Shawn M. Finch, DVM

I wrote this mini-drama for Banfield Blog and they thought it was stupid.  It is!  But it is fun!  They wanted me to deal with the problem of limited resources in these economic times, and write to veterinarians.  My answer was focus on prevention, which is ALWAYS less expensive than treatment, and when treatment is needed, work with clients to make it happen.  This essay was meant to remind vets how EXCITING preventative care is because so many spectacular things get accomplished during what to us is a routine exam.

Banfield didn’t really say this essay was stupid.  They just wanted me to actually answer the question Kristi Reimer, the editor of Veterinary Economics, posed in Affordability vs. Excellence, Do Veterinarians Have to Choose? So I did.  Find it here.

But this Celebration of Preventative Care was more fun to write.  Next time your pet needs “just an exam” or “just preventative care” I hope you think of this and smile.

I Love to be Boring.  It is Very Exciting.

You have seen this case countless times, as have I. Your Pet Nurse hands you a medical file and yawns.  “Routine visit, Doc.” You see the Pet, sigh and move on to the next. It seems like it’s been forever since you actually saved a life.

Or has it?

Imagine the same case with the drama I believe it deserves. Your Pet Nurse runs out of the exam room and shouts, “DOC! I can not find one thing wrong with this cat!”

You gasp and grab her shoulders. “Did you check the molars?” So moved she cannot speak, she nods, and you both stare together into the future at Kitty curled on a sunny ledge, healthy and happy, thanks to years of incredible health care from the amazing combination of her wonderful family and your wonderful medical team.

You hand her a tissue, and she hands you the medical record.

You swing open the door and yell, “You love cats! I love cats too!” You all join hands and jump up and down as you celebrate this great coincidence. You turn your attention to the gorgeous cat on the table and perform a thorough exam. This cat is completely healthy! “What food are you feeding her?” you ask.  “That food is entirely balanced and contains TAURINE!” They had no idea they were preventing the horrendous heart conditions you describe!

Together, you review the intestinal parasites you intend to prevent. When you get to the descriptions of children with ocular larval migrans and hookworm infections, Dad faints dead away.

Holding a vaccine behind your back, you announce, “Kitty is up to date on everything except for the most horrendous, uniformly fatal neurological disease that has ever existed!” At this, Mother and children begin to weep. Dad regains consciousness and lowers his face into his hands. “But wait!” you whisper. “With this fifth teaspoon of liquid, I can provide complete protection!” You raise the syringe above your head and the fluorescent lights shine through it, creating beautiful pink patterns on the walls of the room.

Kitty heads home with her eternally grateful family, protected from a myriad of unspeakable diseases.  They have an arsenal of medications that will shield her from the worst of the parasites to which she could be exposed. You have discussed cat care and provided resources to learn even more. She will be vigilantly protected from the Scary, Scary Outdoors. Her family agrees to meet you again in six months for another celebration of health and prevention, and six months after that…this could go on indefinitely!

Once again, you have preserved the life of a Pet. You are protecting children and enriching families. You are doing it with limited resources, and doing it well. You are amazing. You are a Pet Saver. You are the Veterinarian.

I am SO EXCITED (that I am up at 4 am) to report that Banfield Charitable Trust accepted their grant! They will DONATE $15,000 to take care of the pets in the NHS Guardian Angel Foster program!! YAY! Banfield has so many cool aspects to the company. And I love NHS too…here is the story I told when Banfield Charitable Trust asked me if Nebraska Humane Society lined up with the goals of Banfield…true story…

“My Pet Nurse” in the story is Jeni Snyder.

“The Nebraska Humane Society veterinarian” is Dr. Amber Horn.

My “Good Client Who was also a NHS Officer” is named Jennifer. She has since moved to Florida.

I do not know the name of the foster family that took care of Zoo Kitten…that’s why they call them angels, I suppose…

“Two years ago, my daughters and I were driving to the zoo when we passed a very small kitten curled up and apparently sleeping on a yellow “dash” in the middle of the road. I did a U-turn and snatched the kitten up by her scruff so she wouldn’t get hit. When I got her into the car, I realized she had already been hit, and was bleeding from her nose.

