Tails from the Trenches: Working as a D.V.M.

TL;DR: veterinarian, rabbit mom, exotics enthusiast. Follow me through me being a fresh doctor. I work in a cat-friendly and fear free certified clinic. **I will not give veterinary advice online. It's illegal and unethical. THINK before you ask**

[missnoodliness]

He stole my heart from day one and 5 years later, I still melt. It took so much time and trust to get here. I can do almost anything with Coriander (except he sticks his tongue in the otoscope cones for his oral exams...) and his dad of 2.5 years has won him over. I truly never expected him to love someone other than me but his dad put in the time/patience with this little floof.

As you can see, my room will always be messy so some things never change

[missnoodliness]

Coriander has been getting used to his new hutch. By comparison, this one has much more of a horizontal footprint. It doesn't have the built in storage drawer or the flat top, but it's much easier for him to maneuver. He's been getting brave and loves the snacks he finds in the new. Now he needs to take his happy butt up the ramp and we can phase out the vertical hutch.

[ask-a-vetblr]

Are lionhead rabbits really brachycephalic? Do they have similarly severe issues as those in brachycephalic dogs and cats? Maybe it's just that I'm not as familiar with rabbits as dogs and cats, or that their faces aren't visibly scrunched, but when I heard they're brachycephalic I was kind of confused!

vet-and-wild here.

The biggest issue with brachycephalic rabbits is dental issues, but there can be some level of noisy breathing. I’m not aware of the same elongated soft palate issues or similar problems we see in dogs, but they certainly aren’t the healthiest. I’d consider lionheads at least somewhat brachy, but tbh it’s usually their coats that have trouble. People do not care for them and they just become a matted mess that gets irritated and infected. Their eyes are also frequently really irritated from secretions building up on the hair and basically turning into cement. They are very cute but I find that owners are rarely prepared for the maintenance they need.

[missnoodliness]

Please ignore that I can't take a straight photo to save my life.

Supposedly this 14 month doggo hit his rear paw on the sliding glass door. They thought he had ripped his nail off.

Actually he fractured the 4th digit of his left hand paw and the toe nail was embedded into the soft tissue of the 3rd digit next to it. This is the first toe I have set and sor far he's doing great

[missnoodliness]

Happy 5th to my littlest marshmallow ❤️

[kaijutegu]

I got done reading another one of those articles about pet parenting and a bit in it made me think. Specifically, this bit:

Nonparents were also more likely to use family terms such as “parent,” “child,” “kids” and “guardians” when referring to their relationships with their pet.    

So, what I wanna know (from you) (in the tags/replies) is:

1. what terms do you use when referring to your relationship with your pet 2. what kind of pet are we talking about here 3. how do you refer to your pets’ relationships with your family (or do you even do that)

As for me, when I talk about my pet lizard I refer to myself as her parole officer or (less frequently) her mother. (Given her history and arrest record in the state of Florida, I really am her parole officer.) I usually refer to her as my daughter, my roommate, or my bestie. When I’m talking about her to my siblings, she is ALWAYS “your niece” as in “give your niece kisses you coward” or “don’t you dare call your niece slimy.” I think if she was a dog I wouldn’t do that but there’s something hilarious about holding up a ten pound lizard and telling my sister to say hello to her niece and to stop being rude.

[missnoodliness]

I refer to my rabbit Coriander as my son. Which can be very confusing to clients and former classmates who assumed I have a human child about to celebrate his 5th birthday. I think driving a minivan for years probably didn't help the image either.

He is also the grandbun to my mother. Coriander is the nephew to my siblings, as in Don't you dare make fun of your nephews hair, he just woke up

[missnoodliness]

Oh my god your precious Coriander looks just like my little Marylu! ❤❤ so cute and wonderful!! And your a vet?? Is it ok if I ask you some bunny questions? Like, her fur gets so long and drops over her eyes, should I cut it? but I'm worried about accidently snipping some whiskers?

Coriander also suffers some long hair around the eyes but gets around just fine. Cutting their hair isn't necessary and I avoid scissors around bunnies if at all possible. As long as it doesn't get matted you shouldn't need to trim around her face. Angoras get around just fine with all their big floof!

