[I originally posted this image (a dog’s ear covered in ticks) on Facebook captioned “I guess he was a little…ticked off!” The dog was treated for tick infestation and at time of discharge was parasite-free!]

Black humor and other coping mechanisms are a fact of life in veterinary medicine. Sometimes I forget that not everyone sees things the same way we do. The above picture, much to my surprise, received quite a bit of flack for the pun in the caption. People were upset not because the pun was terrible (I will freely admit that!) but because they saw it as making light of an animal’s suffering. The sad fact is that veterinary medicine is full of suffering; whether you’re in general practice or specialty, wildlife or shelter medicine, spay/neuter or disaster relief, and we all find our own ways of dealing with it. I think I had forgotten that. For me, this was an interesting picture showcasing a heavy parasite infestation in a village dog. The dog was with us to be sterilized and treated. I knew that we would be alleviating his discomfort as well as we could. I also knew that in the weeks before and after I had seen and would see so much worse, from gangrenous legs to massive blunt trauma, emaciation and deliberately inflicted injury. And I knew that my sorrow, my discomfort, my anger, my personal emotions — none of that would help my patients.