No, it's not a foray into a bad joke. It's my life at the moment.

I'm on my signifiicant others' tenth-year vet school reuniuon cruise to Belize and Cozumel. It's the first time I've been out of the country in twelve years...and I'm loving every minute--except for the hours I've spent worrying about how I'd ever manage to post my blog entries.

Shortly after embarking, I was informed that...

I’ve been cleaning out my house in a fit of Spring cleaning never before observed in my home (not like this, anyway). That’s how I found the woodgrain box with Marcel’s ashes stashed in the bottom drawer of my living room’s overstuffed credenza.

Marcel’s been gone for seven or so years now. I’m far from over it, though. Like most owners who blame themselves in the event of a pet’s accidental...

For those of us in Miami-Dade County who would break the law in a fit of civil disobedience or as a genuine means of peaceful protest against the ineffectually restrictive breed specific legislation we suffer under, I say….good luck with that.

That’s because in this county—as I’ve had cause to discover in the course of my ten years practicing as a vet under “the ban”—enforcement of the...

Picture it: A dark, new-model SUV parked by the roadside with metal crates packed into the cargo compartment. The hatch is up, from which a sign dangles lazily on this windless day. A woman sits a few feet away on a fold-up chair under the partial shade afforded by her striped umbrella. Inside the SUV, puppies are milling around, two to three large breed pups to a cage. Akitas? The...

In the [almost] ten years since I started working at this practice (it’ll be exactly ten on May 1st), we’ve been through a variety of changes in how we handle the basic wellness care of our patients. Here’s a timeline:

1998: Yearly exam with physical, annual DHLPP vaccine for dogs, annual FVRCP vaccine for cats, annual FeLV vaccine for indoor/outdoor cats, annual rabies vaccine for all, fecal...

Chopping up one’s Christmas tree for bedding is not exactly what most of us find ourselves doing the day after New Year’s, but that’s the task this goat owner found herself working on as temperatures plummeted in Miami.

From ten degrees above normal to twenty below that which we have grown accustomed to (in one day!) is a lot for us thin-skinned Caribbean types populating this strange...

The definition of stress: over thirty minutes spent hunting down the exact location of a stray testicle in a dog’s abdomen. In the abdomen? Yep. Because it ain’t hanging between his legs like it should be. Instead, it’s stuck up in his insides making trouble for those of us on the outside who are simply trying to make sure it doesn’t turn into cancer or get all wrapped up in guts.

When...

I love this Terrierman site. It pleases me to no end to see knowledgeability and common sense get play in the lay pet world in ways that explicitly encourage more of the same in others. That’s why a recent post defending up-front payments to vets while decrying the commercialization of the vet profession caught my eye and held it all the way through its winding argument.

So you know (in case...

Yesterday found me leafing through a high-gloss magazine on French bulldogs one of my devoted clients had gifted me. I was immediately drawn to an article on “decoding Frenchie sounds,” expecting to be informed about airway issues.

Though it did touch on the concept of respiratory disease, it reveled in the snuffly-snorty Frenchie noises as an immensely cute characteristic of the breed—strike...

It’s been the week for bad gastroenteritis cases—‘tis the season and all that. Ubiquitous Cuban pork rinds on dinner tables make it stealthily into patient maws lurking beneath tablecloths. The black beans get scooped into bowls when everyone’s too busy to make sure Fluffy’s food made it in the grocery cart. And ribbons are strewn everywhere as if expecting to disappear without a trace....