Online wanderings…
After handing out gobs of Halloween candy to the neighborhood kids last night, I came back to the computer to check e-mail and do some goofing off. I’d recently read about a vet in Miami who has a very active blog, and decided to check out Dr. Patty Khuly’s site, Dolittler.com. As you may have guessed, the site is named for the fictional physician who can talk to animals. While Dr. Khuly makes no such claim, she sure does like to write, posting daily or nearly so. The site is described as “A veterinary blog for pet lovers, vet voyeurs and the medically curious… ,” and I’d say that’s pretty accurate.Dr. Kuhly has quite a following—including vets, pet owners, and others—and many of her posts were thought-provoking and generated quite a bit of commentary from subscribers. Hers is an interesting perspective into the life—the good, the bad, and the ugly—of a veterinarian in the real world. It’s a no-holds-barred look at the challenges we face, the decisions we make, and the thrills we experience, a look that isn’t often granted to those outside a veterinarian’s immediate family and closest friends. I’ll place a link in our blogroll so you can go back and check in with Dr. Khuly from time to time.Surfing through Dolittler’s links, I eventualy wound up on a site that had dog horoscopes on it. While I’m not much into astrology, everybody likes to read their horoscope from time to time, and I figured Rana and Archie would be no different. Among other things, I learned that Archie’s “natural sense of adventure compels you to the out of doors.” If you’ve been reading his account of the post-operative experience, you already know that those words are spot-on! This site, of course, started me wondering about cat horoscopes, and Google could find plenty. While we don’t know the exact birth dates of any of our kitties, I did waste a good bit of time trying to ferret out their approximate birthdays using the detailed horoscopes at the Kitten’s Lair.Okay, now that you’ve had a little fun, here’s a good site to use for serious information. Veterinary Partner is a great resource for pet owners and should be one of your first stops if you’re researching pet health on the net. It’s the flip side of the Veterinary Information Network, a huge online community of veterinarians providing online access to a variety of clinical and scientific resources, consultations with specialists in a vast array of disciplines, and online continuing education courses for all members of the veterinary healthcare team. While non-veterinarians can’t access VIN directly, the information at Veterinary Partner is generated by the same group of experts and presented in easy-to-understand terms. Priority Pet Hospital’s clients, however, have indirect access to all the benefits of VIN, since both Dr. Burns and I are members and frequent users of this fantastic resource. Who knows, the VIN community may even be of help to your own pet someday!