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

1 month into my career as a vet, a client walked into an exam room with Mulan and tried to get me to euthanize her because she was allergic to fleas. At the time, I thought that sort of thing happened all the time, someone showing up in your hospital with your very favorite breed of pet, needing to give them up.

It never happened to me again. I have to believe our paths were meant to cross (especially since my not-so-sentimental colleague at the time might very well have obliged her request.)

As one might expect, the staff of a veterinary hospital is pretty pet-oriented. We all have pets- most of us, multiple pets- with the exception of our one anomalous staff member with no animals, much to everyone’s bafflement. He has a young family, he’s understandably busy, and he just hasn’t gotten around to it.

When our no-nonsense receptionist took a break this afternoon, she asked this staff member to watch the front desk for her. 10 minutes later, he walked into the back with a really cute little puppy.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

He shrugged. “This lady came in, handed me the dog, said she couldn’t keep him and left.” He paused. “At least he had a parvo vaccine.”

The receptionist, who had just entered the room, looked at him like he was out of his mind. “What do you mean she gave it to you? Why did you let her do that? We don’t take relinquishments!” She started to look panicked. “What are we going to do with him? We can’t keep a puppy here! What am I going to tell the boss??”

As I started to run through the list of options in my head, it occurred to me that the staff member was still holding the puppy with absolutely no effort to hand him off to anyone else. It was, dare I say, a bit possessive.

“Did you call your wife?” I asked suspiciously.

“She’s fine with it,” he admitted.

This marks the fourth fifth pet this year turned over at our clinic who would up adopted by a staff member.  Not that I condone veterinary hospitals as a dumping ground for unwanted pets, but the times I’ve seen it happen, the staff has always wound up working very hard to get the pet adopted out. Not once has a pet been turned over to a shelter. We’re suckers.

I can’t say I approve of someone doing what she did, but you have to admit it could have turned out much worse for the pup.

After Emmett died, some of the hardest times for me were the quiet nights when my husband was out of town on business. Besides the companionship (yes, that was the only time he was allowed on the bed), I missed the comfort of having a fluffy, well-attuned barking machine keeping a keen eye and ear out for me 24/7.

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My childhood dog was a Lhasa Apso named Taffy. For the first 8 months of life on the East Coast, she was an adorable ragamuffin of flopsy adorableness. Then- we moved to California.

In the warm Southern California climate, flea season is year round. And over the next few months, Taffy became Scrappy. Her long lustrous fur fell out, to be replaced with that hyperlichenified elephant skin indicative of massive irritation. Her skin was one raw welt.

The only way to keep her comfortable was to shave her short like a rat, dose her up on steroids like a Mr. Olympia wannabe, and routinely smoke out the house with nasty-smelling flea bombs probably just as bad for us as they were for the fleas.

Then Advantage came out.

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Kekoa is perpetually smiling. She is a happy girl.

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Tech support has decided we need a Picture of the Week. My husband promises he will produce one, each and every week. I told him in no uncertain terms that this was a Big Commitment and made him swear on his camera honor that he would keep it up.

“Well, you can contribute too,” he said.

“But I don’t want to,” I said. “This is your idea and my only good pictures are ones I got because I was lucky. I can’t produce good photos under pressure.”

Then I told him this was a good way to force him to up his game. Yep, I issued a challenge.

Doesn’t this look like a promo shot for a 70s cop drama? I call it “Brojak.”

Poor Apollo. He is now presiding over the fifth fur-monster to infiltrate his quiet life. Perhaps there is some secret camaraderie amongst our shadow-shaded friends, or maybe we just got lucky, but this is the easiest doggie transition we’ve had yet. Kiki/Koa/Ricola is pretty ambivalent about him. I now have TWO pets exceedingly difficult to photograph. That’s OK. It’s a throwdown challenge for my husband to work with the infamous photographic challenge.

I work with a cat lady. I don’t mean this as a pejorative- she really does love and adore cats and is a tremendous resource for all things feline. Yes, she has 13 of her own, but they are all well taken care of, and many of them are cats given up by their owners for various reasons.

My point is, she knows all sorts of things about cats and cat breeds and loves to share trivia. When she met Apollo, she declared he was a black tabby with a touch of Bombay. “You do realize,” she said, “that black cats are actually dark brown tabbies?” And I did know this, but only after getting a black cat of my own. I’m still learning about different cat breeds. Working with her, seeing her enthusiasm, makes me more appreciative of the finer joys of living with cats. And she helps me be a better vet for it.

Instead of referring to him as the arm-humping jungle ocelot, I looked at Apollo through my co-worker’s eyes and saw the other side of him: regal, composed, and possessed of an old-Hollywood-like ability to find the perfect lighting:

I’m ready for my close-up.

Will you look at that- he is brown! And I do say so myself, perfectly photogenic.