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RAVE HERE thread
Started by Jamr0ckin
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I'm calling the SDN police
YO THIS POLICE STATION IS NEAR WHERE I AM FROM. PAWFFICER DONUT IS PRECIOUS.I'm calling the SDN police
also it feels illegal to be posting in the rave thread because I certainly have had no raves to share for the past several weeks
although I do think the prospect of little kittens with batons and badges might qualify as a rave
although I do think the prospect of little kittens with batons and badges might qualify as a rave
They had a different kitten for a hot second before Pawfficer Donut who was named Pawfficer Badges, but she got the felv and her and her siblings went to one of the felv sanctuaries in Ann Arbor to live 🙁
OK this does not belong in the rave department. Dang 🙁
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You are gonna get arrested by Officer Purrington
I know 🙁
But she’s living her best life at Leuk’s Landing! She even made the cover of their calendar.
Lol I call myself a dairy cow.animal case in point: how emaciated dairy cows get post parturition! So they basically just load them up with food and hope they don’t lose too much weight.
Edit: no I did not just call kcough a dairy cow, that’d not bode well for me
Congrats @kcoughli just passed a year ebf and have kept losing weight the whole time. You got this mama!
I am on second shift swing tonight (my least favorite shift ever - NOT a rave).
But THANK JEEBUS my brain actually let me sleep for a few hours before this shift for the first time ever! Because emergencies are actually coming in! Which means I am not dead tired AND bored at the same time! WOO!
ETA: Or dead tired and trying to save lives... a similarly not good combo LOL
But THANK JEEBUS my brain actually let me sleep for a few hours before this shift for the first time ever! Because emergencies are actually coming in! Which means I am not dead tired AND bored at the same time! WOO!
ETA: Or dead tired and trying to save lives... a similarly not good combo LOL
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Told a rotation mate she was going to be starting her internship in the dairy production industry soon
Saw this today on r/UpliftingNews, made it to r/all:
Alberta veterinarians vote to ban declawing, ear cropping, tail docking surgeries: ‘It’s inhumane’
Thought there would be a few people here who would enjoy the news. 🙂
Alberta veterinarians vote to ban declawing, ear cropping, tail docking surgeries: ‘It’s inhumane’
Thought there would be a few people here who would enjoy the news. 🙂
ill preface with this: I haven’t read this article yet, and so I don’t know if they addressed my concerns in it.
I... I have mixed feelings about this. It’s really easy to ban things they don’t like (declawing, cropping, tail docking) but then it brings up some good questions, one regards immunocompromised owners and declawing. And then the second is the official breed standard. I don’t believe that cropped ears/ docked tails are going to be taken out of the official breed standards anytime soon, so now instead of the veterinarian doing them who knows what they’re doing and can do it safely/ humanely, who does it? The breeder? The groomer? I do understand trying to discourage these mutilating actions, but idk if a straight up ban is the best way to go...
Was reading Facebook comments from the Alberta association post and some of the news networks during class today. The majority of the responses were actually negative, which surprised me.
I don’t really understand outlawing tendonectomies. I saw this as the most humane alternative to declawing when the option was between bringing my cat to a shelter or front declaw since she was ruining every piece of upholstered furniture in the house, some of which are family heirlooms.
I don’t have a ton of information on it, but from what I do know, it seems like decent alternative in situations like mine, where the cat would otherwise end up in a shelter or on the streets, and I feel like outlawing it will end up increasing shelter burdens.
I don’t have a ton of information on it, but from what I do know, it seems like decent alternative in situations like mine, where the cat would otherwise end up in a shelter or on the streets, and I feel like outlawing it will end up increasing shelter burdens.
I think straight up bans tend to be much more effective than they seem. At some point our profession needs to be able to take a stand against practices that we consider inhumane and I have always been somewhat fascinated by the equivocation I see in arguments against outright bans of certain practices. I see a lot of the "well people will simply do it at home" argument, and while I understand the perspective, I also don't know that I agree with it - as someone who works in humane enforcement, there are tons of things that owners aren't allowed to do at home that they do anyway, but on some level it's okay because we can and do prosecute them for it.
I think the bigger issue is making sure that the law is consistent with the veterinary practices at the time the ban takes effect, but these sorts of things would almost universally fall under some version of practicing without a license and/or causing bodily harm to the animal, which are laws that are generally very consistently in place in most areas.
