But my point is that I admittedly don’t read every thread on this board, but I have seen no less than three threads by CCL wherein she calls animals names or ‘little fuckers’, and I’ve never seen one where she talks about anything she likes about her job.
And I guess my other point is more what sylphishone said. I hate leaving my dog overnight at the vet as it stands. If I know that everyone there is calling her a ‘crumbsnatching little fucker’ I’m not going to be much more comforted.
Isn’t it SOP to muzzle dogs that show aggression at the vet? That might have saved you from a painful bite.
I like all dogs until they give me a reason not to like them. (I’m not overfond of little dogs, but I don’t actively dislike them as a class. Individuals, yes, the entire group, no.) Hell’s bells, people, I’ve owned and loved small dogs before. We get all sorts of little ratdogs in all the time that are sweet as they can be. It’s a damn shame most of them die. (Being a specialty hospital, most of our patients have terminal illnesses or very, very grave injuries, so we don’t have the survival rate most vet clinics do.)
Going for the throat of every staff member who opens the door is a reason to not like an animal, IMHO. This dog was biting the plastic tubing on his IV line, just because it was there, for God’s sake. He was even going after the women who pulled his line through the door to inject his pain meds when he first came in, as well as the one who tried to give him a hot water bottle and blanket because his body temp was only 95. Somehow, I don’t think it was just me and my bad attitude.
I love my job, thank you very much. I do not, however, love every single client or patient we ever have. Some of them piss me off to the point that I feel the need to blow off some steam. I think I have, to date, started three or four Pit threads about my job over the course of the last year. One was about an asshole client, one was about people wasting our time with crank calls, and two were about nasty little dogs trying to rip the faces off everyone in the building the second they came through the door.
If that makes me a bad person or a bad tech, so be it. I can live with that, just like I can deal with the fact that blowing off a little steam about something at work means that people who know fuck-all about veterinary medicine will feel the need to tell me how to do a job my bosses and colleagues think I’m quite good at.
We’d already handled this dog quite a bit to do necessary monitoring and treatments. (I’ll freely admit, though, that he didn’t get the same level of monitoring that non-aggressive patients do. It’s just not feasible to check a heart rate or temp on an animal like that every hour or two, even if they are a critical patient. ) He started flipping and twisting and clawing, and I let go of him before he managed to fracture something. He managed to paw his muzzle loose, so it was hanging around his neck. I tried to drop a blanket over his head so I could unsnap the muzzle, and that’s when he got me.
We finally managed to snare him in our cat clasper. It’s a big frame that clamps the animal tightly between two mesh panels, with zippers that allow you to pull out a leg or such for drawing blood. It took fifteen minutes to catch him in that, and when we got him out, it took two techs and the doctor to hold him so that another tech could change the bandages around his chest tube.
Between us we had nearly fifty years of experience dealing with sick and injured animals. We know the difference between fear/pain biting, and aggressive biting. And this, my friends, was pure aggressive biting. A fear biter, or a pain biter, does NOT clamp down and hold on until you pry it loose.
But thanks for everyone’s input on my job satisfaction, attitude problems, and commentary on my professional skills.
Geez, qm, no-one bit the first time – whaddya want?
(I love that movie, but its relevance to the thread is just a bit tangential.)
I hate tiny agressive dogs.
Waaaaaay back at the tail-end of the eighties there was a little terrier-type thing that lived a coupla houses down, having the run of a fenced-in front yard.
That little bastard would start yapping as soon as it sighted anything moving, and keep it up until whatever it was moved out of sight. Absolutely no attempt was made by its owner to discourage this behaviour. It would run right up to the fence and run up and down the length of it, making a great show of its willingness to attack.
It grated on me for months, until I finally decided that if no-one else was going to disabuse the little rat-bastard of its inflated notions about the territory under its purview, then by God, I would.
From that point onward, every time it opened its trap, I charged, emitting a berzerker scream, doing my best to communicate to the puny shitter that it would be an easy task for me to rend it in two, and that, beyond the simple ability, I’d really rather enjoy it.
Once, an alarmed-looking woman stuck her head out the window while I was doing this. “Hello,” I said congenially, “I’m training your dog.”
