draggonlaady

You know what's really obnoxious? being repeatedly interrupted by clients asking you the question you are trying to answer. Here's a suggestion for anybody going to a doctor or expert of any kind - when they start trying to go through your lab results (or car engine print-out, or architectural blue-prints, or whatever) LET THEM TALK. When they get to the end of the section, ask questions if they missed anything. DO NOT interrupt them every 3 seconds to ask "but how is this all related" questions - THEY ARE GETTING THERE and you are just delaying it.
It is bad enough that on several occasions I have literally told clients to stop - this isn't just occasional questions, this is constant peppering of disconnected bits that don't allow me to finish a single thought, to the point that I start pointedly repeating EXACTLY the same 3-4 words several times until they stop interrupting me at exactly the same word, and if that fails, I tell them that the only way we are ever going to get anywhere is if they let me get through my spiel and then they can ask questions if I missed anything.
What makes people do this? I mean, if this was one person who was just seriously manic or overwhelmingly ADD or something, it'd be annoying but rare. Instead, I have similar encounters on an at least weekly, sometimes daily, basis with multiple clients. I don't get it.

In not entirely unrelated news, just got a call on the after hours line from a guy who interrupted every fucking sentence I said during the entire conversation, completely missed the repeating-start technique, and then didn't want me to call the hawk he was asking about a 'raptor' because that's "ominous"... it's just a little bird, and yeah, it has a hooked beak, and bit my friend 3 or 4 times, but "raptor" just sounds so mean.... *headdesk* This being toward the end of the conversation, I was pretty fed up with him anyway, and I pointed out that I don't care how big or not big it is, if he has a hawk of any type, it is by definition a raptor, that's what a raptor is, end topic. I did not say, but did think, "Also, your friend appears to be a fucking idiot and tell him to stop sticking his hand in or near the mouths of wild animals."

Just thought I'd throw this out here, since so many of my posts are ranting. This morning was mostly dedicated to 2 really really good clients, who don't flinch at all from doing things even if they're expensive. Client 1 (Sweet but crazy, I've mentioned her before) just dropped over $200 on rechecking things here (blood work, radiographs, cytology) on her way to S for more recheck lab work (ultrasound) which will probably run over $500, all of this subsequent to a $1000+ surgery she had at the referral surgeon in S several months ago. She is always chipper and happy and fun to work with. Client 2 brought in 3 dogs (which is how this took most of my morning) for dental cleanings, mass removal on one, blood work on 2 (the 3rd had blood work a month ago prior to a different surgery), they're looking at a $700 bill and they will smile and laugh when we hand it to them. Additionally to the clients being friendly and compliant, so are all 4 of the dogs! Total jackpot.

I just got a call from a girl with a chinchilla; said chinchilla has been lying in one place, twitching its tail all day. Won't/can't get up and move. Cannot hold its head up. Feels cold to the touch. Recommended that she take chin's temperature, and offered to come to clinic and look at chinchilla to get better idea what's going on. Doesn't want to bring it in, doesn't know how old it is, doesn't own a freaking thermometer, after questioning turns out that they have been feeding the chinchilla hamster food. Explained chins are not hamsters, should be feeding CHINCHILLA food. No other species' food. Girl asks what chinchillas are allergic to. I explain that as a species, chinchillas are not particularly prone to allergies, in fact I've never seen allergy problems in a chinchilla, but I suppose in theory they could be allergic to anything a human can be allergic to. Owner says "well, the people we got him from say chinchillas are allergic to apples, and that it's okay to feed him parakeet food." To which my only reply had to be "They are wrong. He is not a bird." Well, can we give him vitamins? No. There is no amount of human-multivitamin you can shove down his throat (and good luck with THAT) that will make bird seed or hamster mix a balanced diet for a chinchilla. What should we do with him? He's really weak and acts like he hit is head." Well, as I said, I can meet you at the clinic and take a look at him, but I can't tell you over the phone what's wrong with him. "ok. well, thanks anyway," and she hangs up. So the chin's probably going to lay there and die because they can't be bothered to 1: look up proper care for the species of pet they have, which is available for FREE at the library or on the internet, and 2: can't be bothered to take it to a veterinarian when it's sick, because that costs money.