If we'd like to take a stand against breed standards that we consider inappropriate, well then why not stop performing procedures that allow that breed standard to remain in place? Things rarely change all at once, and for all the people who will complain or try to do things at home, I am sure there are many more who will see the barrier created by our profession itself and not pursue it further than that.
There is a relative paucity of good studies about immunocompromised owners and declawed cats. The CDC doesn't recommend declaws as a method of preventing zoonoses to owners, and frankly I sort of think that you'd have to be a severely immunocompromised person to be at a serious health risk from an un-declawed cat. There are a few papers indicating that infections with Bartonella henselae and dermatophytosis are more likely in immunocompromised cat owners (and note that dermatophytosis transmission would have no relation to whether a cat was declawed or not), but current evidence suggests that it's much more effective to screen for a healthy cat in the first place than it is to declaw them, particularly for Bartonella, where appropriate flea control is a much more important factor for disease prevention than the declaw would be.
There's some conflicting data about declawing and its effect on shelter burdens (I suspect it is probably a little variable by area). Some studies have found that declawed cats were actually more likely to end up in shelters when other factors were controlled for. Some other, more recent ones also found that declawed cats had a longer length of stay before being adopted out from shelters, although they didn't speculate as to why.
As for tenectomies, a lot of that data is a little harder to sift through since it's mostly compared against declawing and isn't recommended by a variety of organizations (including the AVMA, which is fascinating to me because they hate taking a stance against anything lol). From my understanding it seems to mainly be that overall pain/complication rates are similar to declawing, with the added concern for owner maintenance for the nails over time, which sort of adds a built-in failure point for some clients. Without proper maintenance things like nails growing into foot pads etc are certainly common, so I wonder if that's why the strong stance against it from some agencies that are otherwise okay with declaws.
I'm also slightly fascinated by how many people simply don't like having aspects of their profession legislated about at all, and prefer to rely on professional judgment and maintain their own discretion to make medical decisions without having a law in place to dictate the medical choices they are allowed to make
I've met many veterinarians who were absolutely against declawing and also against declawing bans for exactly this reason
@Caiter92 it seems my stream of consciousness posts are resonating with you 😛
I have thoughts and then you post them so I don’t have to do any of the work 😛
I'm just trying to avoid studying by... doing literature reviews on completely separate topics
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This is an argument I've heard a lot, and maybe the only one that I really agree with (I haven't read the above article so I'm speaking more generally).
Declawing/tendenectomies/whatever in general don't sit right with me. You know when you get a cat that it has claws. That is just...what a cat is. It is of no direct benefit to the cat itself to remove that characteristic, it is strictly something that makes it easier for us to live with them. We don't remove a dog's teeth so that it doesn't bite, we teach them. Why do we continue to be ok with removing a cat's claws so that it does not scratch? Cats are not untrainable, and there are so many other ways to deal with that issue that I just don't have much sympathy for it anymore.
I also don't have much sympathy for strictly cosmetic procedures like what ear cropping and tail docking are in most cases.
Even with all that I do get uncomfortable with bans popping up if the local veterinary community isn't at the forefront of that movement. I can't 100% say why, it just bothers me to think of non- medical professionals making rulings on medical procedures I guess?
I agree that it's probably the only argument that I think holds water. Medical autonomy is an important topic and I think this is a huge part of why I think it's so important to have strong professional organizations that actually adequately represent the interests of its members.
I wrote a paper for a healthcare systems class several years ago that was about the political clout of the veterinary profession as a whole, and really when you compare it to other professional bodies it's pretty abysmal. I always thought it was interesting because we as a profession have a lot of public goodwill and many of the topics we are interested in helping get legislation on are (politically-speaking) not that complex (e.g. lots of animal welfare issues), but we really are terrible about organizing and advocating for our needs professionally. I'm interested to see if this changes over the years as more people entering the profession gain interest in working in governmental policy/lobbying roles
We are a complex and diverse profession, much like human medicine, and I think it's a shame to hand over the vast majority of our place on the political stage to one or two broad organizations that don't represent the profession as a whole well (this certainly happened with physicians and the AMA).
