[avoiding-claws]

I gotta know; what's the most baffling, how-the-fuck-did-you-manage-that thing you've pulled (or seen pulled) out of an animal?

An entire pork rib? Swallowed whole? By a puppy?

Yknow when you just think of the logistics and you just wonder how on EARTH did you swallow that whole without doing any damage or choking.

Same vibe with any dog that eats those long wooden bbq skewers whole. Like how.

[love-bnarvt]

We pulled a damn butcher's knife out of a St. Bernard once. And just like that, no damage whatsoever and we were all fucking baffled.

[talesfromtreatment]

Tomorrow we have a 120 pound, 12 year old bernese mountain dog coming in.

4 days ago it ate some paper towels out of the trash.

3 days ago it started having heavy panting and poor appetite.

For my vet med peeps, what do we think is actually wrong with this dog:

why is this dog coming in?

bleeding splenic tumor

lung cancer

foreign body/obstruction

other type of cancer

Voting ended onJan 15

[talesfromtreatment]

Answer: none of the above. Dog is acting normal today. Nothing abnormal seen on rads anywhere.

It was funny though because one of the vets walked in while we were doing the rads and went "Did you find a splenic tumor?" and when we said no, the response was "hunh. Odd."

For the non vet-med peeps, Bernese Mountain Dogs are second only to Golden Retrievers in their love of making cancer. You find a lump on a berner and it's nearly guaranteed to be bad.

[love-bnarvt]

Glad the doggo is okay but I'm just utterly shocked at the notion of a 12 year old Bernese Mountain Dog. I've been in this business for over 16 years and I'm used to seeing them go out around 7 or 8 years old whether they get cancer or not.

[avoiding-claws]

Is negative pressure wound therapy a viable option in vet med, and if so do you have any experience using it? With people I can attest to how annoying and cumbersome wound vac systems are, I can only imagine it would be so much worse with pets.

I know it is a thing, and I learnt about it super briefly at uni, but I do think it’s likely more of a referral level thing. I’ve never seen it being used in general practice or heard of anyone using it.

Like you said, interference etc and patient energy levels would be such an issue I imagine!

[love-bnarvt]

I only ever saw it once while working at a referral vet and this was over ten years ago. Rattlesnake bite that the owners sought no medical treatment for and so a good deal of the dogs skin and some tissue became infected and then eventually just rotted right the fuck off it's body from the lower part of its neck down to the chest and into the arm pits. Huge, awkward area to treat and especially the armpits made it rally difficult to keep sealed so that the vacuum thing could work but the dog was a complete angel and was so patient and we were able to make it work.

[talesfromtreatment]

Help the 100% against all breeders people found my post about unethical dog breeders and are trying to claim that mixed breed dogs are perfect for everyone and that they're automatically healthier than purebreds

[love-bnarvt]

I worked at a specialty clinic for over a decade and If I had a nickel for every single time some well-meaning poor sap told me, "I paid 40 bucks for this animal at a shelter because all I heard was that mixed breed dogs are healthier and now it's costing me thousands of dollars every year.", I could have retired by now.

[love-bnarvt]

Look, I'm sorry but this is absolute horseshit from the BBC and I'm so fucking disappointed. The animals that were released from the Russian whale jail, most of whom were adults and with multiple members of their family groups, were only in captivity for a matter of months. That does not compared at all to animals that were captured as 2 or 3 year olds and then lived in captivity their entire lives, or were born in captivity, and them spinning it saying "See, SEE?! Seaworld is lying, they can all be released and thrive just like this one is!" just goes to show how desperately disingenuous this movement is.

[chumbie]

reblog this and put in the tags something you watched that terrified you as a child. i was so scared of the hot sauce in spongebob that i refused to be in the room when it was on

[love-bnarvt]

The scene in Mary Poppins where everyone is laughing and floating up to the ceiling scared the holy living hell out of me when I was a kid.

