As for the confidentiality issue…
In my state it does apply. But only to things the PET tells the vet.
About 25 years ago my Golden Retriever started barfing up every meal. After trying a bunch of stuff they did a barium test and found a huge mass. When they opened him up they found an intact Nerf football. They had to break in into pieces just to get it out and it filled up a whole basin (which they thoughtfully saved for me).
Dog was fine. The vet said he’d never seen anything like it.
Which is why our City Animal Control charges a rising fee. It’s $25 for the first time, $50 for the second. I don’t remember if it keeps going up in increments or if it doubles.
I worked as a general drudge in a vet clinic in high school (bathing and walking dogs, cleaning cages, etc.). My favorite was the deeply embarrassed woman who came in with her toy poodle. The dog had gotten into the bathroom wastebasket and swallowed a used tampon. Whole. Ick.
Also, remember the show Night Court? The man who played the judge would bring his Golden Retriever to our clinic. You could hear the wave of whispers in the waiting room when people recognized him.
One of the more astonishing cases I recall was a bulldog that had, about a month previously, been shot in the side while hunting. His hip, leg, bladder and urethra (among other things) had shot lodged in them. Apparently the owners removed what they could see, cleaned him up, and assumed he was fine, until it became obvious that the dog was having trouble urinating. By the time they brought him in, scar tissue had built up around the pieces of shot to the point that the dog could only let a little trickle of urine out whenever he attempted to go. The doctors put him under anesthesia and drained his bladder – which by that time was HUGE. It took an eternity to clear out, and we all thought about what relief the poor little guy would feel when he woke up.
Those owners were far from the stupidest we saw, but the rest of the stories make me sad or angry.
True story. 
Gweniever does that - I call it “projectile shedding”. My vet calls it “stress shedding” and says it’s very common in cats. When I worked for him I always said I was going to learn to spin yarn from animal fur because I would have an unending supply.
Dogs can projectile shed, too; just ask our vet, who gets coated in a blanket of golden retriever hair every time we take our idiot dog in!
I am still giggling over that poor chinchilla, though. Man, how do you explain to the little guy that you’re just trying to make him feel better, not giving him a hand job every day?
I used to have a cat that hated the vet. The only thing Puss hated more than the vet was riding in the car. So with the car trip to the vet, the vet visit and the car trip home, you had the kitty I hate this shit trifecta.
Anyway one time we go into an exam room to wait for the vet. Puss goes wandering around the room. She get up on the counter and sticks her head behind the autoclave and justs stays there. One pound of head behind the autoclave, 20 lbs of kitty in plain view.
Doc walks in and asks, “what is your cat doing?”
I reply, “It’s obvious, she can’t see you, therefore you can’t see her.”
Cracked the doc up.
Oh, I know, that was a joke. It’s a really amazing deal - for $58 you get the cat, its shots (and discounted shots for the rest of its life), the tests they do, a spay or neuter, a microchip, AND a bag of cat food. The animal itself has negative value! The private shelters all charge more like a hundred bucks for a kitten and only a little less for an adult cat. The shelter staff does a great job, and I’d never say anything against the work they do - I’d just be surprised when they charge me to pick my dog up, is all! I guess I shouldn’t be, but I’d never really thought about it.
My ol’ cat Jake can open and close cabinets. Its not unusual for me pull out a cranky cat instead of the pan or bowl I was looking for.
Years ago, I took him to a new vet. The cat is wandering around the on the exam room floor and the doctor walks in. Jake takes a look at the doc, opens a cabinet, walks in and closes the door behind him.
“Well,” said the vet. “We know how he feels!”
My family once owned a cat who was sweetness and light until he got to the vet’s office. Then he hissed and spat and tried to bite the vet, so the vet tech had to put a leather mask on him. It made him look like a badger. During this process, he managed to scratch her finger and it swelled up so much she couldn’t take off her ring.
Boy’s underpants? Ha! My Doberman-Shepard mix ate an entire pair of pantyhose once. Luckily she barfed 'em right back up. Pretty gross- 3 feet of spitty nylons…
Pantyhose? tampons and underwear I can almost understand. One smells neat and the other has neat texture. But pantyhose?
While we’re on the subject of problematic owners (Hawk’sGirl), my current winner is the lady who called at 4:45 in the morning and demanded to speak to the doctor for an update on her pet’s condition. Because, you know, doctors don’t sleep or anything. When I refused, she chewed on me for a bit and then passed me off to her friend, who repeated the threats to my job and safety. I held my ground. Eventually, I was passed back to the owner, who toned herself down and said that she just wanted to know if her pet had seizured any more because, if it had, she would need to make arrangements for the care of her other animals. You see, she was camped out in our parking lot at the time, not wanting to be far from her sick pet. I confirmed the pet hadn’t seizured and she went away happy.
