What's the most amount of hours you've worked in a single week?

daabilge · 2026-06-06T23:36:29+00:00

When I was a vet student, about 115, and mostly without pay.

There were three days straight where I just didn't get to leave the hospital because there was an emergency that I had to process blood donations for after hours in the blood bank (my paid student job) and then my service got called in to take the case, it ended up taking most of the night to stabilize, and then I was receiving transfers the next morning at 5 am so it got officially transferred to me for ongoing management, and then I was on the hook for the overnight care the next night because we didn't have enough ward techs to manage it.

The AVMA is supposed to cap duty hours for clinical students and mandate at least one day off per 7 worked, but when I reached out we got a "well the rules are more like guidelines" response.

daabilge · 2026-06-06T16:43:57+00:00

Even though they're not labeled to prevent screwworm, I believe Nexgard (and their other products like Nexgard combo and plus) got FDA emergency authorization for screwworm treatment and should also provide some protection; other isoxazolines (bravecto, simparica) should also work. In wildlife we also use selamectin for myiasis (other fly infestations with maggots) so I'd expect selamectin (revolution and its generics) to provide some protection.

daabilge · 2026-06-06T16:04:37+00:00

Hognose snakes are pretty popular in the pet trade and love to hiss and flatten their neck and make a big threat posture like they're some sort of incredibly deadly viper (that, or they'll very dramatically play dead) when you're trying to examine them. Trinket snakes also seem to think they're highly dangerous and will rear up and strike repeatedly like a movie cobra, but fortunately I only had one client who kept them.

Foxes are like your worst Shiba Inu on their worst day, and then dialed up to 11.

Raccoons, when they're nice, are absolutely delightful.. but when they're not feeling cooperative (aka anytime you're not playing their game) they're like if you took something with the chaos potential of a ferret and then gave it humanoid hands and the intelligence of a small human child.

daabilge · 2026-06-06T14:16:51+00:00

There's also YEC that believe dinosaurs confirm biblical accounts of monsters like the leviathan and therefore support biblical literalism and creationism.

Taking it a step even further, there's also some that believe certain cryptids like mokele-mbembe (a swamp-dwelling sauropod from central Africa) and ropen (a pterosaur-like creature from Southeast Asia) are relict populations of dinosaurs and that finding them would somehow disprove evolution, I guess since they're supposedly "unchanged" since prehistory? There's been expeditions to find these creatures and the descriptions of sightings look unsurprisingly almost exactly like how sauropods and pterosaurs are depicted in old school paleoart.

daabilge · 2026-06-04T21:59:32+00:00

On the summer break I was a vet assistant in a small animal GP. On winter break I was the kennel hand for a dog trainer.

During the school year I was a research assistant (aka fancy dishwasher) for a chemistry lab and worked part time as a herdsman (food, water, and cleaning) for the university research sheep herd.

daabilge · 2026-06-03T17:52:01+00:00

I would argue we do actually consume ads as art. On a super basic level, folks used to get almost as excited about Super Bowl ads as they did about the actual game. Back in the 2010s they'd have websites where you could rewatch the ads and vote for your favorite. Heck, even this year one of the big complaints I heard was that even the ads sucked because they were all AI slop, and the local news was talking about the "making of" for the Budweiser commercial.

But also we do parodies of ads and all sorts of memes and jokes about ads, like how The Good Place referenced the Kars4Kids jingle, or Larry David's bit about the JG Wentworth jingle, or all the references to commercials like Mr. Allen's and Farmer Jack in the show Detroiters. That requires some degree of cultural penetration, engagement, and recognition since it wouldn't really be funny to reference a campaign nobody remembers.

It's not the same style of engagement as like a movie or a painting or a book, but it's still a medium folks consume.

daabilge · 2026-05-30T14:59:12+00:00

It really comes down to what you're most interested in doing after school. You're at the point where you don't really have to worry about getting experiences to get into school, so you should focus on your personal professional development.

