Ah, life

[cjsmith]

If I ever own a dog who outweighs me, he will be trained. He will know (and respond properly to) at minimum COME, SIT, and STAY. Heck, he can be shaky on STAY as long as he knows the other two.

Saw two different pets today who were attacked by other animals in their households. One is going to heal, though slowly. The other was DOA.

In the clinic's computer system we keep track of all kinds of info about the animals, whether medically relevant (age, sex) or not particularly (color). We had a tortoise in today. Just guess what color he is.

I gave my first vaccination (supervised of course). Remember those tiny tiny puppies? They're a LOT bigger now, and twice as heartstoppingly cute. I gave two of them their distemper vaccines. The whole staff was joking around about how we had to keep an eye on each other and make sure that the client got all five of her puppies back.

My heart goes out to one couple who are facing the hardest decision a pet owner ever has to face. I don't yet know what they will choose to do, but finances might turn out to be the overriding factor. I feel awful for them, just awful.

Yep, you guessed right: the tortoise is listed as tortoiseshell.

Comments

[evilegg.livejournal.com]

Holy smokes.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

It's possible that the rat was not a pet, but food for a reptile. So he wouldn't have been the gentle type. But still!

[evilegg.livejournal.com]

Yeah- I figured it was all part of a larger herpe family.

[steph-2012.livejournal.com]

A friend with a boa put a dietary rat in the tank with the boa... in time for the boa to go into hibernation. The rat snacked on the boa till the friend discovered the problem. The boa eventually healed, but it just makes you think...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, live feeding has its drawbacks. :-/

[racerxmachina.livejournal.com]

I've seen frightened mice really hurt the heck out of wild snakes we captured to study in biology classes. The teacher put the mouse in with the snake, explaining that the snake was hungry and how the snake would attack and eat the mouse. We then saw the mouse beat the crap out of the poor snake. After a minute of this, some of the softer-hearted students (like me) asked the teacher if we couldn't please take the mouse out of the enclosure.