Appalachia Is Devastated. Towns I Loved, Towns I Visited All The Time, Are Gone. Not Damaged, GONE. They

Actual Conversation Today Between BoyToy and I:

Me: 😷 I wanna snuggle

BoyToy: Not happening.

Me: I know 🥺

BoyToy: You got ADv and I got strep. What kinda bioweapon you trying to create?? 😂

Me: With you? The kind USAMRID would lock up. 🥹👉👈

Him: 🤣🤣🤣 Go back to sleep, I'll see you when we're both healthy.

People tell me my pets are skinny all the time, and keep in mind, my dogs come with me to work... In the clinic... My dogs are both easily 5/9 BCS dogs, with my Terrier being a 3/5 MCS (average pet muscling), and my Malinois being a 4-5/5 MCS (basically the maximum muscling you can achieve in a dog)

While I don't think everyone should maintain their dogs the way my mal looks, they absolutely should be maintaining the way my terrier looks, he is lean, healthy, and decently muscled.

I work in rehabilitation, and I see a LOT of CCL tears and Spinal discomfort, while Genetics and conformation play a big role in that, the biggest factor that you as an owner have? Is keeping them at an appropriate weight. I've had one patient who did a full CCL tear while at a healthy weight, and that dog also didn't do a partial tear or full tear on the opposite leg as we worked on healing the first one. She was also a performance dog who had this tear occur halfway through an agility course. Meanwhile, I almost exclusively see full tears when patients are above a 7/9 BCS and they're almost always accompanied by a partial tear or full tear in the opposite leg within 6 months.

Their recovery takes significantly longer, their prognosis is worse, and they often have even more issues come up in their spines, shoulders, and elbows during recovery because they have too much weight to effectively support on 4 legs, let alone 3 or 2 legs, resulting in secondary and tertiary injuries.

Obese pets aren't cute, and obese pets have worse health outcomes. Talk to your vet about your pet's BCS score and, if your vet evaluates it, MCS (Muscle Condition Score) and honestly discuss what the pet is eating, including toppers, treats, supplements, and actual volume of food. Also, you can use this calculator to calculate how much of your food you should be feeding as a baseline (not just trusting the bag amounts)

Pets are very commonly overweight. And very commonly the reason given will be ‘because my parents feed them more than they’re supposed to, and they won’t listen when I tell them to stop’.

And I sympathise. I understand. Parents are hard, especially when they still think of you as ‘their kid’ and not ‘grown adult with autonomy’. Getting your parent to change their behavior is very difficult.

My two cats have a scoop in their bag of food, and they get one scoop each for dinner. It’s a very simple system: 1 scoop 1 cat. If I notice they’re getting a bit podgy then I make the scoop a bit concave. If they’re looking a bit light, I give them a little extra breakfast. But dinner is always the same, never more than one scoop.

But last night I watch my mother (the very same woman that scolded me for my weight since I was ten) decide to feed the cats for me while I finished washing the dishes.

The cats follow her, mewing pathetically, as she carries the food bag to their bowls. And I watch, as she’s talking to me and making eye contact, while she gives one cat a slightly heaped scoop of food, and then the other.

And then, dear reader, she replaces the scoop into the bag, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world, and proceeds to give each cat an additional handful of food.

I was astounded. I was politely mortified that you just increased the cats’ meals by at least 80%. No wonder they’ve been podgy!

We had a polite but firm discussion about how that is a measured scoop in the bag, and have-you-been-feeding-that-much-the-whole-time, but I do not think she has listened. I think I will need to gently ban her from feeding the cats.

It's Tuesday and I'm already 21 hours in 🥲 but patients need care so... what is one to do?

You sacrifice some other area or combine areas. You integrate your social life into working out or eating, or, if you're a fool, into your work life.

how the hell do people work full time AND work out. and also eat. i feel like a dvd player

The best breeders I know do 5 things:

1. Deworm and get Veterinarian Administered Vaccines for their puppies

2. Health Test all of their dogs both genetically and through programs like PennHip or OFA and have standards from these organizations they expect their breeding stock to meet (Good -> Excellent for OFAs generally)

3. Do tons of early neurological stimulation for their puppies and are working with their puppies daily from the time they are born

4. Include anti-breeding contracts on their produced dogs that are "Pet" quality, and have very strict breeding contracts for their dogs of greater than pet quality (usually enforced via co-ownership) BUT may not specify Spay/Neuter in their contracts. I'm staunchly against early spay neuter as someone who works in rehabilitation and general practice because I see the long term effects of early spay neuter on the daily. They also tend to leave spay neuter in their contracts to the best judgement of the dog's primary DVM.

In the practice where I'm employed, we don't sterilize earlier than 6 months unless there are extenuating circumstances. We were also one of the first clinics in the area to adopt Balance.it fresh food feeding programs and recipes, the first to refuse convenience euthanasia (we still do B.Es), and the first to refuse the declawing of cats.

We've also limited our crop and dock procedures. We've done 10 medically necessary docks in the decade I've worked here all of which were due to injury, mutilation, or disease processes. With 3 ear amputations due to tumors or significant injury. We also refer our cosmetic crops to another doctor for clients who would otherwise get backyard crop jobs.

Your breeder should not be pushing against core vaccines and monthly preventatives. They also absolutely should not be pushing against BOAS surgeries, especially on pet dogs (and a lot of the breeders I know who push against BOAS are the ones whose dogs got them anyway.)

why do breeders push against vaccines and spay/neuter? ive never understood this

The cynical answer, that i think is the truth deep under the anti-vax rhetoric, is that it's a way to save money and excuse the fact that they are selling puppies that have never been vaccinated or dewormed, despite being 8 to 12 weeks old. Exams and age appropriate shots and dewormers eat into their profit margin. Maligning these and building distrust of veterinary staff helps hide their shitty breeding practices, and gives them a somewhat captive consumer population for the homeopathic bullshit and supplements many of them also sell. And quite a few will say that if you get them these vaccines or dewormers that it will make them *more* prone to getting the disease or conditions like epilepsy. This tells me that that have parvo on their property and shitty genetic lines.

Some breeders may truly believe all their bullshit, but the person they learned the bullshit from? Knows it was bullshit and just wanted more money and control.

*EDIT* missed the s/n part, but that goes back in to building distrust of vets to keep control over their customers along with not understanding the studies.

And it's also a great way to excuse shitty hips or elbows if you can blame early spay/neuter.

The Beguiled, dir. Sofia Coppola, cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd (2017)

Healthcare shouldn't have a weight minimum or weight maximum, just because a condition goes hand in hand with too much or too little weight does not mean that condition should be ignored in patients with the opposite presentation. I.e. a PCOS patient who is underweight shouldn't be having their PCOS symptoms ignored (and also shouldn't be told to lose even more weight), and an obese patient with anorexia shouldn't have their disordered eating ignored either, especially in cases of rapid weight loss in order to qualify for surgical procedures and the cardiac damage anorexia does no matter the current weight of the patient

healthcare should not have a weight limit.

Not only was I at the club... I was a regular and my bartenders knew my name and special ordered a 0 proof gin for me when I stopped drinking for a year.

No nuance