This may seem a self-serving post that’s soooo off topic you might not want to stay to read it, but I’ve got a story to tell. Strange as it may sound and non veterinary though it may be, I speak so much about my personal life on Dolittler that it seems natural to tell it here.

Almost twelve years ago (on February 24th of 2006) my uncle was killed by the Cuban government. He was in one of two...

Interestingly, the AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) has issued a policy statement on the ability of municipalities to pass laws which regulate veterinary activities. 2005’s West Hollywood legislation prohibiting declaws and 2007’s Norfolk City, Virginia’s ban on non-veterinarian cosmetic procedures were perhaps the impetus for such a decree.

Both laws impinged on the state’s...

Sophie is my ten year-old French Bulldog. She’s been at the specialty hospital for the past 24 hours and the worst is over. But I’ve been a nervous wreck—as any of you might be if faced with a similar crisis.

Sophie’s neck pain has been dogging her for six weeks now. She’s had anti-inflammatory drugs, opiate pain relievers, muscle relaxants, nutraceuticals, Reiki, massage, exercise restriction...

Flagler Dog Track is a decaying grey building in the heart of Miami which looks more like a strung out concrete coliseum than a viable sports arena. Instead of drawing the crowds and packing the parking lot on weekends, it hosts flea markets where it once held hundreds of cars while their owners played the dogs.

Today, we South Floridians vote on the fate of three such places in our area:...

Oh, Cesar, it’s due to your aggressive techniques and dominance-based methods that we’ve come to require such explicit recommendations on punishment in pets. But “Dog Whisperer” Cesar Milian is not the only target of this edict issued by The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior (AVSAB).

Titled, Position Statement and Guidelines on the Use of Punishment for Dealing with Behavior...

OK so after this week’s post on rough clients and tough situations in pet healthcare, let me offer this heartwarming story of a truly giving client trying her hardest to make a difference in the life of one sick pet—mine, in this case.

Ever since she heard Sophie was suffering from debilitating neck pain, this client began offering weekly sessions of Reiki to ease her obvious discomfort. She...

This weekend Miami Beach is hosting a “social networking” conference geared towards all those Internet types fond of bringing folks together online in all kinds of profitable ways. This means everyone from gearheads to preteens and potters to potheads—yep, for every segment of society there’s a social network just for them.

Think of it as a sort of religion for the masses encapsulated on the...

How many times can I say it. I’m truly not trying to steal your money. It’s just that there’s no way I can tell you what’s wrong with your pet unless we probe a little more deeply. X-rays, bloodwork, urinalyses, ultrasound, CT scans and MRIs are but a few of the items on the menu. The one thing I can’t offer you? A tricorder eval.

Remember that device “Bones” used to determine what the heck was...

A couple of days ago, my “Teeny-Tiny Paris-Style Pocket Pooches” post attracted a bit of characteristically bilious invective.  In case you’ve never read this post or its unspooled thread of comments, it seems to attract a surprising number of negative comments relative to the rest of Dolittler’s content.

In case you assume such negativity annoys me, reconsider: I love knowing that people are...

A quick Google search in vet news turned up at least three US vet hospital fires in the last month. Another guy a couple of months ago got extra press for his heroics in getting everyone out safely--but his whole place burnt down.

Now that’s a bad day. While he received accolades for managing to get everyone out safely, I’m sure his life has been a living hell since the TV vans packed up and...

Nothing hits vets where it really hurts than when news breaks in the hospital of a records request. So-and-so client is defecting to another local practice without leaving word or explaining why. They just want out—usually because they’re unhappy with you for a real or perceived injury to them or their pet.

It happens every other month or so and I guess that’s not too bad compared to the...

Twice in as many weeks I’ve been asked whether I would authorize the at-home euthanasia of a pet…with a household stash of controlled drugs.

Both individuals asking are in the human medical profession. That’s why I’m guessing their query emerged out of 1) an expectation that a house call option was not available and 2) an understanding that these things can be done at home by someone who knows...

It’s true. We’re suckers for service dogs of all stripes. Last weekend at the North American Vet Conference I fell in love with about five of them as they lounged out at the booths of their sponsor organizations or drug companies.

Yes, drug companies actually sponsor these service animals and their organizations by giving them free drugs and sometimes large cash infusions, usually asking only...

