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

“Room 2 is Freddie,” says the tech. “He’s been vomiting for a couple of days.”

I grab the chart of the door and take a peek as I go in the room. “Hi there, Mr….Krueger-” pause-

“Freddie Krueger?” I look at the dog, a wrinkly shar pei.

The owner grins proudly. “I was going to save that for my first born son, but I figured I’d use it on the dog.”

Good choice.

I want to know why, in a profession where 75 + % of the entering class is composed of women, all the veterinarian memoirs out there are written by men. Vet school memoirs are even more scarce. I find this simply unacceptable. All those doe eyed little girls out there want to know how it really happens, right? I’ve seen the class pictures plastered inside the dean’s office going back a bajillion years, and I guarantee it isn’t what it once was, back in the good old days. For a lot of reasons.

How do all those old guys write memoirs 50 years after the fact, anyway? I can barely remember how it was for me, and that wasn’t very long ago at all. I think the best approach would be to write it down immediately, before I forget and find myself, 75 and wrinkly, making up stories to fill in all the holes from my long ago past. “Chapter 12- the day I delivered giraffe twins in Old Ruddy McDermott’s calving stall! That’s just how it happened. Or did I just read that in a James Herriot novel? Dammit!”

I’ll tell you how it all went down for me, starting 11 years ago. Actually, I need to back it up and go even further back. 1993.

Back then, I wanted to be a doctor. I loved science, I liked problem solving, and my father declared that English (my second choice for a major) was “utterly useless.” So my choices were, engineer, doctor, or…well, those were the only choices I had thought about.

In 1993, I was a senior in high school. I applied to some top tier schools, some state schools, and one random small liberal arts college. In what is to be a recurring theme in my life, I kind of applied to that last one on a whim- my high school counselor, the affable, brogue-tongued Mr. Malarkey, was an alumni of Nameless Small Catholic University and always talked it up. It was close to last on my list of choices, but what the heck, everyone needs to apply to at least one random school. When the acceptance letters began arriving, I started to sort them out in order of preference and realism- Harvey Mudd, great, 30 grand a year, never mind…UC San Diego, check, UC Santa Cruz- why did I apply there again?… Nameless Small Catholic University, accepted, and…whoa- scholarship? For full tuition?

My father, ever the pragmatist, was not much one for organized religion himself, having suffered plenty as a child under the harsh rule(r) of Sister Mary of Beatific Beatings. That being said, as soon as he saw that letter he couldn’t talk that place up fast enough. Oh it looks great, small private school, think of the opportunity! So SCU it was.

I was a little leery about attending a Catholic university- although I was brought up Roman Catholic in Boston, I stopped going to church almost as soon as my family set foot on the West Coast in the 80s. It was just the first of many ways I would disappoint the East Coast extended family- no church, said “like” too much, didn’t wear socks, wore pants to a funeral. Maybe going to a Catholic university would convince them somewhat that I wasn’t entirely a lost cause. I had a lot of less-than-pleasant memories about my experiences in church, and to be honest I was none too thrilled about going back to an environment saturated with a philosophy I had long since shrugged off. But, the scholarship made it the most affordable option, even more so than state school I had assumed I would be attending.

At SCU I was surrounded by the pampered sorts of liberal arts college attendees who had connections and money, and didn’t really fret too much about the future since it was a given that they would be taken care of no matter what. I had no such delusions, however, so I spent that entire four years studying, doing community service, and running around accumulating things to pad my resume with so I would stand a chance at grad school.

Going to a Catholic university wasn’t as bad as I had dreaded. They had a church on campus and held masses, but they weren’t mandatory. Many of the professors were members of the clergy, but quite a few were not. I took ‘Religions of the World’ with a rabbi. Overall it was a pretty positive experience, with so many of the Jesuits there inspiring people to go forth and do good services, which we did. Then there was Brother Snickers.

Brother Snickers was the head of the biology department, a rotund little Dutchman with a nasally voice and piercing blue eyes. On the first day of Biology 101- aka ‘Weeding 101′ he stood at the front of the room and told us half of us would drop the class. He also told us that although many of us harbored dreams of medical school, we should just get over it because most of us weren’t smart enough for that. And stupid me, despite every evidence to the contrary that I was not “most of us”, I started telling myself I probably wasn’t smart enough either. Boy, that was dumb.

Of course, he was also the pre-med advisor. That didn’t help.

