vet school, I was (rightfully) proud of my fledgling career choice. I shouted it from the rooftops: I'm about to be a vet! It's so cool! Check it out! Tell me everything about your guinea pig! But of course, with age comes both wisdom and boundaries, as well as an understanding that many people lack both. So without further ado, ... Read more »

Pet Doctor Barbie and the Pet Food Dude

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It's been a while since I've done a Pet Doctor Barbie post. It's past due for a new episode, yes? I think it's time for Pet Doctor Barbie to meet one of her self-appointed arch nemeses, Pet Food Dude.   Episode 8 Hi Mrs. Sandford, good to see you and Muffin. It's been a while! I'm really glad you're doing housecalls now. I want to get Muffin's bump looked at again. OK, I'll just look at my notes here- 1 cm, top of head...mm hmmm... So where we left it one year ago was that you ... Read more »

Grand Opening: The Pawcurious Surgical Training Centre

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So, every year I attempt some form of creative teaching enterprise at the kids' school, and some years go better than others. This year, in a school I really like, I think things went well. I was asked to do a "veterinary science station" for the annual Science Fair, and I thought back to what I was excited about when I was a kid:   Playing with guts! And I thought to myself, I bet I could create a dog version of this anatomical model. So I went to Joann's, bought a bunch of ... Read more »

Candy Pee and Me: How Big Pharma Seduced Me at NAVC

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It's been entirely too long since I've posted, and for that I apologize. I've been terribly busy responding to nastygrams depositing my checks from Big Pet Food sneering at plebians going to a continuing education conference this past week, and what a week it was. Like many of you, I read the Indy Star's expose about the loose strings of pharmaceutical companies (or, in internet conspiracy parlance, Big Pharma) at continuing education conferences such as the one I was going to attend, and ... Read more »

The Long Dark Twee-Time of the Soul

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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 »

Dog: World’s Worst Coach

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I am training for a half marathon. I thought about training for a full marathon, but then the reality what that was like the last time I attempted it kicked in and I remembered that oh yeah, I don't like to run. I think you can do a full marathon once when you don't like to run, just to say you did (Rock n Roll 2001 for me), but after than there's really nothing to prove other than, "oh yeah, this hurts." A half marathon though, is doable. Still not fun, but manageable. I have decided, ... Read more »

Super Bowl Ads Scorecard

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Let's face it, the game on Sunday ceased to be interesting about 15 minutes in so there was more interest than there normally is in the advertisements. There were some hideous ones. There were some OK ones. There were some great ones. Here, in no particular order, are some of the animal ads that graced the screen during our annual American paean to commercialism. Chevy Romance I was very concerned this ad was going to end up in some sort of abbatoir, or a rodeo, or any number of things ... Read more »

Flashback Friday: Depressed Puppy

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So I was looking through old Brody photos for a Flashback Friday and found this one:   Which was awesome all by itself, and then I realized he was the perfect candidate for some captions. So I turned him into a Depressed Puppy Meme.   Hope you have a better long weekend than this guy! ;) (If I recall the true sadness was not being allowed to chase my mom's hellkitty around) Feel free to make your own caption, they always entertain me. :D ... Read more »

It’s Bad Poetry Friday: Emails and spam

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This is what happens when you leave me alone in the first rainstorm of the year with a bottle of port, a pile of Dr. Seuss books, and a backlog of emails asking, asking, asking, asking for me to once again be a Nice Veterinary Writer/ Pet Blogger and do some more free work. Mostly, it's just a silly Friday I need to Apologize to Dr. Seuss Once Again kind of post. I dedicate it to all of you who know this feeling all too well.  E-Mails and Spam I'm Dr. V. Dr. V is me. That Dr. V! That Dr. ... Read more »

The Hairy Hambone in: GUILTY!

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By now I'm assuming many of you have seen Denver the Guilty dog. If not, it's worth it. The behaviorists will tell you, over and over again: Stop anthropomorphizing your pets. They do not feel shame or guilt. I don't know about that. For all the protesting that dogs forget what naughty things they did 5 seconds after committing the crime, that these intelligent beings simply disavow all knowledge and memory of their actions and are merely responding to our own disapproval, I know of way ... Read more »

The Hairy Hambone

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As you may have heard, this weekend marked the annual Comic-Con. What this means in practice is that over 100,000 of the world's hardiest hardcore nerds descend upon our fair city, bringing with them their finest Storm Trooper costumes and zombie paraphernalia. Each year my husband, a lifelong attendee, takes this opportunity to bring out his dusty boxes of comics from his youth to flip through them and figure out if any of them are worth anything. They never are. In honor of this festive ... Read more »