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

Morning writing time with Birdie The sunshine beaming in my windows delivers just enough warmth to remind me that Spring is right around the corner. I am at home in Southern Pa., close to the Maryland border. It is the last week of February. The tail end of Winter's quiet. The peaceful transition from snowy sleepy slumber to the bright burgeoning of the explosive Spring colorful life. There are few birds congregating outside my window at the feeder I fill daily. They sing the songs of cheerful excitement, catching up on free pickings as if prepping the internal organs for the demand a ..read more

It has been a week since I last flossed. It seems like a confessional to the internal self to seek a pardon, and once again, promise to do better. It seems I seek a peaceful acceptance of all of my inadequacies within my inabilities too often. This week was exactly like this… a series of internal confessions with a humble begging for forgiveness to a self that doesn’t take disappointment, or failure, easily. This day, this Wednesday evening, within this moment, was about Mollie, Genie, Maxi, Taylor, and Sophie. They were all in some degree of desperate dying. Each patient was supported by at l ..read more

  There was still a tag attached. That’s what I remember most vividly. There was still a big cardboard tag, the kind that keeps you from being able to fit the merchandise in your pocket as a theft deterrent device, still attached to the obviously brand new toy she held so proudly in her mouth. It was the kind of tag that allows it to be hung on a rack for easy display whilst also providing the descriptor that announces the features of the toy that your pup might find most exciting and enjoyable. The colorful cardboard backing to allow plastic ties to prop up mouthpiece rope from the stu ..read more