Blue Kitty is a "stray". He's been living at the same place for months, and they like him, and they feed him, but… he's pretty independent. Not the kind of cat that wants to come in and sit on your lap. Really, he's about half wild. Under those circumstances, he doesn't exactly get a thorough […]
Author Archives: Doc
"So, how long has that tooth been broken?" Replies range from "Huh?" to "I didn't know he had a broken tooth." to "A long time. I don't think it bothers him." I must confess that I don't have the moral high ground, here. I pet the dog, I feed the dog, I don't give the […]
The cat's basic nature differs considerably from that of the dog. They are nocturnal hunters. They climb trees. They are very flexible — if their whiskers can get through an opening, so can the rest of the cat. A dog accepts restraint pretty well, but cats hate it. Many cats simply refuse to wear a […]
So here's a weird thing: just the other day I was writing about Science Diet, and this week it goes on sale… for four months. All the prices went up in July, but if you buy a really BIG bag, the price is dramatically reduced. Do they have a surplus of big sacks? Is there […]
Many times we are presented with a pet whose teeth are terribly diseased. They have lost most of their attachment to the jaw, and the gums are swollen, infected and bleeding. Amazingly, after neglecting the pet's mouth to this condition, some owners are distressed because "You pulled his teeth." Teeth like these are the dental […]
This is a bottle of Depo Medrol. It is one of the more commonly used long-acting cortisone injectable products. One of the more common uses is to give long-lasting relief from allergic itching. Allergies are a malfunction of the body's defenses, so you give enough cortisone to suppress the body's defenses a little. I'm not […]
This little recall (big if you're the company, I guess) only affects one size bag (20-pounds) of one product: PEDIGREE(R) Complete Nutrition Small Crunchy Bites. It's also in a limited market area, i.e. a long way away from me: Albertsons stores in Southern California and Las Vegas, Nevada. The pet food is being voluntarily recalled […]
After crashing the bike in April, my desire to ride was in about the same shape as the bike. I later discovered the persistent soreness in my elbow was a crack in the radial head. It wasn't visible on regular X-rays, but showed up on an MRI (which makes me wonder about a lot of […]
This is Sinatra. The shelter folks gave him that name because of his “Ol’ Blue Eyes”. Those eyes are pretty droopy here, as he is still suffering from a combination of light sedation, and heavy uremia [waste building up in the bloodstream when the kidneys cannot get rid of it]. He had been straining to […]
I was fortunate to be able to find a relief veterinarian to cover for me so that I could take a week’s vacation without leaving my patients in the lurch. Sure, I called home a few times to see if there were any big problems, but mostly I just didn’t worry about anything but having […]