Making muffins

A sweet older client of mine came in with one of her cats for his annual exam. Things were going rather smoothly and routine until near the end of the visit when I reached over to give Crabby his Rabies vaccine while he was precariously close to his mom.

"Hey now, make sure you don't poke that thing into one of my breasts!! No seriously, they're fake and I was told they could rupture any minute. I got these back in the early days when they just put silicone under your skin. They're a little bigger than I wanted so now I'm always worried that something will happen to one of them. Heck, even when the cats go to make muffins on me in bed I worry their claws will pop them just like that, BANG!! I can see that you think I'm joking, but I'm not."

Mexican food has the same effect on me...

"So what brand of food do you buy for Fluffy?"

"I think it's called Nitro."

"Wow, that's pretty explosive stuff."

"I'm sorry, I don't understand. Is there something wrong with it?"

"What? Oh, no no, I was just joking. You see, the name is actually......ummm, nevermind."

(sigh...)  

TMI, continued

(as I'm putting on a pair latex gloves to express a dog's anal sacs, by far one of my least favorite tasks, the male owner chimes in....)

"Don't worry there Scooter, this is gonna hurt me more than it'll hurt you. The urologist just did the same thing to me."

(....and even though I wanted the conversation to end there, my super observant and very helpful nurse Lauren had to follow with a correction...)

"Actually sir, humans don't have anal sacs."

(....which led to why I wasn't hungry for lunch today: )

"Oh I know, it was just my prostate. But he put on the gloves and did the same thing that you're doing there. It's a little big...my prostate that is."

another pet peeve

I'm not sure which is worse. The client that answers their cell phone and talks during their pet's office visit, or the client that decides to be "considerate" by not answering their phone, but allows it to continue ringing.

After five minutes (the person kept calling back), I had to finally tell the client to take the call. How in the hell does the constant ringing NOT bother them??

Oh, THAT one!?

"What brand of cat food do you feed Flaky here?"

"We feed him the BEST cat food on the market, the BEST there is."

"Ok, which one is it?"

"The best one, you know, the one that's a brown kibble. It comes in a big tub. Don't you know what the best food out there is called??"

"Sorry ma'am, there's a lot of pretty good foods at the store, and I don't particularly think one is the absolute best."

"But it's the only one that's a brown kibble!"

umm, no.

"So how are your pups Hershey and Squirts doing today, any vomit, diarrhea or other problems?"

"Oh thank goodness no, they're doing great, they just need their shots. But I have diarrhea, all of the time actually. I had to have my colon removed. But you probably didn't want to hear that."

So who owns who?

"Now, I need you to use these eye drops three times a day to help treat Goopy's eye infection."

"I'm not sure doc, would twice a day be ok? He has to sleep in until noon every day, otherwise he's a grumpy puppy for the rest of the day."

"Well, you could still apply the eye drops three times a day, just do it when he wakes up, sometime later in the afternoon, and again late at night before you go to bed."

"No, you don't understand, he goes back to bed at 6pm. I won't be able to give him the eye drops after that."


(Note: for all of the vets our there reading this - no, he doesn't have a medical reason for his "low" energy level. He doesn't actually have "low" energy and doesn't need to sleep that much. It's really the owner that sleeps that much, not her dog.)

Can you hear me now?

I'm sorry, but no. If you called our office from your cell phone, it's not our signal that's the bad one. And I'm not stepping outside of the office just to see if the connection is more clear.

Just sayin'.

A little Friday afternoon advice for you. If your dog appears to be uncomfortable, he's standing with a "hunched" posture and his tail is tucked down between his legs, FORCING him to swim in the backyard pool as "hydrotherapy" and then applying compresses to a random place on his back (alternating between cold and hot) several times over a few hours, isn't really the recommended course of action.

"And why compresses at this location on his back, do you think he injured that area?"

"I don't know, I don't think so. It just seemed the right place to do it."

Like a lobster?

"I was wondering if you could check out this thing on Missy's eyelid, it looks like some sort of crustacean or something similar."

"Wait, it looks like a what?"

"A crustacean. You know, like a scab."

should've seen it coming...

"Thanks for squeezing us in this morning doc, April at the front desk said you guys were swamped. Hank here had really bad diarrhea this morning and I didn't want to have to wait until this afternoon."

"No sweat, I wouldn't want to wait very long with an Old English Sheepdog having diarrhea all over the place either, especially with all of it sticking to that long hair. What time did all of this start?"

"Oh, about 10 days ago."

been busy

Sorry I've let this blog slip, I've been swamped! Not only has work been busy, my wife and I had our first child less than a year ago. Some of our "hobbies" definitely took a back seat to all of our other priorities. I realize that I never really posted super often or anything, but I'll definitely try to get back into the swing of things. I really need to give mad props to those of you that have full times jobs, multiple children, several pets AND still post on your blogs regularly! There are not enough hours in the day!

The day after Easter...

"Could you check out the bumps on Speedy's back, my wife and I are REALLY worried they could be cancer, especially since he's a boxer and all."

"Of course, no problem. How long have the bumps been there?"

"Probably since February, maybe longer."