[missnoodliness]

I had to make a change for Coriander's housing for his physical health. Coriander's hutch was designed when he was 2 months old and while he's been able to do the steep ramps for years, he's starting to struggle. I saw he didn't make it one time and just sat on his second story, defeated.

So with the cost of lumber, I chose to get a pre fab bunny hutch which is more horizontal than vertical, has a gradual ramp to it. I was very surprised he came out while we were assembling with power tools.

It's also sort of an early birthday gift to the boy. We'll post more soon

As always, excuse his slew of toys and poops. My home is never clean

[gothambunny]

having a "dont touch me" type rabbit can be hard because it can feel like youre being neglectful when you're just being respectful of their individual needs.

and since i have one who's very clingy and one who needs space i often feel bad because i don't want it to seem like im picking favorites because harley wants to be snuggled and fussed over 90% of the time and ivy absolutely does not 90% of the time.

she still gets lots of toys and treats and i make sure to just sit and chill out near her or play with her with her toys (we play reverse fetch. i hand it to her and she throws it) and she knows im there on the rare occasion that she does want attention but u know?

anyone else with a no-touchy bun feel the same? what do you do when you want to make sure they feel loved without overwhelming them?

[missnoodliness]

Coriander varies between these two settings. At times, he wants pets forever and other times he just wants to do his own thing (his no touch mood).

Sometimes physical interaction isn't what they want, but you can still spend quality time with them! When Coriander is in the no touch mood, I usually spend my time with puzzle toys for him, or just reading/journaling on the floor in the same room. For some bunnies it's about proximity and not physical touch.

Does your bunny sploot around you? Brux? Just hang out? Loaf with you in the room? They all show their happiness a little differently, but they only relax around the ones that trust/love.

[theexoticvet-deactivated2022070]

Suturing Kit Giveaway!

This is a very nice, unused, suture practice kit and it could be yours!

Keep reading

[theexoticvet-deactivated2022070]

Spread the word! I’ve only gotten 1 submission so far. Which makes picking a winner easy for me but I’d like others to participate as all.

[missnoodliness]

There's a lot of nights I don't sleep, but I'm always up with Coriander for breakfast. I realized he hasn't had a vet visit in almost 2 years now, but as his doctor I'm letting it slide.

[missnoodliness]

It’s National Love your Pet Day. Here’s to the #1 bun son

[missnoodliness]

A Case of the Very Unthrifty Puppy

I have been thinking about this case, despite it having ended several months ago. It still eats at me, so I considered not posting about it at all. Puppies and kittens are not all smiles and joy in a veterinary office, much to the surprise of the general public.

Lucy came to us as a puppy for her initial set of vaccinations and the owners noted that she had soft stool. She was routinely dewormed and vaccinated.

Throughout her puppy series of vaccines, the consistency of her stool never improved. Her littermates of her sex were close to 40 lbs. while Lucy weighed in at under 8 lbs. She was skeletally thin, her limbs proportionate, her hair coat rough. Out of context, you would have thought she was an abuse/neglect case. Her fecal consistency ranged from watery to pudding consistency daily. Her appetite was poor, though her owners reported that she played at home.

She was tested for Giardia, intestinal parasites both in-house and sent to reference laboratories. We tested her for pancreatitis, B-12 deficiencies, folate abnormalities, pancreatic enzyme deficiencies. We dewormed this puppy multiple times with broad-spectrum dewormers. Pre and probiotics made no difference, antibiotics made no difference. We supplemented her with parenteral B-12, anti-diarrheal medications.

Eventually when I had run the gambit on bloodwork, x-rays that I was able to do in-house for this sad puppy, we referred her to an internal medicine specialist. With an abdominal ultrasound and intestinal biopsies, all that was found was eosinophilic inflammation throughout her small intestine and stomach which was interpreted as inflammatory bowel disease. The internist began Lucy on a dose of prednisone that was immunosuppressive. The steroid helped her stool a little, but it never became formed, but was not watery. It also helped her appetite some.

