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Grape Expectations

It may seem like a long time ago for some of us, but to my generation it’s a relatively recent discovery that grapes are poisonous to dogs. It was somewhat of a shock when this first came to light, but the intervening decades have yielded enough data to help you...

To the Clinic, Jeeves

You might be surprised at how many animals use the services of a chauffeur. They arrive at the clinic with a human chaperone who is not their full-time companion. That person waits with them until their name is called, guides them into an exam room, and proffers a...

Spectrum of Care

Our last piece made reference to the costs inherent in veterinary care, which play an especially powerful role when there is no insurance coverage (as is the case for a large majority of U.S. pets). The burden of these fees, borne solely by the pet owner, is the...

The Case For Pet Health Insurance

Health care is expensive! When engaging with the human medical system, the real costs of your care are often completely obscured by a complex web of interactions between insurance companies and the “provider” of the care (which is never your actual doctor, but a...

Goodbye, Needles

In our last piece, you learned how elevated blood sugar is somewhat like a mob of workers milling around in the street, locked out of their jobs and making trouble while they are not gainfully employed. That’s really damaging to the body of a diabetic patient. Humans...

Can’t Get Into the Building, Boss

Folks, there has been a really cool new development in the treatment of diabetes in pets. I’d love to share it with you, but I do feel like we need a little backgrounder on the disease itself. If you have a diabetic pet (it is a very common illness in cats and dogs),...

Exception: The Mutants

Now that I am fresh off a pedantic lecture on using medicines in the appropriate quantities instead of cutting back based on your “gut instinct”, I must confess that there is a small, very specific population of pets that may need to be ...under-medicated. Please read...

Let the Label Be Your Guide

I must admit that I am often in despair over how reluctant pet owners can be about utilizing pharmaceuticals. Sometimes, it’s for a legitimate reason: there’s a bout of hand-to-hand combat with each dose or a daily manhunt to locate that wily pet buried deep in his...

Oncologists Are Brilliant People

The biggest obstacle to treating cancer is the fact that it’s made of the patient’s own cells. Medicines are generally geared toward killing foreign things, but a tumor is not a foreign thing. It’s a badly behaved part of the patient’s own body that has somehow...

All The Right Questions

Folks, we are in some uncertain times right now. We’re all a little frustrated about the amount of information available on this Mystery Canine Respiratory Disease. Here are a few tips on how to make the most of the facts we do have. The news media isn’t a great...