Among the most annoying chronic problems in dogs occurs when they occasionally spring a leak (of urine, that is). I’m not referring to the stand-up-and-aim variety ubiquitous among unneutered males, nor to the frequent messes made by the untrained. This is the kind of leak that occurs most often in spayed female dogs. It typically happens while they’re sleeping or resting. And punishment is...

July 30th, 2006

Sunday. Yesterday I saw one of the strangest cases I’d seen in weeks—if not months. It would have been a sad one, too, were its conclusion not likely to result in a healthy pet within a week.

A six-week-old pup, a Jack Russell (AKA Parsons) terrier was rescued from a farm in Miami’s hinterlands. He was found with no food or water, scrounging on the ground for whatever food...

July 29th, 2006

Saturday. My first client takes one look at me and says (and I paraphrase): Dr. Khuly, you’re the only vet I know who goes to work in heels, wears a punk rock hairdo and paints her toenails blue.

This (I say, pointing headwards) is not punk rock. Punk intends to repel and offend, I contend. My hairstyle was designed to please (myself, mostly, I’ll admit).

But this begs the...

July 28th, 2006

Friday. After a long night with two dogs in my bed (Miss Brown has quickly assumed her role in my household) I’m here at work on my day off to make a zillion phone calls and deal with one of veterinary medicines occasional headaches: a surgical complication.

Earlier this week (Monday) I spayed a six-month-old Rottweiler pup. Since she’s an anxious dog I made the decision to...

July 27th, 2006

Thursday. I have a new puppy. Her name is Miss Brown and my longtime readers (all twelve of you) know all about her.

For those of you who are new to Dolittler, I’ll briefly recount her story: A four-month-old collie mix (Miami Dingo Dog, as I like to think of her) is spotted at a grade-school playground after an accident with a fence.

The pup has a badly broken back leg. She was...

The swimming pool can be summer’s best friend or a year-round disaster waiting to happen. Consider the drowning deaths of 4,000 children every year in swimming pools across the US. Multiply by one hundred and you have a reasonable guess at the number of dogs that drown each year in our backyard watering holes.

There are no confirmed statistics on exactly how many dogs drown every year but my...

July 25th, 2006

Tuesday. What improvement! The kitten’s leg is beginning to yield to our ministrations. After a particularly aggressive physical therapy session I could feel some muscle give way (rip, actually) from the healing bone it was attached to.

Now that he’s up after the anesthesia we administered for this procedure, the kitten is sore and unhappy. A pain-relieving patch has to be...

July 24th, 2006

Monday. The kitten’s leg is not improving in spite of lots of physical therapy. His owners want me to keep trying but…

The surgeon came over today to check out his leg. He is not optimistic, to say the least. If the physical therapy has not yielded measurable changes each day he’s been here his chances are nearly nil of ever bending that leg again without…surgery, of course.

He’s...

July 23rd, 2006

Sunday. Here I am Sunday morning trying hard to bend a kitten’s really stiff limb back into shape. And it’s not complying. The limb, that is. I’ve given the kitten a whopping dose of pain relievers. At this point he could care less how aggressively I manipulate his limb—he’s practically asleep.

The problem: Baby kitten is found with a severe femoral fracture last month. I repair...

Are these not the cutest pugs? These guys are lucky to be alive. Despite their gorgeous appearance, they are the perfect example of something very ugly. Their harrowing story of survival tells why dogs should not be bred by inexperienced owners and backyard breeders (the vast majority of us).

The story: There was once a mama named Mandy (not her real name) whose owners decided it would be a...

Bully for me. I’ve finally been handed my first subpoena. No, I’m not being sued for anything but one of my colleagues at another hospital is. And now I’m being dragged into court to testify against him.

Needless to say, this makes me very uncomfortable. I will not relish missing a day’s work (and a day’s pay) as well as suffering the stress of a downtown courthouse appearance. Moreover, I...

Hip dysplasia is a disease of the hip where a dog’s normal ball and socket joint don’t allow for a normal, smooth fit. Instead, painful rubbing and instability results in a messy, ineffective joint incapable of bearing a dog’s weight effectively.

Most dog aficionados consider hip dysplasia to be exclusively a large breed phenomenon. German Shepherd and Retriever breeds are overrepresented, to...

July 19th, 2006

Wednesday. Today I saw Lola, a friend’s very sick little Dachshund mix. She spends a lot of her time in the Florida Keys chasing lizards and living la vida doga. She’s a happy dog.

But on Thursday night, she came down with a serious fever. She was hot, very hot, and quiet, very quiet. Since the keys suffers from a severe dearth of all-night vet hospitals, my friend took her to a...

July 18th 2006

Tuesday. An argument almost broke out in the waiting room today. One of my crazy (but lovable) clients walked in with Heidi, a well-fed Dachshund well into her graying years.

Heidi is not really fat, just a bit paunchy. She could use a few pounds off her frame, but mom is well aware of the trade-offs and manages her weight more responsibly than most, I must admit. Heidi would be...

July 17th, 2006

Monday. Tachina is a ten-year-old Boston terrier with enough energy to power a small city—so says her mother, and she should know. I have never met a dog that evokes the Tazmanian Devil quite like she does.

Tachina's owners have to bring her in a crate so she doesn’t run circles around everyone in the waiting room.

I feel like a tree in a hurricane as she jumps all over me...

