Gus was my suburban lizard medicine project. Unfortunately, I’ve not got much happy news on this patient's update.

After a couple of weeks of attempting to medicate this backyard lizard with antibiotic-infused crickets (put the buggers in a bag with a hefty dose of injectable Baytril, shake ‘em up and release in front of the sick lizard in question), it was clear Gus’s illness had bested us...

In case I ever needed one good reason to be a vet, Minino is it. I always promise you updates on the cases I highlight and I’ll admit—sometimes I forget to comply. Today, however, I’m not only updating, I’m giving you some more happy news (as if the dog rabies success story wasn’t enough).

Remember the little blind kitten I told you about in this bittersweet post about a month ago? He was

Yesterday’s client wasn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. All on staff had fumed when she failed to arrive the previous day after reporting, by phone, that her dog had gotten into her bottle of Advil (ibuprofen). The woman failed to heed the receptionist’s direst warnings, claiming she couldn’t bring her dog in until the next morning. Period.

So I called her back and explained exactly...

Tuesday brought an unexpected little miracle. It arrived in the guise of voraciously hungry little stray male kitten. He was riddled with fleas, sported no fur over his ears, face feet and tail and suffered raw pink patches over his back and belly. The tiny white and gray 8 week-old thing was a pitiful sight more reminiscent of Pinky (of Pinky and the Brain fame) than of any earthly feline.

So...

Have you ever heard of a teacup cat? I saw the first two examples of these at the hospital today (yesterday by the time you read this). They’re littermates—little ragdoll “teacups” (roughly 30% smaller than they should be). They were twelve weeks old and looked little bigger than your typical eight-weekers.

They were cute as a button—you can well imagine what two tiny ragdoll fluffballs would...

I got to thinking I'd been spending too much time with lawyers recently when a colleague’s recent disaster case had me wondering…is this malpractice?…or is it just one of those inexplicable things that happens in animal medicine? On first blush, it sure seemed like a classic case of sloppy care. (It happens, I’ll admit.) But as with everything else in this case, the real answer was lying just...

No, this is no advertisement for Advantage and its familiars. This is the truth and consequences of fleas on pets—even indoor pets, as this case will prove.

Dingleberry (so named for his long fur’s talent for capturing stray fecal balls in the litterbox) was a beautiful black Persian cat we’d occasionally undertake to anesthetically groom (he wouldn’t have it any other way and his fur required...

Have a one-eyed pet? Know anyone with a one-eyed pet? Send me your pics and I’ll pay homage to them ALL on this post as a way to encourage humanity to accept that one-eyed pets are BEAUTIFUL! [If they’ve got no eyes (as happens on rare occasions) consider them doubly welcome!]

Include a link in your comment or email them to me directly (drkhuly@dolittler.com) and I’ll showcase their pic on this...

This is perhaps one of the scariest cancers we vets see in pets. Both dogs and cats suffer it. And unless it’s one of the microscopic variety (and these do exist rather commonly, mind you), they’re almost invariably untreatable—that is, by conventional means most owners can afford.

Believe it or not, most brain tumors are not the malignant monsters we’d expect after witnessing the severity of...

This post is neither about money nor pet safety…whew! We all needed a little respite after three serious posts on that subject. It does concern euthanasia, though, so those of you needing to close your eyes, plug your ears and sing “la la la la…” to shut out the impending doom of another potentially depressing post can come back to it after a respectable period of time.

This post is about...