We took her across town to Banfield, and my pet nurse and I examined and stabilized her. I called a good client who was also a Nebraska Humane Society officer. She was on duty and raced over to get the kitten.

I said, “Will you let me know how she does, and if she gets adopted?” Now I realize what a huge favor I was asking—over 12,000 cats go through NHS a year! With a few vets and a limited staff, and with some pretty severe injuries, Zoo Kitten probably should not have even gotten a second glance! Two weeks later, one of the doctors at the Nebraska Humane Society called me. Zoo Kitten had recovered from her injuries and was treated for an upper respiratory infection, fostered until she was old enough to be adopted, and had been adopted into a great home.

So I can tell you I love their foster program for the thousands of people (foster volunteers and adoptive families) and thousands of pets it helps, which I do, but really I love them just as much for saving Zoo Kitten, and caring enough to keep track of her and let me know she did well.

My “Mom lectures” about the intrinsic value of a pet, even one without a home, may not be remembered, but the experience of being a part of the Banfield/Humane Society team that rallied around a stray kitten has become a part of who my daughters are.

Multiply that one experience by the number of foster homes that have children in them, and the effect of such a program seems huge. We, as a community, are raising Omaha kids to value pets. A huge part of that is the Guardian Angel Foster Program.”

I told you 2009 was going to be great…

…I took Amanda and Abby to the zoo the next week…they were very good sports about it!

Here is a write-up on the website of Banfield Charitable Trust…

http://www.banfieldcharitabletrust.org/Press_Release_021709

And here is a picture of the beautiful plaque Nebraska Humane Society put on their lobby wall to say THANK YOU to Banfield Charitable Trust:

This newsletter is the second in a group of rallying cries to you, my favorite super heroes. Now that you and I know your secret identity, the Pet Savers, I have another assignment for you. This one is as large a problem, as difficult, and as heartbreaking as your previous (and still ongoing) assignment, saving pets from abuse and neglect. But I know you, and you are up to the task.

The Nebraska Humane Society (NHS) accepts into its shelter approximately 12,000 cats a year. A very large number of these are family cats that are given up by their owners. Many are unwanted kittens of pet cats. Some have been lost, and need only a refuge until their owners are found. However, only 1-2% of the cats brought into NHS (120-240) are lost cats who are successfully reunited with their owners. About 4,000 of the cats are placed in new homes, and the rest, sadly, are euthanized. By my calculations, this amounts to 7760-7880 cats that are euthanized every year, an average of over 20 cats a day! The cats who are euthanized first are those who are not adoptable or those who are too sick or hurt to be saved—as well it should be. But next are the sneezers, the urine sprayers, the cats with ringworm and intestinal parasites, all treatable conditions, IF resources did not have to be carefully directed to do the most good for the highest number of cats possible.

The remaining cats are then given very thorough preventative care. They are spayed or neutered, microchipped, dewormed, tested for feline leukemia and vaccinated for several communicable diseases. They are comfortably housed at NHS or brought to other areas where high numbers of potential adopters can meet them, most notably the adoption centers of the four PETsMART stores in Omaha. The adoption fee pays for a small percentage of the care the cats receive. The NHS foots the rest of the bill, and almost every veterinarian in Omaha offers a free first examination for the new pets.

I thought I would open with statistics, because when I started working on this newsletter, I was under the false impression that the cat overpopulation problem in Omaha is primarily a math problem. And I love math! But read those numbers again. Over 7,000 cats are euthanized at the NHS every year. Some are not adoptable. Some are sick or in pain. However, there are just not enough resources to take care of the rest. So the rest of the cats are humanely euthanized… cats and kittens, long-haired and short-haired, the beauties and the scroungy ones, the feisty ones and the sweet ones, the ones with treatable diseases, and the perfectly healthy ones. What do you suppose that does to the veterinarians, pet nurses, staff and volunteers of the NHS, who are there every day because they love animals as deeply as you and I do? Probably the same thing it did to me when I heard those numbers… and I don’t wish to cause you pain, but I imagine you are reeling a bit too.