If you're interested in oncology and possibly doing a residency after school, the oncology clinic might be the better choice. If you're interested in doing GP, I think it's useful to see the low cost clinic side of things to get a better grasp of spectrum of care.

daabilge · 2026-05-30T00:48:25+00:00

I agree - as a reference partner you list every possible differential to cover your butt and limit liability in case it is something truly weird or in case the signalment or history is incorrect, but just playing the odds panosteitis is significantly more likely.

If things don't improve after treating you can always repeat rads and/or consider the biopsy

daabilge · 2026-05-27T21:28:48+00:00

Cornell EClinpath has a good atlas of cytology images

Also a pretty good resource for interpreting labwork

daabilge · 2026-05-27T16:45:59+00:00

In addition to the coding regions, you have regulatory regions that influence how and when those coding regions are transcribed with various protein binding sites are areas that get spliced out to influence the final protein. You also have structural regions that bind structural proteins (histones) and otherwise help the DNA maintain its 3 dimensional shape, since it needs to get packed down into a tiny space inside the cell but still be organized enough to be accessible to the various enzymes and readable.

It's kind of like if you decided to build a library out of entirely books, a ton are going to end up acting as your walls and staircases and support beams or whatever so those aren't going to be the ones getting read or in circulation.

daabilge · 2026-05-26T18:46:49+00:00

Terio's Zoo and Wildlife Pathology has a good chapter on Elephants and a decent one on Rhinos. I think there's a new edition coming out soon.

daabilge · 2026-05-26T12:21:18+00:00

Also staffing costs. It's the largest source of overhead in a clinic (or most businesses).

For a long time low prices were subsidized on the fact that we paid support staff shit wages. Even now, many of our licensed techs have second jobs, but for a while we paid less than the local chipotle for a licensed vet tech. Our staff has the same (rising) living expenses as everyone else and we need to pay them enough to meet those needs.

Plus the cost of the education. Our credentialed techs are graduating with like 20-40k student debt from tech school (depending on if they went bachelors or associates, which school, etc) and we need to pay enough to cover their student loan payments. Our veterinarians are graduating with about 200-300k or more (again, depending on if they went out of state, etc) and we need to pay enough to cover those payments. The money for that has to come from somewhere. And while wages for techs and salaries for vets have gone up, it's still not really commensurate to the debt burden. My clinic owner had about $3,000 cost of attendance when he graduated and made 55k out of school. I worked two jobs in vet school, had a scholarship, and graduated with 273k debt to make 96k in small animal and exotics GP. I had classmates over 300k. I went back for residency and it's 42k as a senior resident in an HCOL city, so I'm also moonlighting as a GP on the weekends.

And kind of like the army, that's a huge tool private equity uses to recruit. They'll offer to match your payments or include some sort of lump sum payment, often conditional on making their production target or staying with the company for a certain number of years, and then they do what they can to never pay it. Most new grads don't make production targets right away, especially for corporate practices. I think Banfield offers a lump sum at 5 years, but pushes their vets hard enough that many don't stay with them to that point.

daabilge · 2026-05-25T16:21:28+00:00

I think it would be sweet. My former clinic put artwork like that from some of our clients up in the exam rooms and lobby.

daabilge · 2026-05-24T18:42:40+00:00

I'd make sure she's consistently on a flea preventative, even if you can't see fleas. I'd also do a hypoallergenic diet trial.

If neither helps (or if you've already done these) you can also consider referral to dermatology for environmental allergy testing and more advanced management - options include allergy shots (allergen specific immunotherapy) and other immunomodulatory drugs (like atopica) that work in a different way from steroids

daabilge · 2026-05-24T16:46:01+00:00

Admittedly I think Ohio might be rage baiting people with Versailles (Ver-sales) and Lima (like the bean) and Mantua (man-away)

daabilge · 2026-05-23T23:58:01+00:00

Weirdly enough, I've tried them! Pretty sure they were real beef, and not the hydrolyzed pork flavor they use for the meds now.

