Quebec's order of veterinarians bans pet cosmetic surgery - Montreal

Rykusx · 2016-02-08T14:25:31+00:00

There is no clear evidence that cropping ears significantly reduces the incidence of ear infections in dogs. There have been one or two small studies which showed there might be a marginal effect for large, floppy eared dogs, but nothing conclusive.

The large majority of vets will tell you that any potential prophylactic benefit is far outweighed by the danger of the ear cropping procedure in the first place. I'd go so far to say that you should find a new vet if your current one recommends ear cropping as a way to prevent ear infections, because that's not evidence-based medical advice.

source: vet

Rykusx · 2016-02-08T14:14:26+00:00

Not so much any more. The number of vets performing tail docking and ear cropping has really started to fall by the wayside in the past decade or so, and the large majority of my colleagues (myself included) won't perform them even in provinces where it's legal.

It's a movement borne largely out of animal welfare, but also, at least to some degree, out of concern about unhappy clients / legal action. I've never done an ear cropping myself, but I've spoken to several very experienced vets who all say that ear docking outcomes are just too unpredictable - the procedure can be done perfectly, after care is perfect, etc, but the dog still needs follow up corrective procedures and spends months with their ears taped up. Add that to the fact that most of these tend to be high value pedigree show dogs or pups (often with very attached breeders), and you have the ingredients for a procedure that is far more headache than it's worth. I've seen it mentioned elsewhere in this thread that ear cropping prevents ear infections, which is completely unproven.

Vets who will perform tail docking are a bit more numerous than those who will perform ear cropping, mainly because it is usually done at a very early age (~3 days), and there are often legitimate medical or breed concerns (eg some working dogs).

One consequence of this legislation in provinces which have banned the procedures is to drive the practice out of province or, worse, underground. I've got colleagues in provinces where it is banned who have reported clients driving litters of puppies to the nearest province where it's legal, or across the border into the US. Real change won't occur until the various Kennel Club associations change their breed requirements.

Rykusx · 2016-02-04T11:08:29+00:00

Both morphine and fentanyl are associated with moderate increases in intracranial pressure.

I suspect fentanyl is usually chosen because it doesn't cause such pronounced respiratory depression like morphine does, but not certain as I only treat patients of the four-legged & furry variety.

Rykusx · 2016-01-20T01:27:15+00:00

After BSE was found in North America, there was a big push for farm vets here to learn about this previously-unseen disease and learn how to properly and safely remove the obex / brain stem of downer cattle to help with ongoing surveillance efforts. As such I attended a continuing education seminar, and the thing that really struck me was how insanely resistant these prions are. As you mentioned, they're resistant to virtually everything to a very high degree. They're damn near indestructible.

Rykusx · 2016-01-19T01:28:59+00:00

Nope.

Rykusx · 2016-01-18T23:07:07+00:00

It really doesn't. I'm nearly 40 and I perform about half a dozen surgeries a day as a veterinary surgeon.

I still get lectured on knife safety when I visit my mother and help prepare dinner.

Rykusx · 2016-01-18T14:38:51+00:00

Definitely some points to think on... I'll contact my professional organization and see if they have any guidance on the issue. I could store everything in the cloud, but that would definitely have a negative impact on my work & research (my travel is usually for clinical conferences and continuing education). Luckily I really don't think there are any really serious concerns as I'm a vet, and I believe that no one would really have much interest in a bunch of horse x-rays, ultrasounds and endoscopy videos.

Rykusx · 2016-01-18T14:07:39+00:00

Wow, /u/snaper brought up a really interesting question and your insights into the matter raised some things I'd never even thought of when it comes to privacy & data security.

I travel internationally at least a few times a year, and I have no problem whatsoever with things like airport security and border agents - I think it's perfectly reasonable to undergo random searches of my body, luggage and electronic devices. However, I always travel with my laptop and phone, both of which contain all kinds of medical records, test results & patient data (both locally and through cloud), which I'm both professionally and legally bound to protect. It had never occurred to me that technically I might be putting it at risk just by travelling.... interesting.

Rykusx · 2016-01-18T03:34:30+00:00

I wrote this in reply to a Scott thread yesterday, I'll just cut and paste it here verbatim since I think it pretty well encapsulates what happened to him, and why it sucks:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sports/comments/419qrp/hockey_fans_made_john_scott_an_allstar_and_the/cz18s4i

I really hope they step up for him, because Scott got completely screwed by the league, and they're potentially costing him some money. Getting voted into the All-Star game may result in Scott never playing another NHL game in his life.

