You can call me Patty, Dr. Khuly, PK, or even Dr. K. but please don’t call me Dr. Patty––not unless it’s in jest. Actually, it’s not really that I mind being called Dr. Patty. It’s more that it bugs me when other veterinarians adopt a public, pseudo-professional designation that employs their given names. 

Why hold out a pet peeve that doesn’t even affect me directly? I guess it’s because it...

Every two years, all licensed veterinarians in the state of Florida are required to collect sixty hours of continuing education. Among these mandatory hours, two must include instruction on the subject of pharmacy regulations. (Mine was last week so it's fresh in my head.) This, a nod to our unique status as veterinarian and pharmacists, seeing as most of us shelter animal pharmacies in our...

How many pets succumb to rat poison toxicity every year? I’m sure the ASPCA Poison Control knows but I don’t have the figures on hand this morning. I have, however, seen at least two pets die following confirmed ingestion of rat poison.

In one case, a dog’s sudden internal bleeding led to a frantic search of a vacation home where a basement stash of rat poison had indeed been thoroughly...

Illegal drug poisoning in pets is more common than you think. While most pets won’t consume alcohol in sufficient quantities for intoxication (not willingly, anyway), other mind-altering drugs don’t provide the same degree of safety.

Marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine, crystal meth. They’re all common culprits in emergency pet medicine. In fact, veterinary communities in certain geographic locales...

...sometimes they deserve to have the wrath of the public rain down on them. Consider the following two examples:

A local colleague who decided he couldn’t take no for an answer when a client refused to pay a $500 bill, citing the impoverished state of her bank account. Apparently enraged by the disparity between his client’s excessive finery and his own decidedly down-market ways, he points...

If I were to list all the categories of questions I get in order of how frequently they hit my email inbox, the hands-down winner would have to be the Q on canine vasectomies. As in, “My veterinarian won’t perform a vasectomy on my dog. Where can I have one done?” and “Do I have to fly my pet down to Miami to get my dog a vasectomy?”

All this attention simply because, once or twice (OK, so...

Last night I attended the mid-week showing of Cavalia, the Canada-based equine spectacular currently taking the US by storm.

Considering the accolades and effusive praise it received from my friends and colleagues, wouldn't have missed it. All I needed was a good enough excuse to blow more than my monthly entertainment budget on one night's guilty pleasure. Luckily, I found one: My son's 12th...

Spied on the front page of The New York Times this morning: “Heel. Sit. Whisper. Good Dog.” Surgery to cut the vocal cords of barky dogs is losing favor, it reports. Amid such current front page news as food coupons for hungry Haitians and Gates’ POV on “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” comes the “news” that debarking is no longer on the “in” list.

While I’m gratified that the New York Times took the...

What is it about tails? For some reason, humanity seems to abhor nothing more than a caudal appendage. Unless an animal’s got a prehensile version, it’s only going to get in the way. Best get rid of it, we say.

Many breeds’ tails are docked within days of birth. Others have the tail-lessness bred into them through fancy genetic tricks. Cats are not immune to the shenanigans, nor are plenty of...

Nothing is 100% safe. Nothing. There’s no perfectly safe flight, drug, car ride, surgery or sidewalk. Any drug, food, supplement or medical device with the power to help you also has the power to hurt you. That much we know for sure.

It’s the cure vs. kill conundrum and it’s a big deal when it comes to all kinds of veterinary subjects. Usually it’s the anesthesia and the commonest drugs that...