Yesterday’s patient was a well-fed Shih-tzu. About four years old, this little specimen of her breed was the picture of health—except for the prominent pudge about her waistline. When questioned about her diet, by way of treading delicately in the direction of her “excess baggage,” her owner fessed up to little Chi-chi’s problem with food:

“Doctor, she just does not like to eat. I have to...

Think you already know everything you need to know about Xylitol? Time to re-think this…

In case you haven’t read my back posts on this (here’s the first and here’s another), Xylitol is a natural sweetener sourced from the birch tree. It’s a perfectly healthy substitute for sugar—unless you happen to be a dog…

…in which case your inability to break down this naturally occurring compound...

A veterinarian can’t be all things to all people (I’ve said this before many times and many ways on Dolittler). And this little ditty rings especially true on holidays.

We’ve all been there…a sudden bout of vomiting…a lacerated leg…a cat bite abscess that rears its ugly head…or, in today’s example, the recognition that her back is horrifically painful again…on a major holiday.

The prospect...

I live in Miami, but every year the immediate clan and I spend Thanksgiving with my sister in New York’s East Village where my sister's family resides. Before that it was in remote, upstate New York on a stunning tract of land she and her husband helped preserve with the Open Spaces Commission. And starting next year it’ll be in the Bay Area, where they recently decided to relocate.

My sister...

Spied in The Miami Herald Online yesterday: State inspectors in Florida will be on the lookout for non-compliant pet shops across the peninsula in advance of the annual puppy shopping extravaganza occasioned by the Holidays.

Here’s the scoop:

“State inspectors will conduct a sweep of pet stores during the next five weeks to ensure the establishments are complying with laws that protect...

Last week one of my nineteen year-old patients died. Or rather, as the euphemism goes, I put him to sleep. In truth, it was a race. If I’d been a few seconds slower he would’ve beat me to it. Such was the extreme of his advanced decrepitude.

Foxy had been blind, deaf, chronically disoriented, episodically anxious, unable to walk without assistance and periodontially challenged in the extreme....

Last Monday the AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) issued an important position statement on tail docking and ear cropping. Stronger than the 2005 version, which frowned upon the practice without showing any teeth, this statement still stops short of opposing ear crops and tail docks in all cases. Here’s the wording for your consideration:

“The AVMA opposes ear cropping and tail...

You wake up groggily one Saturday morning—admittedly a bit on the late side—and you suddenly realize how it is you managed to sleep in. Your ten year-old kitty companion is nowhere to be seen. She’s typically right there, meowling and staring at you plaintively so you’ll get up and fill her food bowl.

You look everywhere and finally you find her in her strange-guests-are-here hiding spot...

“Sometimes you just can’t legislate common sense,” is what some dog owners are saying in response to the driving safety legislation making its way through many states’ legislatures. Some of these bills would specifically ban dogs from riding in the driver’s seat with their owners. Others mention pets specifically among a list of ticket-able “distractions.”

Dog owners who take their pets out...

A vet can learn a lot from her clients. All she has to do is ask the right questions. In this case it’s about saving money—this time on your pharmacy bill. In this post my clients pony up on how they save big $ on their Rx’s. So if you spend any money on pet prescriptions you’ll definitely want to read this.

Most of what I have to say won’t make most vet hospitals happy (so you know, the...

When bad things happen at the vet’s, the groomer’s, doggy day care, etc., most of the time the establishment gets blamed for its lax protocols. That’s my take, anyway.

No, I’m not just referring to things that happen at our place. It’s also my experience that animals arriving with wounds from altercations (with both animate and inanimate objects) are attached to owners who blame the facility...

Every once in a while (OK so more often, recently) I like to write about veterinarians in my specific employment circumstance. That is, I get a hankering for telling stories out of school on the realities of working for a practice I don’t own. But it’s not always all about me. To that end, here’s a post with larger patient care concerns in mind. Read on…

Increasingly, vets are graduating from...

I know this doesn’t seem a very veterinary topic, but stay with me now…

You know the lolcats, right?  They’re the silly, sad and sometimes frustrated cats (and other creatures) pictured with cartoonish captions to indicate their inner thoughts…as we mere humans might interpret them.

In case you don’t know, Icanhascheezburger.com is the flagship site for these pics. They’re funny, they’re...

It’s well known that precautions can be taken to mitigate the potential havoc anesthesia can wreak on any given patient, human or animal. In human medicine, safety measures are governed by scrupulous standards, which are the result of meticulous research.

The veterinary profession has learned a great deal from its human counterpart, given that science in the realm of animal-specific anesthesia...

Sadly, everyone knows someone whose pet has died mysteriously under anesthesia. This disturbing knowledge, second-hand though it may be, makes even the most rational among us cringe when it comes to having our own pets anesthetized.

It’s one thing to know that emergencies must be dealt with anesthetically. We accept that broken bones, swallowed toys and lacerations are inevitably treated to a...

After the ratting-on-a-vet post from earlier this week I received an interesting story courtesy of a fellow vet. It detailed the subject of his own brush with a nearby state’s Veterinary Board a few years ago. Here’s the story, paraphrased, with some identifying details altered:

Vet sees a new client with a young black shepherd. After congratulating the owner on her stunning dog, vet innocently...

