The final installment in Sophie Sue’s saga. It was inevitable. She was euthanized last night at home atop her favorite pillow on my bed. She died peacefully.

“I didn’t mean to do it, Ma! He just followed me home. What else could I do?” 

Sorry excuses were on my lips one afternoon late last week as I attempted to hide the furball on my car’s floorboard when I stopped off at my parents’ house to pick up my male Frenchie from “day care.” But she’d already seen him. It was too late to avoid the icy stare and maternal recriminations. 

Leave it to my...

Have you ever wondered if your dog gets headaches when he’s under the weather? Whether your cat feels a sinus-ey stabbing pain behind her eyes when she’s got a cold? How would you know?

I’ve recently had cause to wonder whether my own dog gets headaches. As  some of you may be aware, Sophie Sue’s been strangely “off” lately, likely the result of some brain tumor-related issue (she was...

So you want to eat meat? I do. For a lot of reasons. Yet aside from a few spear-fishing trips, I’ve never killed my own dinner. 

Like the vast majority of you, I’ve been content to order meat at a restaurant and purchase my slaughtered and dressed beasts at the market––until recently, that is. 

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been slowly but steadily gravitating towards a lower animal...

No, I didn’t suddenly grow a pair overnight. But I do have plenty of first-hand experience on this issue. Though women serve as the primary caretakers when it comes to pets’ veterinary needs (in the US, about 3 to 1 over men), a surprising percentage of my own clients come from the testosterone-rich crowd among us. 

These Miami men are usually educated and polite Hispanic males, but I get all...

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about my dog’s brain tumor. Strange, this ability of a questionably animate thing to lay me low so effectively. Of course, it doesn’t compare to the stress people and their family endure with human cancer––at least I don’t think so, never having been in that unenviable position. But it’s harrowing in it’s own unique way, I promise you. 

The most...

Yeah, I’ve got a few hot chicks on my mind. And they’re all under a heat lamp in my back yard. 

My seven baby Dominique-esque chicks arrived last Thursday. All healthy. All vibrant, cheepy and cute as you might expect of any newborn baby (save the human variety, for which the cute-factor seems to elude me). 

These fluffy gray and yellow chicks have been going back and forth to work with me...

Walking into work yesterday, April 1st, I heard the darnedest sound. I could have sworn my little hen, Elsita, was hacking up a hairball. 

Elsita’s been living in the hospital ever since she was diagnosed with aspiration pneumonia. The three-times-a-day medication had meant of lot of scrapes and bruises once she got the hang of eluding me intelligently. In hospital things have gone so...

Why is it that men always seem to keel over first? Though the ones that “know thineselves” are smart enough to walk away at the first sign of an impending needle stick or bodily effluence, I always seem to get the ones who pretend to want to be “in on the action.” 

And that’s often a bad idea. 

Yesterday's roster smacked of the full-moon lineup. You know, the list of new clients coming in...

There’s no better example to prove veterinary medicine can be an art as well a science than that of the interchange between veterinarian and pet owner in the face of a crisis. 

How a veterinarian handles these crucial moments can mean everything to how the patient is ultimately treated––or not. Typically, it all comes down to 1) how well these parties know each other, 2) the trust the pet...