booprenorphine

There’s a little nugget of justice that will hopefully make people think carefully about letting loose on social media.

Well, ‘client from hell’ is a possibility.

It was mentioned in the article that the vet clinic sent this woman a letter advising her that ‘unfortunately they would be unable to provide her veterinary care in the future’.

Those letters are basically “Go away and never come back” in polite terms, and they’re very rarely used. You get disgruntled and rude clients all the time, and usually let it slide, they pay their bills and you just hope they don’t come in often. But the ‘unable to provide you veterinary services in the future’ letters are usually reserved for people who have abused the staff, are a liability to have on premises, or otherwise so terrible that you need to make sure they don’t come back.

As drferox said, she was essentially fired as a client. That is not all that common, in the grand scheme of things. It should probably happen more, to be frank, but it doesn’t.

As said above, she created a whole crusade to name and shame this veterinary pracfice, and considering most practices are advised legally to not respond to social media abuse, it likely became a very toxic one-sided event.

There’s a reason why veterinarians have one of the highest rates of suicide out of any profession. It has become a cultural thing for the staff at vet clinics to be punching bags for every frustrated client. And then because it happens so often, we’re told to just move on because it’s “normal”. We’re told we can only stop it when it’s dedicated abuse accounts bad.

The other day we had a client legitimately complain because they “had to raise their voice on the phone in order to get an appointment”.

They’ll get a very blunt response from management but it doesn’t sound like they’ll be fired from our practice.

Molecular embroidery!

Photosystem I, Cytochromse b6f, Photosystem II, and ATP synthase from the light dependent photosynthesis bag

Pain relief is extremely important! From simply an ethical standpoint all animals should be released of pain. From a scientific standpoint not treating pain causes lots of problems: weight loss, immune system compromise, slower wound healing, behavioral problems, cognitive decline, increased risk of chronic pain, and more.

Don’t ever send me stuff like this again, I’m going to just delete it in the future because I’m sick of it. 

These sorts of asks are just excuse after excuse. Your neighbourhood isn’t magically immune to disease, predators, wildlife, cars, other humans, dogs ect. even if you think it is. Asks like these just feel very much like you’re trying to get me to say you’re not a bad pet owner for letting your cat out so you can feel less guilty. I’m not going to enable that! 

Instead I can lead you to lots of great guides on how to transition your outdoor cat into an indoor one: 

Transitioning your cat from an outdoor cat to an indoor cat.

How to turn an outdoor cat into an indoor cat in a painless way

I want to start keeping my cat indoors. How do I adjust an outdoor cat to containment to my property?

Turn an Outdoor Cat into an Indoor Cat

There’s a lot of talk about Coronavirus at the moment, and a lot of misinformation in these early days while data is still being gathered, so lets clear some things up.

There is more than one coronavirus. Coronavirus is a family, there’s a bunch of them, and many have been well known for a jolly long time. 

COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) is the illness caused by SARS-CoV-2, it’s relatively new and it’s what we’re all worried about. 

The COVID-19 virus was detected in one, single dog in Hong Kong, owned by a human who was infected with the virus. This dog continued to have low levels of the virus detectable in its mouth for several days, never showed any signs of clinical disease, and so far (March 12th local time) has not demonstrated a serological response. 

So it appears that while COVID-19 can exist in dogs, if it does so it is the dog getting infected from its human, and there is no evidence that they then transmit the illness on to other humans. Think of the dog’s mouth like unwashed human hands - the virus can be there, but hasn’t actually infected the hands.

Current advice is to keep suspect pets with their owners if they are in self-quarantine, and wash your hands after handling. Also, don’t let your pets lick your face if you have any cold or flu symptoms.

More info below cut, including other species.

The dog never showed any symptoms despite being carefully watched.

They repeatedly tested negative for days before release, and continued to show now symptoms.

They were 17 years old, which is an advanced age for any dog, even a pomeranian.

The Hong Kong dog did have evidence of antibodies to COVID-19, though never any symptoms and never any evidence that it was capable of transmitting it.

There is one case of a cat in Belgium that has tested positive for the COVID-19 virus and is unwell with both respiratory and gastrointestinal signs. This is still early days and waiting for more info, but it was owned by a COVID-19 infected owner and appears to have picked up the infection from the owner in close contact.

The virus can experimentally replicate in the nose of ferrets. There is no known natural occurrence of this so far, but if you experimentally squirt the virus up ferret noses it’s quite capable of replicating there, and their tonsils. Not a peer reviewed study, because peer reviews take time but worthy of a ‘watch this space’ flag when dealing with ferrets owned by infected people.

The above study is small and not peer reviewed, but suggests while cats and ferrets have some susceptibility, dogs are less susceptible, and pigs and poultry are very resistant. However, when you consider the sheer numbers of domestic pets in contact with hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 cases worldwide, the risks from animals is infinitesimally low and no evidence yet that they can transmit, though some may potentially be able to be infected by humans.

Just keep washing your hands, and don’t let pets lick your face. The numbers are still incredibly low in the real world (Three. There are three cases.) but we are watching this space.

Starting to get a little wary of the feline situation.

Domestic cats:

Experimentally infected cats might be able to shed enough virus so that virus particles are detectable in adjacent cats who were not experimentally infected.

This is why there are recommendations to keep your cats indoors during the pandemic. (should be always, but especially now) Treat them like an extended family member or part of your house, only you can’t disinfect them if they bring viral particles inside.

SARS, which is related but distinct, was detected in an outbreak in cats in 2003. There was thought to be no cat-to-human transmission, but thought the cats contracted the virus from human contact, or contact with human garbage.

In addition to the Belgian cat mentioned in the previous update, one additional cat in Hong Kong has tested positive for viral detected, though has no symptoms at this stage.

Naturally occurring infections in cats continues to appear exceedingly rare, but good advice is to keep your cats home with you, do not care for them directly if you have respiratory symptoms, and do not pet strange cats while outside.

AVA summary with relevant links here.

In addition, blood sampling of cats in Wuhan, while no disease in the cats was reported, suggests that ~14% of them had specific, effective antibodies for neutralizing COVID-19, which did NOT cross-react to the normal feline coronaviruses. This suggests that COVID-19 can enter cats, but not that they are likely to become unwell or that they shed it. This is also a preliminary report, not a peer reviewed study so should be considered with caution.

Big Cats

There is a case of a tiger in a Bronx zoo having both respiratory symptoms and testing positive to COVID-19. I have been trying to wait for more information before commenting, though additional information hasn’t been forthcoming yet.

Multiple big cats at the zoo are showing symptoms, but only one has been tested to date because testing them required general anaesthesia and is a risk to both patient and staff.

It’s thought an asymptomatic keeper is the cause of the infection, however this is currently not verified and New York is a bit of a COVID-19 hot spot right now.

Keepers should not have direct contact with the big cats, but viral particles may have gotten in on equipment, food etc. Or, more concerning, potential transmission breathing the same air for several minutes in face-to face contact from several feet away and through a barrier. How the infection occurred is not currently clear.

If multiple big cats are affected, this looks suspicious for cat-to-cat transmission of the virus between the tigers and lions.

And in general IDEXX is developing a commercial COVID-19 test for domestic pets, have processed ‘thousands of samples from the USA and South Korea’ and… haven’t actually found a positive yet. They are expanding their sample collection. (Link, about halfway down page under drop down options)

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