[Author's note: this is a story about something that happened a few years ago - as you will no doubt surmise from the May Day reference - but I thought it was too good not to re-tell.]
So, I don't know what it is lately with me on call, but the last 3 times I've had the pager I've had to go in at 3 A.M. every time. This time it was for a very sweet hit-by-4-wheeler pit bull mix (whose owners probably won't have the funds for repair of her two fractured femurs, unfortunately). The owners were out camping on Jim Creek when she was injured - running loose, naturally - and the poor thing dragged herself and her two broken back legs back to the camp site. The man (an extremely handsome Native guy) seems to be the thinker of the pair; his girlfriend was not only reeking of alcohol but was sloppily tearful and faintly belligerent by turns, not to mention that she also appeared to have spent HER camping trip rubbing dirt on her face and clothing. (Okay, in fairness, due to genetics, the guy's skin color - a gorgeous smooth coppery brown - might've disguised some dirt, if he'd had any, while the girl was almost white-blond and pale, a perfect canvas for besmirchment - but he sort of looked like he'd just stepped out of his apartment, neatly dressed, pressed and clean. Maybe it helped that HE wasn't the one who was three sheets to the wind.)
At any rate, I did my best for them, but the upshot was that I was pretty tired come Saturday morning (between that and other emergencies I got maybe two hours of sleep that night - second time this week, so it had unexpected impact). I went in early to take thorns out of the eye of a darling little King Charles mix, which turned quickly into not just doing that, but also taking porcupine quills out of a large and gentle-tempered Akita mix, euthanizing a 19-year old cat and doing a vaccine appointment all before 9 a.m. (when I officially begin work on a Saturday). It sort of took off from there - an exceptionally busy day, with no time to regroup and several dicey medicine cases to frazzle my badly-frayed reasoning skills. By the time 1:00 rolled around I was in a weird sort of daze - slightly removed from my body, nauseated from fatigue and hunger (no time for breakfast OR lunch), and inclined to slow, rolling dizzy spells. It was a little like being tipsy; but that afternoon I kept sort of coming back to myself to find that I was talking to clients with no awareness of what I had said for the last 10 minutes. I could remember doing my physical exam and I'd "come to" hearing myself give correct advice on home care, but I could not remember anything in between. Very disconcerting; makes you hope sincerely that you've confined your comments strictly to the medical.
At any rate, all this combined to make me VERY glad that the owners of the 93# American bulldog didn't have the money for the C-section she so clearly needed. I felt bad for the dog, of course, especially as she had waited over an hour for me to see her (as did every other walk-in we had that day); but I would have been deeply questionable as a surgeon by that time. In addition I had an obstructed tomcat to catheterise, and 3 clients to call back about blood work. So, when we finally closed the doors I was relieved (for her sake and mine) that the beluga-esque form of the bulldog bitch had evidently travelled on to another vet, perhaps the one the owner's mother patronised, who might cut them some slack on billing or holding checks for the sake of the mother's patronage. We had never seen any of them before that very day, and the clinic's policy forbids expensive procedures for non-clients without a deposit of some kind.
I no sooner finished my call-backs when the answering service called to chirpily inform me that the bulldog's owners had borrowed the money for the C-section. Fortunately Dr. J had the pager for the rest of the weekend, so I suggested they call him. I called him a few minutes later to round him about my in-hospitals, and (to my mute astonishment) I hear my voice going: "Would you like me to stay to help you with that C-section?" Dr. J hesitates, but says, "Well, it would be nice if you could, but you don't have to." Well, I'm hardly going to turn down THAT invitation. Not only is he my boss (which means this is a chance to please the guy who signs my paychecks) but that's his way of telling me he'd prefer my skills to those of the on-call tech (flattery will get you everywhere).
