Visiting Vet: It wasn’t an easy birth
All I remember is she was a very big dog. A Great Pyrenees or Saint Bernard. It was back in the day when we almost never referred patients to specialists, and when I still...
Visiting Vet: When chocolate isn’t sweet
It all started with a small tropical tree indigenous to South and Central America, Theobroma cacao. This tree grows big red fruit pods. Inside the pods are seeds, also called beans. For more than...
Visiting Vet: Cats and dogs
Sprinkles is a sweet, petite, 8-month-old cat who shares her home with her sister Sprocket, and her “cousin” Pippa, a 6-month-old Labrador retriever. Despite the stereotype of “fighting like cats and dogs,” there are...
Visiting Vet: Senior animals
It’s one o’clock in the morning. I can’t get comfortable. I have bursitis in my hip, and it hurts. I toss and turn. If I fall asleep, I will almost certainly wake up again...
Visiting Vet: Connections
“Do you carry electric blankets?” the voice asked when I answered the office phone. For a moment I was confused. Veterinarians use a variety of warming devices for our patients. In the old days,...
Visiting Vet: Happy holidays
Deck the Halls
(Please sing out loud to your pets for full effect . . . with apologies to Scottish musician Thomas Oliphant, 1862, who wrote the original English lyrics.)
Deck the halls with boughs of...
Visiting Vet: Help is here
Two o’clock in the morning. The telephone rings. A dog vomiting repeatedly. Sunday afternoon. The telephone rings. A limping cat. Halfway through dinner. The telephone rings. A horse colicking. In the shower after work....
Visiting Vet: Bones are not humerus
Three families. Four dogs. A whole lot of short rib bones. The first people were not regular clients, but referred to me as “the vet on call.” I think on a Saturday afternoon. The...
Visiting Vet: Greylock’s case
When Greylock arrived for his appointment, his owner and I spent some time chatting on the porch. The handsome grey middle-aged cat had originally been a stray. “He was almost feral but crying for...
Visiting Vet: ‘My dog is choking!’
“My dog is choking!” I get these frantic phone calls way too often. Sometimes at two o’clock in the morning. Or the time I was sitting in my backyard in a bathing suit reading...
Visiting Vet: Cats’ eyes
Ketzeleh, a sweet older cat, came in for an appointment. Her owner reported the cat’s eyes had been a little runny for a few months. She hadn’t been too concerned since Ketzeleh had been...
Visiting Vet: Mako’s miracle
The answering service relayed the message to me at 7 pm by quoting the client’s exact words — her dog, Mako, had eaten “a ridiculous number of vitamin D gelcaps.” Well, that can’t be...
Visiting Vet: A Great Dane’s final journey
The phone rang. 10:30 pm. Alannah, a 6-year-old Great Dane, was acting oddly — restless, panting heavily, and occasionally making a “throat-clearing” noise. Late-night sick Great Danes alarm me. This breed has one of...
Visiting Vet: Frolicking Fenster
It was just a freak accident. Fenster, a beautiful but shy Tabby-Siamese mix, somehow got one of her hind legs caught under a double-hung window. Her owner isn’t sure how it happened, but cats...
Visiting Vet: Considering euthanasia
Everybody, please. Sit down and take a deep breath. One of the hardest things veterinarians deal with is helping owners with decisions regarding euthanasia. We are asked to euthanize animals for all kinds of...
Visiting Vet: Read the signs
Benedict, a 5-year-old English setter, recently arrived on the Vineyard after a two-day drive from down south. “He’s usually a good traveler,” his owner said when asked if the dog’s current bout of vomiting,...
Visiting Vet: Mushroom mayhem
It’s been a particularly soggy July. Everything’s damp. Even the dry laundry doesn’t feel dry. And let’s not talk about my hair. Know what likes this humid weather? Mushrooms. My yard is erupting with...
Visiting Vet: Belvedere is back on his feet
“I think my dog is paralyzed,” the owner said when he called on emergency one afternoon. “He’s fourteen, a Labrador. Something’s really wrong.” I get a million of these calls. Elderly large breed dogs...
Visiting Vet: Simple treatment can work wonders
Roro, a 3-year-old cat, lives a freewheeling feline life rambling around the backwoods of West Tisbury, but coming home regularly for food and affection. When he didn’t show up for a few days, his...
Visiting Vet: A different kind of wake-up call
5:30 a.m. I am good at sensing what time it is by the way the morning light angles in through my bedroom window, by how loudly the birds sing, by how many cars rumble...