It’s not just the simple bite wounds sustained during a brief brawl at the puppy park. It’s also the crushing injuries, the broken bones and the bleeding lungs that are at stake when pets get into it.

The worst cases are fall under the category of “BDLD” (“big-dog-little-dog”) interactions or occur when cats get handed the business end of a dog’s maw. In these cases the aggressors are usually...

Ever thought you wanted to be a large animal vet? For a while, I did, too. I was one of those “horsey” girls. You know the ones—played the Pony Club, leased horses in middle school with spare change (or managed to find a way to get their parents to pay for it). They’d do anything for those creatures.

Fast-forward ten years and vet school’s in her sights. But all she hears after subjugating her...

Anyone who’s kept up with my blog entries probably knows my opinion on part-time pet ownership. So you can easily imagine my skull imploding over breakfast yesterday after spying the headline of a front page article in the Wall Street Journal.

“An Idea Whose Time Has Come: The Time-Share Dog.”

Seriously?

Not that the article concludes in favor of shared dogs, not when you consider how it...

No, I don’t own a veterinary practice. I can give you a very long list explaining this lapse in my traditional vet career trajectory.

And while on paper it’s a justifiable life choice, I’ll confess: Eschewing practice ownership doesn’t make me feel particularly virtuous or successful as a small-animal practitioner. I suspect the same is true of many of my ambitious colleagues.

Here’s why I’ve...

Since I'll be kayaking in Key Largo far away from my DSL modem for the next couple of days, this and the next post are reprints of the last couple months' Veterinary Practice News columns.Enjoy and comment away--I'll be back on Tuesday to respond.

I’ve suffered the disgrace of a malpractice lawsuit--no, not mine. But I served as a witness in a case brought against another veterinarian. The...

Last weekend kicked off this years’ AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) convention in New Orleans. I was meant to attend but, sadly, it fell casualty to my own pets’ needs. Luckily, I have Mr. Wayne Pacelle of the HSUS to keep me informed on how the AVMA’s House of Delegates voted on the issue of veal calf confinement (see below for the link).

I checked on this myself and read that...

In a recent editorial in Veterinary Medicine magazine, a California veterinarian named Dr. Robert Miller had a thing or two to say about the red-headed stepchild of the veterinary profession that is “behavior medicine.”

In it, he bemoaned the dearth of knowledge and available services at the high end of the spectrum—at all levels of the behavior spectrum, in fact.

While more and more...

Ouch. Hits home on this, my Sophie’s first week of radiation for her brainstem tumor. This article was emailed to me by a dozen or so supportive parties, some shocked, some impressed that I’d agreed to submit my dog to brain cancer treatment.

None of us here should be too shocked, however, that owners are willing to pony up—big time—for their pet care when conditions prove treatable. It’s a...

At the risk of stealing thunder before you catch the lightning, let me just tell you how the cover story in today’s New York Times Magazine unfolds:

This glossy “Animal Pharm” piece has a mouthful to say on the so-called “modern phenomenon” of using psychoactive pharmaceuticals on our pets, railing at times against their use but more often against the sentiments that provoke humans to apply...

At the outset let me state that I am largely in favor of gun control measures. Like you, like nearly everyone, I favor legislation that would keep guns out of the paws of my country’s criminal elements.

With that in mind, it seems reasonable to assume I'd be disappointed by yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling essentially supportive of less restrictive gun control measures. But considering my...