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wtftastic posted:yeah in your professional work as a vet there's no way you could ever contact an ACO or someone who runs animal control in your area. Different vets have different levels of interaction with their ACO. At our clinic, we are besties with the ACO and humane society. We see the majority of their good sam cases, all of their voucher neuters, and all of their euthanasias. Based on how much we work together, I don't think they get around to the other clinics in town very much. It might be a little weird/awkward for someone at one of those clinics to call her up to shoot the poo poo and ask the kinds of questions that are easy to ask a stranger on the internet. Our ACO is an awesome, super cool lady. Hilarious (to me) is that her first name is one soft letter off from a notorious BYB. Both of them are prone to calling up for emergency squeeze-in appointments. Every time the front desk pages that "S~~~~" is on her way, there is a great deal of suspense over whether we get fun visit time or twenty gross puppies for health certs.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 01:42 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 06:52 |
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Have you had any experiences with humane traps for relocation, TNR, etc.? Or is that more a wildlife officer thing? (I stopped doing TNR in Florida after finding a pissed-off possum in a trap.) Do you have any stories about working in tandem with other city depts?
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 04:18 |
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How did you pick which vet to go to? Did you have a list of folks that were "good" or had an arrangement with the city / county / whoever, or did you go to the closest one? We used to see animal control 1-2x/month when I worked ER for a variety of different things.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 05:14 |
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Have you ever run into other illegal/criminal activities in the course of your investigation? Like have you ever gone into a property and found weed or a meth lab or something like that? If so, what do you do? Are you required to report evidence of criminal activity or is that outside your area of expertise?
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 15:47 |
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If Flavor Truck doesn't mind, I did AC for about 10 years so I can also answer questions. Did a thread in PI about it some years back which has fallen into archives.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 18:55 |
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SubponticatePoster posted:If Flavor Truck doesn't mind, I did AC for about 10 years so I can also answer questions. Did a thread in PI about it some years back which has fallen into archives. Did you see any pet sharks, wolf dogs, or tigers?
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 18:57 |
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SubponticatePoster posted:If Flavor Truck doesn't mind, I did AC for about 10 years so I can also answer questions. Did a thread in PI about it some years back which has fallen into archives. Go hog wild! I'm taking a break from this thread for the holiday.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 19:01 |
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EXTREME INSERTION posted:Did you see any pet sharks, wolf dogs, or tigers?
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 19:02 |
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I am so happy this thread turned around. It's super interesting. And yo, Supes! Just a heads up. We got the state EP called on us at work because our pigs live near a 'creek' on the property border, their housing is just a hair over the distance requirement so that our rescue hogs aren't literally making GBS threads up a 'protected waterway', which is really just a drainage ditch. You might want to check up on your state's rules for that.
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 20:32 |
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wtftastic posted:yeah in your professional work as a vet there's no way you could ever contact an ACO or someone who runs animal control in your area. it would literally be impossible. they would never want to talk to you. I don't work in General Practice anymore, and I'm not associated with the local ACO because there's no reason for me to be. Where I used to work, we were the clinic that ACO used. We had one ACO for the city; he was overworked, underpaid, but he did his best. The cases he brought to us were almost always sad. We knew a lot of how things worked (and didn't) from him, but different places function differently. Flavor Truck posted:Go on ahead. Thanks to everyone who PM'ed me about this thread. I'm not discouraged by shitposting in light of those who have legitimate questions. There's very little information out there on the day-to-day for ACOs and my positive experiences greatly outweighed the negative. I still volunteer at a local shelter and have lots of input on things like budgeting, treatment of strays by shelter size, etc. How did your area handle intake? Did you have a central holding area, and if so, was it sufficient to your needs? Was there a written (or unwritten) rule about amount of treatment on stray cases?
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# ? Jul 4, 2015 21:09 |
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Is there a ton of burn out and compassion fatigue? Are you versed in animal first aide? How do you handle a case of suspected rabies for someone's beloved pet verses a stray or a wild animal?
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 09:22 |
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You get to developing a really thick skin, but stuff can still get to you. Burnout due more to heavy workload - like most AC departments we were understaffed and underfunded. I was fine while working but in the time after I quit I had a bit of mild, I dunno, PTSD about it. Like "goddamn, how did I deal with that all the time?" We did get animal first aid taught to us and carried a small med kit in our trucks. Really basic, like how to stop bleeding and the like. Not much different from a basic human first aid course. As far as rabies goes, if it was a suspected exposure then it depended on the animal's vaccination status. If current a 10-day quarantine at home, if not either strict 6 month quarantine at a vet's office or euthanasia for immediate testing. Wild animals like bats and raccoons usually got euthed and tested right away. Never encountered a domestic animal suspected of being actually rabid. The vaccines work great and it's why they're stressed so heavily. It's nothing to gently caress around with. Fun fact: I am vaccinated against rabies. They didn't give me a tag to wear though
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# ? Jul 6, 2015 21:07 |
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Are rabies shots for people as horrible as I've always been told it is (needles into the stomach?) or was that just a tall tale told to us kids to scare us into staying away from wild animals?