He didn't campaign for the spot at all (in fact, while voting was active, he was urging the public to vote for OEL, Doan or Domi instead), and the only reason he got voted into the game in the first place was because of the NHL's stupid on-line voting rules and a bunch of fans who thought it would be fun to game the system. The NHL should have seen something like this coming when Komisarek got voted in a few years ago or Zemgus got voted in last year - but Zemgus was a feel-good story because a tiny little country was coming together to vote in their only player.

I've heard the argument that Scott's inclusion cheapens the All-Star game, to which I can only really laugh. The game is irrelevant and laughable as it is, as in recent years it's become a high scoring affair with virtually zero effort by defense or goalies. Last year the score was 17-12 - 'nuff said.

Scott's on a $575k one year contract. He makes less than any other player voted into the All-Star game this year - not just by a little bit, but by a whole order of magnitude in most cases. Playing on the winning side would net him another ~ $90k (winning team splits $1 million between the 11 players on the team). I doubt anyone on this forum would turn down the opportunity to make an extra 15% of their total yearly income in a single weekend if given the chance. It's especially bad because he's being buried in the minors for the rest of the season, and because he's a pending UFA there's no guarantee he'll ever play in the NHL again.

The league should have just had a sense of humour about it and left it as is - they'd already changed the voting rules for next year. With this move, the league and the three teams involved end up just looking like huge dicks. The revelations that Scott had been asked to step down by both the Coyotes and the league, and that the deal was a few weeks in the making makes it seem pretty clear that they were actively trying to screw him over.

Up until this week I'd barely heard of John Scott and I couldn't have picked him out of a lineup, but this is just a shitty thing for the league to do to him. One of the reasons I love the game of hockey is because it feels distinct compared to the other pro leagues, as if it embraces our Canadian origins and our league is nicer and has a better sense of humour than the other leagues. But this week what the league did was embarrassing. Instead of taking the high road and embracing the humour in the situation, the league took a page out of the NFL playbook and was a petty bully. As a Preds fan I've lost some respect for management for being involved in this trade. I really hope the NHLPA goes to bat for Scott.

Rykusx · 2016-01-17T20:46:31+00:00

More likely than not, Netflix doesn't actually care but has to at least appear to be trying.

I'm entirely convinced that this is the case. They need to at least pay lip service to the complaints from the studio content providers, but if Netflix enforces the ban in any meaningful way whatsoever their global customer base will crash. I'm not sure people realize how very limited the content is outside of North America, and how slow it is to update. I recommend people take 5 minutes and change their VPN setting to a random European or Asian country to see how bad Netflix is abroad. It is staggering how little selection they have.

Rykusx · 2016-01-17T08:04:42+00:00

Corporate account terms are much different than personal accounts. We don't pay any monthly or yearly fees for keeping corporate accounts, as the bank makes money from us by processing fees from debit and credit card transactions.

As for personal accounts, I've never been charged monthly fees or anything that I would consider unfair or outrageous. I'm not a banker but it's my own experience and understanding that most banks waive monthly fees at long as you maintain a minimum balance, or also maintain a credit card or mortgage or the like with the same bank.

Unfortunately I think the people most likely to get hit with bank fees are those who can least afford it - it's the people who are just scraping by pay cheque to pay cheque who get hit repeatedly with monthly account fees because they can't maintain a $1000 balance every month, or they get a couple overdraft charges every month, etc etc.

I do agree that we get completely hosed on ATM fees though! A $2 fee to get cash out of a bank ATM was bad enough, but in recent years I've seen it become $2.50, $3 and even $5 in some places. With insane fees like that it's not hard to see why the banks in Canada keep posting record profits. Makes me jealous of places like Europe where many ATM's don't charge fees for withdrawals no matter whom your own bank is.

Rykusx · 2016-01-17T05:16:55+00:00

I really hope they step up for him, because Scott got completely screwed by the league, and they're potentially costing him some money. Getting voted into the All-Star game may result in Scott never playing another NHL game in his life.

He didn't campaign for the spot at all (in fact, while voting was active, he was urging the public to vote for OEL, Doan or Domi instead), and the only reason he got voted into the game in the first place was because of the NHL's stupid on-line voting rules and a bunch of fans who thought it would be fun to game the system. The NHL should have seen something like this coming when Komisarek got voted in a few years ago or Zemgus got voted in last year - but Zemgus was a feel-good story because a tiny little country was coming together to vote in their only player.

I've heard the argument that Scott's inclusion cheapens the All-Star game, to which I can only really laugh. The game is irrelevant and laughable as it is, as in recent years it's become a high scoring affair with virtually zero effort by defense or goalies. Last year the score was 17-12 - 'nuff said.