They're siblings!

You know, it's truly amazing how many times that statement is immediately followed by my informing someone that their pet is pregnant. *sigh*

Given previous experience with this client, you can guess how incredibly thrilled I was when they called at closing last night. My enthusiasm was only amplified by the fact that I was already a sleep-dep zombie after being called at both 2:45 AM and 4:45 AM by Mrs Miller, and getting to the clinic at 5:30 AM to actually deal with Mrs Miller in person that morning.

So it seems that Sue Happy here decided to breed one of her other dogs, to get that litter of puppies that she's been wanting for 15 years or something. She did not, of course, have the dog x-rayed to get a puppy count prior to whelping. Dog whelped 2 days ago, and now has foul smelling vaginal discharge, decreased appetite, and doesn't seem to be making much milk. Sue is very concerned that it took 5 hours to have 4 pups. I tell her the time frame is normal but the number of pups is small. I am concerned that either the dog has a uterine infection, or the dog has retained puppies. We agree that the dog should be seen as soon as possible due to the risks of retained pups (you know, cool stuff like dead pups rotting inside, ruptured uterine walls, peritonitis, and death). And at this point things just get fun.

She says she wants to bring the dog in, but her car's transmission is going out and it can only be driven in second gear now. It'll thus take her over an hour and a half to get here. I point out that she will be driving past 2 much closer clinics and especially if the car is that unreliable, perhaps she should consider going to the clinic 33 miles closer, or the one 25 miles closer to her. She says the people at clinic one have already left (like I'm trying to? no worries asking me to wait late for you, but can't ask them to come back?) and she "had a bad experience once" at the other clinic and doesn't want to go back there. ("Well, lady" I do not say, "I had a bad experience with you once, so I don't particularly want you to come back here!")
So I reluctantly agree to meet her at the clinic in an hour and a half.
An hour and a quarter later, she calls back. Says she can't get the car started. She's "going through some marital difficulties right now" and doesn't "want to accuse anybody," but she is pretty sure that her car "has been sabotaged". The only vehicle she has that will start is blowing exhaust fumes into the car and she's worried that this will kill the puppies. Can she bring the dog in tomorrow instead? Once again, I point out that there are clinics MUCH closer to her, and the logical solution is to take this other car (perhaps with the windows rolled down?) to the the MUCH CLOSER clinic to have the dog seen tonight, since if she does have retained puppies, 18 hours may be the difference between sick and dead. Somehow, her response does not give me confidence that she will do this.

She does not (I confess that I am surprised) call me back in the middle of the night to tell me that the dog is worse, or that she has suddenly acquired a car. Nor did she ask if I could come get her and the dogs. (Bruce agreed that if she did ask, he would do so for sufficient cash.)

Instead, she shows up without warning this morning (after my first surgery is sedated, of course). She says she tried to take the dog's temperature last night, but "took it in the wrong place" because didn't realize she was supposed to use "you know, that thing". I assume this means she took a temp in the vulvar fold instead of the rectum, but decide I don't care enough to ask for clarification. Owner's idea of restraining the dog so I can check her temperature is to hunch over the dog's head sobbing. I go get a technician, both to hold the dog, and to insert herself between me and the owner, as I would really like to smack her upside the head just on general principles. We end up taking a radiograph of the abdomen, and find no retained pups. Whoo!

Send dog home on antibiotics, warn owner that this may cause diarrhea in the pups, and if it does, they need to be taken off of mom and bottle fed.

I ask what she feeds the dog, and she replies "chicken soup and Caesar's" and goes off about how she won't feed anything with corn in it, because corn is clearly evil, and practically the worst thing you can ever do to a dog (besides leaving them ill for months on end before taking them to a doctor, I guess?). So, I'm hazarding that by "chicken soup" she means Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul brand, and not chicken soup. I could be wrong though. Either way, I'm not impressed with Caesar's as nutrition for a lactating bitch, and recommend she switch to a puppy food, for the higher calcium and calorie content. I make a point of telling her at what age we want to start vaccinating the puppies, so that 5 months from now I'm not stuck dealing with all 4 of these pups dying of parvo, and send her on her way, so that I can go start the 4 spays I've got lined up for the morning.