[avoiding-claws]

There is some insane nurse vs vet tech/nurse drama going down on tiktok at the moment.

It seems to be mainly American-centric so I haven’t looked into it (and won’t be lol) extensively but ooooooh my god what are you even arguing about? Human nurses kicking off saying that the term nurse only refers to human nursing? What? And everyone is just arguing in circles and pissing each other off.

[love-bnarvt]

Oh no, can confirm, human nurses fucking hate veterinary nurses in the US. All while I was doing my schooling the people who were their doing all the human medical programs were constantly going out of their way to take any and every opportunity to be rude to us and belittle what we were doing, and that was over 16 years ago, so I can imagine how bad it is now. And that's not to say nothing of the experience continuing into my actual career having human medical professionals being the absolute worst of the worst of any clients that we had at any hospital that I worked at.

[norseminuteman]

[love-bnarvt]

Earthbound (SNES)

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Sega Genesis)

Killer Instinct (SNES)

Knights Into Dreams (Sega Saturn)

Final Fantasy IX (Sony Playstation)

[paravet]

Had a first today. We had a client with his two dogs come in for a regular scheduled appointment, annual exams with boosters, specifically a rattlesnake vaccine. I've had plenty of people request the rattlesnake vaccine (I work in Southern Oregon basically in wine country) or the Lyme vaccine but it's very rarely used.

Me: It looks like they're due for all their core vaccines, would you like to booster those as well today?

Client: Oh, no thank you.

Me(thinking he misheard me): So both dogs are due for their RABIES VACCINE as well as DHLP, another core vaccine for dogs, would you like to have us give those today?

Client: No thanks. We don't really believe in that stuff. Just the rattlesnake vaccine for today.

Me(flabbergasted): So you're declining the rabies, distemper, hepatitis, and leptospirosis vaccines, but you want the rattlesnake vaccine?

Client: Yes, please thank you.

🤯

Make it make sense!!! What the hell!!! It's fucking Monday morning!!!!

Please fucking vaccinate your pets! The next county over to mine has CONFIRMED RABIES found in at least four foxes?!? Just looked it up, IT'S FIVE. FIVE TESTED POSITIVE.

[love-bnarvt]

I don't understand. That makes no god damn sense. The rattlesnake vaccine doesn't even work that way, it just buys you time to get to a vet, the pet still needs treatment after being bitten. What is this owner on?

[talesfromtreatment]

Today was potentially the stupidest day I've experienced in 25 years of working in vet med.

Reblogs with pet reptiles or fish would be greatly appreciated

[love-bnarvt]

So I have a bearded dragon named William. He's the third bearded dragon that I've owned. He was seven weeks old when I bought him from his breeder. He has never displayed any of the posturing or gestures that bearded dragons commonly do, or seen another reptile apart from my rosy boa, Lady, in his five years of life, let alone another bearded dragon, and is mostly indifferent to other animals. I recently moved from California where the only wildlife you see are deer, mangey squirrels, rats, pigeons, and house sparrows, to Mississippi where nature is in your goddamn face and house whether you like it or not pretty much no matter where you live. There are green anoles every-fucking-where (one of which is constantly trying to get in the house for some reason), and one day I was sitting on the porch with William on my lap, and one of the bigger ones that hangs around was sitting on the trellis. I could see them both watching each other, then the anole climbed down from the trellis, onto the porch right in front of us, and bobbed his head and extended his dewlap, at which William immediately flew the fuck off my lap and ran after him.

Here he is being adorable:

[talesfromtreatment]

We're having a dog drop off this morning because it got its cone off over the weekend and chewed the splint for its broken foot.

The owner, a human physician, decided that the best thing to do... was take the remains of the splint off and wrap the dog's foot and leg in bubble wrap.

5 vet techs and the vet: WHAT?!

I think i will avoid that doctor if I ever break something...