So, I set out to a forum of veterinarians and specialists online to try and help this poor puppy because I felt that I had run out of ideas, run out of plans for her. We were making no headway, no weight gain for her. We switched her to a hydrolyzed diet, but she had no interest in it and had to be put on appetite stimulants. I wanted to test her for congenital Addison’s disease (a lack of steroid production within the body), but the owners could never wean her off the prednisone for me to test her.

Lucy continued to struggle and consulting with specialists had given me more ideas, but I could not make the puppy eat the food they recommended, nor could I make the owners compliant with staying off of steroids in order to do additional diagnostics. When Lucy was 11 months old, her littermates were weighing close to 50 lbs and she never managed to beak 8 lbs. She stopped feeling playful at home, she had no appetite even with medication to help, her stools were never normal and never had form to them. Her owners had become financially restricted and could not pursue a second opinion referral after their first one.

They asked me to evaluate Lucy and asked me what I would do if Lucy were mine. I hate that question most of the time because while I have usually seen similar cases, I am never in my client’s shoes. I do not have their house payments, their debt, their children, their own health issues, their employment status, or their life experiences. I told them what that what they needed to keep in mind was her quality of life, not her quantity of life. I asked them to consider what her favorite things to do were, did they see signs of pain at home, to think about what her future may look like because with the diagnostics so far, the tentative diagnosis and treatment were not improving her physical condition.

Perhaps a week later, about 2 weeks before Lucy would have been 1 year old, her owners elected humane euthanasia. I have never faulted them for this decision. Their puppy was suffering and they were suffering just trying to keep her going. They asked me if they should do a necropsy, what was involved in it, if they should spend the money to try and get an answer. I told them it may not give them an answer, that necropsy does not always reveal the underlying pathology. Ultimately, they elected not to pursue necropsy and had her privately cremated.

This case was one where I felt like I pulled out all the stops, did everything I could think of, referred as soon as the owners were on board with it, and when that got us nowhere, I turned to a forum of experts. Even then, it felt like I failed this puppy, like I failed their family. I will never know what the true underlying disease was or if I could have even fixed it. My boss still tells me that we did everything we could within our means and the clients’ limitations, but I can tell you that it still eats at me. I do not know that it will ever go away.

[missnoodliness]

Coriander is a happy boy of late and often flops up against me.

I very nearly brought home a dog with lymphoma to live out his days recently, but his owner did eventually show up to get him. Long story. 2021 is off to a weird start.

[missnoodliness]

Seeing a 6 month old bulldog with such severe brachycephalic syndrome that he can't play like a normal puppy is heartbreaking. The poor dog gets winded after running across my 12 ft exam room, begins coughing due to his upper airway obstruction. Not to mention he has congenital vertebral abnormalities that many bulldogs have.

Please do your research before obtaining any breed of dog.

[missnoodliness]

Do any shelters take snakes? I have this lovely ratsnake i have had since October 2020 and my mental state has never been the most stable, and I'm so worried what would happen to my angry baby nope rope if something were to happen to me, and i have never heard about shelters taking snakes.

There are some that will take reptiles, but it's gonna depend on their funding, their staff's expertise. Depending on the area, you may have to look for a reptile rescue. The best thing you can do is call and ask so you have a backup plan in place.

Wishing you and your danger noodle luck!

[missnoodliness]

🐱 🐯 🐤 for the emoji ask!!???

🐱 - do you have any pets?

Yes! I currently own a rabbit named Coriander, a golden retriever named Cooper.

Cooper just had his second TPLO to repair his torn cruciate ligament and is not excited about his restricted activity. I'm excited we're out of cruciate ligaments to tear and that he currently doesn't have arthritis.

🐯 - what’s your favorite animal?

Rabbits are my favorite animal!

🐤 - which animal do you identify most with and why?

I think rabbits are my favorite because I identify with loving fresh veggies/greens/herbs as well as it taking a lot for me to trust people. I have a hard time with new people and I'm particular about those I keep around. If you're one of those people, I'm very warm and cuddly.