Pawcurious Vet Blog: Pet help, stories, and information with Dr. V

For arguably the most popular girls’ toy of all time, Barbie sure does seem like something concocted by a guy.

May I present to you Exhibit A:

Barbie Pet Vet. Because I can’t help myself, I own several versions of Veterinarian Barbie-excuse me- Pet Doctor Barbie- starting with her 1996 incarnation in chartreuse hot pants. She’s gone through some changes over the years, but this is the first one I’ve seen actually wearing a miniskirt. Make that, a miniskirt that was then hemmed a few inches because darnit, knee length is so constricting. If she wore her outfit on Southwest on the way to a CE meeting, she might get kicked off.

I should also mention that, contrary to previous practitioners, 2009 Pet Vet Barbie works in mixed animal practice, so she sees horses, and one would assume, sheep and goats and other such farm creatures where one might wear, if not pink coveralls, at least denim jeans. I guess the boots were their concession to that.

I need to state for the record that Pet Vet Guy Fantasy Barbie in no way reflects the average practitioner. And even if she did, that outfit is just so obscenely wrong for the job that I can’t even fathom how it would factor into normal kid play.

“Hi Mr. Jones, what brings you to Barbie Pet Clinic today?”

“Well, I’ve heard some great things about you from my friend Joe, so I thought I would bring my pony Bessie to you so you can check her hoof.”

“OK then, so let’s take a look! Hi Bessie!”

“Erm…sorry there Bessie, my knees are a little stiff from Pilates…let’s see here…”

“Well darn, they’re just not bending at all…maybe if I lean this way….almost there…have a carrot, Bessie…”

“There we go! Good girl! Now let’s see that foot!”

*thud*

“Oh my God! Mr. Jones!! Are you all right?”

“Oh yes, yes, I’m fine…so sorry about that, must be the weather….”

Stick Barbie in a bun, some chinos from the Gap, and some Doc Martens, and then we’ll be on our way to Realityville. In the meantime I do kind of dig the pink lab coat.

There is a touchy question I have to work in whenever a client brings in a pet with a chronic cough. Somewhere in between the “how long has it been going on”s and the “what medications have you tried”s I have to find a way to tactfully phrase, “Are there any smokers in the house?”

Most of the time it isn’t really that hard a question to pose. I just ask it, and get either a yes or no. I don’t ask if it is them personally who smokes, so that leaves the door open to blame the roommate, which most people do.

But, when you open the exam room door and you are immediately assaulted with the stench of stale Menthols, and the poor dog is so steeped in secondhand smoke it stays on your hands long after the exam, and when the owner shakes your hand with tobacco stained fingers, it’s pretty obvious what the answer is. I’ve found through trial and error that a direct “Your habit is killing your dog” isn’t met with much enthusiasm, but simply skirting around the issue talking about air fresheners and the risk of other airborne irritants HINTHINT is usually met with a blank stare.

Strangely enough, although the risks of secondhand smoke are well known and documented, most people haven’t yet made the leap to the fact that dogs and cats, who also have lungs and breathe the same air that we do, would also be affected.

I just read an article from the journal Tobacco Control stating “one in three of the smokers said knowing smoking was bad for their pet’s health would make them quit and about one in ten said this would make them ask other smokers they lived with to quit.” They tried really hard to make this sound positive, but I guess I’m a pessimist. 100% of current smokers know smoking is bad for their own health and it hasn’t stopped them. And this study was conducted by survey- a theoretical situation- so I’m guessing of the 1/3 who would even make the attempt, how many would actually do it?

Smoking makes me sad. I’ve watched people I love suffer a great deal for it. It’s so frustrating to see a pet suffering terrible consequences for a choice they didn’t make and have no control over, and feel so helpless. I try to introduce the topic gently, just to clarify to people, yes, smoking can do this. And does do this. Then we look at the dog, wheezing and coughing on the table, and I put my stethoscope to his chest and hear the snap/crackle/pop of chronic bronchitis, knowing that nothing I can do will really help unless the owner makes a change.

Without a change, the story is always the same. The pet comes back, as bad as ever. I’m not sure what they want me to do. The meds help, somewhat. I address the owner who is somewhere in front of me in a cloud of smoke-stench. “This isn’t going to get better unless you get him out of the smoke,” I tell him or her. And they shrug, guilty as charged. Their kids look at me with red rimmed eyes. Good luck with that, lady.

