Your veterinarian hands you a bottle of antibiotics after treating your cat’s abscess. "You’re to finish them all,” he urges. If you don’t, as the implication goes, you may be contributing to antibiotic resistance. And it won’t be your cat's health alone that suffers, but potentially YOURS, too. 

Antibiotic resistance is an emerging threat that has accelerated in recent decades. The rise of...

Ever thought about why it is we feel the urge to offer treats and tidbits to our beloved creatures? I have. I’ve thought about it a lot. After all, if I can plumb the depths of the American psyche on that one I think I’ll have earned myself a Nobel Prize––or at least a MacArthur Grant. 

Here’s a short, would-be pet story to illustrate:

Last Saturday I spent the afternoon kayaking with my...

It’s 6 PM and your favorite veterinary hospital is windng down for the day. You can see the lights go off inside just as you pull up with “the mother of all emergencies.” Your dog has just bloated and you didn’t think to call ahead. You were so wound up and near-hysterical when you found him at home, mid-bloat and retching, you didn’t even have time to register the time of day. 

As you see...

This has been a tough week for young felines in my parts. Litters of unwanteds stray into oncoming traffic and fare poorly against backyard dogs. Their eyes drip mucoid tears as they hunch wih backs against one another awaiting their next handout. 

At work we received ten this week: One sweet-as-sugar seven month-old with a litter in her belly. A three week-old litter of three healthy fat...

If you own a sort-of-purebred––whether he’s recognized by a breed registry or not––you can breed him to a bitch of similar heritage––or not––and create a “designer dog.” 

After all, a so-called “designer” doesn’t have to be Gucci or Pucci or Prada to claim he created a “designer” paper airplane that cannot fly...or a “designer” dress that fits like a garbage bag. 

When, I’d like to know, did...

Women are bad with directions and men hate cats. Or so they say. Though, culturally speaking, we readily buy into these not-so-truisms, we also understand them to be misogynstic generalizations. 

After all, I can find my way out of a mangrove maze without a compass or a GPS and navigate any city with near-perfect aplomb. My boyfriend shows a similar ability to buck these sex-linked traits by...

It’s summertime and that means flying bugs. Unless you live in the most arid climate imaginable...you’ve got ‘em too. 

The bites and their bumps are disturbing enough, but we all know that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The real predators to fear are usually not the insects themselves...but the even smaller bugs they carry with them. The West Niles and the heartworms of this world are far...

Got a ferret? Guinea pigs? Fish? Snakes? Goats? Chickens?

Consider that plans are in the works to limit their inclusion into the arsenal of accepted “pet” species. Wild, non-native species are especially targeted. This we know. Some of these rules seem fair. Some do not. And we live with the unfair manifestations of these emerging laws, fighting the regs tooth and nail, if we must. 

Consider...

“Irregularity” is a politely inadequate euphemism for what you know as diarrhea, constipation and flatulence. In all cases, these symptoms are accompanied by changes in the animal’s gastrointestinal bacteria. That’s why “probiotics” are often recommended for these pets by way of boosting “good” gut bacteria and counteracting the bad. 

But what are these probiotics anyway? And how do they...

We’ve all heard the stats: One in three pets will get lost in his or her lifetime. Only 17% of dogs and 2% of cats make it back home. By some estimates, almost four million pets are euthanized every year because pets aren’t properly identified and their owners can’t be found.

If you’ve hung out on Dolittler over the years, you might already know that strong opinions prevail on the subject of...