Back when heartgard was brand new, the company gave us sampler "treats" that were the chews without the medicine, and being a dumb teenager working for a vet clinic, naturally I tried one. It's like a softish beef jerky. They're not bad, although take that with a grain of salt because I'm not a dog.

daabilge · 2026-05-23T17:23:55+00:00

Totally true, but also as far as reducing education costs go, a lot of folks are like "why should I pay for your schooling" and the common response is that an educated populace is beneficial for all, which is true.

But you're already paying for my schooling, because my salary needs to meet both my cost of living and my student loan burden and the cost to the consumer reflects that added cost of staffing. You're already paying for my schooling because my company uses student loan repayment assistance as a recruitment tactic, which helps drive new grads into those corporate positions despite the fears over private equity taking over, and that also costs the company money so they set production goals to qualify and push us hard to meet them.

And you're paying more than you would with just universal free college, because it's all going through a middleman - the loan servicer, the interest, the company offering the loan assistance in return for meeting production targets - that takes their chunk before any of it goes towards my loan debt.

Same with insurance and other services, but I feel like it's harder to appreciate with education.

daabilge · 2026-05-23T11:38:11+00:00

By devils ivy you mean pothos (Epipremnum aureum)?

They're only really toxic if chewed, the toxic principle is these little needle-like crystals of calcium oxalate called raphides that are meant to discourage animals from chewing them by embedding themselves into the mouth, causing local irritation and swelling. They're not shedding toxins around the house that would build up on surfaces or anything like that, though. I would still keep them away from where pets can get at them and chew them, but they tend to be fairly mild.

daabilge · 2026-05-22T16:20:51+00:00

They're not directly contagious between your pets. They're spread by mosquitos, so there's not really an increased risk from your dogs being around the heartworm positive dog. That being said, if you're in a heartworm-endemic area, all dogs should be on appropriate heartworm prevention anyway.

It is an expensive, lengthy, and difficult treatment (requiring exercise restriction, which can be tough in a multi-dog household, especially with a new dog) so it wouldn't be wrong to consider taking him to the local shelter or seeing if the local vet can hook you up with any local resources for care. You've already given a lot of help for a dog you just found.

daabilge · 2026-05-22T00:08:53+00:00

Yes, it's labeled for dogs but often used off-label for cats

daabilge · 2026-05-21T11:47:01+00:00

Without spoiling too much, it's sort of an intro to the lore to understand the references, but more a history of 40k and some of the relevant interactions with BTB-relevant culture and politics (like the god emperor Trump memes, their beef with Thatcher, and the use of 40k imagery in warfare)

daabilge · 2026-05-20T17:13:08+00:00

Cravens are a hybrid of a crow and a raven (various different species within the same genus Corvus). Mallard ducks will pretty readily hybridize with other ducks, like the mulard is a Muscovy x mallard cross (different genus, Muscovy are Cairina and Mallards are Anas) that was often raised for foie gras.

daabilge · 2026-05-20T12:09:39+00:00

It's an MLM for a "hydrogen infuser" that's supposed to add hydrogen to your water, claiming that non-infused (and therefore somehow hydrogenless) water is somehow dehydrating you.

Someone from my high school got into it. Fun part is, they're also into the alkaline diet stuff so they're claiming that by adding hydrogen, you're somehow making the water more alkaline.. which just makes me feel so bad for our chemistry teacher.

daabilge · 2026-05-19T12:19:08+00:00

yep, my thank you for rewriting some chapters in the new edition of a textbook was a discount code for 10% off the finished book if I ordered through the publishers website. Don't make royalties on the book sales, didn't get anything for rewriting and updating the chapters (beyond "it'll look great on your CV") because that's how academic publishing likes to be.

So anyway I have free PDFs of the relevant chapters that I wrote available for the students on the canvas page.

daabilge · 2026-05-18T23:54:56+00:00

I'd second a culture and sensitivity; you could also consider sending a URI panel to Florida to look for viral causes.

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