Well, not actually my first braces or retainer (that was 44 years ago, after all). I mean the first one that I’ve applied to a patient. In a previous post we talked about how retained baby teeth can lead to malocclusion: teeth that grow in where they don’t belong. On little Cocoa here, I failed […]
Author Archives: Doc
Back when I was in veterinary school, Dr. Larry P. Thornburg was a lecturing pathology professor (as opposed to the hands-on pathologists who worked with us in the laboratories). One of my favorite Thornburg-isms was "This is a very interesting disease — we don’t know a thing about it." When we moved on to the […]
Set the Way-Back, Sherman. About ten years ago, I was flipping the channels and came across a guy in England who had built an enormous trebuchet: a counterweight-driven catapult that uses a sling to further extend its throwing arm. He was throwing small automobiles and upright pianos, among other things. He like to see things […]
One of my high school classmates became a veterinarian as a second career. When she (and I) went to college the first time, women were not exactly being encouraged to apply to veterinary school (the dark ages — sometime between the Norman Conquest in 1066 and 1980). She became a teacher, despite really always wanting […]
Old Yeller Alert It’s always hard to give bad news, but sometimes it’s harder than others. Today I had two old patients with kidney failure. Everybody’s pets are special to them, and saying goodbye is never easy, but today… The first one was a cat whose kidneys were so large and misshapen that I could […]
People make a lot of jokes about not working on Labor Day. Drive around town and you see plenty of people working, though. I typically cover the clinic chores on holidays. I feel that I need to check on the patients that are here, so I might as well clean up after them, too and […]
Yesterday morning, our schedule was unusually light. It put me in mind of a conversation between the legendary masked rider of the plains and his faithful Indian companion."Ugh, plenty quiet around here, Kemo Sabe. Yes, Tonto, too quiet." That was not a problem today. Combine a full appointment schedule, plus people who are afraid you […]
The downer today was finding out that a long-time client has terminal cancer. I went to visit her in the nursing home and she really didn’t recognize me. We talked for a while and she finally associated me with her dog. Though she didn’t really remember me, she talked about the instructions for her dog’s […]
You always need to keep the compassion turned on, for the owner as well as the animal. Sometimes the animal just doesn’t have enough sense to stay out of trouble, and sometimes we’ve just provided such a dangerous environment that it’s hard to stay safe. It’s really not fair to blame a pet for his […]
They say that cases come in threes, but that’s not one of my personal superstitions (and I do have a few). On Sunday I saw two hit-by-car cases, both with a broken pelvis. Quite a coincidence, and two was enough for one day, thank you. The pelvic bones, the pelvis (as in Elvis), the pelvic […]