Which is how I found myself prepping the bulging dome of this bulldog's abdomen 20 minutes later. The owners were banished to the front but told to stick around in case we needed hands. I prepared baskets with heating pads in the bottoms and a pile of towels, as well as syringes of dopram (to stimulate breathing) and dextrose (since the two commonest causes of neonatal death are hypoglycemia ans hypothermia), while Dr. J made a long incision in the abdomen and exteriorised the biggest uterus either of us has ever seen (well, on a dog, that is.) I am standing by with my towel-draped hands held out like an acolyte about the receive manna from the high priest, while Dr. J opens the uterus.
"Here's two," he says. "No, three." He deposits three slippery bloody water balloons into my outstretched towel, each containing a very large puppy - all of which are moving, I see, as I rush them to the heating pads and start tearing the tough slippery double membranes off them. Amniotic fluid is gushing everywhere, and Dr. J keeps coming in with another pup, and another, piling them into the overflowing baskets and onto the towels. I'm thinking I should have gotten out more towels. I'm ripping gestational sacs as fast as I can (not as easy as it sounds), and trying to keep everyone's mouth above the placentas and the rising tide of fluids. Only when he pauses to exteriorise the other limb of the uterus do I have time to go up front to tell the owners we need hands. They traipse back uncertainly and hesitantly begin to mimic my frantic resuscitory activities (which, due to the mounting puppy count, are sort of like that guy in the circus who keeps all the plates spinning at the same time - except that in my case there's considerably more blood and other assorted body fluids). It is the husband I have to tell three times that he is being too gentle and he needs to STIMULATE these pups; they haven't had the arduous passage through the birth canal to wake them up, and in addition they have had some of their mother's anesthetic across their placentas. His wife and mother-in-law (both of whom have had children) seem to pick up more quickly how much force to use. I thought it was rather dear that he was afraid he would hurt them, and how ginger his handling of them was; but at the same time I was afraid his resuscitatees would die if he wasn't a little firmer with them. But he gradually got the hang.
We are now up to 14 puppies - all alive, and thank God that's the last of them. Dr. J is closing, which means I have to trot back and forth bringing him suture and managing anesthesia, as well as keeping my 4 puppies going. Fortunately the owner didn't wait too long before getting the dog sectioned, so the pups are not severely distressed, and by the time the last one is out, the first one has essayed her first tentative warbling cries. Pretty soon most of them are in good voice, and it sounds like we have Alvin the Chipmunk and 13 of his closest friends all drunk and singing away. The bitch (now about 20# lighter) is covered in blood, and it looks like we slaughtered several chickens in the O.R., but everyone is alive, even the very last pup, who is having a slow start and requires extra help from me.
Dr. J and I carry the somnolent mother out into the treatment area and lay her on a prep table where we can wash the assorted blood and fluids off her. I trade off with Dr. J, who has the instruments and is severing umbilical cords. I wash the blood out of the bitch's white coat. For some reason I have trouble rolling her over. The surge of alertness I had borrowed from my adrenal glands is fading and I am puzzled. After two or three attempts I realize one of her nipples is caught between the bars of the treatment table rack. (Yikes!) Fortunately she is still asleep for the most part. I free her (noting that now there is milk mixed with the blood and fluid in the sink under the rack.) Well, hey, at least she's got good milk production. I proved it. But I am a bit glad no one saw me do it.
Several of the pups are making lusty attempts to crawl over the edge of their baskets and plummet to their deaths (or at least a good splat on the floor), so I rummage around in the back and find a Rubbermaid bucket that a client left us, which might fit all 14 pups and two hot water bottles. After I set it up I have one of those moments of dawning consciousness that have dappled my afternoon and I see just how big a mess we have made. Not only is the O.R. streaked and spattered with blood and smears of green and black from the placentas, but there are trails of gore traipsing back and forth from the O.R. to Treatment, where we did our resuscitations. Both treatment tables are liberally painted in red and green and black, and stripes of blood trail down the sides of both. Heaps of sodden towels are wadded everywhere, slimy with blood and fluids, and gelatinous black and green placentas are scattered amongst them like some malign species of jellyfish. The newly-recovered bitch is now laying sternal on the floor, a pool of dark blood gathered under her tail (and no wonder, poor thing, what with the number of placentation sites she has to involute). I don't even want to think about the state of Jack's shoes, which I have noticed are making squishing noises as he walks. A strange little smile breaks over my face. For some reason I think all this is hilarious. I go get the mop and start in, giggling quietly to myself. (Fortunately everyone else is engrossed in the puppies, trying to decide which ones look most like the father.)