It's a difficult topic though, because I don't know how you'd prevent the conglomeration of the profession's interests without more grassroots efforts on the parts of individual veterinarians and without getting more veterinarians into politics/legislative roles in government
I used to be pretty okay with declawing before I learned more about it. Ever since, I’ve fought pretty hard to keep clients from declawing their cats. My office offers the procedure but only in specific circumstances. These include immunocompromised owners, mentally challenged children in the house, and things of that nature. But on Friday I had an owner call and say he wanted to declaw his cat. I told him the reasons we typically accept to declaw and I asked why and he said “well I’ll just give you the generic story: he’s clawing up all of my furniture and now my leather couch looks like pleather.” I asked if he’s tried any alternatives at all. Clipping the nails, keeping scratching posts near areas where the cat sleeps, or using soft paws. He said no. When I asked about soft paws, he said “so you mean I’d have to clip his nails every month and put those things on?” as if it were the end of the world. He really felt like he couldn’t spare two minutes of his life once a month. I told him about some of the effects of declawing and that while some aren’t guaranteed (not every cat develops noticeable pain or arthritis in their paws) it’s a high enough risk that it’s inhumane to do it. He ended up thanking me for all the information and that he would look into it more. Whether that meant he was just going to call another hospital or not, I don’t know.
I just feel like declawing is done 100% out of convenience (except for in the cases I mentioned above). Then we have people coming in asking why their cats are biting. Well when you take away a cat’s first line of defense, its claws, it resorts to biting, which can be a lot nastier than a small scratch.
Ear cropping will never sit right with me. To me that’s like getting your child a nose-job because their nose is bigger than what someone of their ethnicity typically has. Cosmetic surgeries don’t make sense to me in veterinary medicine. It harms the animal for no physical benefit. If there’s a medical benefit behind doing it, sure. But if it’s only cosmetic, then it shouldn’t be done.
Edit: apparently the medical word for “mentally challenged” is seen as a slur by this site’s automatic detection program...
I just feel like declawing is done 100% out of convenience (except for in the cases I mentioned above). Then we have people coming in asking why their cats are biting. Well when you take away a cat’s first line of defense, its claws, it resorts to biting, which can be a lot nastier than a small scratch.
Ear cropping will never sit right with me. To me that’s like getting your child a nose-job because their nose is bigger than what someone of their ethnicity typically has. Cosmetic surgeries don’t make sense to me in veterinary medicine. It harms the animal for no physical benefit. If there’s a medical benefit behind doing it, sure. But if it’s only cosmetic, then it shouldn’t be done.
Edit: apparently the medical word for “mentally challenged” is seen as a slur by this site’s automatic detection program...
Gonna be honest, when I posted the article I didn't really think about any reasons why it could be bad, but I have really enjoyed reading the discussion. 🙂
From an outsider's perspective (so take my opinion with a grain of salt lol) I still think overall the move to ban is a good thing. Especially considering it says the ban passed with 98% of the vote in favor.
From an outsider's perspective (so take my opinion with a grain of salt lol) I still think overall the move to ban is a good thing. Especially considering it says the ban passed with 98% of the vote in favor.
It sounds like most veterinary professionals aren’t against a ban in and of itself, just that the ban is written and brought up by politicians, not by veterinary professionals. That’s the part that doesn’t sit well.
Edit: the Canada ban IS by veterinarians. Sorry!
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It should be noted in this particular case that the ban was written and proposed by veterinarians. Also of interest, in my opinion, was that one vet stood up during the proceedings and proposed adding spay/neuter to the list of medically unnecessary procedures which is another interesting debate.
I feel like most people just don’t really know what declawing actually is. They just think you’re popping the nail off but not really harming the cat. Most people don’t realize that you’re actually taking a whole hunk of bone off with it. I’ve seen more people be less interested in declawing just by knowing what the procedure actually is.
Yea you’re right. I forgot which ban we were talking about! I’m so used to talking about the New Jersey one that I forgot the article was about Canada. My bad!
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That's awesome that the whole thing was spearheaded by vets.
You could make the spay/neuter argument for male cats I think - as long as they are kept indoors I don't think there are truly any medical benefits to neutering them, just behavioral. There definitely are medical benefits for dogs and female cats though.
There's such a huge population level and public health effect too, that one is just a much more complex issue in my mind. I think it is done less commonly/routinely in some European countries though so there is some precedent for that. If people were more responsible with their intact animals it might not be as big of a thing.
I feel like that’s the reason behind a lot of things existing. People are just really bad at doing what’s right because they don’t feel like doing it. Why did you let your intact, unvaccinated cat outside? “Well he was crying to go out and he really likes it and i just can’t say no.”
