Dr. Amy Attas: NYC's Veterinarian to the Rich & Famous

00:00:08
Speaker 1: You're listening to in the Vets Office with doctor Josie Horschak.

00:00:16
Speaker 2: All right, today we have doctor Amy Addis in the Vets office. She is the og house call veterinarian from New York City and she recently released the book Pets in the City. This book details her thirty four year career from its inception throughout all the peaks and valleys that followed. We hear about your journey to becoming a veterinarian. How you met your husband, Steve. I love that story, by the way, how you built your own house call practice, and the many behind the scenes tales of working with some pretty high profile clients in their homes. From an anal Gland expression, hitting one of your owners in its own two pe to sprinting down Second Avenue with a cat Carrie in hand. The storytelling in this book is amazing. I loved it. So welcome, doctor Amy.

00:00:59
Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here with you.

00:01:01
Speaker 2: We are really and by me and Sia. Sia is here with me today. We are so excited to have you. I really want to dive into the book, but before we do, we always start with a case of the week, and I was thinking, since you were here, I would let you take over and share one of my favorite cases from the book this week.

00:01:19
Speaker 1: I love the way you frame that, because one of my favorite cases was on a Saturday night when I was at home getting dressed to go to the opera with my husband, and the house phone rang and I picked it up, and I couldn't quite hear what the person was saying. There was so much static on the line, and she kept calling back and calling back until finally we had a clear line. And what I heard on the other end was Amy, this is Share. I'm landing at midnight. Can you see my dog? And I'm like share? And my husband said, who's on the phone chair? And I'm like no.

00:01:54
Speaker 3: Share.

00:01:55
Speaker 1: So she had been filming a movie in Italy called Tea with Mussolini, and there was a little stray dog on the set and she decided to take him home. Sounds familiar.

00:02:04
Speaker 3: That sounds very familiar.

00:02:05
Speaker 1: He had a terrible ration itch. So from the plane she decided that she wanted a house call when she landed at midnight. And even though I was going out that night, the opera was over at a quarter of twelve, it was perfect. I would go out with my husband and then I would go meet Art and take care of her puppy.

00:02:21
Speaker 3: That works out nicely, so it.

00:02:22
Speaker 1: Worked out nicely. I examined the dog. Unfortunately, she wasn't there. It was her staff that was there. I examined the dog and I diagnosed the dog with a condition called sarcoptic mange. Major little bugs that live in the skin. They cause enormous itching and they're contagious to people, one of the few things that are contagious to people. And I gave strict instructions that he shouldn't be held, and if he was sleeping someplace, we should clean the sheets, et cetera. And he needed a follow up injection in two weeks. The injection that I gave is a drug called ivermectin, and it stings like the dickens, and I warned everyone that was there, this is going to really burn, he might cry whatever, and he was just as calm as can be. What was his name, His name was Pepo. People people there the p so two weeks later it was time for his follow up injection. She was now staying in a hotel, so I went to make a hotel visit and I do that often for people who are traveling through New York and they need travel papers whatever, and also really fun for a lot of celebrities. And again I thought, this is my chance to meet Cher. And I get to the hotel and she's not there. So it's like the most beautiful hotel suite I've ever seen. They bring people in to see me. People looks much much better. But I'm a little alarmed because they're holding him in their arms and they're not wearing any protective clothing. But he did look a lot better. So when I went to give him his second injection, I expected him to behave like he did for the first injection, but this time he screamed like I was murdering him, and the door flew open, and Income Share yelling what did you do to my dog? And Share had her hair and rollers white face cream on and she was wearing a bathroom Did you almost die? I almost thought, so. I explained what was wrong with her dog, and that it was giving the second injection, and you know, at this point, you shouldn't be contagious any longer, and she said contagious. Nobody told me contagious, and then she lipped open her bathroom and she was there in her total body nakedness to ask me if the rash that she had on her belly was the same thing that the dog had, and then she thought about it for a second and she said, no, I think I had this before I got the dog closed up and left. So that was my meat and great from Share.

00:04:47
Speaker 3: You got a full frontal nude show.

00:04:50
Speaker 1: I got there full share show.

