Fiontan

So then a nurse comes over and goes "Okay, I've got some stickers I'll put on your things so we know they're yours" and I'm like "OK cool" so she puts a sticker on my coat and stickers on my bags of clothes and then she turns to Shamu and I'm like "oh I guess he gets a sticker too"

But no. She pulls out a hospital bracelet that's an exact copy of mine and slaps it on his tail, like so:

And i was delighted by this, so I took a picture to send to my friends, who were equally delighted, and were cracking me up with their reactions (like so:)

Anyway, they take me back and put me under, and when I awake groggily a few hours later it takes me a minute to get my bearings, so I don't notice Shamu at first. But then I realize he's tucked up next to me in the gurney, so I grab him, and my hand touches gauze.

And I'm like "huh?" so I look at him and I realize

@thatlittleegyptologist

If your pet has a surgery, and is sent home with a "cone of shame"... LEAVE THE FUCKING CONE ON.

We did not put that cone on to torment your pet. We put that cone on so that your pet's insides stay inside. Yes, I know they're running into things and look very very sad. I am not being heartless when I say "I don't care. The cone stays on." I'm trying to keep your pet safe.

We've had 5 different clients take the cone off "for just a minute" in the last 2 weeks. One incision we were able to restaple. One we knocked out to resuture, which the owner had to pay for. Two we are currently managing as open wounds because the owners took the cone off a second time.... and one had to go to emergency to have her guts put back into her body after they were dragging on the bottom of the crate ("but it seemed uncomfortable to sleep in...")

In the VERY VERY RARE occasion that you need to temporarily take the cone off for the pet to eat or drink properly you must be actively staring at your pet the whole time the cone is off. Not just in the same room. Not on your phone. Not cooking. Not "turned around for a moment". Actively staring like you're a little kid who just found the most fascinating bug to ever cross your path.

1. Biden’s allowance of aggressive pursuit of anti-trust practices is exactly why this is happening. Not only are they doing what previous administrations couldn’t or didn’t do, but they’re seemingly casting a wider net on what is deemed “anti-competitive”. In this case, it’s information sharing between landlords. This leads into point #2.

2. In 2022 ProPublica published a story about RealPage, a company that operates a software used to set market prices for rentals. How it works is that landlords that use the software offer up the information they have about their local rental market, and then that information is shared with whomever else has the software and they adjust their prices accordingly.

The issue is that not everybody has access to the software, creating an unfair advantage. Unfortunately, when one property owner raises their prices, others are likely to follow suit, meaning that even if they don’t have access to the software, the prices still go up as a reaction to “market pricing”.

According to this politico article underneath, “While the RealPage probes could yield a traditional price-fixing lawsuit, they are also emblematic of the Justice Department’s increased focus on information-sharing agreements across the economy. Last year the antitrust division withdrew guidance giving safe harbors to certain information sharing in health care. And the sharing of anonymized data in the chicken industry is the focus of a separate DOJ antitrust case.”