Here I am on the last day of a few days away from home. I'm three time zones away in Northern California trying hard to exorcise my recent demons. Though I've been posting faithfully, it's clear to me that I won't be able to do you justice today. That's why I've opted to bring you back to a post many of you may have missed. It's an important one, one I hope you''ll disseminate so others won't...

Veterinary students ultimately find themselves lodged between a rock and a hard place. The “rock” is the school’s need to educate them broadly and deeply. The “hard place” is the veterinary profession’s requirement that students emerge fully versed in the private practice lingua franca (i.e., with the well-developed ability to function independently in clinical practice).

It seems incredulous...

Is your pet on a prescription diet? Let me rephrase that: Is your pet on a “Prescription Diet”?

If so, is your veterinarian the only place you can go to pick up your Rx-labeled pet food? If it’s sold at the big-box pet store down the street, do you have to arrive at said pet store with a written prescription in hand before you can pick up a bag or case of pet food? Did you ever wonder why...

When the time comes to say goodbye, where will it be? A large and growing number of you seem to prefer that it happen in your own homes. After all, that’s where you and your pet shared the most time and feel most comfortable. 

Maybe you’d prefer not to risk an intractable memory of her last breath within the confines of the four walls you inhabit, but you feel you owe it to her, anyway....

I’m going out on a limb here because I’m not sure how much you guys really care about inside-the-veterinary-profession issues, but I thought it’d be interesting to run this past you all, anyway.

Imagine the nation’s number-one association for doctors, the American Medical Association (AMA), is choosing one particular health insurance carrier for its membership’s benefits package. Its...

The pet microchip industry is getting a boost from the pet owning public’s increased interest in keeping their pets close. Nonetheless, it’s the opinion of this veterinarian that the industry––and the product itself––is suffering serious growing pains as the pet owning market’s demand matures beyond what the current, lowly microchip can reasonably supply. 

For microchips to do what their...

Microchipping pets is a pretty simple process. A loaded syringe, a quick flick of the wrist...and voilá: A microchip bearing a series of digits has been “installed.”

It’s standard practice for microchips to make it inside your pet. Shelters do it. Pet shops are required to do it. And in some areas, breeders have to do it, too. Add to that population the growing percentage of pet owners who...

Got a Schnauzer? What made you want this breed of dog? Did “Shnauzer” come up on an Internet breed finder? Maybe you grew up with one, or your friends have one. Perhaps you just like the way they look. Their spunk. Their style.

Today’s topic is “breed perceptions.” The question, according to one study out of Australia, is whether people, at a formative age––at a time when lifelong opinions...

The Obama administration is working hard on solutions to the high cost, spotty availability and inefficiencies of our current medical system. As if the economic crisis, foreign policy nightmares and energy issues weren’t enough, taking on the US’s human healthcare insufficiencies as well will take an act of God to surmount. 

No matter, we have to start somewhere, right? Some proposals have...

Here’s my simple answer to the controversial question of "people food": Personally, this veterinarian hates the issue because of the words involved. “People food” is a loaded term––one full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Nothing, that is, beyond a Madison Avenue-originated, hard-blowing wind kicked up to keep most of us from feeding our pets anything that doesn’t come in a bag or...