00:04:52
Speaker 2: I love that in the book you said your veterinary nurse on the way out was like, damn, I really got to get back to Pilate's.

00:05:00
Speaker 1: She's in good shame.

00:05:01
Speaker 2: She looks amazing for her age. That is hilarious. So I'm assuming people did great. Sharon did not have.

00:05:08
Speaker 1: Maids exactly and exactly tell but just to let you know that when you do house calls, I do experience things that are different from what you do in a animal hospital. That is not the only time that I saw a client in their full nakedness. I mean there are times when we were in the doorbell and a client answers the door with insufficient clothing on, and we'll say, like, you know what, we have time, please go put something on and we'll wait out here.

00:05:34
Speaker 3: We don't need to see that we don't. That is so funny. Yeah, I can't. I'm sure.

00:05:38
Speaker 2: I mean I got a little glimpse from the book, but I can't imagine the things that you've seen.

00:05:43
Speaker 1: So I come home every day from work and say to my husband, you will not believe what happened today. And that, of course was the genesis of the book, because I went in the other room and thought, I'll remember this forever, and then I think, let me just write a little something down so truly I remember the stories forever. Need a one word clue, and that's what I did, and eventually I realized I have a lot of great material here.

00:06:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, and here it is.

00:06:08
Speaker 2: One of the things I loved that you talked about in your book was your journey to veterinary school. That really resonated with me. And one of the quotes that you said was I needed a stellar GPA, stratospheric test scores, unreserved recommendations, and wide ranging extra curricular experience. And what I found in my journey to BET school is the extra curricular experience. They really put a huge emphasis on that, I think more so than human doctors, because we get small and will experience most people pre vet, but then you have to go out and work at a zoo or large animal I mean you're doing things that you would never even be dreaming about just in order to even get considered at a bet school.

00:06:48
Speaker 1: So one of the things that a lot of people don't realize is how competitive it is to get into veterinary school. And I think most students in veterinary school really have an idea of what it's going to be like to be in this field. Others go on for secondary education professional school, but they don't know what it's like to be a lawyer, they don't know what it's like to be a doctor. We actually have to get practical experience beforehand. I think a lot of that is to weed out people who might think being a veterinarian is all about playing with puppies and kittens. It's my favorite part of the job, but it's a small part of the job. I mean a lot of that is dealing with, you know, medical problems, and dealing with the emotions and sort of helping families deal with how to care for their pets who were really sick. And you should know that before you devote that all those years and all that money into becoming a veterinarian.

00:07:42
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely.

00:07:43
Speaker 2: One of the stories you told was about working on a dairy farm and doing manual labor, and I had a very similar experience where I worked at a zoo and the zookeepers are like, well, we don't know what to do with this girl, so I shoveled bison poop for a whole summer.

00:07:55
Speaker 1: I've had a similar experience.

00:07:57
Speaker 2: I never had bigger biceps in my whole life. Came home for a weekend and my mom was like, oh my god, and I was like, yeah.

00:08:04
Speaker 1: Well, as I say in the book, I had to cut the seams of my shirt sleeved shirts because my arms had gotten so big. But there's another possibility. I was working upstate New York on a very very large dairy farm, and about two miles from the farm there was an ice cream parlor where they made fresh ice cream, so there was a daily hot fodge Sunday that might have had something gg you know, the change in my size keeping up.

00:08:30
Speaker 3: You were working hard and I trained you well.

00:08:33
Speaker 1: I mean I used to eat a dan and yogurt for breakfast back then I started eating three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I could not keep up with how much energy I needed to work on a floor.

00:08:44
Speaker 3: I remember being starving.

00:08:45
Speaker 1: Great deal of respect for people who farm.

00:08:48
Speaker 2: People do always ask like, why didn't you go into farm animal medicine or horses, And I'm like, I don't think people realize the the labor involved in it and what a taxing job it is, and so I respect them so much.

00:09:02
Speaker 1: So from what I know about you from listening to your show, I feel like you had the same thing that I had, which was a calling that we had to do this, and for me it was clear. I love all animals, but my calling was to be a veterinarian for dogs and cats likewise.

