Veterinary Detachment

Some doctors seem detached from reality at times. They don’t quite get how the real world and life’s obligations can get in the way of always thinking about the ideal way to live.

Veterinarians are worse, especially when it comes to applying medicine. Yes, they can apply the most obnoxious treatment to an animal at their office with grace and ease. First, the animal is at the vet’s office and they know it. Fear and a slight case of petrification are strategic advantages to the vet who is about to squirt pink liquid down the throat of a cat. second, they handle animals all day. Worse, they handle scared animals who see the vet as some sort of Gitmo interrogation officer and are used to learning all the tricks. third, they have backup during the application of said torture. If the pet’s owner can’t help, there are assistants available to come in and hold the flailing beast down.

Invariably, they send you and your scruffy beat home with a bottle of pink stuff and an eye dropper, or a tube of goo and your own finger. “Administer three times a day” doesn’t seem too bad until the first time you try to do it on your own, and have a new found appreciation for what “holy war” really means.

Squirting an eye dropper of pink stuff into the wild toadblock or smearing goo on the underside of an Okra eye (Chinchilla) just doesn’t happen without a full on melee breaking out. When two of us held the toadblock down and finally got a nice squirt of pink junk in him, He promptly spit once, shook his head wildly and ran off leaving us looking like Hello Kitty met Bukake Champions of 2007. When goo was finally smeared under the eye of a struggling chinchilla being held by the tail upside down, the poor thing ran in her cage and began rubbing her cheek on every surface she could find including the cage, wood ledge, pumice stone, grassy mat, luffa, floor, water bottle nozzle, wood chunk, cuddle buddy, cardboard tube, chew carrot, and wall. We’re pretty sure she ended up with a lot less goo on her cheek than every inanimate object in her cage.

Vet’s, remember that we’re pet owners. We spoil our pets, we love our pets, but we simply are not equipped to engage in outright sparring to force feed the creatures the medicine they so desperately need, but so passionately hate.