#vebtlr

[drferox]

Are there a lot of negative feelings against pediatric spaying/neutering? I know there are risks to it, but once I found a vet that offered it I've brought at least 15 stray kittens in for the procedure. I couldn't house and care for these animals until they reached six months so I am grateful for the procedure and the vets that will do it, but is there a general dislike of clients who ask for this, and vets that perform it? I've been reading some pet blogs and there's some discourse about it.

No, I wouldn’t say there’s a lot of negative feelings against pediatric desexing, especially when it comes to cats. A major factor is what you’ve described, the sooner a rescue animal can be desexed, the sooner it can be reliably sent to a new home without further breeding, which is what a rescue is trying to achieve. If you’re obliged to wait until the animal is an adult, you are stuck with them through all their ‘cutest’ stages and have to rehome an adult, or you risk the new owner breeding that animal anyway. I know some breeders seem tube tying for their puppies, but this just subjects the animal to a second surgery.

Most of the voices against pediatric desexing are from pet bloggers who are not working with rescues or shelters, who are considering a single dog or cat in an ideal scenario with ideal owners, not a bunch of 15 kittens that need rehoming to goodness knows where.

It’s usually more a technical concern at the vet end. Do we physically have tubes and kits small enough? What’s our weight cut off? For me it’s 1.5kg for a spay, so long as they’re at least 8 weeks. (All the pain relief meds registered for use to take home aren’t registered under 8 weeks), but while it’s something I can offer it’s not something I routinely push.

And anyway, what’s the alternative for a rescue situation? Rehome entire animals and hope for the best? Accidents happen and contracts about desexing aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. Keep them until adulthood when they’re harder to rehome? Or desex them as soon as you can and give them the best, soonest shot at a happy life.

[drferox]

Hey, I asked this question earlier but I don't think it got answered. Sorry, I don't mean o bother you. Why are pets often diagnosed with disorders like anxiety and OCD when developmental disorders and other mental illnesses aren't possible to diagnose in non-human animals? Question Tax: If you could re-introduce a recently extinct/near extinct species to it's native ecosystem again, which would you choose and why?

We tend not to talk about ‘mental illnesses’ in animals but more ‘behavior problems/disorders’. This is partly because of a historical perspective (where one only cares about behavior if it’s a problem) and partly because we can’t really know what an animal is thinking, we can only observe behavior from the outside.

I might diagnose a dog with anxiety. But in the human field that wouldn’t necessarily be the end of it.

I see a dog that is displaying fear in certain situations. Maybe they have an obvious trigger, like storms/fireworks and I call it a noise phobia. Maybe it’s only when they are left alone and I call it separation anxiety. Maybe it only occurs when they are left alone and as a result they lick their legs down to the bone, and I end up calling this separation anxiety, with an obsessive compulsive behavior. (Probably shouldn’t be calling it Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, honestly, because I don’t know what the dog is thinking, only what it’s doing, but people are often lazy with their wording and it’s often convenient to explain things that way to the animal’s owner).

In the human field the patient would be asked what their thought patterns are, and they can then be classified to a much higher detail rather than just describing inputs and outputs.

It might be easiest to think of behavior in terms of a black box model, where the black box is everything happening inside the animal’s mind.

In vet medicine we can control and observe inputs, and observe outputs. You can do the same for humans, but you can also ask them about their black box, even if the information you gain about it isn’t 100% accurate, it’s still something more to work with than vet medicine gets.

So we end up talking about things that have features in common, and might even be equivalent, but can’t actually prove that they are. For example,

Cognitive dysfuction instead of dementia, because we see the dysfunction in cognition

Learned helplessness instead of depression

‘Anxiety’ often gets left as an umbrella term rather than defining it further

If we can’t gain an insight as to what’s happening in that ‘black box’ of the mind, then we can’t reliably use those terms in vet medicine.

Things like personality disorders, learning disabilities, developmental neurodivergence, etc are indistinguishable from just personality when all you have are just inputs and outputs.

I just don’t have the ability to look into that black box.

(As a side note about language being confusing, OCD may also refer to osteochondritis dissecans, or osteochondrosis, which are orthopedic disorders, and ‘Depressed’ is often used to describe a suppressed level of consciousnessrather than depression as we talk about it in humans)

As for the question tax, I often think about what it would be like to have Thylacines in Tasmania again, or what would happen if we could reintroduce Thylacines and Tasmanian Devils back to Mainland Australia.

[drferox]

How common are hermaphrodites in animals you've treated? Up until recently I had never thought about it but my friend's neutered male recently had a litter of kittens. It turned out that Pax has one functioning ovary and a uterus (and had testes of indeterminate functionality last year)

So we generally don’t use the term ‘hermaphrodite’ any more, unless we’re talking about species which have full sets of both male and female reproductive tracts, like snails and earthworms, for example.