About the time I notice I am starting to bump into things, I decide I might just have enough juice to get home if I leave NOW. I make sure Jack has things under control and weave on out to my truck (don't remember much of the drive home, but there are no new dents on the truck, so it must've gone okay). On my return home I have an invitation to a May Day party at Wildwood Farm on my answering machine, but I am now so tired I want to burst into tears, so I decline and pitch headlong into my bed. I slept like the dead and today I feel somewhat restored, but in the back of my head I have the niggling question: just what DID I say to some of my clients yesterday? (Sigh). Unless it's embarrassing, we'll probably never know.
Showing posts with label American bulldog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American bulldog. Show all posts
Monday, January 12, 2009
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Tales From the Bark Side
I don't know about you, but I sometimes wonder if there's any truth in the common-knowledge sorts of beliefs, such as the idea that oddball behavior (and/or, quite literally, lunacy) increases at the full moon. I do think that particular wives' tale actually has some merit, based on the kinds of calls and cases we get during the full moon.
For instance, one spring evening a few years back, I get an emergency call for a gerbil with a degloving injury of the tail. As this is a non-life-threatening injury, the owner elects to wait til the next day for surgery. I gave instructions for nursing care overnight and the owner arrives in due course the following morning. It's probably a $4 pet which will live 2 or 3 years at most, but it came in for a $150 surgery (a gratifying sort of client - the monetary value of the animal is less important than the emotional and intrinsic value of the animal). Mind you, this is a procedure I've never done before, as I don't really do a ton of Gerbil surgeries (hmmm, now why could that be...?) However, the nature of veterinary medicine is that you get to see things all the time that you've never seen or heard of before. Luckily they train us A) to think, and B) to apply core knowledge to novel situations, so I figure I'll be able to wing it. I hope.
As you might imagine, it's a bit hard to inject anesthetic drugs into the teensy weensy gerbil vein and then get an endotracheal tube down the teeny weensy gerbil airway (partly because they don't make tubes that small, and partly because you'd have to open up the teensy weensy gerbil mouth and get past the NOT-so-teensy weensy gerbil dentition, which is impressively sized for an animal so teensy weensy). So, instead we box them down (which does NOT mean punching them in their tiny little rodent heads; it means putting them in an induction chamber and piping in the gas until they fall asleep.) We have an induction box for cats, but it's mighty large for a rodent about half the size of a cat's head, and would take weeks and weeks (well, a long time, anyway) to reach anesthetic levels of gas. I was kinda thinking we'd adapt a jar to the task, but then my eye falls on the induction masks we use for larger animals, like cats and dogs, in those cases where we have to mask down an animal rather than our usual IV-and-intubate regimen. I think: Hmm, maybe we can put the cat mask over the gerbil's head. Then I think: Maybe we can put the entire gerbil into the mask, up-end the open side onto the table, and use that as an induction chamber. It's small, it's compact, it's made for gas anesthetics, and it's handily equipped with a rubber gasket which will make escape attempts less profitable. Turns out it's the PERFECT fit for our little gerbil (appropriately, if unimaginatively, named "Gerbil".)
