Dr Ferox's life as a veterinarian

Bunny (c) sarnibil1 of Flickr.com

There’s a couple of important things, dear reader, that I would like you to know about rabbit medicine.

• If you can’t fix a bunny for under $60, most people will put it to sleep instead
• Little bunnies are usually owned by little children, for some of which it is the first living thing they’ve truely cares for other than their family.
• Regardless of what the primary problem was, if it’s not something that’s an immediate threat to the bunny chances are the bunny now has Gut Stasis.
• Gut Stasis is what’s going to kill it.
• I can treat gut stasis. This involves force feeding bunny special food as often as possible.

Which is why it’s often difficult to see a sick bunny, even if you have a fairly good idea of what’s wrong.  Even if you don’t know what’s going on, it’s probably gut stasis.

And no parent is going to feed a baby bunny all through the night. They’ve had enough of that with their own child, the reason they have this stupid bunny in the first place. [Read more →]

Recently I spent some time at a veterinary conference, had a lot of fun, learned a lot of things and came home with a big bag of loot.

I’m in two minds about my bag of loot. On the one hand it’s always nice to receive free stuff as you walk around a hall filled with various stalls trying to sell you stuff (even if most of your free stuff consists of pens and post-it-notes), but on the other hand I try to remain at least a little cynical about all the information I’m given about “wonderful new product X”, particularly when there’s “wonderful new product Y” on the other side of the room.

I know corporate sponsorship is an issue in human medicine and pharmacies, and so I am mindful of it every time I go to work wearing a pair of socks with a particular brand emblazoned on their side, or use a pen with a particular logo on it, or amuse myself with an industry sponsored stress ball or Frisbee.

These events are useful for learning about new products, some of which we genuinely needed, but I am conscious of remaining impartial to brands and only using the one that’s best for the job. To be honest, picking which medication I prescribe sometimes just comes down to the weight of the patient!

But the whole concept of a conference is very useful for re-learning things, discussing difficult cases with somebody new and generally feeling less isolated in this generally fragmented profession.

But it is a bit weird when a ‘normal’ person decides that they get to come to some of our lectures too. [Read more →]

Some days when I am on call there are three voices in my head that respond to people’s problems.

Client: My rat is having trouble giving birth and has been going overnight.

Voice 1: Rat? WFT? I don’t know how to treat a birthing rat!

Voice 2: C’mon, she’s obviously really worried about it, otherwise she wouldn’t have rung the emergency service.

Voice 3: Now this we have to see.

[Read more →]