On their website, NHS says “our vision is to put ourselves out of business.” I believe we can get to the point where every cat in Omaha has a home or is merely waiting to find one. Then NHS can do what I know its team truly longs to do, SHELTER the adoptable cats until they are in permanent homes and have euthanasia be only the tool it is meant to be—a humane end to suffering for hurting animals.

This is primarily an issue of the hearts of people towards cats, but there is a tiny bit of math involved in the cat overpopulation problem. Simply put, the number of cats and kittens in and around Omaha is greater than the spaces available for them in homes. We can reduce the number of cats born and increase the number of cats adopted, but until these numbers are roughly equal, we will have a surplus. The surplus must be sheltered, fostered, left outdoors or euthanized.

NHS built a huge beautiful shelter in 1992 at the site of their previous building. As the population of cats who needed to be sheltered grew, they bought the strip mall next door to the shelter, and they are beginning to house cats there as well. Also, there is a huge volunteer foster network in Omaha.

We have many colonies of first-generation feral cats (illegally abandoned cats) and second-generation feral cats (the offspring of the abandoned cats) in Omaha. Many of these would not be tame enough to be placed in homes, even if enough homes were available for them. And, as I mentioned, thousands of cats are euthanized each year.

As far as solving the equation: cats in Omaha=cats in homes, I know that you are already working toward making that a reality. Your pets stay indoors and are sterilized. You are the ones adopting the cats and kittens from NHS, other rescue groups, and even right off the streets. When you adopt a kitten or cat, you realize it is a lifelong commitment and have never taken that charge lightly.

My parents are my greatest heroes. In every facet of life, Mom and Dad are to be emulated, but since this is a kitty newsletter, I will stay on track and say only that if every person in Omaha did exactly what my parents have done, I would not have this newsletter to write. They have had two cats (both at my teary pleading—I promised no more!) The first one, Winston, was a scraggly, angry, tiny little abandoned calico with attachment issues. She was malnourished and flea-ridden, with intestinal parasites and ringworm. I remember when I was eight years old Mom was constantly taking Winston to the vet. Mom made sure all of Winston’s medical issues were resolved before Winston even got to normal kitten preventative care. She had all of her necessary exams and vaccines and was spayed at a young age. Thanks to Mom’s diligent care, Winston became a gorgeous, sleek, healthy cat. She was always an indoor cat and always had routine check-ups. She became high-maintenance again when she developed chronic kidney failure as an older cat. Again, Mom never missed a check-up or treatment. And Dad has put up with both cats for decades despite his severe allergies. They have housed, fed, provided love and medical care for Winston for TWENTY YEARS and the other high-maintenance cat, Oliver, for seventeen years now and counting. So you can see how I came by my love for animals honestly. And you must have had some amazing role models as well, because from what I have observed, you are wonderful pet owners and dedicated animal advocates.

It’s your friends we need to talk to. Don’t get me wrong. Your friends are great. And I know that they are as much animal lovers as you and I. Maybe they just have not heard how big the problem is, or how simple (simple, but not necessarily easy) the solution is. So I need you, as a friend, to talk to them.

The key to solving cat overpopulation in Omaha, I believe, lies in changing the attitudes of the people of our great city. Not even changing their attitudes from bad to good, more from indifferent (”huh, I never thought of that…”) to engaged (”ok, that’s doable.”) Most, I suspect, will jump right on board. However, I will tell you the few objections that I have heard to having cats spayed and neutered, and what I believe are reasonable solutions.