Her half of the entire conversation is held at a volume which really doesn't make my head happy, and is frequently interrupted with alternating crying and prayer. Guess I should just be thankful there was no screaming today.


*********


So in pulling up the links for my previous encounter with Sue Happy, I realize that I somehow did not detail the wonderful phone conversation which occurred when I notified her that the dog had died. I don't know why I never shared this story with you, it's a good one.

I called with the bad news (I'm sure you've figured that part out, but anyway), and her reaction was to throw the phone to the floor /crash, thud/ and go storming through the house screaming and slamming doors. I hear a steady stream of curse words (not terribly inventive, mostly just "fuck" and "shit" repeated over and over) and then she finds a victim to take things out on: her unlucky brother-in-law, who is apparently sleeping. She drags him out of bed with curses and thuds, and lays into him about how it's his fault the dog died, because he went to visit her at the clinic, and if he hadn't gone in and taken that bitch his girlfriend, the dog wouldn't have used up all her energy interacting with them, and she'd still be alive, and how fucking dare he kill her dog, what a son of a bitch he is... and about this time, bro-in-law's girl picks up the discarded phone, apologizes, says someone will call back about what to do with the body when they get Sue Happy calmed down, and hangs up. I think if it was me, I'd have calmed her down with a garden hose, but then I've never really dealt with raving hysterics well.

but really, I'm not. I already knew that people were too stupid to figure out on their own that letting the dog sit in their lap while driving was a bad idea. It's a sad comment on the level of people's stupidity that this is enough of a problem someone feels compelled to address it through law.

Also, this person makes me want to smack them repeatedly about the head and shoulders with a large blunt object:
“We constantly have a war back and forth. I keep having to block her from getting up to the front of the car,” said dog owner Sarah Kingery. “You should focus on driving but that’s not always realistic. Once they have short legs for some reason you just become a sucker and let them do whatever they want.”

She actually said this to a news-reporter? TOTALLY FUCKING proves the point that some people are so stupid they need this made into a law. *headdesk* There are several varieties of car dividers to install to address exactly this problem. Also, not that I expect this bippytart to figure it out, but there is the option of training the dog to stay in the back seat, instead of letting it jump onto the driver's arms and lap.

Sadly, I have at least one client who is a repeat offender at this exact issue, resulting in the dog falling out the driver's side window and skidding along the road not once, but twice that I know of. Who knows how many times the guy has let the dog fall out and NOT brought it to the clinic?

My evening has definitely been... backwoods? county? gruesome? practical? I dunno how to label it. So I'll just tell it out. If gore bothers you, do stop reading now.

My last appointment of the day was to kill and behead a horse. We met the neighbor at the owner's house; he drove his backhoe down so that the horse could be buried promptly. The horse was down and unable to rise, but still skittish, so I wrapped my jacket around her head as a blindfold and kneeled on it to keep her still while Dr S did the actual euthanizing. Then we took the head off and strapped it to the back of Dr S's truck. Tomorrow, he'll bring an axe to work and we'll open the head up to get the brain out and ship it to the lab to test for rabies. Not that I really think it's at all likely that the horse is rabid, but just to be absolutely certain. Normally, for a dog or cat, we'd just send the whole head, or the whole body for something particularly small, like a bat. The cost of shipping a horse head on ice is, however, rather...daunting. The neighbor with the backhoe has apparently buried many a horse... one of those tasks that anyone in the neighborhood with a backhoe will get called to do around here.

I was home just long enough to sit down and look longingly at the food Bruce had cooked when the phone rang. So instead of doing justice to dinner by savoring it, I shoveled food in my mouth while changing into old jeans and boots to go see about a breach calf.

Took about 2 minutes to evaluate mom and calf, and decide it was a bad go. Asked the owner if he liked the cow enough to pay for a c-section to take out a dead calf. "Not really," says he. "Guess we'll burger her. We weren't going to breed her again anyway. Sorry to've disturbed your evening."