Aside from the ten learning points I addressed in the previous post, you should all know about some new products on the horizon for your pets. Conferences like this one are where the big companies roll out their new stuff. That’s big news for vets…and for you, too. At some point down the road you’ll be hearing about some of these so get ready.

Drum roll, please:

1-Vetmedin: The new “miracle...

What a question! I’ll bet you didn’t know that we vets think as long and hard about our prices as you do when confronted with an estimate for your pet’s care. How much should we charge for an ear hematoma, unblocking a cat, a dental cleaning, a bloat?

It’s not easy to figure it all out. But I reckon it’s even tougher on your side. We know exactly how much it costs us to bring you our...

In case you couldn’t tell from my recent posts and comments therein, I’ve been at a conference all weekend. It was a marathon for this busy girl, especially since my sister’s movie premiered in Miami on Friday night with a red carpet screening and the obligatory fancy party I couldn’t miss. By the time I got in my rental car on Saturday morning (at 6 AM) I was already exhausted.

After stopping...

No, it's not a foray into a bad joke. It's my life at the moment.

I'm on my signifiicant others' tenth-year vet school reuniuon cruise to Belize and Cozumel. It's the first time I've been out of the country in twelve years...and I'm loving every minute--except for the hours I've spent worrying about how I'd ever manage to post my blog entries.

Shortly after embarking, I was informed that...

What makes anyone think that a mouth that smells like three-day-old garbage (and frequently far worse) isn’t worthy of treatment? Teeth just get no respect! To get anyone to sit up and pay attention we vets have to start talking about hearts, livers and kidneys—more respectable (albeit, unseen) organs.

Why is it that abscessed teeth get paid no heed unless an animal’s face swells like a...

Four days ago, I read about a newly created organization of veterinarians: the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association (HSVMA). It’s a nascent group created essentially as an amalgamation of the HSUS (Humane Society of the United States) and AVAR (Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights).

My initial response?: Oh, wow,  now we’re really in for it.

Here’s some background:

About a...

No, it's not a foray into a bad joke. It's my life at the moment.

I'm on my signifiicant others' tenth-year vet school reuniuon cruise to Belize and Cozumel. It's the first time I've been out of the country in twelve years...and I'm loving every minute--except for the hours I've spent worrying about how I'd ever manage to post my blog entries.

Shortly after embarking, I was informed that...

In preparation for my weekly podcast feature, I’ve been playing around with all things multimedia. (Thank God for Macs!) As part of this new venture, I just uploaded my first video to YouTube.

It’s a milestone, I think. For someone whose siblings make a living out of filmmaking (production, direction, everything), I’ve been a little slow to embrace the medium. Maybe, just maybe, I’ve finally...

There’s no end to the havoc one’s own body can potentially wreak. Autoimmune disease (where the body’s immune system attacks itself) is one example. Colic in horses, where intestines slither and twist into unnaturally painful contortions, is another.

I mention colic because today’s disaster case was kind of like the dog’s version of colic. I guess you could also call GDV (AKA, “bloat” where...

At the risk of driving unwanted traffic to Dolittler’s family friendly content, here’s a story from last week’s  McClatchy News Service (which is why it ended up in The Miami Herald, I guess). CAUTION: This material is not for younger or more sensitive readers:

A panhandle Floridian, currently serving jail time for an anachronous “livestock theft” offense (who serves time for that anymore?) was...

I’ve been cleaning out my house in a fit of Spring cleaning never before observed in my home (not like this, anyway). That’s how I found the woodgrain box with Marcel’s ashes stashed in the bottom drawer of my living room’s overstuffed credenza.

Marcel’s been gone for seven or so years now. I’m far from over it, though. Like most owners who blame themselves in the event of a pet’s accidental...

For those of us in Miami-Dade County who would break the law in a fit of civil disobedience or as a genuine means of peaceful protest against the ineffectually restrictive breed specific legislation we suffer under, I say….good luck with that.

That’s because in this county—as I’ve had cause to discover in the course of my ten years practicing as a vet under “the ban”—enforcement of the...

Picture it: A dark, new-model SUV parked by the roadside with metal crates packed into the cargo compartment. The hatch is up, from which a sign dangles lazily on this windless day. A woman sits a few feet away on a fold-up chair under the partial shade afforded by her striped umbrella. Inside the SUV, puppies are milling around, two to three large breed pups to a cage. Akitas? The...