It was only a few more weeks before the odious little creature was an altogether more docile creature. I’m not sure to what degree its transformation was due to its fear of the one passerby who didn’t ignore its aggressive displays, or how much it was influenced by its owner’s modified behaviour. For some reason, after that, she seemed to have taken hold of a clue somewhere, and when she heard her dog being a nuisance, she would actually expend the herculean amount of mental and physical energy required to put her head out the window and say, “Pepper! Quiet!”
CrazyCatLady, I’m sorry about your injury, and I hope that the near future holds a section of ratdog’s brain on a microscopic slide.
I used to work in a vet office, and sometimes we had bad animals, of course. We’d be careful, and sometimes we’d still get bitten or clawed. When it happened, we’d be pretty ticked off- just like someone taking a swing at you, you’re gonna get mad. CCL is responding to a pretty serious injury, and hey, she wants to vent. I’d vent to whether it was a dog or a cat or a human being that did it (although, granted, seeing this all done by a human would be a bit weird…)
As a side note, I did have a ‘ratdog’ once. Li’l Shih-tzu. Nice as they came, but dumb as a post.
No need to fly off the handle, CCL, just wondering if there’s any aspect of your job you enjoy?
I’m sorry you got bitten, CCL, but why exactly wasn’t this dog muzzled? It’s not uncommon for injured animals to snap at those who are trying to help them. If tubes, etc., made the fitting of a soft muzzle impractical, you might try a loop of tape with enough slack in it to accomodate the tubes, around the muzzle, crossed on the bottom, and then around the back of the skull.
p.s. can’t blame you for disliking the little rat dogs. 
Be careful out there!
Psst! Ratdog pulled it off. Re-read.
Oh, and thanks to everyone who expressed well-wishes for me and the thumb. It’s about twice it’s normal size today, despite the NSAIDS, and I can barely bend it at all. Made getting dressed today a real bitch, not to mention trying to cook lunch. Luckily, the pattern of the swelling suggests that he didn’t actually hit the joint capsule, and there’s a good chance the numbness is caused by pressure from the swelling rather than actual nerve damage. There’s no way to know till the swelling goes down.
It wouldn’t really bother me so much if I didn’t know these people were going to throw a screaming, howling hissy fit about sending his head off if he doesn’t make it. They’ll trot out all the arguments about how he’s vaccinated, and how it’ll traumatize them and the kids to have him beheaded. To that, I and the state government say, “Boo-fucking-hoo.” Just last summer there was a case of live rabies in a vaccinated cat a couple counties over, so there are NO exceptions to the off-with-his-head rule when an animal has bitten someone in the last 10 days.
If you don’t want to risk your dog being beheaded, teach him not to attack everything that moves. If he’s not potentially exposing anybody, he doesn’t have to get tested, but if he bites people, he HAS to be tested. It’s a harsh but simple fact of life.
Larry, by ‘hampster spit up my post’, I meant that the first time I thought it went, I checked the replies & it wasn’t there. In reality it was as were a dozen others…my view just didn’t show it. Anyway, I reposted. And then <boom> the damn thing shows.
But, I guess you had to be there.
On little dogs, I have no comment. But I had a huge cat that my vet’s office staff had major malfunctions with. He & I got along fine, but his vet card was marked that he was equivolent to a vicious dog. Later in his life, when he was to the point where it was merciful to put him down, I took him to a different hospital to have it done.
Some time after, when I had another pet into the original vet office for something else, one of the staff asked about the cat that died & I told her that. I remember her commenting “good thing, as I would have made a necklace out of his teeth.” or something to that effect.
Its funny, but I didn’t feel as guilty about his biting the crap out of her after that.
Oops, I was composing my post while CCL posted that ratdog removed the muzzle.
I tend not to post about the good animals we work with, because it hurts too much. Most of them are dead, you see. Because of the nature of our practice, we see the worst of the worst. We don’t get to do vaccines and well-puppy exams. We treat terminal cancer and do surgeries on animals so debilitated that their regular vets don’t feel comfortable putting them under anesthesia. Most of our patients don’t make it very long, and we know they’re not going to make it long.
If you think about the really sweet dog that came in over the weekend, you have to think about the fact that she suddenly coded five minutes after you told her owner he could come visit later. You also have to think about how terribly nice her owners were, and how much they loved her, and how the last thing they said to you was, “Take care of her for me, okay?”
If one of you wants to think about that sort of thing all the time, go right ahead. I can’t.
It’s a tough job. And I’m glad that it’s being taken care of by someone who knows what they’re doing, and cares about animals.
