Got a pet? Of course you do. Exercise with her? Maybe yes. Maybe no. Either way, it’s time to take a survey!

Since we’re usually hashing and rehashing research here on Dolittler, I thought it might be apropos to help contribute some raw data of our own for a change. This time, its about human exercise and animal-keeping. And who among us is NOT interested in this subject?

After all, this is...

Call me strange, but I’ve always wanted to write a sci-fi kid’s novel on the subject of a parallel universe in which dogs are raised for food and biofuel. (Some of this fantastically abhorrent stuff is even committed to my computer’s hard drive.)

So when I read Monday’s New York Times piece on dog evolution and early domestication, I was oddly enthralled––and none too surprised––to learn that...

A couple of months ago a tearful client explained that she’d had to go into the hospital for a MRSA infection. And now that her physician had demanded she remove all pets from her household, her husband and teenaged son had refused to live in the same house until she complied with the order––which, of course, she didn’t do. (Would you?)

Because of the limited data available on MRSA...

Last week I extracted the sweetest little pair of Victoria’s Secret underwear from the innards of a beagle.

Though the pink had long since faded to gray, and I’m sorry to say the elastic had melted in the acids the teensy thong had marinated in for months, there it was: a sign of victory for me as it exited in two pieces (one directly out the stomach, another via a small incision in the...

Using drugs for indications not approved by the FDA or in species not listed on the label is a fine gray line many of us in the veterinary profession are uncomfortably forced to straddle.

That’s because way too many of our drugs are not economically significant enough for drug manufacturers to undertake the incredibly expensive approval process required to bring them to market for common...

Pet friendly? I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means. That’s what happens when you live in Miami. Except for a small enclave on South Beach, pets get nowhere near their due––not compared to Portland, anyway.

Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Portland, Oregon’s neo-urban Pearl District has trouble keeping its pet owners out of the Safeways and the Whole Foods. When Oregon’s food...

Not long ago, I was politely panned by a pet owner over on my PetMD DailyVet blog. He or she was upset because I’d dared to present the topic of itchiness (pruritus) in such arduous detail.

I’d discussed pruritus in pets (in three installments) as a complex issue, citing a litany of possibilities for each kind of pattern. I explained, in essence, that diagnosis and treatment was not always so...

This week, news broke that the world’s oldest dog had died at age 147. That’s 21 years for you and me. In its wake came more reports of other dogs vying for the Guinness Book of World Records––including one whose owners are struggling to authenticate their 26 year-old dog’s age.

The fact that we celebrate our pets’ grand old ages as an accomplishment is both wonderful...and slightly creepy,...

You’ve all heard of cancer-detecting dogs and seizure alerters. But here’s one I hadn’t been aware of since very recently: Dogs with the ability to sniff out hypoglycemia.They call this class of dogs bio-detectors, a perfectly reasonable moniker for what it is they do. Somehow, they can use their thousand-times more sensitive sense of smell to sniff out  pathology...sometimes well in advance...

There’s a storm brewing in Washington D.C., and it’s nothing to do with the hurly-burly town hall meetings on healthcare reform. While the battle rages in congressional circles on the merits and pitfalls of revamping how we bring modern medicine to the masses, legislation to minimize antimicrobial use in industrial animals soldiers on.

Though it’s happening mostly under the average American's...