bpc said:
So which is it, should we be allowed to educate ourselves, obtain the needed meds and supplies, diagnose and treat our own animals, and thereby protect them from overzealous and undertrained vets....OR.... should we be forced to take what we can get at the local veterinary clinic even if that means being greeted at the door with a needle full of Baytril.
Absolutely we should be allowed to educate ourselves. However we need to commit to educating ourselves properly, not haphazardly. Many veterinarians as you so rightly point out have NOT made this committment, but they are treating reptile patients anyhow. A dedicated, well educated hobbyist with a good microscope and access to a lab for diagnostics can do a lot more at home for a sick snake than an indifferent dog and cat veterinarian who has no real understanding of reptiles and no clinical experience with them.
A haphazardly practicing, read-it-somewhere-on-the-net hobbyist can do an awful lot of damage trying to treat his own collection. An uneducated veterinarian can also kill off your collection because he or she just doesn't have the clinical experience to make the right decisions. If neither the hobbyist or the vet knows very much about reptile medicine, I'd say the patient is in serious trouble.
I understand that you are 100% percent against venomoid surgeries (performed by a vet or not) BUT, you can't talk out of both sides of your mouth. If a person can do all the things you mentioned in your second post, then I would have to say that a person could also educate themselves enough to perform that minor (yes, I said it again) surgery.
Given enough years of clinical and/or practical experience and the proper drugs and equipment, minor surgery is not beyond the scope of the trained individual. Full adenectomy is *not* minor in the professional opinion of any veterinarian I have ever worked with or discussed this issue with.
It comes down to this choice. Either you are illegally using controlled substances for pain relief and surgical anesthesia, or you are committing extreme animal cruelty by operating without these drugs. The most common scenario is that minimal drugs are used (just iso or sevo for the surgery itself) and the more seriously controlled substances for pain relief are not used at all. This is inappropriate and inhumane, and still illegal when done by unlicensed people for profit.
I've had a fair amount of experience with oral surgery in venomous snakes at this point. These are *not* simple or painless operations by any means. This area is well vascularized and has plenty of nerve tissue, much like the mouth of any other animal. We expect significant postoperative discomfort in the patient, and veterinary ethics (as well as our practical experience at reading the clinical signs of pain in reptiles) require this to be addressed with appropriate medication. As far as I know, none of the unlicensed venomoid practicioners are using any kind of analgesic medication postoperatively. That's not good.
Additionally most are apparently not using postoperative antibiotics either. I have seen venomoided animals in what I would consider to be very serious condition after being shipped to the Columbia show for sale directly after surgery. I would have to guess that the mortality rate would have been very high indeed on these animals.
I have much less of a problem with venomoid operations performed in a clinic by a licensed veterinarian using appropriate pain relief medications. However this really isn't the scenario that we are looking at in the hobby today. I wish it was.
Further Tanith, I've been in your house, watching your vet, GUESS (albeit educated) how many drops of sedative it would take to knock out rattlesnakes so we could do blood draws on them. I saw him get it right most of the time, but I also saw him have to add a few more for a couple particularily fiesty ones. Not exactly what I would call precise calculations.
Have you ever watched any procedures being done under isoflurane? Titrating the amount of anesthetic gas to the patient's response is the normal procedure even in human medicine. That's why iso machines have dials on them.
When using the open drop box laboratory technique in the field, outside the clinic, the titration is done drop by drop. There is not a vet or a scientist in the world who can look at a snake (or a human) and say exactly how many drops or what percentage of iso it will take for them to go down in X minutes. Inhalant anesthetic doesn't work that way - ask your own doctor.
So the truth of the matter is, someone like yourself or perhaps even Kevin can be better equiped do deal with these animals than the local guy who just happens to a have veterinary degree.
You saw the licensed vet at my house supervising all of the anesthesia procedures because that is a legal requirement. He had the appropriate controlled medications. Without those drugs, it is not possible to do some procedures humanely. I do not expect that the amateur venomoider$ are shelling out for vets to attend their procedures with the appropriate drugs in hand.
I chose to have a vet on hand for comparatively noninvasive procedures in order to be certain that it was completely humane and potentially of some benefit for the animals. That in my opinion was the most ethical way to proceed with the research that needed to be done. Performing actual surgery on a snake that is not in any way for the patient's benefit, without bothering to spend extra money on veterinary supervision and appropriate pain relieving drugs, is not something I can even imagine doing.
I am very fortunate now to be working with two veterinarians who have their own clinic. So now I am able to perform simple procedures or assist with surgeries on patients in need under their supervision, with all the drugs and equipment legally available on the clinic premises. If I cared more about profit than I do about inflicting needless suffering on snakes, doubtless I could be churning out a lot of venomoids. But I expect you know that there will be snow covered igloos in Hell long before that happens.
This particular surgery is every bit as controversial in the herp world, as abortion is in the people world. But, just because many of us don't agree with doing it, doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.
I don't agree that people should be able to torture kittens for fun, or to spay their own dog in the garage with no pain meds to save a few bucks on a vet. If I see my neighbor doing it, I will make it very clear that I think it shouldn't be done. There are laws in this country against animal cruelty, and they need to be enforced whether the victims are cute and fuzzy or not.
Turning a blind eye to needless suffering inflicted on reptiles is not a choice I can personally make. I spend too much of my time and money trying to help venomous snakes that people have hurt. Some of them I can save and some I can't, and it still gets to me every time I lose a patient. No, I do not like the fact that there are people hurting and crippling snakes deliberately for a profit.
And if we choose to push the issue and succeed in getting this outlawed/enforced/whatever, what's next? Maybe next we'll have people pushing for no one, other than zoos, being allowed to keep venomous snakes.
In all honesty, the existence of a large number of venomoid snakes in the hands of amateur keepers is more likely to lead to negative publicity and subsequently stricter laws.
I am not suggesting that venomoids themselves should be outlawed. I am suggesting that unlicensed profit mongers who are performing cosmetic butchery on live animals at home without appropriate drugs or equipment are breaking the law.
