By PBF Comics

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

Reading between the lines I’m pretty sure the owner’s complaint was just that she had to pay money, since she clearly expected the owner of the other dog in the fight to reimburse her bill and only complained after that didn’t happen. Also it was a little over $400, which in context of vet bills in Australia for an emergency stitch up under sedation, is distinctly on the cheaper side.

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.

She didn’t just leave one bad review. She started a whole twitter account and crusade against the clinic and that behavior, coupled with the clinic deciding they needed to fire her as a client, would make me very wary.

I saw similar comments saying “so what? She complained? That happens all the time”. Correct, but one article is not going into the nitty gritty of what went down.

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.

I saw a big outpouring of gratitude for this practice from other veterinary professionals to have gone this far and take it on legally. Its nice to see that clients can’t always get away with what they think they can and veterinary professionals don’t always have to stay silent and not engage.

Also “I’ve seen plenty of nasty reviews” should not be like… A chill thing? The routine abuse of veterinary professionals shouldn’t actually be par for the course. It shouldn’t be normal for ANY profession.

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.

This woman is an especially bad case, yes. But we also need to stop normalising the horrible ways veterinary professionals are treated, especially when it comes to public shaming on the internet. Hell, the way we treat everyone on the internet needs to change. But we really need to stop telling our vets that abuse is fine because it happens so often.

Lol for example

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.

That’s the stage we’re at. Where a client can literally call to complain that they shouldn’t have to abuse staff to get an non urgent appointment, at a time when we’re only seeing emergencies, because their every need should be seen to at a drop of a hat.

Have you guys seen that dog skull Skulls Unlimited just posted on their FB page? I’ve never seen anything like it. Worst osteosarcoma I’ve ever seen by leaps and bounds. Poor pup. It honestly looks like a skull from one of the dog mimics in The Thing.

Absolutely incredible specimen but holy shit is it horrific.

A brief twitter insight into how the veterinary world is feeling during COVID.

“Another soul-crushing aspect of the job that most other health professionals don’t have to deal with, veterinarians say, is constantly being asked to perform services or give out medications for free and then being cyberbullied or harassed if they don’t.”

Molecular embroidery!

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

az abszolút instantfaló

scientist voice: today i will be a dick to this cricket 

The phrase “exposed to this spider torment” will haunt me

Coronavirus and Animals

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.

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.

Keep reading

Reports are in that the single dog which tested positive for the virus causing COVID-19 has died, but this is NOT cause for alarm.

So while this might hit the news, and potentially irresponsible media reporting, it’s still really zero concern.

Updates as of 1st of April 2020, and these are NOT April Fools related in any way.

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.

Mostly to ensure there wont be any sort of animal/wildlife reservoir for COVID-19 to hide in when we do look at getting it under control or eradicated.

Updates as of 9th April 2020

Starting to get a little wary of the feline situation.

Domestic cats:

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.

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)

The safest place for your pets is in lockdown/isolation with you, treat them like an extension of yourself and don’t let them go roaming the neighborhood or licking strangers hands.

"I give my dog bones all the time!"

look at me

NO BONES

"But I've never had issues with-"

NO FUCKING BONES

Write your clinical notes like they're going to sue you

And write your warning notes on the client on a separate screen or level like a staff member won’t check the notes before printing them out in their entirety and handing them over to the client.