After chasing little Gerbil around her cage for about 4 minutes (she is a svelte and athletic little rodent, and an adept escapist), we manage to corral her with the assistance of a dry washcloth tossed over her head as a distraction. She isn't ALL that interested in entering the Anesthetic Chamber of Horrors (or so she imagines it, evidently, since she makes several abortive attempts to avoid admittance to the gasketed Hobbitty portal to her own personal LaLa Land). She is, however, no match for Jill's dexterity, and ends up adeptly threaded face-first into the cone, where she curls up cozily. On goes the gas. After a few minutes, little Gerbil falls asleep and Jill reaches her pinkie in and hooks the back end out of the mask so I can operate. There are itty bitty little vertebrae hanging out at the end of the tail, all naked and dehydrated. Dr. J has (in jest) volunteered to bring in a cleaver in case I prefer to do my amputation via the Three Blind Mice procedure, but I elect to use scissors to snip through the tiny jointed toothpick which is the distal third of the tail. I freshen the edges of the skin, point the tail-stump skyward and push the skin toward the table, like scrunching down the paper wrapper on a straw. A little nubbin of tail bone sticks up, which I trim back a little to give me enough skin to cover the tail stump. I pull the skin back up, like pulling up your knee socks in the third grade (though a bit more scaly and bristly than MY knee socks ever were, thank you very much) and throw in two sutures of a hair-thin absorbable. Off goes the gas. Jill frees the front half of our patient from the anesthetic mask and tenderly cuddles little Gerbil up in our washcloth to recover from her anesthetic, which takes about 91 seconds. Ten minutes later Gerbil is running on her little rodent wheel (tail tip jauntily adorned with purple suture) and drinking out of her water bottle (which, for her amusement, has a tiny plastic turtle toy floating in it.) Ta-da. Rodent tail-dock numero uno under my belt. (I bow modestly).
The next oddball thing was a client who caused me to win the stick-a-fork-in-your-eye-client-of-the-week award. They brought in one dog but had protracted lists of questions about two others. Dog number one is a Dalmatian who has previously lost a kidney to urate stones, a stone which forms as a result of an inborn error of metabolism. There's no cure, but by feeding a strict prescription diet you can generally avoid recurrences. The diet works by controlling urine pH and mineral content, which keeps the stones from forming - so long as you stick strictly to the diet and feed nothing else. The owner's concern is that our patient, JJ, is taking on the general size and proportions of a harbor seal. The owner is frustrated that the U/D is making JJ fat, and she isn't mistaken about the weight issues. The dog is nearly 100#, and should weigh maybe 65. Her neck, swathed in rolls of fat, is wider than her head, and she has a pronounced waddle. Rather sad, given the deep-chested athleticism she was bred for.
As I enter the exam room, the owner is feeding dog cookies to their new (four week old) puppy, who is along for the ride. (Who weans and homes puppies at four weeks?!?) The owner takes an additional handful of cookies out of the jar for her Dalmatian - who, remember, is supposed to be on a prescription diet to prevent stone recurrences, AND who is way way way too fat. So, yeah, let's give her a handful - not one cookie, mind you, but a handful - of decidedly NON-prescription dog snacks. Sounds good to me.
I narrowly prevent the owner from feeding the dog a pile of extra calories and inappropriate minerals. We get to talking about the dog's weight. The owner has decreased the dog's U/D by a third - but has substituted some of the Pedigree senior diet that their 13 year old boxer eats. They also feed pig's ears, dog cookies and a LOT of table scraps. Hmmm. That sounds PERFECT to me. The dog has already lost an entire kidney to stones, and is built like a sea mammal, so shovelling large piles of random non-prescription scraps down its throat is clearly a DANDY idea. Sigh.
I reiterate to the owners that the purpose of the prescription diet is to control the recurrence of stones, but that it is impossible for the diet to do this if you feed other items indiscriminately. They look at each other accusingly. "I told you so!" they say to each other simultaneously - which evidently means that BOTH of them are violating the dietary restrictions without compunction, but each is convinced that their own transgressions are NOT a problem, while their spouse's are. Sigh again.