00:09:18
Speaker 2: And I think a really special part about that, and what you talked about in your book and especially making house calls, is that in caring for these pets by extension, we also care for their owners, and I think that we really get to know them very well, and that as one of my favorite parts of my job.

00:09:33
Speaker 3: It sounds like it's one of yours as well.

00:09:35
Speaker 1: It is, you know, one of the things that I wish I had even more training in, because most of my training has been from my years of doing it. Was like a little bit more about human psychology, because I really we deal with people in some of the most difficult times of their lives, and you know, of course we have empathy for them because we've all been there. Having an aging pet or having a really sick pet. We're having to say goodbye to a pet is truly one of the most traumatic days of someone's life, maybe the most. And yeah, and people say that, I hate to I don't like the way this comes out, but people will say to me, I didn't cry this much when my parent died.

00:10:17
Speaker 3: Yes, I hear that all the time, and.

00:10:19
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, obviously we all love our parents, but we don't get into bed every night with our parents, and we often get into bed with our pets, and when they're not there, that loss is really really palpable.

00:10:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, I totally agree with that.

00:10:33
Speaker 2: And I just to touch on what you said, I think part time, we are part time therapists and part time veterinarians. And it's funny because you hear all of us say we went to med school because we love animals and working with animals, but the reality is that the majority of our days are spent working with people and Luckily we enjoy doing that, so.

00:10:52
Speaker 1: You're one hundred percent right. And when I counsel people who want to become veterinarians, and by the way, like Orders of Magnets, more since the book has come out, where younger people are calling me and saying, I read your book, I really want to be a veterinarian. But if the point is I only want to I want to be a vet because I only want to work with animals, this isn't the right job for you, you know, because they don't come in by themselves. They come in with people, and your communication is with the people.

00:11:21
Speaker 2: And it's been so nice for me, Like I don't think I was expecting this, but a lot of my lifelong friends now have are my clients that I've met through taking care of their animals. So it's been such a pleasant surprise for me for.

00:11:33
Speaker 1: Me too, But you have to be careful. They don't get discounts just because they've become.

00:11:36
Speaker 2: You're right, you hear that, friends. I guess one of the questions I had for you is in working with it sounds like a lot of people you got close to you were pretty high profile. And what I have noticed on this podcast especially as we'll have stars, country music stars or like Bobby Bones come on and you talk to them about their career and their goals, and they're kind of one person, and then when you talk to them about their animals, you can just see like a completely different side of them. I think just from watching her on TV that Joan Rivers is pretty intimidating. I'm assuming that you probably saw a lot more of a softer side to her with her animals.

00:12:23
Speaker 1: I saw all sides of Joan Rivers. She was an enormous personality. She was driven in a way that very few people are. When I would go into her home to work with the dogs, there would be posted on the refrigerator her daily schedule, and it said things like up at five, exercise, makeup, leave for studio, and then her entire day was calculated down to the moment and it ended at midnight. I mean, she was very regiment, old enough to be more than my mother, and she had a schedule that would have run me into the ground. So she was an enormously busy person and she was extremely demanding, and her dogs were so important to her. So I was used to getting yelled at on occasion or emails that I wish she had never sent to me. But when she was finished with that, she turned out to be, of course a very dear friend. So we would go through the cycles of Joan's love and her wrath. She was an enormous supporter of mine when I started my house call practice, she told everyone she knew. The relationship over those years turned into a lovely, lovely friendship where we went out to dinner together. I mean she called one day. We had homes close to each other, about one hundred miles north of New York City, and she called and said, take me to the movies on Saturday night.

00:13:50
Speaker 3: So it was like she didn't ask.

00:13:52
Speaker 1: Of course, she didn't.

00:13:53
Speaker 3: Ask a question.

00:13:55
Speaker 1: She would have the most beautiful dinner parties where the group of people around the table were just from all different types of parts of her life, and every person felt like they were the guest of honor. She was an enormously gracious, warm, loving person with a little bit of a biting part of her person.

00:14:18
Speaker 2: You don't want to be on her bad side. Oh no, I love the story about her Yorky. I think it was a Yorky that you had encouraged her to get a surgery that she did not really want to do, and then she ended up doing it and was like, I was right to do it.

