The Supreme Court has agreed to take on a case pertaining to the First Amendment as it applies to animals. And that’s a good thing. When the highest court in the land is willing to review a legal matter that affects animals directly, it speaks to the growing concern for their welfare in all sectors of society.

At issue is that, according to court watchers, the Supreme Court is likely to rule...

You’ll all be pleased to hear that this week’s string of public policy-related animal rants has come to a close. You’ll have to forgive me as sometimes my mind goes on a tear and there’s no way to rein it in until it’s expended itself (and I’m pretty sure it has).

This post will hopefully make up for some of the stress with a couple of interesting tidbits you may have missed in the world of...

If you live in Seminole County, Florida and you want the least expensive pet care to be had, you can mosey on over to the shelter and get tax-subsidized, full service veterinary care––which, of course, means that members of the Florida Veterinary Medical Association (FVMA) are up in arms (yet again).

Not only do many FVMA members rail against tax dollars applied indiscriminately to the...

Here in Miami I get plenty of clients who send an “agent” to do their veterinary business. Instead of seeing a pet owner face-to-face, I get the happened-to-be-available husband, the housekeeper, the man-servant or the could-care-less son who happens to be home from college. 

As I muddle through my obligatory history-taking in these cases, it’s clear there is no bond. In fact, it inevitably...

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...