I’m a real upper today, aren’t I? *sigh* Sometimes my job is like beating my head against a wall. While coughing.

One of my favorite clients came in yesterday. Let’s call him ‘The Matador’.

Everything about him screams ‘machismo’. He struts into the exam room with his chest jutting proudly out, his wife trailing two or three feet behind, and plunks his poodle Beatrice on the table. “HELLO, Doctor!” he booms jovially. “I am here with my best girl! And my wife! hahahahahahahaha!”

He loves to make bad jokes.

“What’s that?” he asks when I give Beatrice dewormer. Beatrice spits it out on the table. “What are you doing to my dog? Remind me NEVER to come to your house for dinner! A ha ha ha ha!” He turns to look at his wife, and only then does she also laugh, in the way that a wife does when she is married to someone like that for a long time, tolerant and just a wee bit embarrassed.

“Beatrice eats birds, doctor,” he tells me in a serious tone. “Should I be worried?” I start to discuss some of the concerns, but I’m interrupting the timing of his schtick so he just blurts in: “As long as my wife isn’t doing it, right? hahahahahahaha!”

If I lived with a guy like that I’d want to strangle him, but he and his wife are extremely nice and very good owners, and I enjoy their visits. Since I only see him every month or so I find him strangely endearing. This may partly be because he told me in great detail how I resembled a telenovela star whose name I can’t remember, but at the time I ran over the computer and looked her up. Other than our blond hair I see zero resemblance, but the fact that he did was a kindness I will never forget. I resemble her as much as I do Pam Anderson. And that is not a lot.

We have a new girl at work, who is still learning the ropes. One of our practice policies is to call people the day after their appointment to check on their pets. This seemed a good job for her to take on, to get used to client interaction. She called Mr. Matador, whom she has not met yet, to ask how Beatrice was doing after her deworming. “Oh,” he said solemnly. “I am sorry to inform you that she died after your services yesterday.”

Her face went white, and then just in time, he saved her:

“A HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Skippy’s previous owners told me, when I questioned them, that he did not bark. I have a witness, it was asked during the Great Skippy Relinquisition and answered in the negative. I asked this because the answer was important to me. I don’t like yippy dogs.

Obviously, those previous owners lied. Forked-tongue demons of the most motivated variety they were, because He Barks. Oh, how he barks. It’s not the kind of thing you forget, like “does he scratch his ears” or “drag his butt,” the sort of intermittent thing you might forget about upon questioning because of its rarity. It’s that high pitched, ear splitting staccato bark, and once he gets worked up, he can’t stop himself. “Yip! Yipyip! YIPYIPYIPYYYYYIIIIPPPPIPPPPPYYYYIIIIP!” My four year old, who isn’t old enough to have heard the figure of speech, covered her ears and told me that he was hurting her eardrums. And she was right. It’s as loud and piercing as that annoying Tatiana from American Idol, and she makes me want to poke my tympanae out.

He barks at my husband.

He barks at visitors.

He barks at men, all men.

And dogs.

And noises, and birds, and reflections and shadows and food and leashes and coffee tables and cats.

He squeezed through the slats in our fence (off to the hardware store!) and ran up to the neighbors in their own yard, and barked at them.

I consulted a trainer today for some much needed guidance. Skippy is a wild man, lacking in any and all discipline, and I need to know if I stand a chance of turning him into a respectable citizen, or if he is a lost cause. I haven’t ever given up on an animal, not yet in my life, but he is quite unlike any of the previous charity cases to land on my doorstep. Smaller, for starters. And exponentially louder.

The trainer listened to my concerns, and brought her dog out for a test. Skippy went nuts, of course. The trainer squirted him in the face with a water bottle (she called it ‘blessing the dog’, an apropos euphemism for a lapsed Catholic like me.) He stopped, at least for a minute. She told me after a brief evaluation if I was willing to do *insert long list of strenuous disciplinary activities*, I stood a good chance of whipping him into shape in six months or so.

Six months? Shall I be praying to St. Francis or St. Jude?

