This is Missy May. She's a pretty good little dog, pretty healthy aside from an occasional mild allergic flare-up. She came in yesterday because of urinary problems. She had been squatting and straining pretty frequently for the last couple of weeks, and now she has had some "accidents" in the house. Her owner very thoughtfully […]
Author Archives: Doc
There's an old cowboy saying: "Don't tell people about your troubles. Half of them don't care, and the other half are glad you've got them." On the other hand, if somebody actually asks, "How are you?", you could pretend that they actually want to know. Instead of replying with a perfunctory, "Fine, how are you?", […]
This is Big Jake. "When he lays around the house, he really lays around the house." [rim-shot!] His 147 pounds are covering my exam table and slopping off the edge. Five days ago he came in because he had been panting in the early morning. He seemed to feel better by the time they came […]
"And I'm afraid to have him anesthetized. I'm afraid something will happen." Hey, something did happen. This tooth lost its attachments and was hanging by a thread, which makes it wiggle around and hurt. It wasn't much trouble to extract this one. The tooth ought to be the color of those two white roots, not […]
This time it's not the dreaded Chinese melamine. Apparently they are keeping that at home to put in their baby formula. It doesn't seem to be working any better for their babies than it did in the dog food here. This recall concerns possible contamination with Salmonella (can you say "food poisoning"?). Here's the website […]
Actually, dogs will eat practically anything (some dogs, anyway). I remember giving post-op instructions for a pup after having removed plastic flowers, buttons, pieces of cloth and some other un-identifiable junk from his stomach. "He'll need to eat a bland diet for a few days after his stomach surgery." "Gee, I don't know about that, […]
This is a picture taken at my wedding reception (in 1976, and Libby is still putting up with me…mostly). The man on the right is Virgil McElyea, known to his friends as "Mac". We were woodshedding some gospel tunes while the cake and punch were going around. Mac passed away about two weeks ago at […]
Every so often a dog comes in with a swollen face. In fact, twice in a twelve-hour period this weekend I've seen a dog with a swollen face (different dogs, okay?) Look at that right lip and left eye. "What happened to him?" We don't know. Dachshunds (more commonly than other breeds) sometimes get facial swelling as […]
A veterinarian in general practice is used to being expected to know a lot. I don't know about guys in the city, but people have asked me to identify snakes, mastodon fossils, and suspected human remains (cow bones, as it turned out). Late night calls (from people without Google): "Do polar bears eat penguins, or […]
In the August 30 issue of Science News, they report on a study by Atsushi Senju of Birkbeck, University of London. They sat around with 29 dogs of various breeds. When they caught the dog’s eye, they either gave a big, sighing yawn, or made other less dramatic mouth movements. Of the 29 dogs, 21 […]