Today’s blog is all about the veterinary science business and training dog owners to be pet philanthropist while the vet business does surgery on the owner's wallet. This comes about from visiting a friend this past Friday and was told the dog they’ve owned for just a few months was in Ames, Iowa having hip surgery performed; all to the tune of $3 grand. You did what?, I exclaimed. I was flabbergasted; and so upon arriving home, I asked Barbara how much she spent on Oreo’s double leg surgery and she said the vets charged $2,500 per leg. Okay now I'm really airborne. Sorry but I can’t help but see why the Chinese are kicking our butts from an economic standpoint. Instead of lowering debt by $3000 to $5000 we are making ourselves feel better by allowing veterinary science to hoodwink us into feeling bad about putting a dog to sleep so they an rake in $6 grand. Don't think for a minute that I don't know why they send home those ‘dog of the week’ photos? Come on, pure and simple this is marketing to emotions; it’s an economic emotional Ponzi scheme.  I don't ever want to hear a vet talk about tort reform and the McDonald's verdict after charging $3 grand for dog surgery. Are you serious?

Oh, I know the animal rights people are going to sick their Rottweiler’s and Pit-bull’s on me. All sorts of people will write me hate-mail and accuse me of being insensitive and a dog hater. But that’s just not true; ask Oreo and Molly our pet dogs looking rather sad eyed at me right now as I write this piece. But give it a rest, these animal-right's folks are some of the same people that yell and scream for tort reform and who tell us that an intelligent, healthy, obedient 11-year-old girls are worth nothing to the parents and then turn around and write a script for dog physical therapy and charge $3 grand to repair a dog's hip.

Every wonder how the law values your pet?

• Vermont Supreme Court Declines to Allow Non-Economic Recovery for Loss of Pets – by Meow-Meow
• Non-Economic Damages In Pet Lawsuits – by Rot. T. Weiller
• Dogs In The Eye of the Law, by Hillary Colley, Esq.

What do I say to the tort reforming animal rights crowd?

So I’m somehow supposed to feel bad for a dog that was purchased for $100 out of a Wal-Mart parking lot from a guy with no mailing address, but not feel badly for parents who lose a daughter that the government tells us they invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into raising, all due to someone else's negligence? In the minds of tort reformers the dogs are worth $6,000 to $10,000 while the human is worth nothing. Pleasssssse!

Will you write me a script for pet grief-counseling?

Am I missing something here or is this reasoning on the fringe of economic insanity? Why isn't there more economic competition with vets and why aren't fees published on the Internet?

I’m predicting the dog surgeons, after they milk the dog owners post surgery physical therapy component will, suggest operating on the other hip. What do you think? After all there’s another three grand to be made.

When I wasn’t pondering if dogs have bellybuttons I got to wondering what is on YouTube for dog psychiatry? Come to find out there is quite a bit. The first is a Sam Kinison piece and Sam could be pretty loud and obnoxious; he regularly swore and he did in this monlogue; so if swears offends you skip this piece on  Animal Psychiatry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCAAkQcyCKs

Other links: one and two.

And let’s not leave out the pet psychics. See this link.

Are there animal communicators? Link, Link and don’t’ forget to lift your leg for this one.

Maybe we can train dogs to be like us – trained to waste money so we can lie around all day sleeping. If so watch this one.

Did you know cats can talk? They can just follow this link. Dogs can too.

I wonder if a dog will ever be elected to the U.S. Senate. Here is a boxer that’s been elected; but as this Brigadier General finds out, this Boxer bites.

The older I get the more I come to realize there is less and less hope for America. As a culture we are mentally weak and getting weaker. But hold onto your hat because today I’m here to point out we have an economic scud missile in the American economic scud missile arsenal. It’s Big Bernie. I suggest we let Bernie Maddoff out of prison if he’ll agree to move to China. If not then send Barbara Boxer along with the toy terrier.

You really ought to stop wondering about that trade deficit, because it has nowhere else to go but up and to the place where that dog should have gone before thousands of dollars are spent on hip surgery. I’m almost certain that Sarah Palin should be mentioned in here somewhere.