Category Archives: Vet Life

I look at veterinary medicine as a team sport. It’s not just the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center team your pet needs—you’re part of the team as well. As a pet owner, you are your pet’s advocate and voice. You tell veterinarians like me what clinical signs your pet is showing and how they’re responding to treatment. Together, we make decisions for your pet based on the available scientific evidence, always considering what is best for your pet and family. But being on the same team doesn’t mean I can always say yes. I have to say no when a pet owner’s ideas and suggestions are not medically correct, even if well-intentioned. Here are three real-life examples from this week.

The fifteen-day Chinese Lunar New Year festival started February 17. As a veterinarian, I love that each year in the Chinese zodiac is represented by an animal. Twelve is an important number in both the Chinese and Western zodiac: the Western Zodiac is composed of twelve constellations, while the Chinese zodiac features twelve animals. 2024 was the Year of the Dragon and 2026—or 4724 in the Chinese calendar—is the Year of the Horse. While we don’t normally care for horses at the current day Schwarzman Animal Medical Center, horses are a part of our history—and occasionally, our present. In honor of the Year of the Horse, I’ll share a few AMC equine stories to start the Year of the Horse off right.

Valentine’s Day is full of sweet traditions—chocolate, flowers, and gifts—but some of the most common holiday staples can become serious pet hazards. Pet insurance companies don’t just help pet families afford veterinary care—they’re also a rich source of data to help us understand how often certain illnesses and injuries occur. While insurance data is not collected with the scientific rigor of a research study, it can provide a useful snapshot of pet care trends. In this blogpost, I’ll look at what pet insurance claim data suggests about common health issues in dogs and cats, and what it may reveal about Valentine’s Day hazards.

This blogpost marks a personal milestone: my 1000th blogpost since I started blogging in 2008. Over that time, much has changed—in our country, at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center and in veterinary medicine. To mark this achievement, I want to reflect on some of those changes and on what continues to matter the most.

Lumps in and under the skin are a very common problem veterinarians are asked to assess. I’m not only saying this as a cancer specialist—skin lumps are common in primary care practice as well. According to a 2025 Clinician’s Brief Survey, primary care veterinarians evaluate an average of 2.7 masses each day in the clinic. What happens next—once a veterinarian examines a patient with a mass—is the subject of this blogpost.