I found a water bottle at home, and I’ve found religion. There’s been a whole lotta blessings going on in the house tonight, let me tell you. Hallelujah. So far it’s helping, but only time will tell if this baptismal bacchanalia is the start of a true conversion or mere false prophecy. Worst case scenario: my neighbor, an elderly lady who was made for dogs like this, is in love with him despite the yipping (I think she’s hard of hearing) and should things get dire, should blessings fail and Skippy stand perched over a smoking abyss, she has offered her loving bosom as an alternative to damnation.

I like symmetry. Matching pairs make me happy and fulfill my slight OCD tendencies. For the last few years, I really had it perfect: two cats, two dogs, two kids; one boy and one girl of each. Then Mulan died, and things felt off-balance.

I didn’t want another dog simply to be balanced, though; my intentions were pure. Zoe missed having a dog to play with; Emmett is very ambivalent about the children. Emmett missed having a companion. The cats and my husband could care less.

I was thinking in that non-rational part of my brain that I really, really wanted a pug or a Boston terrier. I tentatively started to explore the routes for obtaining one, even going so far as to sending in an application for pug rescue. (I considered sending in an application to Boston rescue as well, but the one in my area said they don’t adopt to people with children under 8. I was hoping there was a points sytem whereby having kids under 8 = -5, being a vet = +100, but I didn’t feel like going there so I just skipped it.)

I briefly talked to breeders in the area, but it took all of an hour for me to realize that I am fundamentally incapable of buying from a breeder. i understand why people do, but for me, it just wasn’t an option. I watched craigslist and petfinder. I put the word out at work. I waited for pug rescue to get back to me.

Then, as always happens with people in my line of work, fate dropped in.

A dog arrived in need of a home: young couple, military, has to relocate. They have a one year old dog they have to rehome. Can I help? And that was that.

Skippy is just about as far from from what I was planning on as you can get. He’s a maltipoo, one of those dogs you carry around in a purse (which he spent a great deal of time doing.) He doesn’t snort, but he yips. My god, he yips. I took him home and coached him on how to behave in order to endear himself to my husband: “OK, now, don’t bark, OK? Don’t pee or poop in the house, be good, and just kind of sit quietly on my lap, OK?”

I thought we had an understanding. Then Brian walked in the door, exhausted after a 30 hour travel day from a business trip, to be greeted by a 7 pound ankle biter hysterically barking at him and occasionally letting out a nervous piddle. If I could capture the look he gave me, I could sell it to greeting card companies, istockphoto and Hallmark. It’s called “Displeasure”, or, alternatively, “You can’t be serious.”

It kind of looks like this:

To his credit, he is housetrained, tolerates the children well, and the cats outweigh him by a factor of two.

He is cute, right? Right? Kind of? Look, I know the tearstaining is distracting. I’m working on it.

I have a trial version of Photoshop on my computer. This is where we are headed. Better?

He’s not my style, exactly, but he has potential. At least I won’t have a stenotic nares repair to look forward to. Should I get a Coach dog bag now, or just plan on giving him a Mohawk and spiked collar?

Warm, sunny, 70 degrees. A perfect day for going out in the yard and scooping poop. Normally, this thrilling job is left to my husband, but with the occasional business trip sweeping him away (get it?) I’m left with the less than savory chores. The culprit, of course, is no help.

He creates a lot of work. He’s 80 pounds, after all, and he eats a lot of food.

He also eats a lot of other stuff. Picking up after him is a voyage of discovery. “What is that- tinfoil? Ugh….dissolved diaper innards- DAMN YOU DIAPER GENIE! You failed me again!!” Most of the time I try to adopt a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Anthropologists will be able to examine my yard hundreds of years from now and get a good idea of the daily life of a family in the early millennium simply based on a careful examination of my dog’s poop. “It appears Barbie dolls were still in fashion. Here we have a collection of mismatched plastic shoes and one disembodied head.”

Emmett does believe strongly in contributions to science, and fertilizer.

The yard doesn’t have any complaints. There is that.

He isn’t as indiscriminate as one would hope, however. At the bottom of the steps is a small play area covered in rubber chips. Emmett finds this to be a fine rest area with its commanding views.

Fortunately our resident Type A has a vested interest in keeping the area under her swing poop free. I’m not sure if Emmett is supervising, or just waiting for her to finish so he can sully the corner under the slide.