We were traditionally taught about pseudohermaphrodites and hermaphrodites some ten years ago when I was still at uni, but these days we generally just use the term ‘intersex’. Partly this is because pseudohermaphrodite is an awkward term to use, it’s confusing to get ‘right’ sometimes without an internal and histological exam (getting tissue under the microscope). Partly because the term has connotations which can cause offense when applied to a human, and pets are increasingly little furry members of our family. Intersex is actually much easier and simpler to use for our purposes in general practice.

I’d written about intersex animals I’ve seen before here.

Most intersex animals are discovered at the time of desexing, in which case after a couple of minutes of “Oh! That’s neat and/or interesting!” the procedure continues and they go on with their life like any other neutered animal.

Some are discovered as part of an infertility investigation, and freemartin cattle are a very well known syndrome.

Given that most of our domestic pets are desexed, it’s very rare to have the situation you’d described. For most it is an incidental finding, then everyone gets on with their lives.

[drferox]

Comparing ‘normal’ heads to brachycephalic heads within a species.

There is increasing pressure to breed for longer noses, or in some cases any nose at all, in purebred animals because of its negative effects on welfare. These images help show the difference in morphology very well. It is the extremeness of these features that correlate with health problems.

(Images source)

[drferox]

Here’s a new one on Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation, aka Death Is Coming.

I think I’ve got the sound better this time. I’ll definitely get there with practice.

[drferox]

What are some non-cat and dog mammals that can be kept as pets (apart from the usual hamster, guinea pig, fancy rat, fancy mice, chinchilla, rabbit, ferret, and hedgehog group)?? ;;

See, when you’re asking me this question, as a Vet in Australia, we can’t keep hamsters, gerbils, chinchillas, hedgehogs, or degu. Ferrets and rabbits are illegal in some states. You can’t even keep our native sugar gliders as pets, except in three states, without a zoo or wildlife license.

So I can’t give you the answer that you want, mate. There’s not any extra-special-exotic-unique species I can think of that you can add to your list, and a bunch on the more exotic species I wouldn’t recommend as pets anyway, either because they’re not truly domesticated or have welfare concerns.

And before the comments flow in about Australia’s pet and biosecurity laws being too strict, they exist for a reason and one of the reasons we have these restrictions is that people are really bad at not releasing exotic animals into the wild from their collections.

This isn’t just for mammals, exotic reptiles are considered a serious threat to Australia because they keep getting out. There have been 3 boa constrictors caught in the wild in Australia, as well as 14 corn snakes, and significant efforts are made to stop this island of ours having yet another invasive species.

One of my pet peeves is people thinking they should have the ‘right’ to own any animal they want, when they simply do not.

[drferox]

What do you recommend someone does if their pet passes away at home? I've been getting nightmares a lot about my dog dying at home at night when only him and I are home now that he's turned 13 and has been diagnosed with cancer. (Sorry if youve answered a similar question before)

This will be a little bit morbid.

Wrap them up in a towel or blanket and either place them in a fridge, or in a cool place in the house on an easily washable surface (eg bathtub, or on tiles) in case of leakages. If you are up to it, try to curl them up nicely because they will be stuck in that position when rigor mortis kicks in.

If you intended to bury them at home, you can do so. If you wanted the local vet clinic to arrange a burial or cremation, call them and arrange a time to deliver your pet. If you want an arrangement with another aftercare company, call them and ask about their pickup/delivery options. Many 24 hour vets will accept deceased pets for cold storage pending aftercare arrangements too.

If a dog is too big for you to lift, at the very least try to put a plastic bag under their bottom to catch any leaks, and cover them with something.

And it’s fine to call someone for support if that’s what you need.

[drferox]

I love cats and I'd like to get involved with them, but I can't adopt one of my own due to having an aggressive dog. There's only one pet shelter near me that allows minors to volunteer (I'm 15) and they make you take a $300 "training class" first—I can't afford that. I've never heard of any cat fancy shows happening near me, much less if they'd allow spectators. Are there any other ways I could get involved with kitties, or do I just need to wait till I turn 18/move out? Thank you.

So, the shelter charges a $300 fee for volunteers?

That’s, uh, not how it usually works. Usually volunteers donate their time to work around the shelter, for free. They work for free. They shouldn’t have to pay to work for free, that sounds an awful lot like somebody is taking advantage and I have to wonder what sort of shelter that is.

Agricultural shows may have a cat day/section, or neighbors with cats might be interested in a catsitter on occasion. But you may be better off waiting, I have some questions about that shelter.