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# ? Jul 7, 2015 00:10 |
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Prophylaxis rabies shots are no different than any other kind of vaccine - got mine in the upper left arm. The poo poo is like syrup though and it feels like Mike Tyson punched you there for a couple of days. "Treatment" rabies shots consist of 1 immunoglobulin shot and then 4 followups over 2 weeks. I think the abdominal stuff is how they used to do it way back in the day. Luckily people are fairly naturally resistant to rabies, it's just that it's 99.9% fatal if you do get it so nobody wants to gently caress around. Other fun rabies facts: it's only transmitted by/to mammals. Birds and reptiles carry no risk. The further away from the brain you're bitten, the longer it takes to manifest symptoms. An animal can be carrying rabies but not be contagious yet if it hasn't gotten to the brain. The virus is transmitted through saliva. Blood is not a risk. Bats are most commonly associated with rabies, but skunks and raccoons are usually worse carriers and way more likely to bite you than a bat, which aren't really aggressive. Most human to bat exposures involve children or babies, either by them finding a sick bat and playing with it or a rabid bat ending up in a crib. The only recorded human-to-human rabies transmissions have occurred from organ transplants
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 01:32 |
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SubponticatePoster posted:
I watched (listened to?) some crazy npr/pbs thing about rabies and how it's actually possible to survive through the actual rabies hitting the brain part (the first case of a survival happening somewhat recently) It's an absolutely crazy disease and I wish I had held onto more of the stuff I learned about it in that documentary...
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 02:32 |
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McStephenson posted:I watched (listened to?) some crazy npr/pbs thing about rabies and how it's actually possible to survive through the actual rabies hitting the brain part (the first case of a survival happening somewhat recently) Milwaukee protocol...but idk if it actually works or if that was just some sort of weird fluke. Lyssavirus are crazy
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 03:29 |
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EXTREME INSERTION posted:Milwaukee protocol...but idk if it actually works or if that was just some sort of weird fluke. Lyssavirus are crazy Both. It had to have done something considering nobody survived rabies before ever in the history of humanity but even after using the protocol, the survival rate is still dismal.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 03:59 |
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:Are rabies shots for people as horrible as I've always been told it is (needles into the stomach?) or was that just a tall tale told to us kids to scare us into staying away from wild animals? I got bit by a feral cat as a kid, and I had to get the shots. For me, the initial shots were one in my upper left arm, then shots directly into each bite wound ( oh god this was the woooorst part) and then two shots in my lower back/hips. The last shot was loving huge, which is why they had to split up the dose into two injection sites. Then, I had several followup shots over the course of a month or two. It's been years but I don't think it was all done in two weeks for me. It was incredibly painful and unpleasant.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 05:17 |
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So many parts of rabies are super interesting: the mood shift into a violent state of wanting to spread the virus to just shutting down after that period to the extreme fear of water to the idea of it taking over areas of the brain... Totally crazy stuff. I wish we knew more about it
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 06:11 |
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Yeah rabies is loving fascinating. I'm currently a vet tech student and my courses naturally involve a lot of research into various zoonotic diseases. When I wrote my paper on rabies I found all the information about the disease itself (the hydrophobia!), its strains, its attempted treatments, and its few and poorly understood successful survival cases I had legit trouble trimming it all down to the requested length.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 06:47 |
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We don't have rabies in Aus/NZ and there were a bunch of people being all "OH customs you guys are a bag of dicks for not letting Johnny Depp keep his dogs that he smuggled into Australia without quarantine, SO MEAN" Actually, we really just don't want loving rabies, which has been highlighted to me again by the above examples of symptoms and treatment!
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 07:03 |
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Tamarillo posted:We don't have rabies in Aus/NZ and there were a bunch of people being all "OH customs you guys are a bag of dicks for not letting Johnny Depp keep his dogs that he smuggled into Australia without quarantine, SO MEAN"
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 16:21 |
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SubponticatePoster posted:How long is your quarantine period? England finally got rid of the strict 6-month one they used to have; currently vaccinated animals are ok to come right in. Don't blame you guys for being cautious though, Imagine rabid kangaroos Unsure about Australia but in NZ it depends on the country of origin - no quarantine required for Australian imports, the USA it's like 30 days but apparently for places like South Africa it's 120 days. Rabid kiwis would be a menace drilling through people's ankles so it's important we protect our great nation from this threat.
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# ? Jul 8, 2015 22:02 |
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I infrequently do cruelty investigations as the first point of contact, meaning I have to go knock on the door after receiving a complaint and talk to the animal owners about the complaint. A lot of complaints are unfounded and most people are reasonable. This thread reminded me of the time someone called in to complain that a truck from our organization was outside their house and they (the caller) were freaking the gently caress out and swearing and all kinds of poo poo. It was me, I was driving slowly to check house numbers while heading for a house down the street and I pulled over half a block up to write down the job number, date and time and stuff in my notebook before I pulled up and went to knock on the door. Suburban street, daytime, public property and I wasn't even looking at that side of the road. Some people just get really aggressively defensive super quick.
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# ? Jul 15, 2015 03:38 |
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How were your relations with the police? I ask because an ACO I used to work with would tell us stories where it seemed like it had to be that the police held him in low regard or were just... dumb. One that sticks out is the police picking up a dead dog on the side of the road and putting the body in his truck... in the summer and over the weekend (the ACO was off Sat/Sun).
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# ? Jul 22, 2015 15:10 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 06:52 |
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Mine were very good. Sometimes a couple of them would act put out to help us but for the most part they were excellent. In one jurisdiction we serviced a few of the officers would call me directly if they found an animal problem that was especially bad like dogfighting (because a couple of the people that worked for us were and they knew I would handle it competently) and I'd just radio dispatch that I needed a case to assist an officer and off I'd go. Also when I was a young pup I worked in a coffee place and it was in the bad part of town so the cops were there constantly and I got to know a lot of them so when I was working AC they'd drop everything to come help if I needed backup. It was like having very overprotective aunts/uncles coming to your aid The dog thing would never happen with us because we always had somebody working and if it was an important call they'd wake you up if you were on call. If it was just a DOA they'd let dispatch know who'd write up a call to be put into queue for the next normal shift, if it was when we had regular hours we'd go pick it up then.
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# ? Jul 22, 2015 18:03 |