I don’t normally talk products on this blog. After all, it’s kind of tacky to wax evangelic on something as pedestrian as a plastic-and-metal fur-defying implement. But this one gets special consideration for its ability to prevent disease—really!

Lest you think I hold stock in this product, let me first disclaim: Neither I nor any member of my friend and family network is affiliated with this...

A good friend has charged me with the task of finding the best pet sites on the Internet. He seems to think that my blog makes me some kind of Web-content expert. I’d hasten to disagree, considering that I spend the bulk of my time writing or reading your comments. After that, who’s got time to play online after hours? A girl’s gotta cook, eat, read, knit and exercise, right?

So it’s up to you....

OK so here was last week's Miami Herald column. In case you're wondering how I field questions for this column you should know that some of them come from my own clients. This one is about my very own patient, Mr. Beebop.

Q. My dog Beebop has been diagnosed with a rare tumor in his neck called a thymoma. It’s so big the specialists don’t want to remove it surgically. Instead, we’re going to try...

Last Wednesday night I met with a group of pet people to give a talk on holistic veterinary care. Now, I’m no expert, but I’m definitely a proponent of holistic medicine. And so the topic of discussion wasn’t so much the intricacies of holistic vet care (which I’m not qualified to discuss). Rather, it was about informing my audience about how to source the kind of care you want and need for...

At the risk of courting oodles of personal emails on the subject of individual pet healthcare issues (beyond the heaps I already receive), I’m going to recount one particular correspondent’s tragic story.

This tale had me asking my vet friends for advice, soliciting opinions from human docs, and generally kept me up at night wondering what I would do in a similar situation. Here’s the story...

Still making the rounds in email inboxes everywhere is a link to the University of Florida student who was “tased” while protesting vociferously at a political event. But if you think this electrical charge-imparting weapon is reserved only for the would-be violent humans among us, you’re dead wrong.

Yesterday’s Miami Herald ran a short piece on a Miami cop’s use of a Taser stun gun on a...

Your pet throws up a couple of times first thing in the morning (something she never does) and you want to know whether you should bring her in to the vet’s office. You’re willing to take all the time you need to do so but you want to wait until your vet calls you back to decide whether you should take the morning off work for this possible emergency. Good luck with that.

Depending on my...

In case you’ve never been here, you should know that suburban Miami is full of peafowl. These critters, adored for their feathery good looks, have grown in popularity—and population—over the past decade. My neighborhood is full of them.

Most of them wander the yards, occasionally straying into the street when they need to cross it to find more fruitful foraging grounds. Who owns them? Someone...

About a month ago, one of my favorite colleagues got taken to task by a physician client. She was incensed by the fact that her little dog had had to wait three days to be surgically treated for his paralyzing disk injury.

She’d arrived with her Shih-tzu at his specialty hospital’s emergency room the Friday evening before Labor Day and consequently wasn’t eligible for surgery until...

Last Thursday my boyfriend was attracted to a beauty he met at work—a gorgeous Rottweiler. She was cut from the mold of something quite other than the typical, American-standard Rottie. Not only did she not have an overblown head to match her too-fat frame, she had a tail—a long one, in fact. And that made her special—spectacular, in fact, as he tells it.

Personality, looks and smarts—the...

Gus was my suburban lizard medicine project. Unfortunately, I’ve not got much happy news on this patient's update.

After a couple of weeks of attempting to medicate this backyard lizard with antibiotic-infused crickets (put the buggers in a bag with a hefty dose of injectable Baytril, shake ‘em up and release in front of the sick lizard in question), it was clear Gus’s illness had bested us...

Later this morning, I’m headed back to Orlando to compete in my first ever triathlon. Granted, I’m only handling the swim portion (a relay) at this point (I only just started training in July), but I have plenty of reasons to be scared silly. The first is obvious: a one-mile swim for a newbie racer is bound to make me last in the pack—humility hasn’t always been my strongest point. But the...

This is a direct quote from a favorite colleague’s recent email. Apparently, New Mexico banned cockfighting last spring, and, finally, on July 12, Louisiana joined the civilized world and banned it, too. Cockfighting will now be illegal in all 50 states (in July 2008, one year after Louisiana's law was signed).

I’ll admit that my colleague’s email was delivered cheekily. Not that he...

Here's another Miami Herald article for your reading pleasure (yes, I know it's not hot anymore where you are but I'm still sweltering as I write this):

Q:

My vet says that my dog Maggie, a big, black Lab mix, can’t go for a walk during the day in the summer now that she’s ten. But I know she needs exercise, even when it’s hot outside. What can I do to keep her active during the hottest...

This column ran in The Miami Herald last Sunday. Hope you like it!

Q. My mother bought a teacup Yorkie about six months ago. The pup flew all the way from Nebraska but when we picked her up at the airport she was so sick we ended up spending $2,000 to save her life. The breeder made it clear that he would take her back but that he could not reimburse us for the medical expenses. Is there...

I know it sounds silly but I really want a PetCam. With one of these doohickeys I can watch my pooch Vincent hang out at home all day long while I’m at work with the better-behaved (but cage-bound) Sophie Sue. If he does cute things while I’m out I can log on and watch him sleep in cockroach pose, make his favorite squirrel squeak or munch on his Kong to his heart’s content.

Sure, it’s...

So I’ve got this radioactive cat I’m boarding for two weeks at the hospital. She’s an I-131 kitty just chilling out until all the hot blood she’s got cools down to non-toxic limits.