Some of the most compassionate treatment I’ve ever received from any medical practitioners was the treatment that I received when I drove in to the emergency vet hospital a few minutes after my husband had driven in with our Siberian husky, who had just been hit by a car. She died shortly after arrival. The staff person there asked me if I wanted to go in to see her, and led me into the room, where she had been cleaned up. They handed me a box of kleenex, told me to take all the time I wanted, and moved discreetly off to the side.
When I notified our family vet of her death a few days later (so that we wouldn’t get the “It’s time to bring Alf in for her vaccinations” letter), the staff there was very sympathetic as well. We received a hand written sympathy note a few days later.
IMO, this sort of stuff would make for a pretty boring pit rant, or a depressing MPSIMS thread.
By the way, when our golden retriever goes in to the vet, she gets a muzzle. She’s very sociable and friendly most of the time, but tends to bite when someone tries to take her rectal temperature. (I find her attitude somewhat understandable.) I also find it understandable that she has a note on her chart warning staff to muzzle her, and I totally forgive the staff for any curse words they might have thrown at her when this normally affable dog tried to bite the person who was sticking something up her butt.
Trust me, YWalker, everybody understands her attitude about the thermometer. I have never seen anyone hold that against an animal, nor have I ever seen anyone hold general reluctance to be at the vet against one. Starting to snap the second someone other than the owner takes hold of the leash, though, that will get held against you. (Mostly, though, it gets held against the owner for not bothering to teach the dog any better.)
If it’s smaller than a football, it’s not a dog. EOD.
I don’t hate them but I don’t like them either. My parents always had a dog around and usually at least two cats. When I was real little, that dog was a chihuahua named Buster, and he didn’t really trust kids. Not a good thing when there was as many as 9 kids living at home at any given time. Now my SO has been talking about getting a chihuahua but that recently changed to wanting a beagle. The change was due in part to my not wanting to deal with one of them again, plus SO learned that not all chihuahuas look like the Taco Bell dog.
CCL, I hope your thumb is back to normal soon.
What is this “ratdog” bullshit?
Friedo, I happen to own a chihuahua, and since I’m not a “senile old lady,” I trained him just like any other dog. Ergo, he behaves just like any other dog. He isn’t mean, yappy, hyper, or otherwise “irritating.” He’s just a happy, well-behaved, sociable dog who happens to be small.
I don’t understand all the anger towards small dogs! Take your anger out on the owners who don’t think they’re “big enough” to train correctly, but those, like Friedo, who’ve never met a small dog they liked, seem awfully prejudiced. “Little fucking bastards” seems a bit over the top.
And frankly, as I’ve said before, men who don’t think small dogs are real dogs always seem a bit…insecure.
Sorry, quietman, when I started that, you hadn’t posted the “never mind” yet – and the hamsters withheld their favour from me for a full half hour. (So I feel your pain.)
The problem, AUDREY, is that it seems like whole lot of owners of small yappy high-energy (a/k/a “nervous”) dogs don’t bother to train them well. So they race around. And they jump on people. And they bite. And they bark. And bark. And bark and bark and bark and bark and bark and bark and bark bark bark bark bark.
So a lot of people just don’t like those types of dogs because they seem collectively to be a set of nervous, poorly trained yappers, and I have to admit I’m one of them. (The people, that is; the jury’s still out on whether I’m also a nervous, poorly trained yapper.)
I love all dogs, and I’d be perfectly willing to adore a chihuahua if it was well-behaved, but it seems like most I’ve met are not. Same with yorkies and teacup/miniature poodles and llasas and shi tzus and etc.
I realize that people owning these types of dogs are just as devoted to them as I am to my cocker spaniel, and I also realize there’s a small but vocal section that think cockers are the cranky vicious ones of the dog world. But I would never get one of those yappy little useless dogs, because my experience is they’re ill-behaved little biters, and the bottom line is I don’t like 'em.
CCL, I hope your thumb gets better. I also hope the injured pup gets to keep his head.
CCL, I didn’t realize that you worked at a specialty vet. That certainly makes it a lot more understandable why you don’t have many happy stories. It must take a lot of fortitude to do that kind of work. I have an acquaintance who is a hospice nurse, and I’m in awe of her ability to handle it all, let alone stay sane and basically cheerful.
Bless you, and may you and your patients get better soon.