“I can not afford to have my cat spayed or neutered.”
The Cat Spay/Neuter Connection is an incredible organization in Omaha that is dedicated to assisting owners of unsterilized cats. Their goal is to “seek aggressively the prevention of births of unwanted kittens in the Omaha metro area through public education and low-cost sterilization of family cats.” They will ask how much you can afford toward the sterilization of your cat. They will then give you a voucher for the difference and you can take that to one of six wonderful vets in Omaha who will perform the surgery for you at the reduced cost.

While your pet is in the hospital for the day, you can calculate how many lives you have saved. Estimate how many kittens would have been born had you not had your cat sterilized. As a very conservative estimate, figure that one cat will have four kittens every spring. The next spring, those kittens will have kittens and so will the original cat… and so on. In reality, cats can have much larger litters than four, and much more often than once a year. Male cats will procreate as many times as they can find females with whom to mate. Take the multiplication exercise out however many generations you would like. (The more generations you calculate, the more you will realize how huge an impact your decision has made.) This astronomical number of cats can now be placed in homes because they are not competing with the cute little fuzzy offspring of your pet. Now you too are a Pet Saver.

“I want to buy a cat from a breeder so I can have this particular color/pattern/breed/temperament.”
I have seen every gorgeous color and pattern and breed of cat come through NHS, and if you are willing to wait, we will find your exact cat or kitten. As far as temperament, you can either adopt an adult cat, whose personality is known, or a kitten, whose personality you can help shape. Either way, you will end up with a wonderful pet, all the while saving cats in Omaha, one cat at a time.

“I want my children to see kittens being born/newborn kittens.”
Become involved in a foster program, either through NHS or another great rescue organization. You may be able to see kittens born, help socialize kittens, or even bottle-feed a litter of kittens. You will accomplish the same noble goal of teaching your children about life, while helping to solve, instead of contributing to, the overpopulation problem.

“We need farm cats.”
Feline Friendz is a wonderful organization in Omaha that works with feral cats. They humanely trap feral cats, have them neutered by participating veterinary teams, and release them back to their colony–a trap-neuter-return (TNR) program. If they are living where they cannot be cared for or are not allowed, they are relocated, often to farms if requested. There are your farm cats, and you have also done your part in saving the cats of Omaha.

So there are answers for your friends based on the most common objections to spaying and neutering that I hear. As you know, sterilized pets are healthier… cats without reproductive organs cannot get reproductive cancers or infections. And they make better companions. I do not know anyone who enjoys hanging out with a yowly cat in heat, or worse, a tom who writes “Mine! Mine! Mine!” in urine on everything he sees.

I believe the most difficult aspect of our pet saving mission is this. I hesitate to bring it up, because I do not have a mathematical solution or a pat answer. I believe that cats… not by you and me… and maybe not even by most of Omaha… but cats… in large enough numbers to get us in the bind we are in today… are not valued as highly as dogs are. They seem self-sufficient, as if maybe they don’t need us as much as dogs do. They can come off as a little aloof, which can hurt our feelings. And they, by no fault of their own, induce allergy attacks more dramatically than any other animal I have ever known. And that, I have noticed, has caused more than a few people to hold grudges against the entire feline species.

I am not asking you to adopt a cat if you do not have one or if your house is already full. I am not asking you to become best friends with one. And I am not asking you to give one a big furry hug if it will send you into a horrendous life-threatening allergy attack. I am asking you as Pet Savers to work together with the entire community to get this equation balanced. Let’s get the word out that there are more cats in Omaha than there are homes for them. And let’s all work together to fix it. In my very rough estimation, that can be done in a matter of a few cat generations. And that seems to be just a few years away. Let’s meet back here then and see how far we’ve come.

Once we get there, we will need only to hold to the value that cats are worth caring about, and stick with the programs that are working, and we will hopefully never again find ourselves in the very sad situation we are in today.

If the enormity of this problem bothers you, this would be a good time to go hug your cat (unless you are allergic). Now, Pet Savers, you are ready to continue saving the world… and working together to solve the cat overpopulation problem in Omaha is a great next step.