Brother Snickers’ asshattery was tolerated, even when it became glaringly obvious he had a not-so-subtle misogynistic streak. He was a fraternity advisor and often showed up at parties to hang with the boys. Those boys, especially if they were of the loud-drunk-stereotypical Catholic schoolboy type, got glowing recommendations and wound up at Georgetown med school, Loyola, you name it. I found out years later several of the MVP guys were incorrigible cheats and in actuality just as dumb as I had privately thought they were. But they had a mentor holding their hand, and that made all the difference.

As I was neither a member of his preferred fraternity nor a member of the greater fraternity of XY, Brother Snickers was no help to me. I had other wonderful mentors, fortunately- but they were PhDs and thought medical school was a waste of a good brain. “Get a PhD!” they extolled, one and all. “Being a doctor is soooo boring. Biomathematics is the new biomedical engineering!” And I toyed with the idea, accumulating enough engineering classes and high level math to get a minor should I want it, but it wasn’t where my heart was. I liked fractal equations and looking at mollusks, but I just didn’t have the right temperament for academia.

By senior year, I had amassed a great GPA (o chem notwithstanding), a year as a teaching assistant for freshman biology under Brother Snickers’ ambivalent eye, hundreds of hours of community service, an internship at the LA County Coroner, and no intention of applying to medical school. I had just then started to entertain the thought of a career in veterinary medicine instead. My mother reminded me of a conversation we had when I was 12:

Me: Hey mom, I think I want to be a doctor.

Mom: A human doctor? I would have thought you would want to be a veterinarian. You LOVE animals!

Me: Yes, but I could never bear to euthanize a dog. I actually think it would be too hard to lose a dog or cat, but I think I would be OK losing a human patient.

Mom: ….That’s an interesting angle to take. Don’t ever say that out loud, OK?

For my potential human patients’ sake, I think deciding not to apply to medical school was the right decision.

So- back to senior year. No one had any idea what to think about veterinary school. Brother Snickers could care less; his only expertise was in getting men into medical school. Unfettered by his dream-squashing tendencies, the women in my class went on to other health professions: optometry school, dental school, osteopath school, and me representing the animals. Since no one knew enough to tell me getting into veterinary school was exponentially more competitive than getting into medical school, I was too blissfully ignorant to allow my self doubt to rear up and talk myself out of applying. My marine biology professor and my mathematics professor, mentors both, wrote me great letters of recommendation to have on hand. I had missed the fall deadline for applying, so I decided to take a year off to apply, clear my head, and make sure it was what I really wanted to do. Oh, and I figured, I should probably actually try and work in a vet clinic at some point.

That was 1997. BS in Biology, a vague idea in the back of my mind as to where to apply, and I needed to find a job.

By the by, in 2002 Brother Snickers was placed on administrative leave after being arrested for possession of male child pornography. No joke. He didn’t have issues with me, he just had issues. Oh, was that a bittersweet realization.

Next chapter: My brief and terrifying foray into the realm of erectile dysfunction research. It’s a doozy.

The CDC just released a report estimating 86,000 falls a year are caused by dogs and cats. I wonder if they do a similar report on the number of falls caused by roller skates, weak ankles, wet floors, and banana peels.

The report seems to infer that the majority of injuries are to the elderly, caused by tripping over little dogs out on walks.

Interesting, but I can’t quite figure out what they want to happen. The benefits of having a pet are well documented. Are we going to place warning labels on dogs- “May pose obstacle hazard”? Tell the elderly not to have dogs? Tell them not to take their dogs on walks since that is when the majority of injuries occur?

Is there anyone out there with a dog or cat who hasn’t tripped over them at one point or another? I just don’t get the point of these studies sometimes.

I have a confession to make, and this one is hard.

Skippy is no longer with me.

This is painful. I feel like a failure, especially since I spend so much time talking about responsibility and how a pet is a lifetime commitment. I still believe that, which is why I also think you should be really careful about the hows and whens of bringing a new pet into the home, and that is where I really screwed up.

I knew after Mulan died that I would eventually want another dog, and I had a specific kind of dog in mind. Skippy was not that kind of dog, but he was kind of in the right range, and he needed a home. His owner came to my house to check it out and give Skippy a chance to meet everyone. I went over my ‘deal breaker’ questions, specifically, Is he housetrained, and Does he bark, and was given the answers yes, and no. He seemed to get along with everyone. I was planning on thinking it over for a couple of days, until the owner told me she was moving the next day and was really hoping he could stay, if I thought I was going to keep him.

