Broken bones are fun to fix. No question! When I started out as a young veterinarian, leash laws were lax, and the caseload from auto/dog encounters was high, so I repaired lots of crunched up limbs. I was new at this, and I remember getting…

Piff and Phoenix were brought to Riverbend about a week apart. They were a lot alike . . . talkative, incredibly cute little grey kitties with big personalities and big problems to match. Piff could not poop. Phoenix could not pee. Not good problems, but…

Last September with two friends, Annie and I backpacked for nine days in the Grand Canyon. We took a little-known route we discovered 25 years ago, off the North Rim, down Cranberry Canyon, over the Redwall to the Colorado River, and then back up through…

Tiny Tim, our overly curious Pug, was skunked a few weeks ago. Worse things could happen you might rightfully say, but in the midst of dealing with that headache-inducing smell, it is hard to think what. Wow, was he ever pungent! It was my fault….

Like many other vets and vet techs in the area, I started my career in veterinary medicine at the Rowley Memorial Animal Hospital on Bliss Street in Springfield. The hospital of course no longer exists, but in its day Rowley was an extraordinary place, a…

A hot topic at our professional meetings and in the journals, laser therapy seems too good to be true. Lasers are claimed to do almost anything you want . . . speed healing, decrease inflammation, decrease pain, duplicate the benefits of massage and acupuncture, and…

The dog days of summer are here. Tiny Tim (the Pug) stands chest deep in the wading pool; Jackson (the Golden Retriever) lies panting under the bushes. Too hot to even bother chasing our gimpy grey cat. I snooze under the umbrella on the back…

The dog knee is poorly designed, with its weakest link being the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). The ACL is made up of two thick fibrous bundles wrapped around one another. This ligament runs from the back of the femur (upper leg bone) to the front…

Tyrone was a special cat. He arrived here in March 2000, just 3 months after we opened. Nearly blind and very scrawny with a terrible upper-respiratory infection, he was rescued from a shelter where he was scheduled to be euthanized. He may have been about…