Euthanizing pets takes its toll. No one likes to do it but some of us deal with it better than others. My best friend, also a vet, cringes at the experience and it stays with him for days afterwards. I’m far more resilient on this front, partly because I do it far more often than he does. In part, I suspect he shaped his career to one as a specialist (he’s a surgeon) so he wouldn’t have to...

July 15th, 2006

Saturday. Today I had to tell a client his fifteen-year-old mixed breed dog, Rex, has malignant melanoma, a deadly cancer (of the skin and lymph nodes, in this case, though it can affect multiple organs throughout the body).

You`d might think this is going to be another depressing post but it’s not. This client, one half of a dog-devoted couple, took the news with emotion, but...

July 14th, 2006 (Bastille Day: repent Zidane!)

Last night I was informed that my blog is too negative. Now, this comes from a well-respected source so I’m not about to dismiss it out of hand. He contends that my delivery is vent-oriented. (Like central air? What exactly do you mean?).

Apparently, and I don’t disagree, I’m too self-effacing and don’t write enough about how fabulous my job is and...

July 13th, 2006

Thursday. Walked in the door this morning drenched from this week’s unrelenting, paroxysmal cloudbursts. That was after spending two hours waking, feeding, dressing and taxiing my 8-year-old to the dreaded basketball summer camp (not his thing—don’t ask, it’s a long story). In the hospital’s waiting room, guess what I found? Six clients looking mighty worried about how long...

Sterilization. What an ugly word. That must be why so many pet owners don’t have it done to their dogs and cats.

If you’re reading this and don’t show your pet or actively participate in a breed club, my opinion is that you have few excuses for getting out of this one—especially with regards to your cat (no excuses).

Rhode Island will go one further: If you don’t possess a breeder’s license or...

July 11th, 2006

Tuesday. Had one of those days you have when everything goes well until the last client. Ruins your whole outlook for the night ahead.

Today’s mood destroyer walked in with a black cloud over her head. And when she opened her mouth it was like a black hole, opening wide to suck you in with her hyper-vacuous b---s---.

In the waiting room: I don’t need to fill out all that...

Monday. Olive is a very small, two year old Boston terrier with a very big problem. Her lymph nodes are enlarged and firm—not a good symptom. Lymph nodes are multiple structures dispersed all over the body that serve as a sort of clearinghouse for white blood cells.

Lymph nodes will usually get bigger when the body is actively trying to deal with an infection. They will also swell under some...

July 9th, 2006

Sunday. A beautiful day of swimming and resting. It took me all day today to get over yesterday. Yesterday was a crappy Saturday.  Like most, there was at least one euthanasia to perform. And this one was extra-special.

The circumstances were grave: Oscar would have done his Sesame Street namesake proud. This dog was poorly cared for. His skin was suffering from a severe lack of...

Little Suzie, a ten-pound, ten-month-old terrier mix, had been warned on several previous occasions to keep her snooping snout out of the bathroom wastebasket.

Like any self-respecting terrier, Suzie had never been a good listener. So it was that on this most recent occasion (a day when her mom knew exactly what she’d added to that little wicker basket in the bathroom) little Suzie took matters...

I’m 10.5 years out of vet school, 8.5 years out of business school (don’t ask) and 30-something (please don’t do the math). All this with a total of 20-plus years in the work force, and I’ve just been fired for the first time in my life. It’s shocking!

This is the reality for those of us who don’t own a practice: job security is not always what you would expect it would be with 10 years of...

No, every day is not about happy puppies and kittens. Some days we even convince ourselves we hate puppies and kittens.

Kittens are often sick. And puppies can be aggressive and unruly. You pick them up and sometimes they even growl at you. Their owners growl at you. Life sucks on those days.

I’m depressed after this post. I’ll get back to this another day…

No, we don’t choose our profession based on our potential for income. We don’t usually make the kind of money our extensive educations might suggest. The average income for vets is $65K for women and $95K for men (I will address this income disparity in a later post).

While this may amount to a respectable income for most people, it does not seem like so much money when your student loan bill...

Contrary to public opinion we are not always nice, caring people (some of us really suck—trust me). Example: I know a vet who likes his animals dead. His preferred cases are well-baby checkups and geriatric euthanasia. These are situations he doesn’t have to think much about. They generate significant income. Moreover, they indicate excellent turnover in his practice, and he believes these...

There are 50,000 veterinarians in the US alone. We don’t always love our work but we always seem to have great stories. There’s something about pets—and animals in general—that brings out the crazies among us…and/or within us. Perhaps that’s the best explanation for our wealth of material.

Most people misunderstand veterinarians. They mistakenly believe we are an ideal blend of the rational...

Make no mistake: Dr. Dolittle is not my favorite literary figure. He is, however, the inspiration for many children eager to devote their lives to the practice of veterinary medicine. Hence, the title moniker for this blog. Plus, I get a kick out of comparing myself to Eddie Murphy and some goofy, old, white man with his stethoscope trained on a hippo’s ass.

It always impresses me how...

July 1st, 2006

Saturday. I always work on Saturdays. All my friends go biking, running, or boating on Saturdays. I wake up by seven, hit the Starbucks, buy breakfast for the crew, and work solidly until at least noon.

Most vets seem to work on Saturdays. Keep this in mind if you’re in the market for a career change. Veterinary work is retail work. You may spend eight to twelve hours a day...