Imagine you’ve had a rough week. Your kid’s been sick again with the same darn upper respiratory thing he’s had since he started preschool and you’ve had almost no sleep since. This is the fourth long course of Augmentin since the start of the school year. And today you received results from the allergist your pediatrician recommended.

The news isn’t good. Strong positives were registered for...

This week was a rough one for one of my clients. Last Monday morning dawned to the recognition that her middle-aged Lab mix had a lump on her leg. She’d been in and out of the car several times on Sunday and her owner assumed one of these ungainly maneuvers had occasioned a bruise. She made an appointment to see the vet on Wednesday, her day off, hoping it would improve by then and she’d have...

I have a great new patient. Her name is Proofy. She’s a Greyhound, as her glamour shot shows. Her racing name was “Proof in the Puddin’” or “Proof of Speed” or some other such insult to her current life as a pampered housepet in a loving home.

Much as I try to retain any semblance of objectivity on the dog racing thing, I have a really hard time with it—as a vet, as a Greyhound fan and as a...

Yesterday’s sickest patient was a perfect example. Jefferson came in at nine AM with no appointment. His owner explained (in dulcet, southern accented tones dripping with apology) that he just wanted to weigh his dog on a proper scale, as he seemed to be losing some weight.

After the technician weighed Jefferson and confirmed a ten-pound drop over six weeks, the client asked if he could take...

Altogether too often, the diagnosis of cancer in pets comes complete with death sentence attached: The vet makes the case, presents the histopathology report or the X-rays, then exits stage left. Or the client exit stage right. Either way, the pet (unless immediately euthanized) is left standing in the middle with no hope of anything except the possibility of eventual euthanasia—at some future...

Sorry for the mild profanity but nothing makes me crazier than clients who can’t figure out whether or not they want their pet to live…to receive treatment…or even to go to the vet in the first place.

I have a beautiful little calico in hospital who used to be a beautiful big calico about three or four weeks ago. 'Round about that time she decided to consume many small pieces of cellophane...

If anyone “gets” anesthephobia, I do. I don’t like my dog to enter into a controlled form of unconsciousness any more than you do. It’s somehow very stressful at a very raw, animal level: it’s unnatural and bizarre, if you think about it for too long.

But faced with two alternatives: my dog will suffer forty minutes of avoidable pain or my dog will receive fifteen minutes of anesthesia, I’d...

It happens. In fact, it happens a lot to some of my less discriminating patients. I’m talking about their often bizarre dietary habits. Technically referred to as pica, the eating of stuff not meant for dietary consumption (though usually this terms is reserved for soil-eaters and sand gulpers), the malady can become a truly expensive habit.

Today I stopped into my friendly neighborhood...

I’m sure you’ve all heard of pancreatitis—the notoriously painful inflammation of the pancreas that occurs commonly in dogs. This organ is so sensitive that swelling in the stomach, intestines, or any other abdominal organ can make it swell, too. And when the pancreas swells, things can get very complicated very quickly.

Here's a pic of a pancreas nestled between a slice of small intestine and...

I recounted this ten-year-old Yorkie’s last crisis in my tale of three Yorkies. He was the one who kept turning blue and wanting to die—but didn’t. Lots of drugs and beaucoup oxygen later he managed to manifest his curmudgeonly old self again. 

Sometimes I think dogs hate us so much they’d rather die than live under our care. This is definitely true of cats. But that’s usually more of a...