And all of this... all the interactions with the owners were just so matter of fact. No drama, no fuss, just doing what needs done, even when it sucks. Acknowledging that it sucks, of course, but what else are you gonna do?

And this is not a good thing. I've had yet another visit from this fine specimen of reputable breeding. Don't worry, I was assured at least 6 times during today's conversation that she is not a puppy mill. Perhaps, to overuse a saying made trite by overuse, the lady doth protest too much?

Early afternoon (no, don't rush in first thing in the morning) appointment for a bitch that's been in labor since some time this weekend. Had 3 dead pups at home. Currently leaking bloody, foul-smelling fluid and still straining. Smells like rot. Has at least one puppy in the abdomen, and one in the vaginal canal that I can feel. Owner wants to know if I can remove the puppies with forceps.
No. No, this is c-section territory here, sorry.
So before I can even get into a discussion of sections and/or offer blood work or to spay the dog while sectioning her, owner vehemently declares that she does NOT want the dog spayed. Right. Fine. I lay mental odds of about 50% that I will "have" to call her during surgery and say that leaving the uterus means the dog will probably die.
When I get into the surgery, I discover why the dog was not able to have pups normally: she has extensive adhesion of the bladder to her uterus. The bladder itself is massively overfull (under no circumstances should one's urinary bladder be larger than one's head!). I open the uterus, remove 2 dead and decaying pups, flush everything with sterile saline and leave a whopping dose of antibiotics in the abdomen, but do not have sufficient reason to tell the owner the dog will die if I don't take the uterus right now.

When owner returned for the dog (half an hour before I told her to expect the dog to be done) I started explaining the dog's problems and that this is the most likely cause of her difficulties whelping. I'm about half way through this when she interrupts me with "well, I'm only going to breed her once more." I state in no uncertain terms that I would strongly recommend NOT re-breeding this dog, ever, at all. I explain that it is very likely that she will have problems whelping EVERY time because the issue she has will NOT go away, and in fact, will likely become worse following this surgery. Adhesions are quite common when tissue has been disrupted, adhesion between bladder and uterus is a relatively common sequela to c-section because of the normal contact between the surfaces of the two organs, and this dog is apparently prone to developing adhesions, because she's already got them with no prior surgical history. It is, in my mind, a very clear cut case of "breeding this particular dog is not a good plan." Owner repeatedly asks, despite my unequivocal statements on the topic, whether it would be okay to breed the dog, if she, say, waits a year. Or only breeds her once more. She explains that the dog is "just so pretty" and she "only wants one pup from her".
I ask her if she wants one pup enough to justify a significant risk that she will end up not only with another batch of dead puppies, but this dog dead too. Apparently, she does, because her stated plan prior to leaving was to try "just one more time" but to schedule the dog for a c-section instead of trying to let her whelp on her own. Which I suppose is the best option I can scrabble for if she insists on the idiocy of breeding a dog with a known physical impairment of uterine function. sigh.