00:14:32
Speaker 1: Well, she was never wrong, of course, but you know, like even with her first Yorkee Spike, Spike went to work with her wherever she was. He traveled around, he was part of the show, and I recommended that because he wasn't feeling well, that maybe she would leave him out of the show that week and he should stay home. And like all of a sudden, you know, she had just looked at me and she said, don't tell me what to do, just make my dog well enough to go, Like you didn't, I was mess with them exactly.

00:15:01
Speaker 3: Wow.

00:15:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny we do, even if they're not famous. You have everybody that's a ugineer and has owners that can be a little bit more demanding, and I think our job is to kind of look past that and see, like, Okay, where's this coming from. They just really, at the core of it, love their pet and want their pet to be okay.

00:15:19
Speaker 1: I had a client who moved to New York after he retired. He had been a movie producer, so he moved from California to New York and he lived in his apartment with his two cats, and he paged me on a Saturday night for an emergency, and I called him back immediately. I said, what's the problem. He said, my cat just scratched me with his nails. His nails are too long. Come and cut them. I said, it's ten o'clock and a Saturday night, don't. I don't make house calls. If you truly had an emergency, it would help you. But I'm not coming to cut your cat's nails. And he kind of hesitated and said, you know, in La, nobody would ever say no to me. So he was like being brought back into the real world.

00:15:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're like New York. No means no, and you're retired. Yeah, exactly exactly.

00:16:05
Speaker 2: Another thing that you talked about in the book that I really loved and I have seen with my own experience as a veterinarian, is that no, there is no such thing as a disabled pet, and so we have a lot of patients that require amputations, or they lose an eye, or they go deaf, and so I really loved how you put an emphasis on that. I think I tell my owners all the time. We can learn so much from our animals. I have had dogs going through chemo that are bouncing around and rolling in the grass. Dogs on three legs or cats on three legs that would never know the difference. And if someone cut my leg off, I probably would be in bed crying about it for six months.

00:16:44
Speaker 3: You're the rest of my life. Who knows. But they are just so resilient in that way.

00:16:48
Speaker 1: They're amazing. I learned that very much so from personal experience. I found a dog one day tied to a tree. I had a pug when I was a little girl, so I'm drawn to pugs. I love them. And I walked up to pet this pug tie to a tree, and I saw a note that said I am blind, Please take good care of me. So I untied him. I was in veticol at the time I brought him into the hospital. I had him checked out by the clinicians and everybody said, he's a healthy little dog. He probably came from a puppy mill. Puppy mill sounds too nice. Let's just call it factory farming of dogs, right, or they're just exploited and abused and they're not cared for. And he probably developed his temper which ultimately left him blind. So I didn't I couldn't have a dog. I was single, I was in veticool. I just I couldn't have the responsibility. So I looked at him and said, look, I'll get you everything you need. I'll take you home tonight for a home cooked meal, and tomorrow i'll work on finding you a home. So I took him home with me. He kind of bumped around my entire apartment. He went to the front door, he lifted his leg and did his business, as if to say, this is my territory, I'm home. I'm staying here. At that point, I gave him dinner and I locked him in the kitchen. I said, okay, tomorrow morning, I'm finding you a new home. And I woke up in the middle of the night and he had gotten out of the kitchen. He came into the bedroom. He had jumped on the bed and he was sleeping on the pillow next to me, and he declared, this is my home. And he and I were soulmates ever since. But I learned a lot from Bumper. Sorry I named him Bumper because yes, he bumped into everything.

00:18:21
Speaker 3: I love that name.

00:18:22
Speaker 1: But I realized like he was a little bit more difficult than a regular dog. Like when we went out on a leash, I was responsible for making sure that he had a signal for where to go.

00:18:31
Speaker 3: You were in seeing.