After approximately 1,000 questions about the dog (as well as a nail trim, a procedure which is clearly NOT okay by our JJ), we get on to their month-old American bulldog puppy. Whom they have no idea how to feed. I understand them having questions about whether or not to feed a puppy milk replacer, but I don't get it that they're asking me if they should be feeding an adult food to the pup. (Hello? Do you not have two other dogs?) Luckily these are straightforward questions and readily answered, the more so since the answers are fairly obvious even to the inexperienced, so we dispatch them in short order (which, in this case, means about 10 minutes).
Last is their desire to breed their 13-year-old white boxer to their now-4-week-old puppy (who, you will recall is NOT a boxer, but an American bulldog). They have been advised by our office manager that the boxer is unlikely to live 'til the puppy is if breedable age, so they want to freeze semen. This would require us collecting semen from the dog, and also that the semen is of viable quality for freezing and reconstitution. The problems with this being that A) male dogs tend to begin to decline in both sperm count and quality at about 8 years of age, B) in order to collect a dog you generally need an in-heat teaser bitch to stimulate the male's interest (this is news to the owners), and C) since hand-collection of semen is a bit unnatural from the dog's point of view (what ARE we doing handling those parts in that way, they want to know, and just who gave us permission?), it's best if the dog has been taught to do this at some point in life. Generally this is best done in youth, when they will indiscriminately hump practically anything that will sit still long enough. Trying to get a 13 year old dog to go for this is typically a losing proposition. I'll let you guess if the boxer has ever had this procedure done in the past. But you'd better guess "no."
I explain all of this to the owners, who are a bit crestfallen. The boxer is a "five star champion", they say. Really? a five-star champion? Hmmm. It IS a white boxer; that's an automatic disqualification in the AKC. White boxers are excused from the ring immediately. And though I personally feel that coat-color fashions are way less important than certain other traits, and I myself do not show in AKC - or elsewhere - I have never heard of a "five-star champion." There are national and international champions of all sorts, but no "five-star" champions in the AKC that I - or any of my staff, several of whom DO show in the AKC - are aware of. So I am not sure why they have such a drive to not just breed their elderly white boxer, but to deliberately breed cross-breds which very likely will be hard to place in homes, since that there isn't a huge demand for boxer-bulldog pups by the public at large. Their yen to breed these two dogs together is particularly hard to understand in view of the fact that the boxer is seriously dysplastic and has marked arthritis in the hips and back. Given that this is a hereditary disease, and that American bulldogs ALSO have a tendency toward hind-end orthopedic disease, this seems like just a PEACHY idea. Not.
I have no idea if I managed to dissuade them from trying to collect the boxer - though I did suggest that if they really really need to breed this dog's bloodlines they might consider a grandson, as the dog has been bred in the past (presumably to other boxers, and evidently without regard to the coat color flaw OR the far more serious issue of soundness.) I admit that this was maybe a little craven - I'm kinda thinking that owners of purebred boxers may not be keen to stud their dogs out for deliberate cross breedings - but in all honesty, I AM kinda hoping that enough obstacles will crop up that they eventually abandon the idea. Regardless of the genetics involved, it really seems to me that these are people who should NOT be breeding dogs under any circumstances whatsoever. As nice as they may be, they don't seem at ALL clear on the concept as far as the health of the dogs they already have, and I'm just guessing here, but common sense may not be their strong suit.
Anyway, you could tell it was a full moon, because there were more oddball cases that week - most notably two different people who called for porcupine quill removal, neither of whom wanted to pay us to do it (one wanted us to hold the dog down for them while they pulled quills, and the other wanted us to drug the dog and send it home - fully anesthetized, mind you - so they could pull the quills themselves at home.) I ASK you - where on EARTH does this idea intersect with the world of reasonableness, common sense or sanity? Is it just me, or does this make NO SENSE WHATSOEVER?
