You may not know this, but San Francisco has been rated highest in humane attitudes towards its animals. That’s according to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), whose annual Humane Index ranking looks at a wide collection of animal welfare issues, not the standard pet friendliness and amenities of other rankings.

Twelve major issues are factored into its catchily-captioned index:...

Two new bills just got voted on in the Colorado legislature. And vets all over the country have been watching carefully to see which way the pendulum would swing. At stake is our ability to remain the exclusive providers of animal health services in cases where physical therapy and alternative treatments (like chiropractics and acupuncture) are concerned.

One bill would give licensed physical...

Last night I had dinner with an old friend. This vet school buddy was down for the holiday weekend with the intention of unwinding and de-stressing from her demanding job—but it wasn’t happening. Boarding pass in hand at La Guardia, she got the kind of call no vet ever wants. It was the emergency service, calling to inform her of the death of a patient she’d successfully discharged that...

I never get to sleep in. When I finally get the chance to play opposum for an hour after my normal wake-up call, I get jolted awake by an emergency. No, it wasn’t a client with the bloat of my nightmares. It was my mother. She lives a couple of doors down and often calls for simple things. This time wasn’t so simple. Her dogs were attacking a cat in the back yard. Happy Memorial Day to you,...

I have a friend whose dog is addicted to porcupines. He lives in upstate New York and his Midgie is just wild about the rural prey species at her disposal. Porcs are her favorite. They put up a good rousing fight—hissing, quilling and generally making a big fuss over the whole interaction, all while standing their ground (they waddle ploddingly and can’t exactly make a run for it even if they...

It’s just like it sounds. There’s a new test out there to tell you your mixed breed’s genetic compatibility with that of a hundred-plus purebreds. Should you hanker for a reality check, go right ahead and ask your vet to look into it. She’ll Fedex a sample of serum to the lab and in a few weeks, voilá!: Fluffy’s genetically accounted for.

It might strike you as stupid but some people really...

Got fleas? Ticks? You are not alone. And, as with head lice, you shouldn’t stress out about the implications—it doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent. In fact, there’s mounting evidence that shows we have holes in our best current means of defense.

And the data is in: global warming’s not helping any. Sooner than you think, even you Northern latitudes folks may begin to feel our year-round,...

Low cost doesn’t always mean low quality, but when you go for rock bottom, you usually get what you pay for. So why is it that we’re so taken aback, as a nation, when we find out the goods we get from China aren’t exactly what we bargained for?

I’m referring here to the pet food recall issue—but not exclusively. I have little sympathy for the pet food industry. Sure, it wasn’t its intention to...

It seems impossible that a mere three months after Poppy arrived I could’ve become so attached to her—and she to me. She’s hysterically funny, crazy-smart and won’t leave my side when she’s out of her pen.

Apart from some competitive behavior when facing off with my dogs (she threatens them mercilessly with head-butts) and the rare indoor bowel movement (if that’s what you call all those little...

Among life’s imponderables (like why my nine year-old son prefers Lox on bagels to pancakes with syrup) is the issue of why some people think it’s OK to drive around with an unsecured dog in the back of a pickup. Ditto that on a motorboat, or with a car window wide open and two paws perched precariously on the window frame.

In vet school I knew someone who witnessed the worst kind of pet...

Thought I’d pass along a brief update on my declaw kitty from last week’s post. I saw him again today for the same problem—apparent discomfort in his feet post-declaw. This time Kitty walked for me and showed me exactly what I’d been waiting to see: his limp.

Sometimes it’s hard for an owner to identify exactly where the problem lies, especially in our stealthy-moving cats—they hide...

It’s not uncommon for an owner to request bleeding edge treatment options when a pet’s been diagnosed with cancer. That’s when highly motivated clients with means will do anything to make life more comfortable for their pet—even if it means traveling to another city to participate in [often expensive] clinical trials.

Problem is, most vets aren’t clued into the cottage-y, oncology network...

I never thought myself particularly tacky, but my vanity plate-owner’s staus brings that fuzzy logic into question yet again. Who needs a personalized license plate? Perhaps someone with a less of a penchant for illegal left turns. 

In school I knew this guy (whom we didn’t much admire) with a New York FUT-R VET plate. I know another here in town with FLEAS emblazoned on his bumper. People...

Yesterday’s client took the day off work to attend to her asthmatic cat who was suffering an attack far worse than any he’d experienced before. It was scary for this owner to wake up to see her kitty laboring to breathe. She had to rush in to see us, spending three hours at our practice while we stabilized him. Then she had to go in to work (a large company) and explain that she needed a...

There’s a colloquial term we vets sometimes use to describe the [thankfully rare] times we undertake surgical procedures that are beyond our abilities. We call it the “peek and shriek.” And we all do it at some point or another in our careers.

These are the times we wish we’d never anesthetized a patient and cut him open. These are the times when the room suddenly seems inordinately warm and...

People sometimes ask me why I keep this blog. What would motivate anyone to wake up early or go to bed late just to write something alternately pedantic and soul exposing? Here’s my secret: If I hadn’t forced myself to start writing things down, I might not have the chance to rid myself of daily demons that would otherwise plague me. And I might have progressed to the deadening burnout common...

I never used to think much about stitches. I thought them a necessary evil in the war against open wounds and surgical tissue apposition. No longer.

All the restrictions against bathing and grooming after surgery? Throw them out the window…when you’ve got a perfect closure with no visible stitching.

Of all vets, I should love stitches. I sew, knit and boat—so you should know I adore knots of...