And me being me, I said OK. The things she mentioned as issues- separation anxiety, and cat chasing, I was prepared for, and really were OK to handle. But. butbutbut.

It only took one day to realize he wasn’t housetrained. Not even close. Worse, he was a closet pooper, so he’d go run far away where no one could see him or correct him, and hide a treat. OK, I said, I’ll have to crate him. No problem.

The next day, I found out he was a barker, and not a little bit, but the worst kind of offender- yippy, hysterical, and to top it off he’d pee all over the place when he got excited. I was a bit miffed at this point, but still ready to try and figure it out.

On the third day, I realized he could squeeze through the bars on my fence and go running around the neighborhood, more specifically, into the neighbor’s yard with 4 large dogs. And because he hadn’t had any sort of training to respond to come or other commands, once he was gone, it was a wild chase. That is when I really started to panic. We spend a lot of time running around in our yard.

On the fourth day, I spent hours retrofitting the fencing with chicken wire.

On the fifth day, he dug right under it.

By necessity, Skippy now spent the entirety of his time attached to a lead. He was either in a crate, tied to a table, or tied to me. He couldn’t be trusted inside, where he’d either run off to take a poop or eat cat poop; he couldn’t be trusted outside, where he would run away. I consulted a trainer and a behaviorist to get some suggestions about what I would have to do to mold him into a model citizen, and the answer was, to put it mildly, daunting. And would probably involve methods far more intensive and aggressive than those I have ever used in the past.

His old owner was by now unreachable, of course, and wouldn’t have been able to help anyway. I spent the next two weeks conducting doggy boot camp, which worked as long as he was under constant surveillance, but he really didn’t have much desire to please so any slip of the guard, and off he would go to wreak havoc. One bright and sunny Saturday morning was spent trespassing through my entire neighborhood after my son accidentally let him dart through his legs. Off he went, through one fence and under the next, boom-boom-boom throughout the whole development, me in pajama bottoms and wild morning hair, waving a salmon strip at him, calling, “Oh Skip-py!” in my cheeriest voice since of course we can’t let him know we are fuming since he won’t come if you are, but it didn’t matter since he didn’t come anyway. I had to ambush him under a blackberry bush. I spent the next two hours pulling foxtails out of my hair, wondering how many neighbors saw me and how many knew what I supposedly did for a living.

My friends, my co-workers, everyone who knows me and how I am mentioned to me at some point or another that this was not the ideal match. I knew it, but I had made a commitment, and damnit, I wasn’t going to give up. I can’t give up. I made this decision to give him a home and I should abide by it. I seemed to be the only one who felt this way.

A couple of days later, a family friend came over, and I pre-emptively apologized for what she was about to endure. “Oh, it’s no problem,” she said over Skippy’s high pitched screeching. She picked him up and cuddled him while he peed on her. “I love poodles.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” she said as he licked her with his cat-litter breath. “I had one who passed away a few years ago.”

“Well, I really am sorry,” I said as he sunk his teeth into her pants leg and started to hump her. “I’m trying to make him better.”

“Oh, that’s just how they are,” she said and petted him affectionately. “He’s just young.” She looked at me intently. “If you don’t want him, I would love to give him a home. My chihuahua would love a friend.”

I said we were working on things, but I would for sure let her know. Another long week passed.

As I stood there, Emmett by my side hiding from Skippy’s aggressive ministrations, it hit me. Skippy was not, and would never be, the right dog for me. The words of my trainer friend echoed in my ear: “He really just needs someone who doesn’t care about all that crap.” I wasn’t so determined to make this work out of a deep bond and love for Skippy, but out of a sense of obligation. And was it fair to him to keep him with me because I didn’t want to seem like a bad pet owner for giving him away, to in essence save face, when there was someone right in front of me who would offer him a better life? My friend would love him as he was. I would not. I would be like that woman in Cosmo they always warn you not to be, trying to fix her man, dress him up, teach him some manners, when all he wants is to sit in a wifebeater with a Coors in one hand and his junk in the other.

I called my friend and asked her if she was still serious about Skippy. “Yes, absolutely,” she said. I told her very bluntly why I was willing/mandated to give him up, and all the issues he was bringing to the table. She said yes, she knew this, and was still ok with it.