So then the conversation moved along to 2 other dogs she has. Which she wants debarked, because (she repeatedly explains to me) she's had to separate from her husband because the dogs were barking so much that they were driving him nuts and he was hitting them. And it's not like their in a kennel or anything, she's not a puppy mill. These are dogs she's had since they were 6 weeks old, and they sleep in her bedroom--after all, she's not a puppy mill. I explain that I have never done a debark, and that on dogs as small as these, the risks of the dog dying are so great even in the hands of a surgeon adept at this procedure that nobody I know will do it. She asks if it's because I "don't believe in it." I say no, it's because I don't want to do a surgery that's going to kill your dog. She then asks if anyone else here will do it. I say no. About this time, Dr M walks through the room, and she yells at him across the lobby to ask if he will debark her dogs. He looks at the dog she's carrying (not the dog under discussion, but he doesn't know this...this is totally a blindside question) and says absolutely not on a dog that small. She then proceeds to explain that she means her other dogs, which are "very large--8 and 9 pounds!" Now, I don't know in what world an 8 pound dog is "very large" but it is not in this one. He again tells her no, and then wisely flees (er, walks from the room in a dignified manner). Leaving me in the targets again... Well, can't you do it with a laser? she demands. I explain that while someone somewhere could possibly do so, I have neither the knowledge, nor the laser. She rounds back about to me "not believing in it". She explains that she's training the dogs, and it's not like she's a puppy mill, she's trying! but she absolutely will not use a bark collar, because they make such horrible sores on the dogs' necks. I tell her (in as many words; I'm out of patience and she is so dense that I feel I need to be using a larger hammer to get through to her) that if the collars make sores on the dog, she is doing it wrong. She tries to muster some sort of argument, and I run her puny illogic about the collar not working if the prongs slip to the side of the neck down with my statement that all of my dogs wear Invisible Fence collars daily and have for years, and that I have used electric training/shock collars on several dogs for various reasons, and not a single one of them has developed sores or complications from use of said collars. If the collars are resulting in sores, the owner is at fault. The collar is either too tight, or left on too long with too long prongs, or placed over a fold of skin. There are no bark collars sold which should shock hard enough to create burns, but I welcomed her to try shocking herself with her collar to verify that it was not malfunctioning. And then we're back around to why I won't just debark them. I refrain from smacking her and saying "look, lady, this has not a damn thing to do with my personal beliefs on elective surgical alterations, it's about not killing my patients and if you are so dense as to not grasp that concept maybe I should practice my debarking surgeries on YOU". I instead explain in loving detail how the tissue around a surgery site swells following surgery, and the consequences of such swelling in a very small trachea, and repeat that I do not perform surgeries that I am almost certain will kill the patient. I then offer her the numbers of several trainers (so very, very sorry if she calls you, kresentia!) and the number to the Veterinary Teaching Hospital, where she may or may not find someone willing to do a laser de-barking. I honestly have no clue if they would do that or not, but I somehow don't find it likely that a woman who is too cheap to run blood work on a dog is going to pay the prices attached to a referral for something like that.

And guess it's good she showed up half an hour early, because by the time we get done with all that shit, the dog's awake enough to send home. Yay. Get the bloody Hell out of my clinic, you crazy bat.

I have 2 dogs in foster currently. Arctic is a young adult male neutered Siberian Husky, good with other animals but needs a good fenced yard (was found wearing an Invisible Fence collar--still surprised nobody at least called to get the collar back, those things are spendy).
Holly is a medium sized, short haired, yellow dog of indeterminate breed, a "lady of a certain age". Really well behaved and calm, have yet to find anything that gets her riled up.

Pictures and full profiles here: http://www.petfinder.com/pet-search?shelterid=WA388

In other news, if you have a pet, get them microchipped, and register the microchip. I have a client who found a cat last weekend. She brought it in, and it has a microchip.
I called the microchip company: chip is not registered to an owner, but lot was shipped to Idaho Humane Society.
I called IHS: click/disconnect
Called IHS again: left message
4 hours later, no return call, called back, again got message machine.
I called Humane Society of Palouse (howdy, sphynxagain!) and left cat's description.
Finder called IHS, left message.
Finder called all veterinary clinics in Pullcow area, as well as Pullman shelter.
We heard nothing back over weekend.
This morning, I called IHS: click/disconnect.
I call IHS AGAIN: finally spoke to someone who gave us owner information. For someone in Meridian (this is many and long away from Pullman, where the cat was found).
Finder calls number IHS gave. Turns out that cat belongs now to that owner's daughter, who is a WSU student. Cat has been missing since September, which is why nobody had a current lost ad.

Morals of the story:
--Microchips get lost pets home. They are worth doing.
--Registered microchips eliminate the hassle and many potential points for failure in getting the pet home; what if I'd not persistently called back, or if IHS hadn't kept back records of microchip numbers with adoptions? if the microchip is not associated with owner's name, it makes it MUCH less likely to be traceable.
--Update your registration when you move! What if we'd dropped it when we found the registration was so far removed from where the cat was found?