Emergency!!

Sorry the posts have been slow.. spring and summer is so busy that it's hard to take a shower sometimes let alone post to the blog. It's been mostly enjoyable as most of the things we see this time of year are routine. It's nice to see horses happy, healthy, and not in distress once in a while!

I recently saw an emergency that was a pretty common laceration; a horse reared in the trailer and hit its head, cutting it open. Usually these are ugly (there's not a whole lot between skin and skull and when people see bone they FREAK OUT). Even if you can see bone, it's really not that big of deal.

At any rate, this horse was bleeding and his head was ripped open. I called the next few appointments to reschedule so that I could go see this appointment-- mostly to subdue the overly panicked people. I was an hour away and on my way. However, the people needed to call me 3 times to ask where I was. SERIOUSLY?! I just rearranged my whole day. Would you like me to time travel too?

Long story short, I got there, fixed the horse, it was fine. Rah rah rah.

Days have been too long...

Kind of Psychic

Ok so my premonition was about 80% right. The foal I was talking about was born at 10:45pm on Wednesday night and the entire labor was as easy as they come. (Yahoo!) Everything was so easy that they didn't even have to call me one time. The baby was a big, chestnut with a big white blaze, but it was a colt. Dangit! That's the only part I got wrong! Oh well...I'm very happy it all went well for them. They are super excited too! I should have taken a picture!! Perhaps a picture will be soon to come.

Oh, also someone told me to "Kiss my ass!" today because I wouldn't treat his foundered horse for free. I was also told I don't love animals. This guy was so ridiculous that it was actually hard not to laugh, but still... seriously? He called me Wednesday and proclaimed his horse was foundered and he had no money to treat it-- couldn't even afford the $48 farm call. I tried to advise him the best I could over the phone and told him that I'd call him Friday (today) to see how everything is going. At 10:30am this morning he called my cell phone while I was in an appointment and left a nasty message saying, "You said you would call today, and you HAVE NOT!". Well, being as it was only 10:30am, I fully intended on calling him when I wasn't in an appointment. However, after that message, I thought I'd probably drag it out to the end of the day. By noon he left another irritating message, so I called him back so I wouldn't be continuously harassed throughout the rest of the day. Then he told me again he had no money and his horse wasn't getting better (founder is a fairly intensive, long, drawn out, expensive and chronic disease. I didn't think it would fully resolve in 48 hours.) I explained to him what the fees were and why they were in place, then he exclaimed "Horse shit!". Of course that escalated to the "You don't love animals, blah blah blah".

People. If I have to pay for your animal's medical care by giving my services for free, than I obviously "love animals" way more than you. Idiot.

Selling drugs or selling our souls?

So--to all 2 people who read this blog, what do you think about vets selling drugs?

Perhaps this is more of problem in the equine part of the industry, but commonly I am asked to sell drugs to people who like to "play" veterinarian. They are diagnosing and treating their own horses. One guy today was injecting his own joints! He wanted me to sell him all the necessary drugs, sedation, and syringes for him to do it. Maybe I'm just being a prick, but if I'm going to do that, then I'm going to inject the joint too-- then at least I know it's being done correctly, humanely, and cleanly. Furthermore, if there are complications (let's say at 12am, because they're never at normal times), do I have any obligation to help these people? I feel sorry for the horse, but that puts me in a tough position.

Sorry, but I paid $130,000 to learn how to do that, I'm not going to sell you drugs so that you can do it on your own. Don't chastise me for being "young" and "scared". Don't misinterpret it--I'm just being ETHICAL.

Wowza

With the sudden increase in appointments seen, also comes a sudden increase in "What the heck?!" moments; sometimes I have multiples a day even. Here are just a collection of short rants to my most favorite people:

1) No you can't be seen today. Especially when you call at 3:00pm demanding your horse be vaccinated before 5:00pm. Please don't give me attitude when I schedule you for the next day and tell you your Coggins won't come back for a week unless you pay double to have it overnighted. You have a YEAR to get these things done. It's not my emergency when you wait until the day before you need them.

2) Don't call my personal cell phone 5+ times then leave a message saying "So sorry to bother you, but..." You ARE bothering me. You're calling my personal cell phone. You're calling my personal cell phone 5 or more times.

3) When you page a veterinarian for an emergency at 12:05am, please do not keep me on the phone for 30 minutes talking about your chronically foundered horse's life story. He's foundered again because you gave him unlimited access to green grass. Yes I am sure. No I do not want to come out at 12:30am to come see him. I can put you on the schedule for tomorrow morning (or is it this morning?). No, you don't want that?? Ok. Then why'd you call the other vet in the practice the next day saying you'd "rather have a male vet" while giggling like a total creep. Wow.

