Every year I like to offer a rundown of my holiday nightmare cases. Usually, these are the pups purchased in pet stores. With their…

…unrelenting coughs, watery eyes, sniffly noses, undescended testicles, whopping umbilical hernias, honking heart murmurs, popping knees, crunching hips, stunted sizes, abnormal dentition and full-on pneumonia…

…these pups make me cringe with their crises and...

As if Paris’s penchant for pocket-pooches wasn’t already problematic enough, the breed is bound to suffer in the wake of Disney’s release of Beverly Hills Chihuahua. In case you’re not aware, here’s the official site for the flick.

With more CGI dogs than 101 Dalmatians, Disney’s Chihuahua love story is already a holiday success (though, technically, it was released in October). So what does...

When you take your pet to the veterinarian for a “simple” spay and the incision requires multiple follow-up visits as a result of its obvious superficial infection, should you pay for follow-ups?

When your vet “misses” a diagnosis and you have to go see the [expensive] internal medicine specialist only to figure out it’s something simple your regular vet should have caught in the first...

Just two months ago Miami-Dade County (where I reside) approved an ordinance that would ban the chronic use of tethering (chaining or otherwise confining a dog via tether) as a way of “housing” dogs. But it didn’t happen without a fight, one which the welfare-minded residents of neighboring Broward County are now up against.

In spite of some reasonable arguments in support of the occasional,...

Last Monday the AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) issued an important position statement on tail docking and ear cropping. Stronger than the 2005 version, which frowned upon the practice without showing any teeth, this statement still stops short of opposing ear crops and tail docks in all cases. Here’s the wording for your consideration:

“The AVMA opposes ear cropping and tail...

Every once in a while (OK so more often, recently) I like to write about veterinarians in my specific employment circumstance. That is, I get a hankering for telling stories out of school on the realities of working for a practice I don’t own. But it’s not always all about me. To that end, here’s a post with larger patient care concerns in mind. Read on…

Increasingly, vets are graduating from...

Lots of breeders and regular pet owners give their own vaccines as a way to save on multi-pet care. Many of them do research on the vaccines, ask their vets for advice, buy the vaccines online, store them properly, administer them carefully and keep excellent records.

I have no problem with this approach as long as self-vaccinators don’t skip steps and get all sloppy about it. After all,...

Over the last few weeks I’ve seen about a dozen cases of cats with a deadly infection that looks like panleukopenia. (That’s feline distemper, otherwise known as the “P” in the FVRCP vaccine most well-tended cats receive.)

Their families bring them in to our hospital in carriers with perforated sides. Waiting their turn to be seen, they’ve sat in their carriers in the lobby alongside the...

Are you a vegetarian? A vegan? Do your cats share your dietary choices? Do you wish they did? If so, you might want to read my take on this subject:

I’ve only ever dealt with a handful of cases where owners adamantly sought assistance converting their cats to the vegan/vegetarian diet they kept for themselves. In all cases I explained that such was not my recommendation.

But most of these...

Off the Virginia and Maryland coast within the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge there’s a barrier island called Assateague that teems with feral horses.

Every year the Chincoteague Fire Department holds an annual fundraiser. It rounds up a bunch of so-called “Chincoteague ponies” and swims them across the waters between the Assateague and Chincoteague islands so the weanlings can be sold...