Staranais

That's such a cool photo! :D

Maybe one of you choose the breed & the other choose the pup from the litter, or etc.

The most concerning part of the original article for me is that Mr Wirth isn't just against non-recovery surgeries - he says that's against students operating on live dogs at all before graduation. If he gets his way, that will be a huge problem for animal welfare, as students go off into the world with no real surgery experience at uni, and get let loose on people's pets and stock as soon as their boss decides they're ready (or in some cases, as soon as their boss just gets sick of supervising them?) It doesn't seem to me like Mr Wirth has thought that out well at all, it is bound to create less skilled surgeons and huge problems. I am quite sure that, given enough thought and resources, you could create a course that turns out good students without doing non-recovery surgery. But it is simply not at all appropriate to graduate a surgeon without them having operated on living flesh at all. It is a recipe for disaster. As for the non-recovery surgery itself, from having gone through the process, I don't think the desensitisation argument really makes too much sense. That is to say, I didn't like our non-recovery surgeries, and I'm really glad we did them on stock not on dogs since PTS dogs always makes me feel terribly sad. But the truth is that during the course we have to do far more upsetting things than PTS our non-recovery sheep. Non-recovery surgeries aren't the most distressing things we have to do, not by a long shot. Of course, the fact we see and do far worse things than non-recovery surgery doesn't automatically make it "OK" to do non-recovery surgery. But on the other hand, if someone is genuinely worried about vet students getting desensitised to suffering, I think it only makes sense that they should focus on removing the more distressing things from the curriculum - or more appropriately, remove them from practice and industry so we don't need to learn how to do them. I also wonder, if people are no longer allowed to use dogs for this, will we be allowed to use even dead pound dogs for dissection and practicing surgical techniques, as we currently do? The same ethical arguments apply. These dogs are unwanted, are going to be PTS as they have no homes, but at least their bodies do some good if we get to use them.

Basically, with dogs, I exposed her to lots of other dogs but tried to only let her play with rather boring dogs that would pretty much ignore her. If she looked like she was having much fun with another dog, I tried to lure her away with a toy & show her how much more fun I was. Pretty easy with a little dog that lived to chase and bite things. With stock & wildlife, never allowed her to chase, physically stopped her & gave her a verbal warning if she tried (and then again offered her a chance to earn a prey reward from me). You can never control entirely how a dog will turn out, a dog's final personality has a lot to do with their genetics, their very early socialisation, as well as incidents you can't control during their upbrining. But I'm pretty happy with how my girl turned out. She is good with other dogs, is pretty good with not touching stock or wildlife (not perfect though!) and has a great work ethic. I'd do pretty much the same with my next pup, I think.

I'd complain too, except that my girl perfectly fits her breed stereotype. Stupidly energetic? Check. Barks for hours? Check. Lives to chase and bite stuff? Check. :D

I have a custom made crate for my wagon. It fits the wagon well, I can take it out to use it as a regular crate if I like, and it comes apart into panels & collapses too. It wasn't cheap, though.

I was very careful to try to make sure my dog didn't have an overly high value for other dogs (or for chasing stock or wildlife) when raising her. She was not allowed to play with exciting dogs when she was growing up, although she met a fair amount of boring ones. However, now that she's an adult she plays with other dogs reasonably regularly, she meets people all the time, & she's my pet as well as my working buddy. Ideally, I would not want a working dog that had to be kept kenneled in order to work effectively. If a dog needs to be permanently isolated in order to be persuaded to work, I see that as a flaw in the dog. Perhaps it is just not suitable for the job you are trying to make it do.

Currently retraining as a veterinarian. Also currently training a wilderness search & rescue dog. I have very little free time!

Luckily, where I am, we do get to do supervised surgeries on the SPCA kitties and dogs (they come in once a week for desexing), we do get to do some supervised desexing and anaesthesia of pets, and if we're lucky and we impress the vets we work with, then we also usually also get to do further surgeries when we're "seeing practice" in our final year. So we get a lot of recovery surgical experience too. The non-recovery portion is only a very small fraction of the course (for me, I've participated in 3 sheep non-recovery surgeries, whereas there are probably going on fifty recovery dogs/cats/sheep/cattle I've operated on). I'm quite sure that you could design a curriculum that only included recovery surgeries and still turned out very good vets, but it's not as simple as just taking the non-recovery surgeries out of the curriculum and replacing them with a couple of extra routine spays, as these teach quite different things. However, I don't think you could design a good curriculum that included no dissections, and sadly, the dogs we dissect pose exactly the same ethical problem as non-recovery dogs do - they come from the pound as unwanted animals, and are PTS so we can learn from them.

I think a lot of breeds have stereotypes, either of the type of animal the dog will be, or the type of owners they attract.

I'm sorry your friend had that experience. They tell us to place a catheter first where possible (as Lucknow describes) to avoid missing the vein in front of the owner, & that's mostly what I've seen done, but I guess every vet has their own way of doing things.

We still do. They send us to special classes in school about how to stay positive & not kill ourselves. True story. wow! i didn't know that. is it because what vets see on a day to day basis? They don't really know. I personally think it's partly because it's a stressful degree and sometimes a stressful career (you see some terrible things, you keep some terrible hours if you're rostered on call, & the money isn't always all that great either). But I mostly think it's because we know how to put things down. A vet that wants to kill themselves gets the job done quickly and successfully. Sorry for the macabre OT.

We still do. They send us to special classes in school about how to stay positive & not kill ourselves. True story.

