Everything you know is wrong.

Well, maybe not everything.  However, it is a well-known non-fact that if a dog’s nose is cold and moist, then he is okay.  That doesn’t happen to be true, but it certainly is well-known.  People don’t just think it might be that way — they know it.  In actuality, the only places that dogs normally perspire are their nose and footpads.  So, if the nose is cool and moist, that tells you that dog is perspiring.  If it’s dry, that tells you he’s not  perspiring. That’s it, there’s nothing else to it, the wet nose tells you nothing about his health status or temperature.  The reductio ad absurdum would be to note that a dead dog has a very cold nose.

And how does this relate to my blog?  Science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon once remarked that "…ninety percent of everything is crud".  Hey, I’d really like to be in the other ten percent.  Anyone who surfs the web knows that it is easy to find unreliable information.  You can put anything up on the web.  Of course, since I’m a veterinarian with seven years of college and twenty-eight years of practice experience, everything I say has been "vetted", all my guesses are "educated guesses", and all of my excuses are "doctor’s excuses".

The test of truth is in the application of the data.  If you can USE the information to obtain predictable and desirable results, it is true enough.  On the other hand, if you plug your life experiences into the framework of the new rules and things keep going south, then the information is NOT true enough.

I can hardly keep my personal opinions out of the blog, and I don’t intend to.  Some intentional nonsense is planned, but the important stuff had better be right.  If it’s controversial, I’ll provide references.  In the meantime, with reference to veterinary medical questions, I can recommend veterinarypartner.com.  This is a sister site to Veterinary Information Network, which you’ll hear more about later.  The same database can be accessed through the library link at www.kennettvet.com.

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