4) I can only get to emergencies as fast as I can drive. When I say that I'll be there in 30 minutes, don't say "That's not fast enough!" Would you like me to jump in my personal helicopter?? Lord knows I'd much rather be sleeping than seeing your horse at 11pm on a Wednesday, but I'm still doing it. Don't be a total jerk.

5) When I see your downed horse that is a BCS of 2/9 and is so dehydrated that its eyes are sunk in, don't waste your breath trying to convince me that you take care of it. Obviously, you don't.


Among these righteous, annoying, and downright rude people, there are plenty of clients who are polite, kind, and altogether wonderful. Thank God for those people, otherwise I'd be quite bitter towards the world in about 3-4 workings days.

Writing Letters

Even in my short career, there have been many times people have asked me to write a letter: to describe a prepurchase exam, to describe something to a farrier, to state the condition of humane cases, etc. So when a client called our practice wanting us to write a letter, it didn't throw up any red flags. However when I arrived on the farm, it was clear to me that this was something different...

As the first order of business, the owner wanted me to palpate a mare that was VERY pregnant. They decided that she was not in fact pregnant because she "shoulda had it by now". Ok. Not the soundest logic, but whatever. I stuck my arm in about wrist deep and confirmed that she was indeed very pregnant. (The fetus was large to say the least.) What was the most striking about the mare is that she was extremely thin. (2-3/9 BCS). This is what they wanted me to write a letter about. Apparently someone had called the Humane Society about this mare due to her condition. They wanted me to write a letter stating she was healthy. I told them I'd write them a letter, but it would not say what they probably wanted it to say.

After talking with them, I found out that this mare (a small Quarter Horse type mare) was bred to a Percheron "by accident". They apparently rescued (I use this term loosely) this stallion as a weanling; it is now 7 years old. They were unaware that it was a stallion and put the mare in the same pasture with it. Apparently they thought the testicles of stallions just fell off at some point during their young life; thus, magically rendering them sterile.

So writing this all down is filling me with rage all over again. At any rate, we had a long discussion about proper feeding, how much hay is adequate, improper breeding, and the birds and the bees of the horse world. These people were just plain ignorant, and unfortunately not interested in learning anymore.

Needless to say, I didn't write any letter. It's better that way.

Back to Work

It was a good weekend. I was not on call and in the next state over showing my own horse. I very rarely get to escape from it all, so it was VERY NICE to do something for me, to not evaluate any other horses, and do something I love. (I keep it a close secret that I'm a horse vet at these shows so I don't get tricked into working on my 'vacation'!) I have a Reining horse who is my pride and joy. I saved up all the money I could to buy her and she is just everything I expected and more.

This is only my second show season showing in the NRHA (National Reining Horse Association) so I'm still not that great at it. Luckily, my horse is really good at it, and often does the right thing even though I consistently tell her to do the wrong thing. She is saintly most of the time! I am learning and she is patient.

This weekend was exciting because we did well enough to win our first NRHA check! Woohoo! The run where we won a check wasn't very good. Lucky for us, everyone else in the class did poorly too--and we just did a little less worse than the rest.

It's always so hard to go back to work after weekends like this that make me forget about real life. First step is to call back all those people who called my cell phone and left non-emergency messages over the weekend. I'm happy to help, but some people just abuse the service of free advice. I'm thinking I'm going to change my cell phone number to a 1-900 number so that they have to input a credit card number before they talk to me and then I charge by the minute. :) I think it would be a great idea!

"But I want more!"

So the area of our practice isn't the most affluent in the country. Most of our clientele have horses as pets to enjoy the countryside with; not as prize winning hunter/jumpers or dressage horses. Most equine veterinarians hate these type of practices. Don't we all want to work on movie star's horses and Olympic athletes?? However, I don't think there are enough high-profile horses to employ every equine veterinarian. Instead of being sad about the situation, I chose to embrace it.

As a service to our youth clients who are often strapped for cash, (I see many 'a 4-H families making many sacrifices just so their kids can have horses) I created a one day event to serve as a "vaccine clinic" for horses that was targeted to those 4-H and FFA kids. People can bring their horses on a Saturday, and we will vaccinate them at a reduced cost from the normal for one day only, and they have to bring them to us.

Today I get two phone calls regarding the vaccine clinic: one guy who was so excited about it, he had to call to confirm it was actually occuring, and then a lady. Oh lady...you are exactly what infuriates me. This lady calls to see if we could sell her additional vaccines so that she could take them home to vaccinate her own horses. After telling her that that was not the purpose of the vaccine clinic, she attempted to negotiate with me, "If I bring 3 horses in person, can you sell me 2 sets of vaccines for horses at home?" "If I bring all 5 horses will you give me a quantity discount?"

Let me make this easy for you. NO. Bring the horses or don't get any vaccines.

You try to do something nice, and people just want more and more. Ugh. Note to self: don't do nice things anymore.