Skippy went home with her on Wednesday. The first thing he did when she came in the door was take a poop right in front of her- a final sendoff to me, I suppose, and she laughed and cleaned it up. “Let me know if it doesn’t work out,” I said. “I have contacts in rescue.”

“Oh, I’m keeping him,” she smiled, poop bag in one hand, dog in the other. “Let’s go, Skippy.”

I guess I can tell myself that everything happens for a reason. I still feel like a failure.

I.e. trying to get a thicker skin.

Today I went into a room to give a little dachshund puppy his vaccine boosters. This was a cute dog. Seriously cute. I had seen him once before, 3 weeks prior, for his first vaccination and he was healthy and adorable then, as he was today.

I went in and gushed, trying to ignore the fact of the very stone faced owner glaring at me. Everyone has bad days and bad moods, right? She asked me a couple of questions that I started to answer, and she cut me off each time before I could finish. I did my exam, gave the dog a few extra pets, complimented him, and then got him his vaccine. It was a very standard visit.

The owner then went out and told the receptionist she wants to see “the other guy” next time. She saw “the other guy”- my colleague- one time, for a cough that she declined to do anything about. Nothing special.

Personality is a matter of preference, and I just can’t help whether or not someone likes me. It makes it easier, though, if there is something I can pinpoint that I did to make a person not happy, but in this case, there really wasn’t anything that went wrong. I was in top veterinarian form today. I even wore PEARLS to work, which I never do. My hair was perfect. I did the best I could but it was just me, personally, that she rejected.

Well, you know what? Her dog was UGLY. Ugly and goofy looking too. I’m glad I won’t be seeing him again, him and his dumb floppy furry ears and little brown nose….

*sigh* I lie. He really was seriously cute. Maybe she was afraid I was going to steal him. I could lie a second time and say I don’t get hurt at all, that’s life, but truth be told I do get a wee bit hurt. Much less than I used to for sure, but I prefer to delude myself into thinking my magnetic personality is utterly irresistible to all.

I suppose this isn’t directly related to my job, but I think the concept is one that is of interest to many of my 5 readers so I thought I would share this with you.

Long before I became a veterinarian, I was a mini animal rights activist in training. I remember being 6 and hassling my mother mercilessly about her rabbit fur coat: “Eeeeeew mom, that is soooo ugly! Why are you wearing dead bunnies? We live in California! Yuck!” etc etc. She actually stopped wearing it because I hassled her so much.

As I got older, I turned my eye on the cosmetics industry. When I was 16, my neighbor hired me to babysit her kids. It turns out she was a Mary Kay saleslady*, Cadillac and all. Imagine my surprise as she closed the door behind her, leaving me surrounded by piles of those evil pink plastic compacts up to the ceiling. Quelle horreur! She tried to sell me some stuff, I gave her an earful in response, and that was by mutual agreement the last time I babysat for her.

I’m not the best animal rights person, really- I only recently went vegetarian and I’m not sure being vegan will ever happen, but I try. My brief foray into lab animal medicine only solidified my resolve that there is just no need for cosmetics testing on animals- not these days. Not anymore.

“Cruelty-free cosmetics” is a big catchphrase these days, and companies love to slap that on their label to make it more appealing to people like me. Statements like “this finished product is not tested on animals” only mean so much, though, right? How do you really know the product was created start to finish in a humane way?

I’ve seen the leaping bunny logo on a few of my favorite beauty items but I didn’t know what it meant until recently. From their website:

“Eight national animal protection groups banded together to form the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics (CCIC). The CCIC promotes a single comprehensive standard and an internationally recognized Leaping Bunny Logo. We are working with companies to help make shopping for animal-friendly products easier and more trustworthy.”

I love that. If you click on the link you will see the 8 organizations, which include the HSUS and the Doris Day Animal League. The FAQ discusses their standards in more detail, but in a nutshell the product must be free of animal testing with every phase of production, not just the finished product.

The shopping guide is great and covers not only cosmetics, but household items. And pet shampoo! See, it’s related to this blog!

I’m printing out the pocket guide and making a newly concerted effort to use as many of these products as I can. Will it change the world? Maybe not. But it’s a step in the right direction, and that is always a great thing.

*Mary Kay did stop animal testing many years ago, I suspect in no small part because of Berkeley Breathed and the not so great publicity they got via Bloom County, but this happened BEFORE that ended. I still don’t like their makeup though. Sorry.