Here’s a question: What’s the protocol for handling clients’ off-color jokes, taming their florid outbursts and rejecting any untoward advances?

I have no clear answer for all these cases. That’s where you come in.

No matter what business you’re in, you’re bound to be exposed to undeserved assaults on your dignity and/or your domestic status. Some people are, simply put, “inappropriate.” So...

Never fear. You still have time. Place an order by tonight (or maybe tomorrow night) and you’ll have a turkey. But not just any turkey. This is a turkey that, as we speak, lives and breathes on a free range farmstead in all his or her gallinaceous glory.

All those Whole Foods birds? They invariably best the standard supermarket Butterball for flavor, freshness and potential for “free range”...

Got an oily animal problem? Above all others, Dawn is my go-to product.

I spent the eighties and early nineties washing oil-spilled seabirds in dilute Dawn solutions. The tar glopped feet of gulls, pelicans, herons and plovers (among others) always emerged from the goo after repeated rinses in the light blue magic waters.

When cats and dogs come in covered with motor oil (reference a recent...

Being a food animal veterinarian can offer a broader range of opportunities than the average American might think. We can shuffle papers for a big behemoth of a swine operation, sit behind a desk in Washington D.C., condemn carcasses at a CAFO, manage herds for 1,500-head dairy facilities, consult with family-run farms as they attempt to go organic or introduce chicken fanciers to the sweet...

It’s a huge issue. So big it fuels a sizable niche industry created specifically to meet the needs of pets who won’t––or can’t––tolerate drugs and supplements designed to treat and/or prevent their ills.

It’s nearly every day we access our favorite compounding pharmacy’s expertise in the formulation of new versions of the same-old drugs that line our shelves. After all, pets can be picky...

Here’s another entry born of an email response to Monday’s post on how to identify quality in veterinary care. This time, it’s related to my comment on the issue of compassion in veterinary medicine––particularly with respect to high-priced, technically savvy hospitals where concern for the owner’s pocketbook takes a back seat to what’s best for the pet.

The suggestion led one emailer to ask...

After yesterday’s post on how to spy quality in veterinary care, I received an email asking this simple question (and I paraphrase): How do I know if my veterinarian should be referring me to a specialist? What are these “complex” situations you allude to in your post and how would I know if I’m being led astray?

Excellent question! More so because there’s no clear answer. While our leading...

In response to the question I field most frequently (though seldom worded so succinctly), I’ll offer you a post that attempts a concise response to the issue of quality in veterinary care...and how you know you’re getting it. 

It’s like the tired old quip on porn: No one quite knows how to define it...but you always know it when you see it. So goes quality in veterinary care. Hard to...

First up: Thank you all for the encouragement on kicking the habit-which-shall-not-be-named. Next: Apologies for the rare lapse in my daily posting schedule and the tardiness of this Saturday entry...

...but I’ve been working. Mostly, anyway. Today, I spent 3.5 hours lecturing (again, sort of) on issues surrounding new graduate integration into the work force. It was really more like a...

I’m heading out to Denver today to lead a roundtable discussion on the topic of new graduate integration into the workforce (more on that tomorrow). In advance of a trip out to the Rockies where the oxygen is thinner and the hiking trails are steeper, I’ve been taking drugs...lots of ‘em.

I’m on my second week of Chantix, Pfizer’s blockbuster smoking cessation pills. They work by blocking...