00:18:32
Speaker 1: I was a seeing eye human. He knew up, down, left, right over under. I mean we would go hiking together. He came to work with me, and he knew when we got to the curb to step down, and he knew how many steps to go back up again. Maybe I was giving him some cues, but I do believe he memorized everything. And he was such an inspiration because, like you said, if we went through something like this, we would be like, oh, I feel so sorry for myself. Bumper never felt sorry for himself a day in his life. And I used him at work as a teaching tool for people to see that you could have the most wonderful dog. They're not perfect, but none of us are perfect, and it doesn't matter if you can't see or you can't hear, you can get along just fine on three legs. There were all these things that would be considered disabilities, and they deal with them fine. I learned so much from Bumper. Years later, after he had passed, I got a phone call from a pet store, and the manager of the pet store knew that I loved pugs, and he knew that I had had experience with a blind dogs. And they had a blind pug puppy that the owner of the store had ordered to be euthanized at the end of the day. And he called me and said, Amy, I knew you know what to do with this dog. And of course I knew what to do with the dog. I brought him home. I don't want people to think there's an epidemic of blind pugs out there, but both these dogs had the same problem. They were puppy mill dogs, and they didn't get vaccinated and they developed a problem that could have been prevented with just some vaccine.

00:20:09
Speaker 3: Terrible.

00:20:10
Speaker 2: We did a whole episode walking through vaccines with listeners, just because listeners and owners come into vac clinics all the time, and I don't think they understand the importance or what exactly is distember what does that mean? And so just like you said, it's a problem that could be completely prevented with a vaccine, and unfortunately, puppy mills or puppy factories like you called it are just they're not doing their due diligence, and they're not taking the appropriate care of these animals.

00:20:37
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because so many of the diseases that we routinely vaccinate against, they're very diminished. Right now, we don't see a lot of distemper but if people stop vaccinating, we're going to see this devastating disease again. Same with parvo. In New York City, we didn't have a problem with leptosporosis for years, and now leptosprosis is a problem. It's a disease that's transmitted through urine and often through the urine of rats, and any big city that has a rat population we're seeing more and more leftis bersis. Yeah.

00:21:11
Speaker 2: We talked about that a lot in Season one as well, and we have it here in Nashville, So I mean, it's not just limited to cities. It is important and can be, like you said, preventive with vaccines, so super important.

00:21:23
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:21:24
Speaker 2: One of the I wrote down this quote from your book because I loved it so much. I think it might have made me cheer up, But I'm like, why am I so hormonal right now?

00:21:32
Speaker 3: But I just thought it was.

00:21:32
Speaker 2: Really beautiful, and I think about the human animal bond a lot.

00:21:36
Speaker 3: And I think this like.

00:21:37
Speaker 2: Really puts it, really articulates it beautifully. So you said, our relationship with a pet is like no other. By bringing animals into our homes and making them part of our families, sharing our lives with them, and caring for them, we are at our most compassionate, empathetic, and selfless. I believe that our love for animals defines our humanity. Simply, our animals make us better people. I believe that I do too. I believe that fully. I think the hardest of heart softens around animals. They're just simply the best.

00:22:06
Speaker 1: So I lived on the corner of fifty seventh Street for many years, and I would walk a bumper down that street, and the doorman at the building next door would come out every single day and he'd give me a big smile and a creeting, and he'd bend down and pet bumper. And this was our every day ritual. Bumper passed away. I walk that street every day. He never set foot out of the building. A few years later, I got another dog, and I walked down the street and he came running out and he said, where have you been? I was invisible to him without my dog. He like the whole connection to a human was through a dog love.

00:22:46
Speaker 3: That It's funny. I don't know if you feel the same way.

00:22:48
Speaker 2: But I'll see my patients out and about, and I remember every patient.

00:22:53
Speaker 3: I know their name.

00:22:54
Speaker 2: I can place them if they have something wrong with them, I know, And I can't ever remember the owner's name.

00:22:58
Speaker 1: One hundred percent the same.

00:23:00
Speaker 3: It's like you're Fluffy's mom.

00:23:01
Speaker 2: I don't remember the owner sadly, but the dogs and cats I don't forget. All right, you were dogless at the end of the book. Are you still dogless? Just waiting for the next one to come?