Incredible Organizations Worth Your Time, Talent and Financial Investment and Great Resources for You and Your Friends:

Nebraska Humane Society
www.nehumanesociety.org

The Cat Spay/Neuter Connection
www.catspayneuter.org

Feline Friendz
www.felinefriendz.org

PETsMART Adoptions
www.adoptions.petsmart.com

The Pet Savers
“The only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
-Edmund Burke

Did you know that you have a secret identity that is so secret, even you may not know about it?? You are the Pet Savers. I am officially commissioning you to go out into Omaha and beyond, to do what you are most likely already doing: keeping an eye out for pets who are being neglected or abused. If this newsletter ignites or renews your outrage, my goal will be reached. This is a horrible topic, but I do not have many horrible stories for you. There are a few, but they are meant only to motivate you and equip you for what needs to be done.

My first horrible story is one you may remember. It is the March 1997 account of the Iowa feline rescue group, Noah’s Ark. Two drunken guys with baseball bats broke into their shelter. Eighteen of the cats were beaten to death. I was attending Iowa State University as a veterinary student at the time. The cats who were beaten but survived were brought to us for emergency treatment. Every cat who made it to ISU lived and did well, and we, as a group of students and teachers, adopted all of them. I knew then that I would never be passive about animal mistreatment, nor fail to tell others how they could help.

Included in your mission as Animal Savers, I believe, is taking down puppy mills and dog fighting rings and punk kids who beat cats to death and get misdemeanors because no one can figure out the monetary value of a stray cat. (Can you find the five things wrong with that sentence??) But that aspect of your mission is a newsletter for another day. Just as important as defeating the headline-making villains, is quietly protecting pets one at a time in your everyday life. I want to help you speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves.

Fortunately, you, the Pet Savers, have some other pretty powerful super heroes on your side. Right here in Omaha, we have the best animal shelter in the country, the Nebraska Humane Society. We also have a very impressive population of animal rescue groups, veterinary hospitals, pet-related businesses and individual animal lovers, all of whom are working together to look out for pets. While such groups exist throughout the country, we have no shortage of such wonderful groups right here in Omaha… I will be telling you more about these in future newsletters.

Fortunately, as a veterinarian, I have seen very few active abuse and neglect cases. The reason I have not is that you are my clients. You are the owners who bring your pets to me for treatment and preventative care. Abusers and neglecters do not. They do not tend to seek veterinary medical care at all, which is part of the reason you are so desperately needed. You will see these pets in the “real world.”

Though I have seen few abuse and neglect cases in my practice, I do know they are out there. One of our best clients owns an adorable little three-legged dog. She was abandoned after being beaten so badly that our medical team was unable to save one of her front legs. Her leg was amputated, and she was adopted by the most loving family we knew. Now she is in a multi-dog household, always has her (13) nails painted, shows up at every dog event in Omaha, and is living the life she should have had from puppyhood.

Amy Schultz, Spoiled Rotten, as she should be!  Summer 2006

As a puppy, our own family pet, Noodle the Poodle, was abused. He was let out only once a day to potty and was dropkicked if he had an accident indoors. We learned his history in bits and pieces after we adopted him when he was five years old. We changed his name to Noodle, partially so he could make a clean break from his past, and partially because I love words that rhyme with “Poodle.”

It took about two years to help Noodle work through his fear of men. Most dogs with his history would not recover to the point of being able to be near men, much less trust them. He loves my Dad, my Father-in-Law and my brothers, and has bonded closely with my husband Russ. He is calm and friendly with children, also unusual for canine abuse survivors. He still flinches when I forget and try to pat his head from above. Remember that dogs who have been beaten over the head prefer to be approached slowly and to have their chin or side of their face scratched first. With all the great dog stuff I have learned over the years, that is one tidbit I really wish that I had never needed to learn. We still get frustrated at the occasional puddles of Poodle piddle (fun to say for the first one hundred times, then the novelty wears off), but Noodle has come a remarkable long way for having had such a difficult past.