[love-bnarvt]

Reminds me of the time that we had a husband and wife, both human doctors, come in with a 9 week old kitten that they had been tube feeding with some IV line, as they insisted that it was sick and not eating despite being at a healthy weight and showing absolutely no outward signs of illness whatsoever. It had chewed through the IV line while they were tube feeding it and had swallowed it. We did RADs and sure enough, there was the IV line, along with a second length of IV line that it had also chewed through and swallowed. Well, yes, of course they made us euthanize it instead of spending the money that they needed to buy more designer bags and shoes and the insurance premium on their Mercedes SUV on anesthetizing it so we could go in with a camera and get the IV lines out.

[drferox]

Pets are very commonly overweight. And very commonly the reason given will be ‘because my parents feed them more than they’re supposed to, and they won’t listen when I tell them to stop’.

And I sympathise. I understand. Parents are hard, especially when they still think of you as ‘their kid’ and not ‘grown adult with autonomy’. Getting your parent to change their behavior is very difficult.

My two cats have a scoop in their bag of food, and they get one scoop each for dinner. It’s a very simple system: 1 scoop 1 cat. If I notice they’re getting a bit podgy then I make the scoop a bit concave. If they’re looking a bit light, I give them a little extra breakfast. But dinner is always the same, never more than one scoop.

But last night I watch my mother (the very same woman that scolded me for my weight since I was ten) decide to feed the cats for me while I finished washing the dishes.

The cats follow her, mewing pathetically, as she carries the food bag to their bowls. And I watch, as she’s talking to me and making eye contact, while she gives one cat a slightly heaped scoop of food, and then the other.

And then, dear reader, she replaces the scoop into the bag, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world, and proceeds to give each cat an additional handful of food.

I was astounded. I was politely mortified that you just increased the cats’ meals by at least 80%. No wonder they’ve been podgy!

We had a polite but firm discussion about how that is a measured scoop in the bag, and have-you-been-feeding-that-much-the-whole-time, but I do not think she has listened. I think I will need to gently ban her from feeding the cats.

[talesfromtreatment]

It does not help that, because so many pets are overweight, that many older people assume that's the shape they should be.

There is a little labrador that comes to my clinic. She weighs 120 pounds. Her back only reaches my *knee* and I'm average height. Her senior owner thinks she only needs to lose about 20 pounds. I looked at him and went "she's the same height my 55 pound lab mix was..."

His response? "Oh, there's no way she could be a 50 pound dog!"

Sir, your dog is at this point wider than she is tall. She is 2.5 dogs in one. She's almost large enough to begin affecting the tides.

There is no medical reason for this dog to be this obese. We've checked. Several times.

[love-bnarvt]

Oh if only if only people had the same immediate visceral and vitriolic reactions to seeing fat pets as they do ones that they deem "skinny". Pet obesity has gotten so common to the point where people see a pet that's actually at an appropriate weight and freak the fuck out and assume that it's being starved and abused.

[apolladay]

Are you scared of snakes?

Yes

Kinda

No

Nuance/bald

Voting ended onDec 15, 2024

[lemonsharks]

Nuance: Snakes are wonderful and some of them are not for petting. If someone needs to be afraid in order to not pet the snakes which are not for petting them that is ok. (I.e. I'm not afraid of snakes but I want the inland taipan safely away from me in central Australia.)

[love-bnarvt]

I had a dude ghost me after a date where he took me hiking and we ran into a harmless gopher snake. He freaked out and I calmly stood my ground, grabbed a stick, and picked it up and moved it off the path and kept walking.

[positivelyqueer]

it’s so important for your health to regularly interact with people at least a decade older than you who aren’t family, especially as a young person.

When my 45 year old teammate gives me advice on mental health and I know she understands because she’s had a tough adult life.

When my 32 year old friend tells me his life started improving for the first time the year she turned 30.

When the 60 year old man at the soup kitchen gives me permission to grieve by telling me I’m ‘just a baby’ with only gentleness in his voice.

