Here’s a pet peeve of mine: Why are pets and their issues always remanded to the same periodical vicinity as great recipes and fancy decorating ideas? For example, it’s the very girly Home and Design section of The Miami Herald that prints my 400 words every week. And it’s the same for most papers across the nation—one step shy of the funny pages and always unnecessarily nestled among the...

Vet hospitals across the US are finally grabbing hold of the most basic dental technology and making good use of it. But most pet owners are still unwilling to pay for it—or are they?

Consider the tried-and-true dental X-ray machine: not even a quarter of vet hospitals in the US offer this simple tool to determine—for sure—whether a questionable tooth needs pulling or deserves a fighting...

I have a confession (yes, another one—but it’s a biggie): I often prefer to sit with my computer and write to you than actually see patients and clients. I’ve been feeling guilty about this for about a year now, but it’s finally wearing on me enough that I feel the need to come clean.

I acknowledge this to you now after suffering a couple of weeks of grinding, work-related stress that urges me...

I’ve spent the past couple of months learning more about pet obesity than you thought you’d ever want to know. It’s part of a new drive to help my clients get a grip on the fat that threatens to consume their pets’ health and well being.

But since the advent of Pfizer's Slentrol, my investigation has taken a new slant. What’s the deal with this dog-slimming diet drug? “Obesity begone!” it...

When I was a kid I remember falling ill one day and spending a prolonged period of time in my bed. The illness was thankfully short-lived, and I certainly don’t recall its manifestation, but I do remember the family cat’s reaction. Perse (short for Persephone) spent her day collecting leaves off a common houseplant and clustering them at my bedside. It was strange—and wonderful—to be so cared...

Has anyone else discovered the irony in Natural Balance’s botulism-tainted canned food? One of the recalled brands was the “Chinese Take-Out” version of their Eatables for Dogs. Who would leave that brand on the shelf after all we’ve been through?

Luckily, botulism isn’t known to be as big a toxin among pets as in our own bodies. In fact, there’s never been a reported case of botulism in cats....

Monday morning in The Miami Herald: Cockfighting feeds for sale online in the US. Every day this week: the Falcons’ Vick and his penchant for the pit.

Is it just me or are you feeling like this news is a little stale, given what the rest of us already know: animal fighting is abusive, underreported and seldom prosecuted. It’s only when high rollers like Vick and his increasingly urban ilk get...

Ahhhh…the Elizabethan collar. Otherwise known as “the satellite dish,” “the big blue flower,” “the cone” and the “circular torture thingy” (among other not-so-euphemistic nome-de-guerres). It’s a menace to petdom and a source of stress for caring parents and veterinarians the world around.

And yet, vets keep prescribing it. In fact, we foist it upon unsuspecting pet owners by trotting out...

A huge, color photo of an anesthetized pit bull being prepped to enter the extremely high-tech mouth of a $750,000 MRI. That’s what’s pictured above the fold in SundayStyles, a section better known for frothy drink concoctions and the weekly wedding roster than for animal fare.

The article details the New York Animal Medical Center (that bastion of non-profit, academic-oriented veterinary...

OK, so I know it’s late to be posting on a Sunday. I have no excuse. It’s just that I’ve been reading the new Harry Potter since I picked up my reserved copy yesterday after work and I haven’t been able to put it down (except for the innumerable interruptions a nine year-old child can manage to provide when he’d rather be playing at something else and occasionally wrenching a good book out of...

Here’s my five-point plan for pet safety during all evacuation-worthy storms, whether you choose to stay behind or head to higher ground. Make sure you check all these bullet points for anything might have missed (I know you guys are pros but you might not have thought of some of the little things):

1-Identification:

• In the event that you and your pet are inadvertently separated, all...

Here’s another post chock-full of fun factoids for all you feline readers. I recently read yet another paper from this past issue’s JAVMA that deals with pain management in cats—at home and after surgery, no less. If you plan on spaying or neutering your cat (and you always will, at some point or another in your kitty career) this study might interest you.

The basic point this study makes is...

A recent study published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) convincingly demonstrates a pronounced statistical upswing in animal emergency hospital traffic on the eve of a full moon.

No longer is full-moon madness a purely human phenomenon. It now seems to impact pets, too. Whether it be a consequence of their human companions’ compulsions or purely their own...

Yesterday, NPR’s afternoon news ran a four-minute interview with Dr. Gregory Hammer, our newly minted king of the AVMA. He was bemoaning the state of the profession’s stale vet school applicant pool—especially when it comes to food animal medicine and public health.

Sure, we have plenty of applicants to fill the seats, but it’s nowhere near the ten to one ratio of apps to admitteds we had back...

Miami’s forward-thinking Camillus House (an organization with a mission to help all homeless men and women find their way off the streets) is having trouble with one of its newest ventures. It has proposed offering kennel facilities to homeless citizens’ pets—and some South Floridians see this as a less-than-PR-worthy misstep.

To some extent, I agree. The concept of a kennel in a homeless...

There’s a saying in Spanish that goes, “En casa del herrero, cuchillo de palo.” Translated roughly, it means the same thing as, “the cobbler’s son has no shoes.” Except this Medieval version finds the blacksmith using a wooden knife. Sometimes I think I should coin a vet version. It seems some of us deserve it.

Take my own dog: he’s been itchy all weekend and I’ve been dosing him with Benadryl...

