I haven't seen a good case of mastitis in the last year that I can recall (also a preventable disease if you spay your damn pets! But I digress). This weekend I saw two. I won't lie, my heart and breasts ached for these poor dogs. On the bright side, I had actual firsthand knowledge of their pain, as well as what would help relieve it. I probably shared more information with the owners than they wanted, but I was able to offer firsthand advice on what would help their poor, painful, miserable dogs feel better. It was very satisfying.
The first owner was a lovely woman. I confess that intitially, I was quite annoyed with her. After talking about her dog's mastitis, she confessed that she didn't know the first thing about puppies or handling maternal problems. In my head, I was thinking, "then why did you go and breed them, foolish woman?"
Turns out, she adopted the dog from the humane society 2 months previously. She had lost her dog of 14 years to likely cancer and had carefully chosen a new companion from the shelter. Turns out, her new companion was pregnant! Poor lady. Thankfully, the shelter was helping her out and taking the puppies when they were weaned and ready to go. I personally think they should have been footing the mastitis bill too.
The weekend was fairly quiet otherwise. The day time shift was apparently busy, but I mostly sat around, read my book, played Words with Friends, and made sure the clinic didn't burn down.
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2 comments:
so what to do for mastitis?
I had a jerk come in on ER once with a Canin Corso bitch with gangrenous mastitis. She had a HUGE hole where one of her nipples should've been. The man point blank told us he bred her so he could sell the pups, he had no intention of paying what we estimated to treat the mastitis as it would eat into his profits. He would rather just euthanize her. We had him sign her over and fixed her mastitis and found her a good home. One of the only WORSE repro-related emergency visits was a guy with a bitch in obvious eclampsia whose owner coolly refused any and all treatment but an IM shot of calcium. In front of his crying and worried children. I wanted to punch that guy.
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