Microchipping pets is crucial in natural disaster-prone areas and for owners whose pets spend any amount of time unsupervised out of doors. For all others (all twelve of you left over) it’s merely ‘strongly recommended.’ That was before this week’s tragedy unfolded in the mountains of North Georgia.

Straight from the headlines comes Ella’s story. She’s the black Lab mix who made it down from...

OK, so I’ve been turned down again for an NPR broadcast but I keep trying. I never stop, really. Someday they’ll find me deserving. Here’s something I wrote for last Monday’s Supreme Court hearings on lethal injection as it applies to humans in capital punishment cases. I can only hope you’ll have more discerning taste and consider it worthy of your attention. ;-) 

PS: Some of you have already...

No, it's not a foray into a bad joke. It's my life at the moment.

I'm on my signifiicant others' tenth-year vet school reuniuon cruise to Belize and Cozumel. It's the first time I've been out of the country in twelve years...and I'm loving every minute--except for the hours I've spent worrying about how I'd ever manage to post my blog entries.

Shortly after embarking, I was informed that...

Yep. Not only do I find this disease of slow-metabolism to be one many of us humans wish we had (especially when at a loss to explain why we gained so much weight over the holidays)—hypothyroidism is an illness pet owners increasingly want their overweight pets tested for.

Wielding the “I only feed this much” hammer I’m so commonly hit with, they want Fido or Fluffy screened for the disease...

One of the biggest stumbling blocks in the battle against pet overpopulation is the whole issue of spaying and neutering cats and dogs before they get out of shelter environments. It’s both morally unconscionable to me as a vet to let these pets get out of sight before ensuring their reproductive dead-endedness and understandably a mite troubling to have them assume the potential health risks...

In the [almost] ten years since I started working at this practice (it’ll be exactly ten on May 1st), we’ve been through a variety of changes in how we handle the basic wellness care of our patients. Here’s a timeline:

1998: Yearly exam with physical, annual DHLPP vaccine for dogs, annual FVRCP vaccine for cats, annual FeLV vaccine for indoor/outdoor cats, annual rabies vaccine for all, fecal...

This client had been calling me monthly for the last three or four months, trying desperately to place the Soft-Coated Wheaton he’d saved from the side of the road in suburban Miami just last year.

When they found him he was about a year old, skinny, matted and unneutered. No microchip. No tag. Newspaper announcements and fliers went unanswered or unnoticed.

Then the kids fell in love with...

Lizards were literally raining down in Miami this past week. Remember the toad rain scene from Magnolia? That’s what I pictured when I heard about this plague of [mostly] iguanas that fell upon our houses and in our yards when the temperatures dipped below freezing and the wind blew hard.

Our hospital saw one and we got calls about several more. Apparently we weren’t the only ones to get phone...

From the beginning it was inevitable that lawyers would descend upon the San Francisco Zoo in the wake of the Christmas Day mauling of three young men. Though evidence of tiger-baiting and intoxication is mounting (eyewitness reports, a shoe just inside the enclosure with blood nearby, a vodka bottle inside the victims' car), it’s also clear that Tatiana the Siberian tiger was able to escape...

Chopping up one’s Christmas tree for bedding is not exactly what most of us find ourselves doing the day after New Year’s, but that’s the task this goat owner found herself working on as temperatures plummeted in Miami.

From ten degrees above normal to twenty below that which we have grown accustomed to (in one day!) is a lot for us thin-skinned Caribbean types populating this strange...

Remember my young Golden Retriever pup of last Christmas week’s posts? I hadn’t wanted to depress you horribly on your holiday and therefore refrained from reporting her euthanasia on Christmas Eve. She was succumbing to sepsis, the full-body infection I’d described to be her primary problem. She was suffering. Her chances were miniscule, at best. It was time.

In the hours leading up to her...

Because we all seem to share something in common beyond the love of animals—namely, the desire to improve ourselves—I thought it would be appropriate to offer up some New Year’s resolutions to better the relationship between pet owners and vets.

To that end, here’s a great game we can play: I offer you some paired, client/vet resolutions and you respond in kind. Sorry if these harp on my...