Visiting Vet: Taking the hunt to your indoor cat
When I was a child, my family had cats. There were Puss, Eloise, Gorilla, and Stinky. There were Pywacket, Farfel, and Nobody, and others whose names elude me at the moment. We lived on...
Visiting Vet: The cat and the carrier
It’s one of life’s little mysteries — the fact that cats love to explore, investigating every tiny hidey-hole they can find, crawling inside paper bags, sleeping in cardboard boxes, but try to put a...
Visiting Vet: Fear-biting and ways to address it
Merlot is a scrappy little dog, born feral on a tropical island. The papers that came with him from the Caribbean animal shelter say “Location Found — Under Shed.” A difficult beginning. But his...
Visiting Vet: Feline chin acne
Minato and Umaki are two sweet but sometimes shy siblings. Born feral, this brother and sister pair were taken in as kittens by a rescue organization, and eventually placed together in a wonderful home...
Visiting Vet: Urinary stones
Early one morning, Balboa, a 5-year-old male shih tzu, was let outside to powder his nose. OK, dogs don’t powder their noses. Even people don’t really powder their noses anymore, but it seemed indelicate...
Visiting Vet: Was it GME?
The first episode happened when Tidbit was 2 years old. In the middle of the night, the young Labrador retriever was jumping off an armchair where she had been sleeping, when she abruptly fell...
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...