Lots of breeders and regular pet owners give their own vaccines as a way to save on multi-pet care. Many of them do research on the vaccines, ask their vets for advice, buy the vaccines online, store them properly, administer them carefully and keep excellent records.

I have no problem with this approach as long as self-vaccinators don’t skip steps and get all sloppy about it. After all,...

Let’s say there was a way for you to spay your cat without surrendering her to surgery. Would you do it? Would you neuter your dog via pill or injection?

If you’re anything like me (as I suspect you are) you’ll wait a few years once this currently non-existent technology comes to market before exposing your pet to its potentially unsatisfactory effects.

But it would undoubtedly be worth it if...

Is your dog microchipped? Your cat? Good for you if they are. But how would you feel if the government required you to microchip him? What if it mandated her microchip number be registered to the state?

If you live in New York you might already be intimately familiar with the issues that swirl around the concept of mandatory microchipping. Last year’s proposal to require microchips for dogs...

Here’s an ethical dilemma on what might otherwise be a boring Tuesday:

A new client comes in with a dog whose leg has been broken since last February. Though the leg sports an impressive external fixator device (one of those scary but sometimes necessary tools used to piece a broken leg together), it’s clear this semi-young dog’s leg ain’t fixed (he isn’t using the leg at all).

You spend twenty...

Dolittler is new and improved (almost). Beware the possible glitches and try not to let me know about all of them at once. But feel free to render your initial opinion below.

And don't fret if not every feature comes online at once. It'll take me a few days. Thanks for your patience!

Update 11/24/2008: If you need to reach us for any technical issues please use the contact us form.

Ain’t it just like a woman to ask for something…only to crush it with her high heel upon receipt?

A week ago I wondered why animals had been so blatantly excluded from the Presidential candidates’ conversation. It wasn’t my most thoughtful post ever, I confess, and now I’ll also have to own up to the fact that I wish I could take some of it back. (And no, it wasn’t just because I have a...

I know a shelter…no names named…that desperately needs a complete makeover. We’re talking way beyond Ugly Betty here.

Said shelter has lots of local claims to fame. Here are seven of its deadly sins…

1-It’s one of the biggest shelters in one of the largest, urban cities on the eastern seaboard.

2-It euthanizes 120,000 stray and abandoned pets every year.

3-It has two receptionists handling 2,800...

I woke up this morning knowing I’d need to type out a post on my keyboard in the Starbucks hour I enjoy before my 7:30 appointments start arriving. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a clue for a post topic—that is, until trusty Gina over at PetConnection handed me one (sort-of—I know it’s only 3:30 AM in SF).

Yesterday she blogged on a topic that left me open-mouth breathing like a feral cat in a...

Would you prefer a vet who gets paid as a percentage of what she charges you?...or one that works on a salary?

Some of you might assume the one on a straight-up salary might be easiest on your wallet: After all, she’d have no incentive to run up your bill. And you might be right. A vet on salary who holds no stake in the practice’s profits tends to offer less (on average) than a practice owner...

In case you hadn’t noticed, the price on that bag of pet food Fluffy eats is much higher than it was ten years ago. In fact, the consumer price index of pet foods is up by 23% over a decade ago.

And 10% of that? It’s hit us over the past year.

Rising fuel costs, grain costs, inflation and the weak dollar are all to blame for this recent surge in pet food prices—not to mention the incalculable...

…veterinarians step in.

I’m no groomer. And no, I don’t relish adopting the mantle of those far better qualified than a vet to trim, snip and clip. I do it only when a pet’s health is involved.

So you know, groomers don’t like it when we encroach on their territory by offering similar services—no more than we like it when they offer healthcare advice willy-nilly, anyway.

It’s true that I’m not...

Ever wondered what constitutes a “Franken-animal”? (No, Maltie-Poo and Shi-Corgis need not apply.)

So-called “Franken-animals” (AKA, “GE” or genetically engineered animals) are those engineered to include a few genetic fragments that, were it not for our artificial human intervention, would almost never find themselves nestled inside such a creature’s molecular blueprints.

These are the goats we...

OK, so neither candidate is on my personal top-ten list for favorite people either—not right now. Both are casualties of extreme media over-exposure and, as such, they’ve managed to get under my skin a bit. Do you blame me?

That’s why tomorrow I’ll be casting my ballot with a big sigh of relief as I bask in that welcome, light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel sensation.

In the meantime, there’s [at...

Over the last few weeks I’ve seen about a dozen cases of cats with a deadly infection that looks like panleukopenia. (That’s feline distemper, otherwise known as the “P” in the FVRCP vaccine most well-tended cats receive.)

Their families bring them in to our hospital in carriers with perforated sides. Waiting their turn to be seen, they’ve sat in their carriers in the lobby alongside the...

Are you a vegetarian? A vegan? Do your cats share your dietary choices? Do you wish they did? If so, you might want to read my take on this subject:

I’ve only ever dealt with a handful of cases where owners adamantly sought assistance converting their cats to the vegan/vegetarian diet they kept for themselves. In all cases I explained that such was not my recommendation.

But most of these...