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...

Every veterinarian gets this line. It pumps our egos and fills us with the kind of joy only animals can add to working lives otherwise filled with fearful animals who run the other way once they catch wind of us. Never mind that these animals who “simply adore” us often fall into this category, too.

“No, really. Everywhere else they’ve had to muzzle her. She must really love you.”

OK, I’ll...

How about a fun one? Here’s Slumdog in his Halloween splint. And below, another few pics of his rooster getup amid his “flock.” I’ve seen better costumes (go to Lincoln Road on Miami Beach on Halloween weekend and the dog frocks will astound you), but it’s pretty funny to us.

How about yours? Submit your own photos in the comment section and I’ll judge for myself. The winner gets a free month...

Today is National Pet Obesity Awareness Day. It’s a special day on which we recognize the immense rotundity of America’s household creatures with an eye towards alleviating their unnecessary suffering.

But this needn’t be a national day of mourning. As we ponder the debilitations of arthritis, the cardiac risks and the diabetic leanings we’ve subjected our pets to by way of “treat-itis” and...

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...

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...

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,...

Veterinary medicine trades in the grossest things. While working in an inner city human ER may best veterinary medicine on the “dirty job” meter, that’s only because of the presence of the microscopic filth that can kill you. I think my profession is way more disgusting––grossly, anyway.

That’s why my pre-teen son worries he might not be able to hack a distinguished career in veterinary...

It’s been two months and I’m still catching heat over my scraggly stray’s name choice.

After this puppymill Pug arrived, amid a flurry of demodectic mange and fleas, my son had promptly christened him “Billy.” In the way only an eleven year-old who sees no evil growing on skin can do, he took one look and uttered the two mundane syllables.

But they didn’t stick. Between the deformed limbs,...

Can you imagine going into the Ob/Gyn one year and being told they’re going to have to “spay” you? Ever wonder why they wouldn’t? I do.

I guess it has something to do with the etymology of the word and the sensitivity of the act of performing a full ovariohysterectomy on a woman. From the Online Etymology Dictionary, here’s the source of the word:

spay c.1410, "stab with a sword, kill," also...