Noodle the Poodle, Cool, Calm and Collected, Summer 2009

Before I moved from Littleton, Colorado to Omaha, my boss in Littleton treated a twelve-week-old Golden Retriever puppy for diarrhea (stress colitis, it turns out). He received a fax a few days later sent out from an emergency clinic to every veterinary hospital in town, trying to find any other vet who had seen that puppy. My boss called the doctor at the emergency hospital. It turns out this family had had two Golden Retriever puppies die of injuries recently, and this one had just been treated at the emergency hospital for broken ribs. The emergency doctor was trying to keep tabs on this pup so that she could be saved. The family came in twice more for stress colitis medication, but denied anything was going on at home. I called the police. (Remember with abuse cases, be careful and be safe, but do not be polite, and do not mind your own business!) The police told me that they could not arrest the owners without more than circumstantial evidence. So I called all three local news stations. And they called the owners. They denied hurting any of the three pups, so there was not a news story to tell. So Russ and I drove to their house. (Do not do this. We shouldn’t have.) And we sat outside their fancy iron-gated backyard in our car for hours on end, waiting for the puppy to come out. But while we were there, she never came outside. Shortly thereafter, we moved home to Nebraska.

I was an emotional wreck. At a meeting in Omaha just after we moved here, one of my favorite speakers made a joke about kicking a dog (which, in context, was funny only because he is the last person in the world who ever would). I started sobbing in the middle of this group of strangers, and, because I couldn’t pull myself together, Russ and I had to leave. The speaker called the next day and said, “Was that you?! They said someone left crying. You know I wouldn’t hurt a dog! I am so sorry I even said that!”

I failed to save that baby Golden, but I know at least four very, very good veterinarians and three news stations were watching that family very closely. So I hope she has been moved into a loving home and that she is chasing balls and starting to go gray around her muzzle like middle-aged Golden Retrievers do. I hope at the very least that she is free from her original owners.

One last story… one of my nurses in Littleton had this unfathomable affinity for Chow-Chows. Her Chows were all friendly, but I couldn’t figure out how she fell in love with the breed in the first place. Then she told me about Homer. Homer is her gorgeous 80-pound golden-blond Chow. Years earlier, her husband noticed that a tiny yellow warm fuzzy was chained in a backyard with no food or water. He drove his motorcycle past the yard for several days, but never saw the puppy off his chain or with something to eat. Finally, afraid he would die, he unhooked the chain, put him under his motorcycle jacket and drove home. This neglected puppy grew to twenty times his original size and is now a huge, beautiful, well-loved family pet.

That was a crime of passion. You do not need to go to such extremes. You can call the Nebraska Humane Society if you see a pet in need. They work with the Omaha police, and they will finish saving the pets you started saving with your original phone call.

And they will respond to your phone calls. This past summer, Russ had to call the Nebraska Humane Society on two separate occasions to rescue hot dogs. (No, not hotdogs…pets…you know…in cars with the windows rolled up in the summertime.) The police were there both times almost before Russ was off the phone.

So please, please keep doing what you are probably already doing. Stay alert to conditions you know are not healthy for pets. We will continue this theme in future newsletters, because there is much to be done and much to learn. As I mentioned, we have wonderful resources in our community. But the Humane Society, the Omaha Police, the rescue programs and the veterinary teams cannot do it all. We need you to remain vigilant… to talk to your friends about pet abuse and neglect… to care enough to not let abusers prosper.

If we all keep looking out for pets who need us, we can get them help while they still have four legs, and their God-given sweet temperaments, and before they start with the puddles of Poodle piddle. (OK, I admit, it is still fun to say.) I am, thankfully, out of stories, and, thankfully, have a very cute Poodle jumping at the back door waiting to be let back inside. He is having a good day.

A Follow-up Note for the Guy Shopping at Menard’s with the Beautiful Doberman Waiting for Him in the Bed of his Truck

Dear Guy Shopping at Menard’s,

I just wanted to check back with you after the note I left on your windshield the other day. It was 80 degrees and you left your dog unsecured in the bed of your truck. Granted, if you had left him in the cab, I would have been more irate, and left you a more strongly worded note and called the police.