00:23:11
Speaker 1: So I never wanted to be dogless. Like I went to vet school. I know that there's a life cycle, and I know that they're going to pass at a certain age. And my Cleopatra was elderly, and when she was about thirteen, I put the word out that I wanted to rescue another dog. Every single pet I've ever had has been a rescue, and I worked with the local pug rescue group because I do have a thing for pugs, and I love pugs. They're just ridiculous they are. And I have when I was a little girl, so in the best way, except if you were black, which case you're just you have fur all over you. But I'm willing to deal with that. And I rescued a dog. She had been a dog on the show circuit at one point. She had been abused. She had been returned to the breeder, and the breeder heard that I needed and she was willing to let the dog come to my home. So she was much much younger. So I'm smart, like eventually, when something happened to Cleo, then Meatball would be she was a Meatball. She would be, you know, still a dog in our home. And this is the saddest thing because Cleo passed January one, and then three months to the day, Meatball passed on April one. She got a devastating disease. And I mean I was treating her friends who were specialists, everybody had a hand in it, and she just didn't respond. And we were and are devastated. So you know, I know that I'm going to get a phone call one day from a pug rescue group and They're going to say, Amy, we have this dog. It has such and such a problem. Can you fix it? And I'll fix it and I'll keep it the way that every one of them have come to me. But we're just just really really sad right now, just going through the healing process.

00:25:02
Speaker 3: My heart breaks for you.

00:25:04
Speaker 1: Thank you, and you know again wishing that we had more of training in human psychology. For some people, that healing process means the next day bringing another pet into your life, right and for some people it really is a very very long process, so.

00:25:19
Speaker 3: Can take a lifetime. I feel like sometimes and we all know.

00:25:22
Speaker 1: That the only thing that makes you feel better is another pet exactly.

00:25:27
Speaker 2: Just got to do it, got to rip the band aid off. But it's true, every pet I've ever had that pass, I've said, I don't know if I can do this again.

00:25:32
Speaker 3: It's the worst heartbreak.

00:25:35
Speaker 2: And then and then here we are, I know, and they just reopen your heart and remind you of why you did it in.

00:25:41
Speaker 3: The first place.

00:25:42
Speaker 2: So I hope your next rescue pug comes to you sooner, Appreciator, I'll keep my eyes in ears. Peel send you a picture please do. By the way, we had Doug the pug on Oh my.

00:25:52
Speaker 1: Goodness, he is pretty cute.

00:25:54
Speaker 2: He is.

00:25:55
Speaker 1: I would love to share with you the story of Squeaker. Squeaker was an unusual patient because he didn't belong to any family. He actually was a building cat. So I would go to this apartment house for a number of different clients, and one day the superintendent of the building asked me to come down to the basement to meet the building cat.

00:26:14
Speaker 3: So this cat belongs to the whole. HOA.

00:26:16
Speaker 1: He did the whole and he, you know, he had a job to do. It was to make sure that no mice came into the building, and he did a fantastic job of that. And one day I did my physical exam, I had a baseline on him, and probably a year or two later, they asked me to come down and see him again, and he had lost a tremendous amount of weight. And when I took his blood, the results came back that the cat had something called hyperthyroidism, too much thyroid hormone in the bloodstream, which beats up your metabolic rate. So he was eating ravenously, but he was burning the calories faster than he was eating them. So he had to go on medication.

00:26:52
Speaker 2: Which for all the listeners is a pretty common I would say disease in our cats as they get a little bit older. Exactly important to run routine blood work because we can detect it and treat it and they usually go on to lead nice, long, normal lives.

00:27:05
Speaker 1: And I agree with everything that doctor jay Z said, And that's the importance of the annual physical examination. People think it's for vaccines. We really want to touch your pets. We really want to take blood from them. So many diseases and pets are silent, we can find them earlier from blood tests. So a really important point. Squeaker's disease was no longer silent. He was already having the symptoms of hyperthyroidism and his blood work indicated that. So I started him on medication. But it's a medication that has to be given twice a day. And as I said, he was nobody's actual cat. So the superintendent of the building wasn't there at the right hours every single day, wasn't there on the weekends. So the people who lived in the building volunteered to give him his medication and it just wasn't working. They would go downstairs. He would not imagine it was beautiful. This is a lot of cooks in the kitchen and it's like this is a park. Avenue building. It was so heartwarming that everybody cared so much. It just wasn't working medically. He wasn't getting his regular medicine. So explained that the next way that we treat this disease is the way they treated in humans with a single injection of radioactive eye do on. The problem is, you can't come home, you can't come out of the facility until you're no longer radioactive. And it has a multi thousand dollars price tag on it, and the super said, oh, I don't know. They're just never going to go for that. It's so much money. And they had a board meeting and they said, yes, we'll pay for it. So Squeaker had his radioactive eye don He went on to do great for years and years and years. And then I went to examine Squeaker because he was limping and as I was feeling his leg, I felt a very bad bony lump and I was sure that Squeaker had bone cancer. The X ray showed that he did have bone cancer.

