I’m not deputized as an officer of the law and I’m no trained tax collector. I have no desire play either role in the normal course of my veterinary life. And yet I’m effectively enjoined to act as de facto dog police multiple times every day as I explain pet license policies and procedures to my confused clients.

It earns me no money––and definitely no friends––but it wouldn’t do to leave my...

In most municipalities in the US, dogs (and sometimes cats, too) require yearly licenses. The fees from these licenses are used to fund the animal services our municipalities provide. In some municipalities (like mine) there is no other source of municipal funding for animal-related services. Consequently, if people don’t buy tags...there will be no animal services.

Because the annual license...

The average price of a veterinary office visit in the US is right around $50. I’ve seen them as high as $250 for specialists and emergency hospitals and as low as $0 at places where the office visit is beside the point (as when vaccines, drugs, tests and procedures are all that get priced).

Most general practitioners like me, however, tend to price themselves somewhere between $25 and $75 for...

My email inbox always looks like a bomb went off in a pile of alphanumeric characters. (Incoming!) What’s worse, it’s clear that someone with the organizational proficiency (and taste) of a middle-schooler took to the “tag” button by way of adding a riot of pseudo-descriptive colors to the laundry list of lines.

It was amid this mess that I’d almost overlooked a crucial missive from a...

Whatever your profession, you’ll have work days that will stay with you forever. Yesterday was one such adventure...in misery.

I was feeling flu-ish and crappy (a rare occurrence for me) and had decided to take the afternoon off (an even rarer occurrence). Since I don’t like to take cold meds I was sniffling into Kleenex, coughing into my elbow and handwashing obsessively when my first...

I get it all the time. Vitriolic emails and anti-pet comments are inevitable every time I attempt a small splash in a big, not-so-pet-oriented pond.

“Take your sappy pet stories and animal welfare hand-wringing elsewhere,” they’ve said, along with, “Pets are dumb animals and you’re one too!” I’ve been called a “dumb blonde,” a “Valley Girl” (really) and a crappy writer (ouch!). Lots of other...

Not having owned a television in 10 years, I’m feeling pretty pop culture deprived lately. So when I heard about a woman who lost her dog to a coyote in the Hollywood Hills, I had no idea this had become something of a gossip rag sensation. After all, coyotes take small pets all the time, right?

Jessica Simpson––whom I’m told is something of a poster child for quintessential blonde stupidity...

Whether you’re a veterinary surgeon or an human oncologist, you rarely have to handle the touchy topic of public health. General practitioners however––regardless of species––are constantly tasked with taking the long view when treating our patients: 

How might our patients’ conditions potentially affect the health of others? Which prevention techniques and tests are in the best interest of...

No, it’s not a typo. “Prebiotics” are distinct from the “probiotic” dietary supplements we’ve treated here before. But they’re not altogether different. They still work at the level of the small intestine where swarms of bacterial colonies reside and feed happily on your pets’ Gi goo.

But instead of supplying “good” bacteria directly (usually in a probiotic chewie or powder), prebiotics...

I get lots of mail like the letter I’m posting below. This one is from a Dolittler reader and pet owner whose pet suffered a fatal reaction––this time from a commercial dog chew. And like most special requests like this one, the questions it raises are many. They’re detailed below this impassioned appeal for your consideration.

Patty,

Here is the letter I sent you that I would like posted on...

It’s popular to report the news as a Friday variety show. Tired as the format might be, this week was so chock-full of news on the animal/veterinary front I figured it would be a shame to let any of it slide by unnoticed.

To that end, Dolittler will run with the wolves this week and offer you a round-up of things playing out in the veterinary arena. Here goes...

Beware blue-green algae––it...

If you’re a regular Dolittler reader you’ll know I’m a big proponent of routine rabies vaccination. I’ll even go so far as to raise the gruesome specter of the disease’s dreaded symptoms and universal fatality to get you to comply. I’m also not above using guilt along with scare tactics. Anything goes when it comes to mitigating the public health risk of rabies.

Why? Because I’ve had more...

Yes, really. If you can’t stand the thought of keeping an ornery, smelly buck and don’t want to ship your doe three hours away for a worthy one, you too can artificially inseminate your goats right in the comfort of your own home.

OK, not inside your home but it doesn’t have to be any farther than your backyard caprine enclave.

