Christmas Eve is not the best day of the year to come down with any illness that eludes obvious diagnosis. That’s what happened to the eight year-old Rottweiler who arrived as a last-minute emergency before we closed for last week’s holiday.

When she arrived, Trixie had been restless and uncomfortable overnight. Her owners suspected a serious flare-up of her arthritis and were seeking some...

Your kitten doesn’t greet you when you come home from work one day. Instead, she’s hiding behind the toilet engrossed in a grim task: playing with the remnants of a bottle of spilled Tylenol gelcaps. Damn!—you thought you picked up every last one. Meanwhile, an unseen stash was hiding in the corner.

At least five gelcaps have been bitten to shreds. Their contents are oozing on the floor and...

Did you know that sometimes veterinarians spay in different ways? Some of us take out the ovaries and the uterus. Others take the ovaries alone.

The debate among veterinarians on this point has often been heated. European vets can’t for the life of them figure why American vets take it all out. Vice versa’s typically the case, too. Why NOT prevent all those pesky potential uterine issues...

Some of you know the drill well: A new lumpy-bumpy pops up, seemingly overnight. You make the appointment, trek to the vet hospital and have your vet stick a needle in it. She then checks the cells she’s extracted under a microscope and sometimes decides to send another slide to the pathologist for examination. She then adds a description of the mass to a chart she keeps that details your...

You wake up groggily one Saturday morning—admittedly a bit on the late side—and you suddenly realize how it is you managed to sleep in. Your ten year-old kitty companion is nowhere to be seen. She’s typically right there, meowling and staring at you plaintively so you’ll get up and fill her food bowl.

You look everywhere and finally you find her in her strange-guests-are-here hiding spot...

It’s well known that precautions can be taken to mitigate the potential havoc anesthesia can wreak on any given patient, human or animal. In human medicine, safety measures are governed by scrupulous standards, which are the result of meticulous research.

The veterinary profession has learned a great deal from its human counterpart, given that science in the realm of animal-specific anesthesia...

Sadly, everyone knows someone whose pet has died mysteriously under anesthesia. This disturbing knowledge, second-hand though it may be, makes even the most rational among us cringe when it comes to having our own pets anesthetized.

It’s one thing to know that emergencies must be dealt with anesthetically. We accept that broken bones, swallowed toys and lacerations are inevitably treated to a...

…veterinarians step in.

I’m no groomer. And no, I don’t relish adopting the mantle of those far better qualified than a vet to trim, snip and clip. I do it only when a pet’s health is involved.

So you know, groomers don’t like it when we encroach on their territory by offering similar services—no more than we like it when they offer healthcare advice willy-nilly, anyway.

It’s true that I’m not...

An earlier post this week on what I wish they’d taught me in vet school prompted a comment on ethics from a vet student. Though I seldom address comments so directly in a follow-up post, I thought this one merited a reprint for fuller discussion.

Here’s the question (and my answer). Feel free to follow up with your own solution to the dilemma:

Q. Speaking of ethics--I'm a second year vet...

Now that we’ve discussed some of the politics of hip dysplasia in dogs (in last week’s post on the same subject) it’s time to count the nuts and bolts involved in its diagnosis.

Every dog is potentially at risk of suffering hip dysplasia—no matter his or her breed. This post is intended to help those of you who take on new dogs (whether it’s a purebred pup or older mix) learn more of the ins...