Sigh. I really wish I'd been there to see Dr. P tell the hold-it-down-while-I-pull guy that he wouldn't do it. Dr. H got to tell the anesthetize-it-and-send-it-home guy that he wasn't going to do that (whereupon the guy started screaming at him that he didn't have the money to pay for us to do it and he's just have to shoot the f%*&$ing dog - because it's a well-known fact that being a complete a**hole makes everyone around you want more than anything else in the whole world to give you everything your little heart desires, especially if it is immoral, unethical, unprofessional and ILLEGAL. Not to mention just plain stupid.)
Oh, well. That's life on call, especially during the full moon, and sometimes the best you can do to try to cope is to go to bed and sleep a whole lot (presuming your dog Ali, who believes you should get up with the sun, will keep his whining to himself for a bit - I tell you, this is a lot less inconvenient when daylight does not commence at 4 a.m.) And you can cross your fingers that in a day or two the lunacy will have faded and things will be back to normal. Normal for us, that is....
For instance, one spring evening a few years back, I get an emergency call for a gerbil with a degloving injury of the tail. As this is a non-life-threatening injury, the owner elects to wait til the next day for surgery. I gave instructions for nursing care overnight and the owner arrives in due course the following morning. It's probably a $4 pet which will live 2 or 3 years at most, but it came in for a $150 surgery (a gratifying sort of client - the monetary value of the animal is less important than the emotional and intrinsic value of the animal). Mind you, this is a procedure I've never done before, as I don't really do a ton of Gerbil surgeries (hmmm, now why could that be...?) However, the nature of veterinary medicine is that you get to see things all the time that you've never seen or heard of before. Luckily they train us A) to think, and B) to apply core knowledge to novel situations, so I figure I'll be able to wing it. I hope.
As you might imagine, it's a bit hard to inject anesthetic drugs into the teensy weensy gerbil vein and then get an endotracheal tube down the teeny weensy gerbil airway (partly because they don't make tubes that small, and partly because you'd have to open up the teensy weensy gerbil mouth and get past the NOT-so-teensy weensy gerbil dentition, which is impressively sized for an animal so teensy weensy). So, instead we box them down (which does NOT mean punching them in their tiny little rodent heads; it means putting them in an induction chamber and piping in the gas until they fall asleep.) We have an induction box for cats, but it's mighty large for a rodent about half the size of a cat's head, and would take weeks and weeks (well, a long time, anyway) to reach anesthetic levels of gas. I was kinda thinking we'd adapt a jar to the task, but then my eye falls on the induction masks we use for larger animals, like cats and dogs, in those cases where we have to mask down an animal rather than our usual IV-and-intubate regimen. I think: Hmm, maybe we can put the cat mask over the gerbil's head. Then I think: Maybe we can put the entire gerbil into the mask, up-end the open side onto the table, and use that as an induction chamber. It's small, it's compact, it's made for gas anesthetics, and it's handily equipped with a rubber gasket which will make escape attempts less profitable. Turns out it's the PERFECT fit for our little gerbil (appropriately, if unimaginatively, named "Gerbil".)
After chasing little Gerbil around her cage for about 4 minutes (she is a svelte and athletic little rodent, and an adept escapist), we manage to corral her with the assistance of a dry washcloth tossed over her head as a distraction. She isn't ALL that interested in entering the Anesthetic Chamber of Horrors (or so she imagines it, evidently, since she makes several abortive attempts to avoid admittance to the gasketed Hobbitty portal to her own personal LaLa Land). She is, however, no match for Jill's dexterity, and ends up adeptly threaded face-first into the cone, where she curls up cozily. On goes the gas. After a few minutes, little Gerbil falls asleep and Jill reaches her pinkie in and hooks the back end out of the mask so I can operate. There are itty bitty little vertebrae hanging out at the end of the tail, all naked and dehydrated. Dr. J has (in jest) volunteered to bring in a cleaver in case I prefer to do my amputation via the Three Blind Mice procedure, but I elect to use scissors to snip through the tiny jointed toothpick which is the distal third of the tail. I freshen the edges of the skin, point the tail-stump skyward and push the skin toward the table, like scrunching down the paper wrapper on a straw. A little nubbin of tail bone sticks up, which I trim back a little to give me enough skin to cover the tail stump. I pull the skin back up, like pulling up your knee socks in the third grade (though a bit more scaly and bristly than MY knee socks ever were, thank you very much) and throw in two sutures of a hair-thin absorbable. Off goes the gas. Jill frees the front half of our patient from the anesthetic mask and tenderly cuddles little Gerbil up in our washcloth to recover from her anesthetic, which takes about 91 seconds. Ten minutes later Gerbil is running on her little rodent wheel (tail tip jauntily adorned with purple suture) and drinking out of her water bottle (which, for her amusement, has a tiny plastic turtle toy floating in it.) Ta-da. Rodent tail-dock numero uno under my belt. (I bow modestly).
