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Yesterday was all over the place emotionally. We met an old dog named Beamer for the first time, and boy, was he sick. Evidently he had broken a pyrex type serving dish a week earlier and actually ate some of the glass. Beamer came to us so sick, dehydrated, hanging his head, depressed, not eating, ropey drool coming from his lips, his heart was racing from fear and pain....his wonderful owner was just overcome with worry. And yes, he had serious money issues. I tried to let him know that it wasn't likley going to be an easy fix, even with all the money in the world. His owner hated seeing his friend hurting so much. He was a beloved family member for over 12 years. At least I knew I could help with that.

"Grieve not, nor speak of me with tears, but laugh and talk of me as if I were beside you.... I loved you so-- 'twas Heaven here with you." (Isla Paschal Richardson).

Not an hour later we met Peanut, a bouncy, silly little 7 week old Cocker Spaniel puppy. She was full of life, licking everyone who got close to her, wiggling all over the place. What a ball of joy! She has a great family who really loves her...what a lucky puppy. How in the world can you go from such gut-wrenching agony to such happy, happy joy in such a short amount of time and not think you have a split personality or something?

We are going to have a staff meeting soon to try to help our team deal with some of these issues that are becoming more frequent in this economy. "Compassion fatigue" is a real phenomenon in the health care industry, and I want to try and protect my big-hearted staff from experiencing it. I have to let them know that they can't care more for a pet than the owner does, as hard as that sounds. We also can't judge people who don't do all the recommended diagnostics and treatments for their pets at the time they bring them in. We don't know what their reasons are for declining the recommendations. If the staff want to take on the costs of treating a specific animal once in awhile, I will support their efforts, as we did for Lucy, the parvo dog. But it just can't happen every day, unfortunately. We have a business to run, and their salaries to pay. People usually get into the veterinary field because they genuinely love animals, but it just isn't enough.

Yuck, I don't want this blog to be a big downer, but it seems I picked a crummy time in the lives of many of our clients to start writing about the day to day happenings in a veterinary hospital. Hopefully there will be lots more entries about critters like little Peanut in the future.

Peace,
DrReneigh