It is well known we grow to be like our pets. The old matron with her Pekinese adopts the same “bad smell under the nose” expression. The old huntsman adopts the same hangdog expression of his Beagle.

Kathy L. was in yesterday. Her mother had a kidney stone, and, lo and behold, the CT scan we sent her for showed a 3mm stone in the left ureter. A chip off the old block.

But her dog was sick, and the vet diagnosed him as having a kidney stone.

Another patient, a mounted policeman was intrigued when I told him his facial pain was from a sinus infection. He told me, with some incredulity, that’s what he’s having to treat his horse for.

Another patient is a middle aged, slightly frumpy lady who is on the antidepressant Lexapro. She tells me the vet put her cat on fluoxetine (generic for Prozac). She also told me he’s stopped harassing the other cat and now is trying to make up to her. But she went on ”I’m not having any of it” and that made me think she’s still irritable, and the cat is doing better than she is.

Yet another patient, a Physician’s Assistant turned veterinarian (he tells me it’s not so different) has just been diagnosed diabetic. When discussing possibly putting him on glipizide he told me “I use that a lot for my patients”. I told him about the lady and her cat.”Oh yes, it’s quite common for peoples and their animals to be on the same, or similar, medicines - especially psychotropics”.

Do we not only adopt the looks, but the diseases of our pets?

 Drug lunches are a big feature of life in the office. To clarify, we are not dining on drugs, we are merely being treated by the manufacturers  of drugs - or to be more precise, their representatives. These dapper assertive guys - or more often buxom coquettish women, with a “come hither” manner, are always trying to feed us.

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