Last year my own French bulldog underwent a simple procedure. Though bloody and a bit painful, my then eight year-old Sophie Sue came through brilliantly. Within 24 hours she was good as new—better, even, for her ability to breathe [almost] like a normal dog. But too few pug-faced breed owners opt for it.

As a kid I loved bulldogs but thought I’d ever own one. I’d seen too many train-wreck...

I’ve confessed here before: Yes I do declaw cats. You may dislike this about me—and I don’t blame you. I don’t like to declaw cats, either.

It’s a personal decision for every vet: Am I willing to amputate the cat fingertips for the benefit of their humans? And, most of the time, I would say no. But sometimes it’s a procedure where the expressed goal is to keep that cat safe and indoors with his...

If you’ve never seen film clips or video of animals with rabies then maybe you’re missing something. It’s not that I want to subject you to a serious case of the willies (it’s never pretty—in fact, the images are straight out of a zombie movie), it’s just that we tend to forget how horrific the disease is. And that’s a bad thing.

Mad Cow? Doesn’t come close on the horrorshow scale. Rabies’ only...

A few weeks ago I mentioned the word “stewardship” in my post on the Endangered Species Act. One of you sent me an email asking what, exactly, I meant by that. Stewardship in that short piece refers to our responsibility, as a species possessed with higher reasoning, to advocate for and otherwise protect those not capable of defending themselves (i.e., all non-humans).

Our culture also uses the...

I’m still waiting to see if they send me a free copy. $24.99 sounds like a lot of money for a game that simulates what I do every day for real. Yet I’m almost intrigued enough to type out my Visa card’s number in my [nearly completed] online form at Macgamestore.com  (only a Firefox tab away as I write).

Just last month I blogged about vets being more pop-culture worthy than other...

Here’s an ethically challenged case for you: Three over-size Maltese dogs in varying degrees of early geriatric distress…owned by perhaps the carpiest client I’ve ever met. These three train wrecks are on their last legs—and far from being tearful over their advanced deterioration, this woman couldn’t be less stressed about their impending demise.

This“retired” owner (I don’t think she’s ever...

If you’re very lucky, you’ve had the pleasure of caring for a pet so very old that she had a little trouble remembering where she was at times. She might also have had a little trouble discerning daytime hours from those at night, usually sleeping all day and pacing around after the rest of the household had gone to bed.

Confusion, disorientation, dementia: call it what you will. But when it...

Today I had a drug rep come to the hospital to let me know about a new medication for separation anxiety in dogs (again, our cats are left out). Just approved, Reconcile, manufactured by Eli Lilly, is not about to become a household name (as Rimadyl and Heartgard have). Yet so many dogs have serious separation anxiety issues that it’s tough to imagine another drug that deserves it quite as...

Have you ever filled out one of those semi-detailed surveys designed to tell you how ruinously you consume our planet’s natural resources? On Earth Day, my boyfriend gifted me a website that computes my exact contribution to the our demise. After confessing to my AC, gasoline, shipped food and miscellaneous other consumer needs, the site calculated that we would require 3.2 planets were every...

I just returned from an almost perfect, long-weekend trip to Key West. We gathered ten friends, rented a historic, five bedroom home on a quiet, tree-lined street, and motor-boated down from Miami on a perfectly glorious day.

The only problem? Apart from seven-foot seas on our return trip (which necessitated a rental car and a gloomy drive back without our boat), the only problem was…the dog...

You might assume this would be an incendiary topic in the world of veterinary medicine. But it’s not. I’m sure there are plenty of vets unwilling to perform feline abortions but I don’t know any personally. Faced with the choice: terminate a pregnancy in the process of spaying a cat or add to the already huge unwanted kitten population…hmmm…let me think…

I, for one, don’t have to.

But that...

[I’m on vacation for four days! (The first vacation I’ve had in over seven months.) So I’m lobbing you two recycled posts for your amusement (Sunday and Monday). I hope they’re new for you. And please excuse the lack of follow-up on your comments. I promise I’ll get to them when I return. –PK ]

Orange has oral squamous cell carcinoma. This disease is a devastating cancer of the mouth. It will...

You didn’t think there’d be a part 3, did you? But pet health insurance is a near-and-dear-to-my-heart issue—so why not?

Remember when I mentioned all the exclusions and small print issues in the pet insurance industry? It’s no surprise that insurance for pets has all the same trappings of its human counterpart.

Funny, though, that vets are just now starting to take notice of some of the more...

Lately, it seems I’ve hit this hot button like the buzzer on Jeopardy. But recent events have me fuming about the fraudulent nature of the pet business. This time I’m talking about my colleagues, though, and I’m sorry to say we have a hand in it at times.

Health certificates, insurance claim forms, OFA X-rays, and condo weight-restriction paperwork—they’re all ripe for fraud. Vets are on the...

It’s a weird topic—and a potentially boring one—but one that has implications for how humans and animals are treated in medical settings.

Do you ever wonder how it is that vets decide which drugs to give and what procedures to undertake when an animal is ill? What we should do is read, read and read. Studies done by respected individuals, reviewed by other respected individuals and then...

You get great service at a reasonable price—and it doesn’t smell as old as it looks—so what’s to complain about?

OK so I complain a lot about my less-than attractive workplace. It’s in suburban hell, buried in the back of one of the most unsightly strip malls on one of the most clogged intersections in my area. If I didn’t work here I’d avoid the place at all costs—except that it’s my favorite...

WARNING: long, portentious post to follow…

You’d think more of us would be vegetarians. My clients ask all the time, assuming that if you love animals enough to go to vet school…you might not want to eat them. It’s a reasonable assumption—from a suburban, “I-don’t-want-to-know-where-my-food-comes-from” point of view.

When I attended vet school from 1991 through 1995, my class included about 15...