It's not so much a formal residency, as informal mentoring - most vets that employ new grads are pretty good at being there to give you guidance when you're doing things like a new surgery or you have an unusual or confusing case. Having said that, your boss isn't necessarily going to be there with you when you're the one rostered for after hours and a bloat or HBC comes in at 3am. And I have also heard complete horror stories such as new grads that were left completely alone in the clinic while the boss went away on holiday, in their first few weeks of practice, and just having to manage the best they could! But overall, most practices are pretty good at supporting new grads.

I don't like the PTS either, Leela. But attacking it at this end is the wrong end. I'd be very, very against this if the dogs were being bred & raised in order to be used this way. But if these dogs don't get used by the uni, that won't save them - they'll still get PTS at the pound. The problem is with the dogs ending up unwanted at the pound in the first place. Stopping the vet students using them before or after they are PTS just stops their deaths doing any good at all. Incidentally, are the people who really dislike this just as angry/upset about the vet students doing non recovery procedures on sheep and pigs? Sheep and pigs are PTS all the time on farms for fairly arbitrary reasons (in fact, of course, most pigs and sheep are bred only in order to be slaughtered!) Using these animals instead of dogs is perhaps one way for vet students to get most of the benefits, while keeping the public happy. And as I said, I was far happier using sheep than I would have been using dogs.

That is amazing!!! Good on you for acting so quickly! I probably would've run around in circles not knowing what to do!! And where did you find the pulse? Easiest to take the pulse inside the thigh, in the little depression in their groin. It's pretty obvious on a thin dog. You can also take it on the palm of their hand (i.e., where their palm would be if they were human, in that hollow beside their dew claw). You can also feel their heart beat directly on the left side of their sternum, under their left elbow.

We've had this debate here at least once before. So I'm not going to read through the entire thread before commenting, sorry. As most of you know I'm in my final year of veterinary science, which means that if all goes according to plan, I'm going to be let loose on people's pets in about 6 months. At my school, during our course, we dissect dead dogs from the pound (and other animals), do non-recovery procedures & surgeries on sheep, and do lots of recovery surgeries on dogs & other animals. The non-recovery surgeries are sad, but I also found them very, very valuable. They're different to recovery surgeries as you can simulate emergencies or procedures you don't often get to do on someone's pets. They're different to dissections, too - operating on a cadaver is nothing like doing surgery on a real, live patient. Nothing like it. They just can't be compared. I'm glad we didn't have to do these non-recovery surgeries on dogs as (rightly or wrongly), I personally find killing sheep far less upsetting than killing dogs. But ethically, so long as the dogs are destined to be PTS anyway, I see nothing wrong with people using them this way. It's no more painful for them, and no more scary for them, than being PTS in a regular way. If you're angry about this, I'd say save your anger for the people who are responsible for the dogs being abandoned in the pound in the first place. It would be a great day if we could no longer do this due to lack of unwanted dogs in pounds.

My dog didn't cuddle as a baby, I had to teach her how.

The heart thing sounds weird. But I don't think anything else sounds terribly excessive. Non-routine abdominal surgery is always going to be expensive, and it can be very expensive if the dog is particularly ill. It is a lot more than a routine spay, but a routine spay is also rather a different matter - firstly it's a routine surgery on a healthy patient, and secondly it doesn't usually make a profit for the clinic, in fact in some clinics spays actually make a loss (this is done firstly as a kind of loss leader as clients expect cheap spays, secondly to help control overpopulation by making spays accessible). They can't do that with all surgeries, though, or they'd go out of business pretty quickly. If he's worried about the charges, he could ask for a full breakdown of costs. It seems unusual that they've just listed "meds" on the invoice and not told him what the dog was given, for example (although there are a lot of drugs they could legitimately have given), so he could ask them to break that down a little further.

Double up!

Yup, if you don't like what you got, complain. It's your right as a consumer.

If he truly has IBD (not just a sensitive tummy) I'd be suggesting something hydrolysed like Hills z/d to see if you can get the disorder under control with no medication. Once the symptoms are under control, you can experiment with adding other foods back into the diet in a controlled fashion, to see what he can deal with. Your vet should discuss this with you at the time of IBD diagnosis, though.

So long as you're not using homeopathic treatments instead of vaccinating your young pups for Parvo, I won't argue. Homeopathy works wonders for conditions that tend to improve by themselves anyway. ETA, I also wouldn't personally vaccinate my dog for KC, except that it's required when I board her. To the OP, kennel cough can make a dog feel pretty miserable for a few weeks, but generally resolves by itself, although it can rarely lead to more severe complications, and can be more of an issue in dogs that are already immunocompromised or that have tracheal or lung problems to start with.

Oh ..... I think he'd be taking it in good spirit, just as I think it was intended. Good on the bloke. I agree, Leelaa17 .... heaven please forbid me to find myself and/or my dog in such a situation, but I'd like to think someone might guess how much my dog means to me and be willing to give him the kiss of life if he should need it. When I did my first aid course many moons ago, the first thing I thought of when they were teaching mouth to mouth was "geez, if I ever had to resuscitate my dog, there's a whole lot more mouth to cover than a human's!" LOL, hold the mouth closed & breath into the nose. However, the chest compressions (if the heart has stopped) are generally far more important to get in than the breaths are.

I can understand the need for budget ideas, but remember that if she gets caught by animal control after jumping the fence, getting her out of the pound could be very expensive too. Once they've learned to jump the fence, they'll do it any time they're in the least bit bored, simply because they've learned it's an option.