I was looking forward to watching this tonight, but it’s not going to be on.
Take a Dutch-born and educated vet and put him in Michigan’s dairy country, and you’ve got a great TV show.
I don’t know if these are bloodhounds or not.
They could be bloodhounds or a black-and-tan and redbone coonhound.
Michigan has a coonhunting scene, so it’s not unreasonable.
I hope this show is back on next Saturday night.
This is better than any James Herriot book!
A vet blog I read regularly (she’s an e-vet) has a rather different take on the show:
http://returnofthederelict.blogspot.com/2011/11/incredible-dr-pol.html
If you go to any cow doctor for your you dog, this is about what you’ll get.
The vet in my hometown is worse than this.
Farm vets are not the places to take your dog.
LOL Unless it’a a major emergency and you can’t go anywhere else
The people who work on cows have a different metric than those who work on dogs.
I think his goal is to keep prices as low as possible. On the show, the cow and horse and livestock work is much more interesting than the dog stuff.
I hope Nat Geo doesn’t remove this show.
If they want to cancel a show, cancel Cesar Milan. He’s much more harmful to people’s understanding of the real world than Dr. Pol.
Dr. Pol is a large animal vet. That’s how they work.
The dogs are coonhounds :-) . Good-looking dogs, too. I lived in Western Michigan in a rural area near Grand Rapids for a long time as a child, and my dad was one of the Appalachian “hillbilly” transplants who introduced many of those good ole Hollander boys to the joys of coonhunting. I remember well when the vet, who had come out to check the pregnant cows on the dairy farm where we lived, kindly took a look at a hotspot on my good old GSD. He gave me something that cleared that spot right up (I was too young to remember what it was, but I do remember how gently he treated my dog).
I love this show. I’m glad it’s coming back. My own veterinarian has a mixed, farm and pet animal practice, and he is BY FAR the best veterinarian in this area, for large animals as well as for dogs and cats. He even helped me with my pythons when I used to keep them, although he referred me to a reptile vet for a python with pneumonia (I respected him for that; snakes were not within his field of expertise). And he referred me to a veterinary oncologist when my beloved 20-yr-old Siamese cat developed cancer because he said that Duke needed more complex testing and treatment than they could provide.
Yes, my vet does try to keep his prices low – as low as he can without compromising the quality of care that he and his partners provide. The main difference in him and the other vets here is that he does not try to squeeze every dollar he can from his clients.
When my coydog was struck by a speeding vehicle right in my front yard 10 years ago, sustaining a horrific compound fracture of his very slender foreleg that required reduction by external fixation, my vets came in on Sunday, when they are normally closed, and my dog got first-rate surgery and treatment, for which other vets in my area would easily have charged well over $1000. They charged me $200 for everything, and that even included the emergency fee and the Kirschner apparatus.
A great vet is worth his or her weight in gold. I have worked for vets who cheated people at every opportunity, and for one vet who was unbelievably cruel to animals (who is, incidentally, still in practice; a vet who works in a private practice, by himself, can get away with acts of sadism and cruelty with impunity).
I love my vets at the East Kentucky Animal Clinic. They don’t have a $50 buck-a-night luxury dog hotel as a sideline, nor do they do grooming (beyond therapeutic and parasite baths and complete clip-downs); their focus is on the MEDICAL CARE of their patients. They are wonderful people.