#1: Stress!

When clients add stress to our lives in quantities disproportionate to that of the average pet owner, we sometimes initiate divorce proceedings. It usually arrives in the guise of a nice letter explaining that it must be our fault:

“It’s clear to the doctors and staff of X Animal Hospital that we cannot render services at the level you deem acceptable. Enclosed are your medical...

Ever been to your vet and been told your pet WILL be muzzled? Does it sound any better if they ASK if they can apply a muzzle? What if they tell you gently that, “for our safety we’re going to put a muzzle on her, OK? It won’t hurt, I promise.”

In my personal experience, it’s all about the WAY in which the issue is broached. But different vets and different hospitals have different styles and...

I get lots of mail on the subject of finding a new vet. Some pet owners have already decided that they need to switch to a different veterinary professional either because they’re moving out of town, require an in-city vet closer to them, or simply because they’re fed up with their last doc.

Ever since I started writing my Miami Herald column a year and a half ago this kind of mail began...

A couple of weeks ago I committed a medical error. I meant to blog about it at the time but, uncharacteristically, something stayed my flighty keyboard fingers. I’m still not sure what it was that denied you the up-to-the-minute access I like to offer, but the following questions might have had something to do with it:

Will others think me stupid? Careless? Saddled with poor procedural...

Never did I think I’d be pushing my late thirties with the amount of debt I currently juggle. Now I can thank my Sophie Sue and her expensive brain radiation treatments at Cooper City Animal Medical Center for finally bringing it all to a head (excuse the pun).

Sitting in the parking lot waiting for her treatment to conclude last Friday I finally experienced the epiphany I required: Making...

Knowing me to be full of crotchety opinions in all things veterinary, a colleague recently asked me to enumerate my top pet peeves in vet medicine.

But like a foodie asked to list her least favorite dishes, I was reluctant to rank my curmudgeonly views on my own profession, especially since I do love it so, faults and all.

Still, I thought it would be valuable to pen a post on this, especially...

Sick pet…surgery…biopsy…what’s next? How long does it take for the faraway pathologist to render a diagnosis?

Some clients call every day—twice, even—hoping to catch the fax as it hits my email inbox.

They’re justifiably on edge, wondering if that scary oral sore is a squamous cell carcinoma, the toe mass a melanoma, the skin mass a grade III mast cell tumor…or something they can finally big a...

Help! I need to find some way to get my Sophie to and from her radiation appointment every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the next six weeks!

The one-time gamma knife procedure is out of the question due to the shape of her brainstem tumor (funky dimensions confirmed on last Friday’s CT scan). This [relatively] fast slice-n-dice procedure was my preferred approach due to the alternative’s...

It’s the Fourth of July and all you U.S. readers know exactly what that means…NOISE! To suitably celebrate the anniversary of our country’s violent birth our neighbors will be out on their lawns sending up illegal flares likely to ignite nearby tinder and frighten our pets into sub-couch submission.

It’s an annual feast for the pyromaniacal among us. Too bad our noise phobic creatures can’t...

Hot on the heels of last Saturday’s comedown (see the previous post) came an angry phone call from a client displeased with his pet’s health certificate.

This was Saturday morning and the health certificate had been issued the previous day. Unfortunately, the flight (a Delta Airlines jaunt from Miami to Salt Lake City) was a couple hours off—and it didn’t look like the dog was boarding it.

The...