I’ve finally pulled the trigger and decided that this year’s...

Yesterday’s telephone call from a major online pet pharmacy was totally unexpected. When I heard it was on the phone, I figured I’d get treated to a sales pitch. The last thing I expected was a contentious phone call over a request for “language clarification.”

It was the pet pharmacy’s in-house legal peeps, calling over last week’s USA Today column. Here’s the “objectionable”...

Since we’ve lately been talking about how to live on the frugal edge, I figured this post was definitely in order. I mean, have you seen the price of dog treats lately? Crates? Toys? Add an “organic ingredients” or “custom-built” label to the item and the price-tag zooms.

And yes, pet food costs 30% more than it did three years ago. That “Rx” stuff? It’s prices have skyrocketed even faster....

Although I worked a 14-hour ER shift last night––definitely not my normal gig––I actually feel pretty great this morning. Energized, even. This fact, along with a few great comments filed under yesterday’s entry, inspired me to put together this post on how to know if your animal ER offers what you need when things go all wrong with your pets in the off-hours.

Though I’ve always loved ER work...

Some weeks my paycheck looks soooo paltry. We all have pay periods like that, don’t we? This one was especially financially trying, seeing as Labor Day intervened (and screwed everything up) and every afternoon brought buckets of rain (no one wants to come a-calling in stormy weather with their pets).

So it was that when yesterday morning’s phone call came in, I was willing to grant a...

Got a pet? Of course you do. Exercise with her? Maybe yes. Maybe no. Either way, it’s time to take a survey!

Since we’re usually hashing and rehashing research here on Dolittler, I thought it might be apropos to help contribute some raw data of our own for a change. This time, its about human exercise and animal-keeping. And who among us is NOT interested in this subject?

After all, this is...

Call me strange, but I’ve always wanted to write a sci-fi kid’s novel on the subject of a parallel universe in which dogs are raised for food and biofuel. (Some of this fantastically abhorrent stuff is even committed to my computer’s hard drive.)

So when I read Monday’s New York Times piece on dog evolution and early domestication, I was oddly enthralled––and none too surprised––to learn that...

A couple of months ago a tearful client explained that she’d had to go into the hospital for a MRSA infection. And now that her physician had demanded she remove all pets from her household, her husband and teenaged son had refused to live in the same house until she complied with the order––which, of course, she didn’t do. (Would you?)

Because of the limited data available on MRSA...

Last week I extracted the sweetest little pair of Victoria’s Secret underwear from the innards of a beagle.

Though the pink had long since faded to gray, and I’m sorry to say the elastic had melted in the acids the teensy thong had marinated in for months, there it was: a sign of victory for me as it exited in two pieces (one directly out the stomach, another via a small incision in the...

Using drugs for indications not approved by the FDA or in species not listed on the label is a fine gray line many of us in the veterinary profession are uncomfortably forced to straddle.

That’s because way too many of our drugs are not economically significant enough for drug manufacturers to undertake the incredibly expensive approval process required to bring them to market for common...

Pet friendly? I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means. That’s what happens when you live in Miami. Except for a small enclave on South Beach, pets get nowhere near their due––not compared to Portland, anyway.

Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Portland, Oregon’s neo-urban Pearl District has trouble keeping its pet owners out of the Safeways and the Whole Foods. When Oregon’s food...

Not long ago, I was politely panned by a pet owner over on my PetMD DailyVet blog. He or she was upset because I’d dared to present the topic of itchiness (pruritus) in such arduous detail.

I’d discussed pruritus in pets (in three installments) as a complex issue, citing a litany of possibilities for each kind of pattern. I explained, in essence, that diagnosis and treatment was not always so...

This week, news broke that the world’s oldest dog had died at age 147. That’s 21 years for you and me. In its wake came more reports of other dogs vying for the Guinness Book of World Records––including one whose owners are struggling to authenticate their 26 year-old dog’s age.

The fact that we celebrate our pets’ grand old ages as an accomplishment is both wonderful...and slightly creepy,...

You’ve all heard of cancer-detecting dogs and seizure alerters. But here’s one I hadn’t been aware of since very recently: Dogs with the ability to sniff out hypoglycemia.They call this class of dogs bio-detectors, a perfectly reasonable moniker for what it is they do. Somehow, they can use their thousand-times more sensitive sense of smell to sniff out  pathology...sometimes well in advance...