George is a 9 year old indoor domestic short haired cat who visited us about a month ago for straining to urinate in the litter box, and producing only small amounts of urine.  He presented again to us yesterday; unable to urinate. George is now a "blocked cat" or, UO cat (for urinary obstructed) cat.  He found us, like they all do, with a little bit of luck, and a parent with limited resources.  When he arrived on Saturday morning at the vet clinic we suspected that he was blocked. We also hoped that his parents had a rainy day account of immediately accessible funds so we coul ..read more

The question I often ask is; How rich is too rich? There isn't is there? Isn't that what we are all expected to say? "You go get whatever you can. Build your empire. Have it all." It is the country's theme song. ..until you see what this breeds. In vetmed, one of the newest frontiers to wealth, (who saw that coming?), there is no limit. The price point to everything is escalating. It seems to have no boundaries, just an endless horizon. Dixie. 141 pound St Bernard with a 5 pound pyometra emergency that was $6,000 at the ER. Our community posted her story and raised all of the funds to pa ..read more

 Seems I teeter on the edge of more cliffs than I want to claim ownership of. The brink of exhaustion. The edge of burn-out. The constant realization that I am not enough in any of the capacities I expect myself to be. I accept that the dams break under my toes. I know that it will happen. I expect and brace for it. It has happened so many times that I am at a loss to find annoyance or dismay upon it. "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished." I am fairly certain that I have titled this for more of my blogs than any other sentiments combined. My Seraphina. She is my daily reminder, my touchsto ..read more

There is something universally consoling about the kind of rainy day that makes all the decisions for you. The kind of rain that does not permit safe passage. Does not allow the outdoors to be anything more than a backdrop. The kind that measures the dogs bathroom needs by a stopwatch. Today, god-granted, is one of these days. Raffles It is screaming rain in torrents. The house is my refuge and even unto this, my old stone manor, I am forced to check the corners, crevices, and crawl spaces for ingress. Nature, that Queen who fates us all, takes her time but always finds her way in. T ..read more

Blocked cats are my professional obsessive jam. The urinary blocked cats, this one disease which is almost always curable, (and, lets be real honest, how often can we say that in vetmed?), affects primarily young otherwise perfectly healthy cats. It is also the most egregious example of how far vetmed has distanced itself from helping the patients who need us most. In the olden days, (i.e. the days of my formative veterinary exposure, when the music was 80's pop and the hair was big), the vets that I worked for would have never-ever, ever, even contemplated turning a blocked cat away. It would ..read more

 Access to Care There are those of us who live our lives with the hope that our pets will find us worthy. We spend the majority of our time giving gestures of thanks for all that they give us, without asking or expecting anything in return. We feel humbled by how little their loyalty costs, and yet we still want to offer more knowing it can't repay all that they give us. The relationship between ourselves and our pets, the ones who share the most painful, joyous and raucous moments of our lives with, is unsurpassed. Our pets are our truest, most trusted, most faithful companions. Most of ..read more

  Alvin. A true example of how much we adore our pets. His story here The most obvious place to start when you are lost is back at the beginning. Therefore, I go here.. Back.. Back to the place I last remembered knowing my way. Having a direction. A footprinted fossil. That old place to call "start here." It is all I know to do when the map has been lost, the sherpa abandons, and the world reminds you that you are merely a speck. A tidbit of dust. A fleeting, insignificant blip on a timeline too immense to even contemplate comprehension. Me, the bag of aging flesh with so much d ..read more

The essence of meaningful change is best sought in the gentlest of approaches. Everyone of the littles is adorable. Thank you to Grace and Britt for helping I have found this to be true with every patient that I encounter and every endeavor in medicine I stumble upon. There is very little too gain with brute force. Nature punishes unwilling interventions. She is the only one of us that is permitted disastrous force with unmerciful annihilation and no apologies for her unexpected wrath. I am currently bottle feeding three 3 week old kittens that my sister rescued.  They are tiny ..read more

I am just a few months away from having twenty years as a veterinarian are under my belt. It is a benchmark I was sure I would attain, and yet, I really never thought about my life, or this journey, past it. You get caught up in the pace. The one foot after the other. Keep moving. Don't top to look back, or, forward. Trek away, day after day. Never looking back to ask yourself; what's next? What does the journey on the other side of this mountain look like? You get so consumed with the cases. The lives. The challenges both internal and around you that you are tormented by expectations to cure ..read more

  We are at an unprecedented time in veterinary medicine. Never before has the demand for veterinary care been so great, and never before has the availability of veterinarians to take care of animals been so thin. It is very important for new grads to understand this. We are also at a place where the ethics and intentions behind every decision being made within vetmed has serious long-term consequences. Never before have you had to start making life changing, and life influencing decisions so soon out of the gate. No one from the other side is going to tell you this. They won’t tell you ..read more