10/27/2026
Dr Friedmans latest article..... Are your ears ringing....
Yes, you. Are your ears ringing? Are your dog's ears ringing?
No, no one has a bad ear infection. Your ears are ringing because we're talking about you and your pets.
Do you ever wonder what we do at work in a veterinary hospital? I don't know what other places do, but at my hospital, we're constantly talking. Most of us have worked here for years and years. In my case, twenty-five of them. Many of my staff measure their time with us in decades, not years. So when we are talking about you, we're going way, way back. Often we're going back three generations of pets, and people.
Dr. Flanagan and I exchange information incessantly. And we have what we jokingly call ESPN. I'll start a conversation by saying, "hey, you know that lady? that client of yours? she has a dog? not the big dog, the other one. you know, he had something last year....?"
The good doctor will nine times out of ten respond "oh, you mean Mrs. So and So? Yep, what about her? That kitten she found got better?"
How do we do it? I don't know, it's just how we do. When you work with people for that many years, many times in the only place they've ever worked, you build a crazy common story together.
So Dr. Dasaro brings in a cat. I look at her and say :"Gee, doesn't that look like what's her name? You know, the cat that had something with her paw ten or twelve years ago." And my husband nods.
Or there's a new employee (with us less than ten years) who can't understand why making a sign with our hand sends Michael and me into paroxysms of laughter. We're remembering how our tech Dale, gone from us so early, made him get into the dumpster in mid August, in a heat wave, to look for a surgical clamp he had mistakenly thrown away. He spent the better part of the day in there and came out smelling like exactly what you would think. Michael came to work for us when he was sixteen. So did Dr. Flanagan. Now she says "hey, what happened to Mr. Wright's dog? Was I out on maternity leave and missed this?! Was it the first leave or the second?"
Dr. Landry, new to us and so lovely, tries to follow the threads of our conversation and just can't. Who's the dog who had heart disease? Why does that immediately lead to ten other cases of heart failure that we took care of for so long? Who is Grilli? Who is "that other one, you know, that one that night.." It makes her head spin.
How can Dr. Harlec tell Kristin to please get that nice lady on the phone for her? And Kris dials without even asking who. And when the nice lady picks up the phone, Kris just says "hi, it's me. hold please" and everyone knows exactly what we're doing, what we're talking about.
This is the beauty and the special part of being in a giant, extended, multiple doctor mom and pop practice. We know everything, about everyone, at any given minute. If you hate sitting in an exam room with the doors closed because you get too warm, we know that. If your cat gets panicky coming to see us, we give him medication ahead of time to make his trip easier. We know our patients, their owners, and we also know that the owner was the child of another owner, fifteen years down the road. We can reminisce with her about her mom's dog Argus and her grandma's cat Pedro while admiring her new Westie Bibi. Our manager Melissa has seen all these guys with us, and we all share a common passion, a past, a future together. It makes the day go by so nicely. Hope your workday is as much fun as ours!
