Interestingly, the AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) has issued a policy statement on the ability of municipalities to pass laws which regulate veterinary activities. 2005’s West Hollywood legislation prohibiting declaws and 2007’s Norfolk City, Virginia’s ban on non-veterinarian cosmetic procedures were perhaps the impetus for such a decree.

Both laws impinged on the state’s...

Flagler Dog Track is a decaying grey building in the heart of Miami which looks more like a strung out concrete coliseum than a viable sports arena. Instead of drawing the crowds and packing the parking lot on weekends, it hosts flea markets where it once held hundreds of cars while their owners played the dogs.

Today, we South Floridians vote on the fate of three such places in our area:...

A couple of days ago, my “Teeny-Tiny Paris-Style Pocket Pooches” post attracted a bit of characteristically bilious invective.  In case you’ve never read this post or its unspooled thread of comments, it seems to attract a surprising number of negative comments relative to the rest of Dolittler’s content.

In case you assume such negativity annoys me, reconsider: I love knowing that people are...

Four days ago, I read about a newly created organization of veterinarians: the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association (HSVMA). It’s a nascent group created essentially as an amalgamation of the HSUS (Humane Society of the United States) and AVAR (Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights).

My initial response?: Oh, wow,  now we’re really in for it.

Here’s some background:

About a...

OK, so I’ve been turned down again for an NPR broadcast but I keep trying. I never stop, really. Someday they’ll find me deserving. Here’s something I wrote for last Monday’s Supreme Court hearings on lethal injection as it applies to humans in capital punishment cases. I can only hope you’ll have more discerning taste and consider it worthy of your attention. ;-) 

PS: Some of you have already...

One of the biggest stumbling blocks in the battle against pet overpopulation is the whole issue of spaying and neutering cats and dogs before they get out of shelter environments. It’s both morally unconscionable to me as a vet to let these pets get out of sight before ensuring their reproductive dead-endedness and understandably a mite troubling to have them assume the potential health risks...

Have you ever started reading a book only to find that after rocking your world for sixty-plus pages it next serves up a section so annoying you're hard-pressed to actually finish it?

That’s what happened to me with Nathan Winograd’s revered book, Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No-Kill Revolution in America.

Its basic tenet? Our system of shelter management is broken, but...

It’s a big species world out there. Though we may love our goats and parrots and rabbits no less than our beloved cats and dogs, it’s a mission to find approved drugs for them when they’re ill. In fact, it’s mission impossible—truly—as there are almost none available.

Any vet wanting to obtain some measure of safety and efficacy-related security in selecting a drug for a minor species patient...

As if the week before Christmas isn’t enough to drive anyone mad, Miami-Dade County took this time out of their schedule (and some money out of our exorbitant property taxes and sizable dog license fees) to send every licensed dog owner a holiday postcard.

I guess they couldn’t decide between a manger scene and a menorah. Instead, they sent us all a personalized nasty-gram reminding us to...

The party line’s the same from almost every vet in the country: spay and neuter your pets. Though there’s some variety in the preferred age at which these procedures are performed, six months is still the generally accepted “ideal” on this front.

Nonetheless, new research is chipping away at our rock solid beliefs on the perfect time for spaying and neutering—especially in dogs. Most recently,...