Though I was disappointed you left him out in the sun, able to jump into a dangerous parking lot, mostly I was upset that it looked as if he rides in the bed also. Please don’t take this newsletter personally; I am sending it out to everyone I know who loves dogs. Do not take the first note personally either, as I leave a lot of those.

For all I know, you may let your Doberman ride in the air-conditioned cab with you. You may really have only run in for a second (though everyone who leaves a kid or pet out in a parking lot seems to say that). If I misinterpreted the situation, I apologize.

However, on the chance my intuition was correct, and your dog does ride in the bed, I will tell you that I have never heard a story of a dog riding in the back of a pickup that ends well.

Granted, I do not spend as much time talking with people who drive carefully around their farms with experienced herding dogs as I do with clients who run in sobbing with pets broken by the interstate. I also don’t talk as much to the owners who let their dogs ride in the bed and have nothing happen. (How boring of a story would that be?) But I see enough dogs who have jumped or lost their balance to know that it is just not safe to transport them unsecured in the back of a truck. And in many cities, including Omaha, it is illegal.

Here are some real cases… a Chihuahua (a Chihuahua!) who jumped out of a pickup bed on the interstate and broke her femur… a lab who jumped out of a truck and received multiple cuts and bruises… .Here is the worst one… a pointer who was chained in the bed of a pickup, jumped out, landed on his knees and trashed them before the owner realized he had jumped and was able to stop.

I also read a newspaper article about two dogs who jumped into each other’s truck beds as one truck was exiting the interstate. Neither driver noticed at the time. That one may or may not be true, but I have always liked that story. That’ll teach them! And if it is true, no dogs were harmed in the execution of that stunt.

The point is, dogs jump out of vehicles. They don’t know how fast they are moving. They don’t know the stories of fellow dogs who have been hurt so badly.

I know this does not pertain to you personally, dear Menard’s shopper, but I will digress a bit and tell you about the other situation in which I leave notes on windshields– when pets are left in cars on hot days. By “hot,” I mean if you would be uncomfortable in the car with the air off, your pet would be too. People try to pin me on temperatures and minutes, and instead of trying to do the mathematics in my head and give them a foolproof answer, as I used to try to do, I go right to the Golden Rule. If you would not be comfortable, neither would they. And if you have the good sense to leave the car before you die of heat stroke, so do they. But you have thumbs. Dogs do not.

So when I see a dog in a hot car, with the good sense to get out of a dangerous situation, but not the means to do it, I leave a note and call the police. And they do come. I would rather seem to be a neurotic, overprotective veterinarian and have a pet owner embarrassed by a visit from the police than have the pet owner come out to a dead dog.

And sadly, I have seen those cases too. In heat stroke cases, if I see pets before they actually die, I can only save them about half of the time. So I am thankful you did not make your dog wait for you in the cab.

As you now know, with this second note from a complete stranger, I am not in the business of minding my own business; I am in the business of helping pets. If you now are too, after my… um… inspiring first note, I really think we can change the world by looking out for pets who need us, and writing notes and follow-up notes (or newsletters even) as needed, until there are no more notes to write, because everyone is treating their pets how they would like to be treated.

Again, I apologize, fellow dog lover, if I misread the situation, but now you can see where I was coming from, and appreciate that my love for your dog, as a representative of all dogs, overrode any manners or tact I otherwise would have had. I hope that instead of being offended, you will see my point of view, and join me and other dog lovers in our world-saving note-writing campaign.

Sincerely,
Shawn Finch, DVM
(”A concerned vet”)

3/11/09  Usually people just need help learning how to keep their pets safe.  But sometimes, people are just plain mean.  Thanks for this article from USA Today, Awesome Sister-in-Law Jodi!

Pet Talk: Dogs will be dogs, and humans must accept that