I confess: I get my genders mixed up sometimes. No, it’s not a vision issue…nor does it stem from sheer laziness. I know it’s right on his record and right between his legs—but somehow I still called him a her.

So you know (as if you didn’t already), parents don’t appreciate this. They usually correct you immediately—sometimes indignantly. And I don’t blame them. This is one transgression no...

I want to be a star…well, not really…but sort of. I’d at least like to get on TV. Now, I don’t consider myself a shameless self-promoter or a wild exhibitionist, but I might admit to being a smidge more extroverted than the average vet. That’s why I signed up for VNN (Veterinary News Network) to help launch my middling career as a broadcast journalist.

VNN is a veterinary broadcast...

OK so what would YOU do if you saw a truck parked by the side of the road with a load of small pups exposed to the hot afternoon sun?

What if the pups were packed into flimsy wire cages with a big, fluorescent, poster-board sign plastered to the front advertising, “Puppy’s For Sale.”

Grammar and spelling corrections aside, what’s your next move? Confront the shirtless idiot sitting in the...

Have a one-eyed pet? Know anyone with a one-eyed pet? Send me your pics and I’ll pay homage to them ALL on this post as a way to encourage humanity to accept that one-eyed pets are BEAUTIFUL! [If they’ve got no eyes (as happens on rare occasions) consider them doubly welcome!]

Include a link in your comment or email them to me directly (drkhuly@dolittler.com) and I’ll showcase their pic on this...

So now that we’re in prime summer vacation season, I’ll have you know that I’ve been besieged with requests for more pet sitters and boarding kennel references than I possibly know what to do with. I don’t know about your locale, but Miami is a slummy place for kenneling your pet.

The pet sitter turnover here is higher than at your local Starbucks and the kennels in my immediate area are...

I just got off the phone with Betsy Saul. She runs PetFinder.com, the famed destination where rescue pets and their prospective owners meet and fall in love…online.

If you’re like me, you worship people who run such effective, socially responsible businesses. How better to make your fortune than by securing the right to say your enterprise is responsible for a full 65% of pet adoptions in the...

I’ve been communicating lately with a sharp animal rights attorney who’s prosecuting a malpractice case I’m frustratingly (and peripherally) involved in. She sent me a great article she wrote about vets and their association with pet stores. It’s titled, “Why a relationship with a pet shop is like a pact with the devil.”

So you get the background, you should know that a small percentage of...

I’m sure you’ll respond to this title with an emphatic, “YES—duh.” But it’s a good starting point for sourcing your opinions and stories.

We’ve all seen vets and techs that have a little more of “the gift” than others. They just glide their hand over the animal’s back and somehow, a formerly hissing, spitting beast is subdued to low grumblings. Others simply seem to have no fear—which is a...

When pets are injured or die at the hands of someone’s negligence, lawsuits seldom follow. That’s presumably because owners can’t collect sums beyond the price of the pet and the expenses they’ve invested in his care—therefore, they can’t show they’ve been seriously damaged. But that’s changing now that more states are adopting legislation that allows owners to collect “non-economic” damages...

Last month a Golden Retriever named Lucky received a prosthetic eye. His Boca Raton family was overjoyed with the results. They’d had to make the difficult decision to have his God-given eyeball removed after glaucoma rendered it a liability to his comfort level. But now Lucky “looks normal,” despite his brush with cosmetic eyelessness.

That’s according to his family, who was concerned its...

This is perhaps one of the scariest cancers we vets see in pets. Both dogs and cats suffer it. And unless it’s one of the microscopic variety (and these do exist rather commonly, mind you), they’re almost invariably untreatable—that is, by conventional means most owners can afford.

Believe it or not, most brain tumors are not the malignant monsters we’d expect after witnessing the severity of...

OK, so I know I just wrote a piece on three pits attacking a cat and the havoc it ultimately wreaked on a non-thinking, legislative body’s poor choice of legislation. Not to reprise the whole pit bull thing, but yesterday’s discussion with a Broward County transplant had me seeing red all over again on a different rendition of the same issue.

You see, in Broward County (our northern neighbor...

You’ve all heard the old axiom: one human year equals seven for a pet. That number’s based loosely on the average ten to fifteen year lifespan of our canine and feline pets. If we’re to stick to that digit, then most pets live to be 70 to 105—in human terms.

Truth is, I’m loath to grant much credence to this magic number seven. After all, how many cats do you hear about who live to see 20? I...

A few days ago, The Miami Herald carried a story on our neighboring county’s new ordinance: Declare a dog “dangerous” after his first offence. Reserve the right to euthanize after the second go-round. This is Broward County’s solution to dogs who kill cats or dogs—or who bite humans.

If such legislation were aimed at owners, I’d be far more sanguine about its enactment. As such, I have a hard...

All you cat owners out there are likely to know about the infamous, vaccine-associated sarcoma. You may not know it by name, but you’ve doubtless heard about the aggressive tumors cats can get at their vaccine injection sites.

But here’s something you might not have heard yet: This month, the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association reported something exciting: The incidence of...

If we lived in a utopian society full of love for its animal brethren and replete with respect for the human-animal relationships it enjoys, all pets would be microchipped with the same technology. Readers to detect these microchips would have been distributed long ago to every facility responsible for reuniting lost pets with their loving owners. And no commercial engine would intervene to...