The next oddball thing was a client who caused me to win the stick-a-fork-in-your-eye-client-of-the-week award. They brought in one dog but had protracted lists of questions about two others. Dog number one is a Dalmatian who has previously lost a kidney to urate stones, a stone which forms as a result of an inborn error of metabolism. There's no cure, but by feeding a strict prescription diet you can generally avoid recurrences. The diet works by controlling urine pH and mineral content, which keeps the stones from forming - so long as you stick strictly to the diet and feed nothing else. The owner's concern is that our patient, JJ, is taking on the general size and proportions of a harbor seal. The owner is frustrated that the U/D is making JJ fat, and she isn't mistaken about the weight issues. The dog is nearly 100#, and should weigh maybe 65. Her neck, swathed in rolls of fat, is wider than her head, and she has a pronounced waddle. Rather sad, given the deep-chested athleticism she was bred for.
As I enter the exam room, the owner is feeding dog cookies to their new (four week old) puppy, who is along for the ride. (Who weans and homes puppies at four weeks?!?) The owner takes an additional handful of cookies out of the jar for her Dalmatian - who, remember, is supposed to be on a prescription diet to prevent stone recurrences, AND who is way way way too fat. So, yeah, let's give her a handful - not one cookie, mind you, but a handful - of decidedly NON-prescription dog snacks. Sounds good to me.
I narrowly prevent the owner from feeding the dog a pile of extra calories and inappropriate minerals. We get to talking about the dog's weight. The owner has decreased the dog's U/D by a third - but has substituted some of the Pedigree senior diet that their 13 year old boxer eats. They also feed pig's ears, dog cookies and a LOT of table scraps. Hmmm. That sounds PERFECT to me. The dog has already lost an entire kidney to stones, and is built like a sea mammal, so shovelling large piles of random non-prescription scraps down its throat is clearly a DANDY idea. Sigh.
I reiterate to the owners that the purpose of the prescription diet is to control the recurrence of stones, but that it is impossible for the diet to do this if you feed other items indiscriminately. They look at each other accusingly. "I told you so!" they say to each other simultaneously - which evidently means that BOTH of them are violating the dietary restrictions without compunction, but each is convinced that their own transgressions are NOT a problem, while their spouse's are. Sigh again.
After approximately 1,000 questions about the dog (as well as a nail trim, a procedure which is clearly NOT okay by our JJ), we get on to their month-old American bulldog puppy. Whom they have no idea how to feed. I understand them having questions about whether or not to feed a puppy milk replacer, but I don't get it that they're asking me if they should be feeding an adult food to the pup. (Hello? Do you not have two other dogs?) Luckily these are straightforward questions and readily answered, the more so since the answers are fairly obvious even to the inexperienced, so we dispatch them in short order (which, in this case, means about 10 minutes).