00:28:50
Speaker 2: There's nothing worse as a veterinarian doing your examine. You know you feel that leave him or your life, and you know the pit in your stomach and you know.

00:28:57
Speaker 1: And you know, and I explained to him that what we needed to do, and I know this sounds drastic, but we needed to amputate the cat's leg because the cat was in so much pain that immediately upon healing from the amputation, the cat would have no more pain. Unfortunately, cats have four legs and they do just fine on three of them. And he just said, no, it's absolutely not possible. They're never going to go for the surgery. They won't want a three legged cat. He'll never be a mouser for them. Again. They called another emergency board meeting. The board came back and said, yes, do the amputation. Squeaker did great after the amputation. And on the day I went to the basement to remove the stitches from his surgery, he was nowhere to be found, and he came into the super's office while I was sitting there with a mouse in his mouth. He was not slowed down for a second. He had a job to do, and he did it. He lived the rest of his life as the building cat, and they took them up. Wonderful care of him.

00:30:01
Speaker 3: That really restores my faith in humanity.

00:30:03
Speaker 1: Great.

00:30:03
Speaker 2: I love that story. It is true, though I mean cats, especially if there's many dogs. Most dogs do great on three legs. But if I had to say cats versus dogs, cats are do great on three legs. I mean they get around beautifully. They're so nimble and agile.

00:30:19
Speaker 1: And they and even with our dogs, they really learned to do it. Even as a veterinarian, I'll be watching a dog walk on the street and my brain will register something's not right, and then when I look closely, I'm like, oh, it's a three legged dog. They really they hide their disability from us so amazingly.

00:30:37
Speaker 3: They do. They really do. That is an amazing story. Thank you for sharing.

00:30:41
Speaker 1: Thank you for making me think of that as one of my favorite stories.

00:30:58
Speaker 3: Well, I loved this book so much.

00:31:00
Speaker 2: I and obviously I'm a veterinarian, so it really resonates with me. But I think any animal lover out there, and whether you're an owner or not, if you just are interested in animals, will love this book. The storytelling is amazing and it was a really nice little peak to what goes on in your daily life being a house called veterinarian.

00:31:17
Speaker 3: So thank you for writing it.

00:31:19
Speaker 1: I really appreciate your comments.

00:31:21
Speaker 3: We end our episodes with Paw and Order.

00:31:29
Speaker 2: So for today's episode on Paw and Order, we are going to take a few tips from doctor Amy's book Pets in the City. Number one, I would not give my pets any human foods or medications without checking with my vets Doctor Amy, and I know I've talked about this a lot on this podcast, but doctor Amy mentions a couple instances where owners gave their pets tile and all and grapes and all other sorts of things that aren't good for animals that were humans, they're perfectly fine.

00:31:57
Speaker 1: So I always tell people that are not people and cats are not little dogs, So don't share your dog's medicine with your cats. Don't share your medicine with your dog. And you know, if you're not sure, pick up the phone. You should be able to feel comfortable enough with your veterinarian that you can call and ask a.

00:32:17
Speaker 2: Question yes, anytime. And that brings up a good point too. If you have multiple dogs. That doesn't mean giving one dog's medication to another dog is always the right thing to do either, because doses can be very different.

00:32:28
Speaker 1: Of course, yes, I agree, And by the way, there are certain breeds that can't take certain medications. So just be educated, make sure you do no harm.

00:32:37
Speaker 3: Yes, I agree with that, all right.

00:32:39
Speaker 2: Number two, somewhat in the similar realm of advice is we recommend not leaving out your prescription medications where your pets can get a hold of them. There are dogs out there that will counter surf and jump up and grab anything that's on the counter, including your medication. Doctor Amy had one instance in the book that I found to be entertaining. I'm glad the dog's okay, though.

