Whenever I get cases with two or more seemingly unrelated problems I automatically start looking for the possible connection. It dogs me (no pun intended) until I figure it out (or the specialist does it for me).

First thing Saturday morning I saw a ten-year-old Lab named Luby. She looked like a bar fight survivor. And her nineteen-year-old owner was convinced she’d been bitten by a rat in her...

Every hospital, provided it’s been in business long enough, has at least one story about The Fugitive. Usually reserved as a cautionary tale for all new employees, it’s one most of us don’t want to relive.

Our hospital has one famous case of a dog who escaped its collar and leash, tore through the hospital in a panic and fled through the back door at the exact moment the back door had been...

What a terrible day to be in the hospital. It must stink to be sick—especially on a beautiful, balmy Christmas Day like today. (Dare I gloat and tell you I’m sitting outside on my patio wearing a sundress?)

By the way, Merry Christmas for all of you to whom this sentiment applies. As usual, however, there is at least one extremely banged-up patient to whom I must attend on this holiday and who...

Today I was going to offer you a post on the merits of charitable giving with a list of worthy organizations for you to consider donating your taxable income. Unfortunately, the death of Peaches (the puppy with Leptospirosis whose story I’d recounted last weekend) has preempted my attempt at philanthropy.

After watching Babette’s feast last night (my favorite Christmas movie, though it includes...

Romeo the Rottweiler-mix, four years old but looking twice his age, came in last week for an evaluation after spending a sleepless night seizuring. They’d started last night—short bursts of violent, head-bashing convulsions (the grand mal variety) that eventually landed him in the local emergency hospital.

The following morning his brain was quieter, but addled nonetheless. He recognized family...

Sometimes you see a case so obviously infectious that it makes you want to put on a mask and yell for the Clorox as soon as the animal touches the exam room table. This, however, is a bedside-manner no-no. Professional though it might be from the standpoint of protecting your other patients, the reality is that no parent wants their pet treated like a pariah.

At first, this six-month-old pup...

Phoebe-the-Cat came in last week with her left paw curled under her sleek black and white frame. It didn’t seem to hurt. It wasn’t orthopedically awry. Every bone and joint felt normal. When coaxed into action, she was unable to bear weight on the paw—it appeared to give way at the wrist. But when the technician picked her up off the floor she astutely noted that the afflicted paw was cooler...

OK so I know I shouldn’t have taken this so hard but I did. A couple of weeks ago I performed a surgery that didn’t go just right. And the clients are not completely satisfied. The hyper-pleaser in me abhors this feeling. And so I went home last night feeling pretty low.

The back-story: A heavy-set (read: minimally sub-obese) Rhodesian ridgeback girl arrives with her brother for his follow-up...

For the most part, I’ll answer: NO! However, as always, I have some exciting examples that actually make me think twice about how much dental care is appropriate—and I’m a dentistry junkie.

Let me first confess: I believe only a tiny minority of dogs can get through life comfortably without routine dental care. Studies demonstrate that even those that may never experience oral discomfort would...

The title of this blog may sound coarse but it is, nonetheless, the one trite, vet school maxim that sticks to my grey matter more than any other—perhaps because it reeks of callous, old-style vet medicine but more likely because it has actually served me well.

Garth, a geriatric yellow Lab with the droopy face and plodding gait of a doddering old man, is one of my favorite clients. So it was...