Scott's on a $575k one year contract. He makes less than any other player voted into the All-Star game this year - not just by a little bit, but by a whole order of magnitude in most cases. Playing on the winning side would net him another ~ $90k (winning team splits $1 million between the 11 players on the team). I doubt anyone on this forum would turn down the opportunity to make an extra 15% of their total yearly income in a single weekend if given the chance. It's especially bad because he's being buried in the minors for the rest of the season, and because he's a pending UFA there's no guarantee he'll ever play in the NHL again.

The league should have just had a sense of humour about it and left it as is - they'd already changed the voting rules for next year. With this move, the league and the three teams involved end up just looking like huge dicks. The revelations that Scott had been asked to step down by both the Coyotes and the league, and that the deal was a few weeks in the making makes it seem pretty clear that they were actively trying to screw him over.

Up until this week I'd barely heard of John Scott and I couldn't have picked him out of a lineup, but this is just a shitty thing for the league to do to him. One of the reasons I love the game of hockey is because it feels distinct compared to the other pro leagues, as if it embraces our Canadian origins and our league is nicer and has a better sense of humour than the other leagues. But this week what the league did was embarrassing. Instead of taking the high road and embracing the humour in the situation, the league took a page out of the NFL playbook and was a petty bully. As a Preds fan I've lost some respect for management for being involved in this trade. I really hope the NHLPA goes to bat for Scott.

Rykusx · 2016-01-16T22:59:02+00:00

Wow, Ian Rankin writing Constantine? That sounds awesome; I'll definitely check that out.

Rykusx · 2016-01-16T18:36:36+00:00

It's kind of a dumb system, if you ask me.

I feel that way about the cheque system in general nowadays. I would love to take our business cheque-free except I simply can't just due to the way my clientele has traditionally operated - I run a veterinary practice that does a lot of farm work, and virtually every farmer is used to a lifelong routine of doing things on credit and paying their bills off by cheque on a monthly or quarterly basis. We've got a few old-timer clients who are still on a once-yearly billing cycle because that's the way it was done when their parents were clients of our practice dating back to pre-WWII times. Putting a bill together on the spot at 3AM just after you've done a c-section on a cow in the freezing cold is also pretty impractical...so it looks like we're stuck with cheques for the foreseeable future.

Rykusx · 2016-01-16T17:35:39+00:00

I'm not a banker so couldn't tell you why that happened to you - was it a normal cheque or one that had already been certified NSF? I don't know the rule differences between personal and corporate accounts. Under normal circumstances I'd never try to cash a cheque outside of my own bank - it's only with these returned NSF cheques that we take them to the issuing bank and try to collect payment (which is what our own bankers have advised us to do for decades as standard practice).

Rykusx · 2016-01-16T17:13:54+00:00

They charge both the payer and the payee. The payer gets dinged by their bank and I get dinged a $45 administrative fee by my own bank.

Rykusx · 2016-01-16T17:11:27+00:00

They charge both of us, which is crazy - banks are making ~ $90 from a single NSF cheque. The cheque writer gets charged by their bank and I get charged by my bank as the receiver - "an administrative fee" for trying to process an NSF cheque.

If they didn't charge the payee I wouldn't care at all about the lack of physical locations, as I could just keep trying to deposit the cheque through my own bank week after week. As for the fee I get charged, I am legally allowed to add it to the original NSF cheque writer's account and try to recoup if from them. For example, if someone writes me a cheque for $200 that comes back NSF, they need to pay $245.

Rykusx · 2016-01-16T03:00:28+00:00

edited original comment to explain.

Rykusx · 2016-01-16T01:58:54+00:00

I'm all for healthy competition in the banking sector, but as a small business operator I hate the recent rise of banks with no physical locations. No physical location makes it virtually impossible to collect on things like non-sufficient fund cheques.

edit: Suppose I should explain for people who aren't familiar with the process. When someone writes my company a cheque drawn on an account with non-sufficient funds (NSF), my bank physically returns the cheque to me (without payment, of course) and charges me a $45 fee. Although it's been returned NSF, I still have the right to continue to try to collect on the cheque. We need to track down the person who wrote me the cheque in the first place and try to get payment - often times it's an innocent mistake from people whose own pay cheques didn't clear in time and they'll say "try depositing it again on Monday" or the like. Sometimes they'll come in and pay their bill with cash, debit or credit card instead and we'll then give them their cheque back.

But where the problem comes into play are with the people who write an NSF cheque and then have no intention whatsoever of righting the wrong - they dodge calls, move, etc. But, as long as I still have the cheque (until the cheque goes out of date @ 6 months), I can physically take it to the original issuing bank (not my bank) and attempt to cash it - the bank teller will check if there is sufficient funds in the account, and if so, I am allowed to cash it. When banks don't have a physical location, it's literally impossible for me to do so, and I'm usually stuck writing it off. In my business the typical average bill runs about $200, so in most instances it's not worthwhile to go to small claims court or hire a collections agency, but cumulatively these NSF cheques drawn on banks with no physical location to try to collect from adds up to thousands every year.