In another encounter, I’m told, this client drove our senior clinician to tears.
Did I mention this client was running for political office at the time? Some local seat. I hear she got less than 1% of the vote. Can’t imagine why…
About 6 years ago, my mother’s Scotty was the subject of a Christmas Miracle. My sister gave everyone a teddy bear shaped tin of fancy Godiva chocolate. My brother snipped the cellophane and attempted to open his tin. A difficult task considering its odd shape. Clamping it to his workbench, my brother finally managed to remove the lid with more tools than should be humanly needed to get to a pound of chocolates. I put mine, still factory shrinkwrapped, into the bottom of a box, covered it with the rest of my nonedible gifts, and went on with life.
You can see where this is going. We returned a while later to find my box’s content strewn about and the dog laying its side, bloated and unable to move. Surveying the mess, we discovered the tin, open and empty. The Christmas Miracle? An animal without opposable thumbs could open that monstrosity! What? The dog recovered and lived another 5 years, none the worse for wear after ingesting what should have been a lethal dose of chocolate.
Heh. Our Newfoundland Angus once ate the entire contents of a decorative Easter basket, including chocolates, some fake grass, foil and egg-shaped candles. :eek:
No worse for wear, luckily- the vet said a dog that heavy would have to eat pounds of chocolate before it had an adverse effect.
But when the St. Bernard get a headstart on the Easter egg hunt, bad things happen. Four dozen boiled eggs, shells and all, transubstantiate in a big dog’s guts into a weeklong cloud of sulphur, the likes of which are difficult to describe. Good thing Easter was late that year and the weather was warm enough we had no qualms about making her sleep outside.
Tabby
But what about the effects of plastic grass, foil, and candles on his insides?
Okay, maybe this is an appropriate topic for me to pop my cherry (so to speak).
When I was a vet student, I did a rotation at a famous emergency hospital in Milwaukee. I happened to see the same guy bring in his year-old Boxer 3 times over 5 weeks. The visits were for a laceration, dietary indiscretion and rat poison toxicosis. They were all pretty expensive visits (in the middle of the night), especially that last one, as the vitamin K tablets alone can cost hundreds of dollars. He was a sweet man, very long-suffering, with this very goofy dog he adored. I’ll always remember him saying, ” You know, I have 4 teenage kids, all really active, and I’ve NEVER had to take them to the ER. I’ve had this dog a few months and I may need to get a second job to pay for his ER bills.”
Later, when I was an intern, it was sometimes a little scary being the only overnight doctor. The only other person in the large hospital in the wee hours was the ICU tech, so you always hoped that the humans who came in were not going to cause trouble. Usually the “off” clients were more funny than dangerous. One night around 3 am, a lady came in with a sick cat. The lady was a little spacey, had a bit of a wild look in her eyes. As I started taking the history, she suddenly interrupted me with “Am I gonna be on TV?” I instantly realized 2 things. One, she thought there were hidden cameras in the stark exam room, and two, she was a fan of the Animal Planets show “Emergency Vets.” No matter that the ER where that show was filmed is on the other side of the continent, has an extremely different building, different staff—everything. Without missing a beat I told her, “Oh, if they decide to use your footage they will definitely call you later and go over everything with you.” She accepted that happily and we finished dealing with her cat. It was suffering from something very routine, not emergent, and I always wondered if she just came in that night to try to jump-start her on-screen career.
Probably the most consistently entertaining thing vets talk about is strange foreign bodies they have seen—what cats and dogs will eat. Kind of like human ER docs and things people put up their butts. Many of you have already mentioned these. Some things require surgery; bizarre stuff like gorilla glue that foams and expands as it hardens in a dog’s stomach. We speculate that it must be so irresistible because it tastes like gorillas. Other things I have heard of being recovered from the GI tract: lots of socks, underwear and pantyhose, remote controls, cell phones, coins and bills, jewelry, a 3-blade disposable razor, 5 pounds of gravel, rubber duckies, a hammer handle, eyeglasses, Barbies, leashes and collars, an electric blanket, a serrated-edge kitchen knife, corncobs, golf balls, a 3-hooked fishing lure, a volleyball-size wad of carpet scraps. Sometimes they get lucky and pass the most bizarre things and avoid the surgery. My favorite, which always makes me smile, is the Golden Retriever that swallowed a full-size light bulb and eventually passed it whole-- without, apparently, ever feeling a thing.
You win the thread, Parenchyma. Welcome to the SDMB.
And the crowd goes wild!!! What a first post! Welcome to the SDMB.