It’s so much easier to abandon and break out from the cultural idealisation of youth when you surround yourself with wonderful people in all stages of their lives.

[love-bnarvt]

THIS, THIS, AND THIS!!!

[talesfromtreatment]

Have an owner who is starting testing before breeding her dog, which like yes, that's good, but it's a golden who is extremely shy, and has allergies. Sounds like a really good breeding prospect to me... an ethical breeder would immediately "retire" and alter a dog with allergies and temperament issues. We have such a breeder at my clinic and she produces the most wonderful great danes you'll ever meet and she's absolutely retired dogs even from just relatives of the dog having puppies with issues.

Worst one i ever dealt with was a lady who heard in one of her golden retriever groups that if you let a female dog have a litter of puppies it would cure their epilepsy... we told her that wasn't true. She still bred the dog. It didn't cure the epilepsy. She didn't tell the buyers when she sold the puppies that mom had epilepsy. And she was planning on seeing if a second litter would cure her when I left that clinic.

[love-bnarvt]

I know I've told this story before, but this again reminds me of the Bernese Mountain Dog breeder that brought her down dog to us demanding that we do an MRI, insisting that the dog had a spinal issue, when in reality the dog had a massively infected uterus and a high fever. She refused to hear that her dog had pyometra, we couldn't even fully get out the word "pyometra" before she'd loudly interrupt and change the subject, pretty much the adult version of putting your fingers in your ears and going "La, la, la, la, la..."

She left without service eventually, refusing to even take the antibiotics we tried to send home (which wouldn't really have helped, but we were desperate to try to do SOMETHING to help this poor fucking dog), saying, "Even if she does have pyometra, I'm not spaying her."

[ailelie]

I have a deep appreciation for every person who posts lists and articles with the theme "Why you shouldn't get X as a pet" where X is everything from exotics to cats and dogs.

Often these articles, especially the ones for cats and dogs, garner terrible comments from people defending their pets as if the article is an insult or threat. The articles aren't for them though.

They're for me. And people like me.

I would be a terrible pet owner. I dislike extra mess (e.g., food tossed about, shed hair, droppings), hassle (e.g., multiple hours required daily interaction, protecting cords and cables from chewing, daily walks) and additional chores (e.g., litter boxes, vomit clean up, aquarium cleaning).

Occasionally, though, I get this little urge saying Wouldn't it be nice to have something else sentient in your apartment....?

And I'll start browsing adoption websites or small breeder sites or upcoming conventions or shelters or however the pet in question is acquired. I'll read through care instructions, make a budget, and think I could do that...

But then, some tiny part of me, too quiet to be heard over the growing momentum of pet pet pet directs my fingers to hunt for the 'why you shouldn't' articles, because there will be one. There's always inevitably one published on a pet store website, hidden in a forum, shared on reddit, hosted by a veterinarian--someone has compiled all the reasons why the pet is a bad idea.

So I find it. And I read it. And then I toss my budget away. And I close all my related tabs. And I let go of the thought entirely. Crisis averted.

Because, occasional impulse aside, I don't want a pet. I just need a reality check from time to time.

[todaysbird]

it’s important to remember that love doesn’t equal energy. loving your pet doesn’t mean you will have the energy to do what it requires, the mental stamina, or that it’s a good fit for your lifestyle. i don’t have a bird right now despite loving them for these reasons

[talesfromtreatment]

Unpopular opinion time, but if your outdoor-only cat is FIV + and constantly gets into fights then he either a- needs to be an indoor-only, and only, kitty with *someone* or b- he needs to be euthanized so he stops spreading disease and coming in every few months with cat bite abscesses.

[love-bnarvt]

Yeah we had multiple clients that had FIV+ cats that they let outside (which is how the cats got it in the first place). We also had a client who's outdoor cat got hit by a car and was lucky enough to only need it's back leg amputated. Then the very instant that the incision had healed they let it back outside, where months later it was hit again and killed. The cat wasn't even five years old yet.