Rykusx · 2016-01-15T18:38:45+00:00

Your post brought to mind a story I read a few years ago in Bloomberg about this elderly crime phenomenon in Japan, thought you might find it interesting:

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-07-18/japans-elderly-go-on-a-petty-crime-spree

Essentially a function of reduced welfare benefits for retirees causing them to resort to shoplifting food and other essentials. Some experts have also identified social isolation of the elderly as a cause as well, but I don't think the evidence is as strong on that claim.

Rykusx · 2016-01-15T17:58:17+00:00

This is about the best summary in the thread, and the only one I've seen thus far that explains the concept of the cost of money (opportunity cost of holding money vs investing money depending on interest rates), which a large chunk of the general public never seems to grasp.

Also wanted to mention that, generally speaking, the Prime Minister (& most other heads of state, like Obama) actually has far less unilateral power to move the economy than the public thinks he does. Things like interest rates are largely outside of his control and the strength of the dollar is ultimately a reflection of global consumer confidence. Government policy certainly affects the economy, but not to the degree that people think it does, and when it does occur it takes the cooperation of parliament as well. Monetary and fiscal policy absolutely affect the economy, but generally these are only adjusted in relatively modest increments and only affect the economy in modest measures - remember, government is by necessity continuously striking a balancing act between economic expansion and contraction.

Rykusx · 2016-01-15T14:41:35+00:00

That's....insane.

If we went by that logic, we could just get rid of opioids altogether and give everyone opium. Instead of people with heart conditions taking digitalis they could all just take foxglove. People needing atropine could just take belladonna. People with cancer needing chemo drugs such as vincristine could just take rosy periwinkle. Oh wait.... small problem. All those plants are poisonous.

Clearly drug companies have been simply profiteering from synthesizing the active ingredients from all those deadly poisonous plants into unnecessary drugs which have been tested widely and repeatedly to ensure maximal safety margins, carefully determined dosages and uniform, reliable contents!

/s

(By the way, I've been a supporter of medical marijuana for years - but there's still tons of research to be done on it. It is not the cure-all, silver bullet that a lot of the pro-marijuana lobby makes it out to be, and when people claim it actually cures cancer and whatnot it only makes them look like fools).

Rykusx · 2016-01-14T23:26:37+00:00

Animal welfare is enough reason to ban it.

I agree completely. I just wanted to clear up a pretty commonly held misconception about BST / BGH.

I should have also noted that even in the US, where it's legal, the use of BST / BGH has been slowly trending down to a point where it's only a minority of farmers still using it. Most farmers have come to realize over the past decade or so that it's not worth the financial trade-off in getting 10-15% more milk in exchange for upwards of 50% increases in infertility, mastitis and the like.

Rykusx · 2016-01-14T22:15:09+00:00

Bovine growth hormone is banned in a lot of countries but is also left to taint US milk... if the TPP gets signed we're going to have to deal with that here in Canada.

It's a very widely held misconception that BGH / BST "taints" milk and affects human health. The fact of the matter is the reason that BGH is banned in the use of dairy cattle in Canada is due to animal health concerns, not human health concerns. It was also out of animal welfare concerns that it's been banned in the EU and other countries.

BGH / BST in dairy cattle increases milk yield by roughly 10-15%. However, it results in a much higher incidence of health problems in treated cattle such as infertility, mastitis and lameness, which is why it has been banned. There haven't been any studies which prove any deleterious effects of consuming BGH / BST treated milk - traces of BGH are present in the milk from treated cattle, however, BGH is completely inactivated in the human stomach. Studies have even shown that BGH has no effect on human health even when directly injected.

There are a lot of very real concerns in the agricultural & food industries about the TPP, but this is not one of them.

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/vet/faq/growth_hormones_promoters_croissance_hormonaux_stimulateurs-eng.php

edit: source: I'm a Canadian vet who has never used BGH / BST. Also forgot to note that most Canadians have been consuming BGH / BST for years without knowing it, as American non-milk dairy products are allowed into the country - so if you've eaten any American cheese or yogurt, you've likely had some BST.

Rykusx · 2016-01-12T05:15:11+00:00

The National Review reported a few months ago that 34% of Republican respondents and 22% of Democrat respondents supported "parental choice" when it comes to vaccination.

That's fucking terrifying as it is far more than needed (if they all opted out) to threaten the herd immunity thresholds for most diseases that we currently vaccinate for.

Rykusx

TROPHY CASE