Last is their desire to breed their 13-year-old white boxer to their now-4-week-old puppy (who, you will recall is NOT a boxer, but an American bulldog). They have been advised by our office manager that the boxer is unlikely to live 'til the puppy is if breedable age, so they want to freeze semen. This would require us collecting semen from the dog, and also that the semen is of viable quality for freezing and reconstitution. The problems with this being that A) male dogs tend to begin to decline in both sperm count and quality at about 8 years of age, B) in order to collect a dog you generally need an in-heat teaser bitch to stimulate the male's interest (this is news to the owners), and C) since hand-collection of semen is a bit unnatural from the dog's point of view (what ARE we doing handling those parts in that way, they want to know, and just who gave us permission?), it's best if the dog has been taught to do this at some point in life. Generally this is best done in youth, when they will indiscriminately hump practically anything that will sit still long enough. Trying to get a 13 year old dog to go for this is typically a losing proposition. I'll let you guess if the boxer has ever had this procedure done in the past. But you'd better guess "no."
I explain all of this to the owners, who are a bit crestfallen. The boxer is a "five star champion", they say. Really? a five-star champion? Hmmm. It IS a white boxer; that's an automatic disqualification in the AKC. White boxers are excused from the ring immediately. And though I personally feel that coat-color fashions are way less important than certain other traits, and I myself do not show in AKC - or elsewhere - I have never heard of a "five-star champion." There are national and international champions of all sorts, but no "five-star" champions in the AKC that I - or any of my staff, several of whom DO show in the AKC - are aware of. So I am not sure why they have such a drive to not just breed their elderly white boxer, but to deliberately breed cross-breds which very likely will be hard to place in homes, since that there isn't a huge demand for boxer-bulldog pups by the public at large. Their yen to breed these two dogs together is particularly hard to understand in view of the fact that the boxer is seriously dysplastic and has marked arthritis in the hips and back. Given that this is a hereditary disease, and that American bulldogs ALSO have a tendency toward hind-end orthopedic disease, this seems like just a PEACHY idea. Not.
I have no idea if I managed to dissuade them from trying to collect the boxer - though I did suggest that if they really really need to breed this dog's bloodlines they might consider a grandson, as the dog has been bred in the past (presumably to other boxers, and evidently without regard to the coat color flaw OR the far more serious issue of soundness.) I admit that this was maybe a little craven - I'm kinda thinking that owners of purebred boxers may not be keen to stud their dogs out for deliberate cross breedings - but in all honesty, I AM kinda hoping that enough obstacles will crop up that they eventually abandon the idea. Regardless of the genetics involved, it really seems to me that these are people who should NOT be breeding dogs under any circumstances whatsoever. As nice as they may be, they don't seem at ALL clear on the concept as far as the health of the dogs they already have, and I'm just guessing here, but common sense may not be their strong suit.
Anyway, you could tell it was a full moon, because there were more oddball cases that week - most notably two different people who called for porcupine quill removal, neither of whom wanted to pay us to do it (one wanted us to hold the dog down for them while they pulled quills, and the other wanted us to drug the dog and send it home - fully anesthetized, mind you - so they could pull the quills themselves at home.) I ASK you - where on EARTH does this idea intersect with the world of reasonableness, common sense or sanity? Is it just me, or does this make NO SENSE WHATSOEVER?
Sigh. I really wish I'd been there to see Dr. P tell the hold-it-down-while-I-pull guy that he wouldn't do it. Dr. H got to tell the anesthetize-it-and-send-it-home guy that he wasn't going to do that (whereupon the guy started screaming at him that he didn't have the money to pay for us to do it and he's just have to shoot the f%*&$ing dog - because it's a well-known fact that being a complete a**hole makes everyone around you want more than anything else in the whole world to give you everything your little heart desires, especially if it is immoral, unethical, unprofessional and ILLEGAL. Not to mention just plain stupid.)
Oh, well. That's life on call, especially during the full moon, and sometimes the best you can do to try to cope is to go to bed and sleep a whole lot (presuming your dog Ali, who believes you should get up with the sun, will keep his whining to himself for a bit - I tell you, this is a lot less inconvenient when daylight does not commence at 4 a.m.) And you can cross your fingers that in a day or two the lunacy will have faded and things will be back to normal. Normal for us, that is....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