00:33:03
Speaker 1: So in this instance, the dog jumped on his father's night table. Dad was in his eighties, so he took a lot of medication, and the dog chewed up all of the vials and a lot of the medication, and we had to figure out what each one contained. One was his heart medicine, one was his blood pressure medicine, one was his arthritis medicine. And then he was a little hesitating before he said what the last one was that special medicine that he uses at night. The dog ate all of his father's viacra, and ironically, viacra has uses in veterinary medicine. We use it for certain types of heart disease, but not all the pills at once, so that poor guy had to spend some time in the hospital being monitored and watching his blood pressure. And we all laughed because he had been newter two weeks before, so like it didn't have any positive effects.

00:33:50
Speaker 2: On as we say in Nashville, bless his heart exactly. That did bring up a good point for me that I don't think I've talked about on this podcast. Or pet does eat something and you're not able to get a hold of your veterinarian, and even if you are, we recommend calling the Animal Poison Control phone number.

00:34:09
Speaker 3: It's very easy. You just google Animal Poison Control.

00:34:12
Speaker 2: The number pops right up, and if they have eaten something like a medication or anything that may be toxic, they are going to kind of walk you through exactly what you need to do. And it's very helpful for us as veterinarians too. We aren't always understanding the toxicology behind every single ingredient.

00:34:27
Speaker 1: Right and things you should know. You should know approximately how much your dog weighs. When you call, like, they'll ask you some questions about that. I always laugh when animals eat medication. I think the number one thing that people tell me is the hardest with their pets is they can never get them to take a pill. And how come, as soon as I drop one of my pills on the floor, the dogs will like, oh, got it, thank you. I think when we want to give them a pillbish to throw it on the floor and see if they'll go after exactly like.

00:34:53
Speaker 3: Don't touch this, haha, They'll go right for it.

00:34:56
Speaker 1: And by the way, not only don't leave your pills out on the night table, but a lot of the pills we give our pets are flavored to make it easier to give them to them, and you don't want to leave those on the counter where they'll go and eat them all at one time.

00:35:08
Speaker 2: Yes, I have had many a patient that love their flavored remadill or their flavored heart guard, yeah, heart Guard, and then they eat a whole pack of it, and that is not great for them either. So that is a great point. Our last and final point for and order is I would not get a pet unless I completely understood the level of commitment financially, time wise, all the responsibility involved that it means to be a pet owner. Doctor Amy wrote in the book, if someone accumulates animals to fill their home and heart. That person has a moral obligation and unbreakable contract to care for those innocent creatures for their entire lives. And I think that's so well put.

00:35:47
Speaker 1: They're for babies, you know, once you choose to open up your home, that is your responsibility to care for them forever.

00:35:55
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:35:55
Speaker 2: I think people see like, oh, this dog's so cute, or this puppy is so cute, and you don't realize that puppy is going to grow into an adult, maybe a very rambunctious one, maybe not, but they're going to be around for ten, twelve, fourteen, hopefully fifteen sixteen years, and your life is going to change and evolve, and you just need to remember that.

00:36:11
Speaker 3: It's a it's a big commitment.

00:36:13
Speaker 1: So when I told you this story of Bumper, one of the reasons I didn't say I'll take you immediately was I was scared of that commitment. I remember, like you know, waking up a week later, we're thinking what have I done right? And I decided I was willing to put all the time and effort into having him in my life, and it was so worth it.

00:36:31
Speaker 2: It is the best commitment anyone can make. I agree, well that concludes our paw and order for the week and really our episode. Thank you so much for coming, doctor Amy. I've loved chatting with you and if you guys haven't read it yet, please get online. You can get on Amazon. Pets in the City is out and ready to be read.

00:36:47
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me.

00:36:48
Speaker 2: You are so welcome, and to all of our listeners. As always, you can contact me on Instagram at doctor jose Vetts. You can click the link in my bio to record questions for the podcast, and as always, please rate, review, and subscribe anywhere that you get your podcasts.

00:37:04
Speaker 3: We'll see you next week.