It’s not very busy for a Monday. I’m baby-sitting a lot of relatively healthy patients: a recovering ear-mite infectee with an ear hematoma (a kitty-cat named Boots), a vomiting puppy who already feels much better and is keeping down solid foods since yesterday (should have gone home yesterday if you ask me but his owners are still out of town), and an anal gland abscess case (a very cute...

May Day. Mayday. So close and yet…not quite. Imagine an easy flight on a beautiful Spring morning and…next thing you know you’re in the drink trying to figure out how you got there. Today was such a day. Things started off so well yet ended up so savagely.

We took X-ray pictures of a sweet, young female lab, expecting to find something routine and benign and instead found the nastiest kind of...

Saturday. It’s a slow day, yet everyone manages to show up at the same time. How does that happen?

Today I sent a complicated diabetes case to the internist, figuring she would be better off in a critical care setting for the weekend. I’m sure the owner thought I was trying to get rid of her. And she wasn’t wrong (you can’t love all your clients). But Ingrid will get much better care where...

Too busy. Four diabetes cases and a gastrointestinal obstruction do not make for a fun day. In fact if there’s one thing I can’t stomach (nevermind the pun), it’s the extremes of work created on rare occasions when everybody decides to get [very] sick on the same day.

The saving grace of sick pet clusters is that they seem to arise at predictable intervals: after 5 PM, lunchtime, Saturday...

Mr. French bit me. On the heels of Otis and Winston (yesterday’s dangerous duo) I have to deal with a freaked out Spuds-dog in serious need of some Prozac. Poor Frenchie, he’s just a serious nut-case.

I know all you Bull Terrier owners out there love your dogs (and if I knew them I would probably love them too) but I must comment on the staggering incidence of mental illness in this breed....

Otis Ryker Stevens coming in. Winston Rodgers, too. What a day I have programmed. Both dogs have the same thing in common. They’re big, fear-aggressive dogs whose owners refuse to acknowledge their potential for inflicting serious bodily harm.

Both dogs have acted aggressively in the hospital. One has actually bitten a technician—the only dog bite in our 35+ year history to require the...

Success! Miss Brown found a home!

She now lives with a very nice young couple and two rambunctious kids—perfect! I expect them to find their way back to me in a couple of weeks so she can get her last set of vaccines and I can determine whether or not she’s working out for them.

Godspeed, Miss Brown!

Today I saw a new client. A young couple arrived with a very sick eight-week-old puppy of indeterminate breed. The pup was clearly dying. The couple was tearful as they explained that this was not their dog. It was their neighbor’s. The neighbor was not taking care of a litter of unexpected puppies and most of them were sick and dying.

It was an excruciatingly sad story. The upshot: They...

Saturday. Waiting to get the day started and expecting Miss Brown’s potential new owner to arrive. This once-stray puppy has been with us three weeks now and she needs a permanent home. Sitting in a cage is doing nothing for her home training.

Miss Brown’s leg, two and a half weeks post-op, is now in great shape. To see this puppy run around comfortable, it’s scary to think what a few more...

Friday. My day off. Went to the hospital to check on my patients, take care of phone calls and pick up my check (let’s not forget that).

On finishing up with my patients, I noticed that one of yesterday’s patients was still in hospital when she should have gone home for the night. The file read: "client insecure about diagnosis; wants a second opinion from another doctor; keep overnight for...