In case this sounds strange—let me explain. The ideal treatment for feline hyperthyroidism (an overactive thyroid) is a shot of some pretty heavy stuff the thyroid specialist comes to town to deliver once a month....

Occasionally we vets get stressed by clients with issues so inane they manage to strum our last raw nerve with a high-frequency hum capable of shattering any possibility of a peaceful day. These are the pet lovers so devoted to the most devilish details that there’s nothing any ordinary veterinary provider could do to instill a sense of well-being or even reason into a nervous parent’s...

No, I’m not referring to Leona Helmsley and her shocking last will and testament. In case you haven’t heard, she left a huge chunk of her estate to her dogs—and nothing to her grandchildren. But that’s not what this post is about.

This is about what your vet does when your pet dies. Afterwards, does your vet send flowers? A card? A pawprint in clay?

Most vets do something. A phone call. A hug....

In case I ever needed one good reason to be a vet, Minino is it. I always promise you updates on the cases I highlight and I’ll admit—sometimes I forget to comply. Today, however, I’m not only updating, I’m giving you some more happy news (as if the dog rabies success story wasn’t enough).

Remember the little blind kitten I told you about in this bittersweet post about a month ago? He was

I’ve decided that perhaps I should include the weekly Miami Herald articles I write in Dolittler’s burgeoning cache. After all, my contract says I own them and you all have such discriminating taste that I’m sure you’d appreciate them.

Do be aware, however, that these are written for a top-25 newspaper, which means that lots of different people read them. Consequently, they need to be made...

At first I thought it was something of a hoax, a story cooked up by some obscure natural health magazine’s over-zealous reporters: “Dog rabies is gone!—a thing of the past,” it claims. Yeah, right.

Yet it’s seemingly true. ABC news on September 7th reported the CDC’s findings that canine rabies is off the radar in the US. That means the dog-specific form of the rabies virus appears to have...

OK, so here’s one of those posts where I ask for your opinion. I hope you see fit to surrender to my request. The issue under consideration relates to a website called VetCentric.com.

First, a primer: VetCentric is an online vet pharmacy and supply store. It goes out of its way to be friendly and informative on the topic of pets but exists primarily to grant vets the freedom to refrain from...

In the lunch-line at the FVMA conference Saturday, I spied the cutest lil’ geriatric pug looking right at me. He was sitting on a chair just watching the world go by—but he only had eyes for me. A couple of steps later and it was clear he had eyes for no one—in fact, he had no eyes.

Stephen-the-Pug had been freeze-dried after he died, presumably at his owner’s request (though how he came to...

Breaking news! Have you heard? It’s suddenly big news that microchips in pets can cause cancer. There’s one reported case out of hundreds of thousands of  microchipped pets. But mice, apparently, show an impressive susceptibility to cancer at the microchip injection site, according to research the microchip industry allegedly buried for fear its...

Ah, the New York Times…all the news that’s fit to print…and a Sunday magazine that gives its writers a little room to maneuver around the news—with editorial vigor, if necessary. And that’s my primary objection to the article. The writer stalked this project with a jaundiced eye aimed squarely at the pet-owner relationship.

 “The increasing specialization of the pet food industry today may well...

Again, late for my very important date…with my laptop and today’s post. Late to the conference I attended all day today. Late to an important lecture after getting hung up on a Dolittler demo with a potential sponsor (I’m still looking for love in all the wrong places). And late to get home after driving for hours in the rain on the return trip.

At least the flu I’ve been suffering this past...

I know this is a late-in-the-day, cop-out post for those of you accustomed to my opinions, impressions and analysis. I must confess to being lazy as a result of a wicked flu that’s dogged me for three days now and my prep for a conference I’m supposed to attend tomorrow (it remains to be seen whether my illness will allow me to wake up at five AM and drive the four hours to Orlando).

The title...

Have you by chance heard of the case of the alleged feral cat shooting in Galveston, Texas? It’s a bit of a scandal since the founder of the Galveston Ornithological Society is the defendant in this high-profile animal cruelty case. His defense? The birds made me do it. Well…sort of.

As reported on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, no less, this mild-mannered, middle-aged and nerdy...

OK, so here’s the rest of the Saturday story, in brief:

First up, the Baxter tragedy. Then…

A woman carting in the most aggressive Chihuahua on the planet (she has to be caged when she goes anywhere) seriously lacerated her foot on the first of the double-glass doors leading into the hospital. Hate to say it, but at least it wasn’t our liability—the strip-mall is responsible for maintaining...

A couple of years ago I spent a series of months battling a disease that left me slightly disfigured (and itchy beyond belief). It started as a rough, red patch of skin on the lower half of my face—right next to my mouth, no less. As it evolved past Halloween and refused to heal even into the new year, somewhere along the way (around Thanksgiving) it became clear I’d been suffering the wrath...

It’s a good thing I got to bed early on Friday night. I’d had to. It had been a rough day of another round of rejections on a variety of projects (including the Vick piece for NPR, which was at least picked up by Veterinary Economics magazine, bless their good taste). I was dog-tired from the stress—and the appointment schedule for the following morning was booked to capacity in expectation of...

Yep. That fateful day we all know is coming has almost arrived. He has to be dealt with—one way or another. Who knew it would be this hard?

I’m talking about Vincent, of course—my eleven month-old Frenchie. You know, the one who’s been feeling is oats a bit too energetically lately.

I heeded all your advice—consigning him to his crate at bedtime, “sit-stay-come” morning noon and night, more...