FTFY
This is another interesting one since a ton of European countries hardly S/N at all but don't have nearly the stray problem that we in the states have. It's certainly interesting as well when you factor in the debates about things like delaying alteration in large breed dogs
There is a huge olfactory benefit for the owner to neuter a male cat! I have no idea how anyone could live with an intact male cat.
The medical benefits for dogs are more debatable. Most of the conditions male dogs get from being intact are cured by castration, and being intact may be protective against prostate cancer. They’ve also found intact Goldens and Rottweilers have a decreased rate of cancer (which is likely why my BIL’s intact Golden is still kicking at 15yo.)
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Oh for sure. I was speaking to benefits to the individual cat itself, owner benefits are a separate thing 😉
I was thinking along the lines of testicular cancer. Intact dogs are more likely to get BPH which is curable by castration whereas a neutered dog with a big prostate is more likely to have prostatic cancer for sure.
I think the other direct benefit to male dogs is decreased roaming behavior, which can get them in trouble on its own (more linked to people being responsible about their intact pets though). I hadn't heard about those breed specific links, that is interesting!
As far as medical benefits go, this page is what I always look to when people ask for why it’s important to spay.
Mammary Tumors | American College of Veterinary Surgeons - ACVS
Mammary tumors in dogs are generally benign and NBD if caught early. I just came off a repro rotation and we discussed all of this in depth. It seems the main reason to spay and neuter dogs is that owners can’t be trusted to be responsible with intact animals.
Cats are a different story imo, and I see more valid reasons for spaying and neutering.
All that said, I would absolutely recommend spaying and neutering to almost all pet owners. There are a rare few very responsible owners that I think could keep an animal intact.
Here’s a pretty comprehensive and fairly recent review on benefits and drawbacks of spay/neuter done by the AVMA, if anyone is interested: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie
Huh. The above article actually says 35-51% of mammary tumors are malignant based on five sources.
Huh. The above article actually says 35-51% of mammary tumors are malignant based on five sources.
But if also says that most of those malignancies aren’t fatal. I guess meaning that surgery is curative? But on top of that, if you’re going to be doing surgery to remove the tumors, isn’t it better to just do one surgery as a younger, healthier dog rather than wait and hope that your dog doesn’t develop anything to be worried about if you opt to not spay? Genuinely asking.
Edit: the article from ACVS, not the one you posted
I don’t have an answer and I think as we learn more things just get murkier. I guess the question is, do we perform a surgery on 100% of young, healthy dogs to avoid having to perform surgery on a certain subset of the population when they develop complications (neoplasia, pyometra, etc) in old age?
Yeah, until they're not. And until people get tired of cutting them off every year or two and let them grow until they drag on the ground and get ulcerated and then the dog is "too old for surgery" and something that could have easily be prevented is causing serious QoL concerns.
Nevermind the ones where we *do* find chest mets before surgery.
Or the fact that anyone who has an intact dog should always have a grand or two aside for a potential pyo surgery after every heat cycle.
I work in an area where spay/neuter is not just assumed. I see all these diseases basically weekly and think people who live in places that don't can be awful flippant about them.
Yup, the sheer number of basketball sized tumors I've seen poor dogs drag in make me want to do whatever I can to prevent the process from occurring in the first place.
This is also probably coming from my animal control place, but aggressive behaviors are much more common in intact animals (mainly intact male dogs) and I think targeted neutering programs could probably be fairly beneficial to reducing bite rates in a community
Wow that discussion was so interesting to read.
I just came on here to freak out about Pokémon Gen 8 being announced for the Switch....
Very excited!!!!!!!
I just came on here to freak out about Pokémon Gen 8 being announced for the Switch....
Very excited!!!!!!!
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Hubz sent me a pic of the starters this morning 🙂 Cute but I can't figure out why the bunny one has a bandage on its nose 😉Wow that discussion was so interesting to read.
I just came on here to freak out about Pokémon Gen 8 being announced for the Switch....
Very excited!!!!!!!
Definitely rhinoplasty. Game Freak and Nintendo are fighting the stigma on plastic surgery. Specifically on veterinary plastic surgery.
Wish I had a switch 😛
Maybe I should start saving up for one
Maybe I should start saving up for one
I like the Sadpole. I don't remember what its real name is supposed to be
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Sopple I think? It looks like a chameleon!
Also I swear if that bunny is yet ANOTHER fire starter that ends up being Fire/Fighting type I'm going to die
