There’s a storm brewing in Washington D.C., and it’s nothing to do with the hurly-burly town hall meetings on healthcare reform. While the battle rages in congressional circles on the merits and pitfalls of revamping how we bring modern medicine to the masses, legislation to minimize antimicrobial use in industrial animals soldiers on.

Though it’s happening mostly under the average American's...

Imagine your pet suffers from an insidious disease she’ll have to suffer with for the rest of her life. Next, picture a simple surgery that can fix it. No more drugs. No more side effects. No more constant testing.

Not that you general practitioner or internal medicine specialist doesn’t deserve a shot at treating your pet’s ills. And trust me, you’ll not yet want to go running off to the...

Pet owners make all kinds of excuses for their fat pets. This especially popular Dolittler entry from a few months back exposes them. Today’s post offers yet another I should have detailed. It's one that gets cited most every time I discuss a canine exercise regimen in any detail: “But she hurts whenever I try to exercise her.”

It’s a conundrum, really. And it's not just to do with overweight...

If you’re a great client and you ask, I’ll sell you a vaccine to administer at home to your pets––for your convenience––as long as you’re willing to listen to my speal on the subject of proper vaccine storage, handling and administration. But that doesn’t mean I support the extra-veterinary sales of biologicals like vaccines––not by a long shot.

This week on Dolittler has been lousy with talk...

Can you think of a scenario more nostalgic than one in which you’re forced to undertake a picture-by-picture, letter-by-letter purge of your personal life?

Long-departed pets shoulder their way back in, their images proliferating on your bedspread. Their old tags tinkle alongside Canine Good Citizen certificates as a ream of ancient adoption paperwork flutters to the floor.

Spring cleaning...

No, I haven’t yet written the great American novel. Or the great American veterinary tome, either. But now that my introduction’s attached to Homer’s Odyssey, I’ve officially been published in a hardcover book. As of today, it's available on Amazon for your shopping pleasure.

Lest you think I’ve been moonlighting as a classics prof, let me explain: Subtitled, “A Fearless Feline Tale, Or How I...

Veterinary medicine trades in the grossest things. While working in an inner city human ER may best veterinary medicine on the “dirty job” meter, that’s only because of the presence of the microscopic filth that can kill you. I think my profession is way more disgusting––grossly, anyway.

That’s why my pre-teen son worries he might not be able to hack a distinguished career in veterinary...

In just one week I’ve seen two separate incidents in which common veterinary products purchased online don't seem to be what they say they are. Both were ordered from large, well-established outlets and neither has yet been evaluated for its true contents. But they don’t look like the real thing.

What gave it away?

One box of Frontline. One box of Heartgard. On the outside, both looked...

Forget about H1N1 for the moment. Let’s talk H3N8.

Now that more states have experienced this nasty strain of the Canine Influenza Virus (there was an outbreak in Virginia last week and now New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Colorado are seeing it) the so-called “dog flu” is again in the news media.

Despite the occasional lull in the general press, you’ll be gratified to hear that for us...

CAUTION: Long rant in progress.

No this post is not a continuation of yesterday’s post on animal cruelty––nor was it intended as its corollary. Rather, today’s is a completely standalone rant on the subject of how some clients come to abuse of their veterinary care provider’s kindnesses.

I’ve posted here before on the subject of financial stress in recessionary times and how veterinarians...

Bringing a legal case against an alleged animal cruelty offender is tough slogging. I get lots of email on the subject and I have a hard time explaining to people why that’s so.

The short answer is simple yet incomprehensible to many of us: Our culture does not yet value the lives of animals the same way we do here on Dolittler. The concept of pets as family may be alive and well...but it’s...

Were you ever faced with the sad reality of multiple extractions for your pet’s less-than-perfect teeth? I deal in this kind of dental crisis on a weekly basis. And nine out of ten times the conversation goes the same way:

“But how is she going to eat?”

Newsflash: If she’s eating “just fine” now, it’s probably because she’s not using her teeth anyway. I mean, have you ever really looked in...

“I don’t know how many times I have to say it: It was wrong...I didn’t step up. I wasn’t a leader.”

If I had my druthers, you’d never stop saying it. Your hell would be akin to Tantalus’s: a $130 million contract dangles above your head while the snarling pits you killed lick at your heels for eternity.

As it is, you got off easy. And you don’t seem to get that, given your impatience with...

It’s been two months and I’m still catching heat over my scraggly stray’s name choice.

