Monoclonal antibody treatments for pets offer some interesting advancements for things like parvo that haven’t had real treatment options and for things like allergies affecting dogs’ skin that often require long-term management. Here are some things you might not know about them.
The new report from the CATalyst Council describes pet ownership inflation in painful detail. It is not your imagination. Your budget is struggling. Owning pets now costs 32% more. The cost of everything — especially veterinary care — is way up. According to the new report, veterinary services now cost 51.4% above pre-COVID levels — nearly 2x the pace of overall inflation (which is already terrible). Let’s dig into the data.
A few years ago, I bought and planted a tiny cherry tree and a tiny apple tree behind the house. Gardening of any kind is tough at our altitude and in our dry climate, which is worse than ever with ongoing drought. Weather extremes makes planting trees an act of faith anyway, so to speak. Everything went fine, until it didn’t. Both trees — to differing degrees — got decimated in 2025 by what we think was a pack rat. Heartbreaking. Yet, this week, the cherry tree did something that I think teaches an important lesson, especially at this point in our shared history. Enjoy a bit of a photo essay as a break from all the things.
There’s buzz in the veterinary world about a paper published in March 2026 where researchers tested the accuracy of veterinary AI for x-rays. The TL/DR conclusion? Of the 6 veterinary AI tools assessed, “…none appeared suitable for clinical use in their current form.” The makers of the AI platforms say that the tools continuously (and exponentially) improve, so tests done 18 months ago don’t reflect today’s reality. Fair point, maybe, but let’s look at what the AI tools saw and what they ignored or misdiagnosed. See for yourself the actual x-rays that 3 of the 6 AI tools botched in spectacular fashion.
Thanks to a long-ago subscription to an online group for professional, indie writers I amassed quite a few connections, including some incredibly successful people. That’s how I kind of *know Allison Winn and get the chance to follow along with her new ventures — including her prior novels with movie and series rights bought by big-name Hollywood folks. Her latest novel, The Insomniacs, is a murder mystery that Parade magazine’s reviewer thinks should be the next season of Only Murders in the Building and should have a sequel pronto. Not that she needs my help to promote her newest novel, but I think you will enjoy it too. I highly recommend you read The Insomniacs and all of her other books, especially if you need a boost of spirit. And, yes, she’s a lover of dogs, especially rescued labs and lab mixes.
Among the many emails I get, I am seeing some kinda ick shifts and other worrisome details about the current state of vet med — veterinary medicine. Let’s walk through a few of them and see if we can recognize a pattern. (I’m experimenting with some color blocks to make articles easier to skim.)
Amid our ongoing worries about Clover’s lungs — first pneumonia, then a possible area of collapsed lung sacs — our veterinarian also discovered significant arthritis in Clover’s lower spine. I had no idea what spine arthritis in a dog looks like in an x-ray, so during our last appointment about 10 days ago, I asked her to show me. So, now I can show you.
If anyone has a right to be nervous about rabies vaccines, it’s me — after losing our original canine heroine, Lilly, to an adverse rabies vaccine reaction. Even then, though, I did not become an anti-vax drama queen. So, the hysteria and misinformation running rampant online about the new RNA rabies vaccine for dogs is insane. It’s meant to scare you. It’s total BS on several fronts.
Grateful to Dr. Sue Cancer Vet for alerting everyone to this new dog hemangiosarcoma study via her great social media videos. I dug around to find the full paper. I read it at the very beginning of the recent 4-day power outage, thinking how heroically productive I was being despite work limitations. I’m just going to hit a few of the main points, but basically this paper looked at possible associations between the number and location of splenic masses or lesions in dogs and them ultimately being diagnosed with cancer. In all the cases, looked at retrospectively, the dogs had their spleens removed (splenectomy) and follow-up pathology to figure out what was what.
While getting through 4 straight days without electricity, internet, cell phone service, and running water due to a massive wind storm, I felt thankful that I’d already bought and downloaded Patricia McConnell’s first-ever murder mystery novel — Away to Me — for my Kindle. Grateful too that my Kindle was 90% charged when the power went out last Thursday. You probably know McConnell from her longtime work as an animal behaviorist and author of many nonfiction books.
