More of why

I need to come home and bang my head on the wall.

Middle aged toy breed dog presents for dental.  Horrific dental disease present and he loses all but two teeth.  Upon hearing this, the owner (who is somewhere between a backyard breeder and a puppy mill-obviously not a client of mine) laughs and responds with "well I knew it was bad."

First of all-it's not funny that you let your dog suffer for years and now it has to live half it's life without teeth.  Second of all....well, see above.  There really isn't anything else to say.

Two teenage girls walk in with a sick puppy and no appointment.  One barely speaks during the whole exam. The other can only be bothered to answer in between texting, seemed irritated at basic questions like has he had any vaccines or deworming, and seemed unconcerned that the answer to these questions was no even though the littermate died of parvo.  They eventually left and we started treating the puppy for...surprise...parvo.

At the other clinic we are treating three different dogs for broken legs.  One of them has TWO broken legs. All were hit by cars or some similar trauma due to not being properly confined in a fence.  ALL three dogs have fractures that need to be plated, pinned or in some way surgically repaired.  NONE of the owners have money for this.  Thus, they are all being treated with splints and "hope."  Two of the three let them out in the rain and got the splints wet.  One is not keeping the dog confined and he removed his own splints which the owner attempted to rewrap.

Owner presents young lab mix with a history of "eating everything," for a few days of vomiting followed by several days of not eating and extreme lethargy.  I finally convinced them to do some diagnostics and based on the history and x-rays I was very suspicious of a foreign body.  I wanted to hospitalize the dog and do a barium series in the morning to either confirm or negate my theory but naturally they spent all their money saving their other puppy who had parvo and didn't have any left for this dog.  I did convince them to at least come back in first thing in the morning to take one more x-ray and see if anything had changed.  About mid-morning we called to see why they hadn't come in.  Seems her husband had the car and she was home alone with a small child and a dog in desperate need of medical care and no transportation.  Seems like a good plan huh?  I presume the child is being exposed to every parasite under the sun since these dogs obviously receive no preventive health care.

Two momma cats and their eleven kittens were left in a box outside the clinic this week.

Sometimes I just want to work in a factory.