After this puppymill Pug arrived, amid a flurry of demodectic mange and fleas, my son had promptly christened him “Billy.” In the way only an eleven year-old who sees no evil growing on skin can do, he took one look and uttered the two mundane syllables.

But they didn’t stick. Between the deformed limbs,...

Cat vs. bird. It’s a Dolittler theme for sure. But there’s always something unsettling about the emotional discussion that inevitably ensues whenever the problem of free-roaming cats killing birds gets raised. It's something I can only describe as “stressful” on the TNR (trap-neuter-release) and environmental front.

I’ve always had cause to ponder the dilemma more intimately than most. That’s...

Last week’s “Man Vs. Mutt” article in the Wall Street Journal’s weekend section traded on a concept that’s been dominating the news and––albeit obliquely––Dolittler’s headlines, too. Yes, we’re talking healthcare reform again. At the risk of bashing this concept into submission, I’ll admit that “I’m on a roll”––or is it merely a barely opaque display of my obsessive tendencies? 

Either way,...

In recent history, few viruses have led to the widespread fear that attends the H1N1 epidemic.

HIV? It’s not fast-moving enough and the can’t-hit-me-ism that attends it makes it not-so-scary to “common folk.” Ebola? Puh-lease. It may be gruesome but that’s one for Africans, we conjecture. But the swine flu? Nasty stuff. And it targets wholesome pregnant women, to boot. It’s a definite...

Smoking is every bit as dangerous for pets as it is for you. This we know. It’s possible they’re even more at risk than you and me. This we suspect.

Patients with asthma and chronic bronchitis are the tip of the pulmonary iceberg in households where smoking happens indoors. Lung cancer (and maybe other kinds of the cancerous greeblies) are also possible.

The tip-off for me? A pet that smells...

We all know cash is king. So here’s a new one on that front: Amidst all the congressional wranglings on the subject of human healthcare comes the news that pets might catch a novel break.

No, it’s not about a new program to underwrite Maddie’s Fund or finance some other government-organized spay and neuter initiative. Forget the indirect approach. This time it’s about tax breaks for you and...

Everyone knows fleas suck. But is your vet doing everything he or she can to inform you of the dangers of parasitic infections to your pets and other household inhabitants? Maybe. Maybe not.

Though diseases spread by fleas are relatively uncommon in the US’s people population, they’re out there. The spread of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes Plague happens via fleas that jump from...

When veterinarians need to blow off some steam, they sometimes post comments to the Veterinary Information Network’s numerous veterinarian-only threads. In some cases, they even pen letters they wish they could have written...to their misbehaving clients.

Here’s one I’ve written to help elucidate the themes in evidence on a “Dear Client” thread on VIN:

Dear Client: Thank you for making the...

This is not a “testimonial” intended for the commercial betterment of any one brand. It juts so happens that the only version of polysulfated glycosaminoglycans (PSGAG) in the veterinary marketplace is Adequan®. And it works.

Poly what?? OK, so it doesn’t really matter to me that you can’t pronounce this alphabet-soupy injectable drug. It’s enough for me that you know what it does so you can...

Don’t get me wrong. Here on Dolittler we’re near-fanatical about the use of pain control measures in veterinary medicine. We also spend a significant amount of time rehashing the side effects some of these alternatives offer along the way. But that’s not what this post is about.

Nope, this post is about how the use of pain relief in pets provides a reasonable escape hatch for those who would...

When the largest veterinary practice in the world refuses to crop your dog’s ears and dock your pups’ tails, you know the times they are a changin.’

Can there be any companion animal veterinary issue as contentious as the availability of cosmetic surgery for pets? Probably not. Surgical procedures that carry medical risks and the possibility of significant pain should be exclusively confined...

Anyone who knows me even slightly well outside of my silicon and stainless steel-infused professional environments can tell you something not-so-secret about me: I love to cook. 

Every day, almost without fail, I pore over online food porn, scour the contents of my pantry and refrigerator, devise menus and stop off at my local farmer’s market for another few ingredients to add to my stash....

Can you imagine going into the Ob/Gyn one year and being told they’re going to have to “spay” you? Ever wonder why they wouldn’t? I do.

I guess it has something to do with the etymology of the word and the sensitivity of the act of performing a full ovariohysterectomy on a woman. From the Online Etymology Dictionary, here’s the source of the word:

spay c.1410, "stab with a sword, kill," also...