This week: venereal disease
One of the banes of being a veterinarian is the unsavoury dinner conversations we are often forced to engage in to entertain friends and family: 'unsavoury' meaning taboo, distasteful, inappropriate or downright gross, especially over dessert. I am glossing over the other types of dinner topic that forever plague vets - often when people find out you are a vet they exclaim, 'Wow, that is a coincidence, I have a [fill in animal species here] and it's got [such-and-such a problem].' It is fortunate that most of the time I am fully armed with countless unsavoury anecdotes.
Yesterday I was at a fancy European-style restaurant where you pay more for the environment than the food. There were many new faces and everyone was dressed up a little and the atmosphere was quiet and sedate. I was intentionally trying my best to redirect the conversation away from my vocation, to happy topics like the possible coming recession, investment opportunities, interesting holiday spots and the like. Ultimately, my deterrents failed and someone brought up the fact that here sat a veterinarian that also writes for a newspaper. I put on a brave face for the inevitable response.
One of the more boisterous patrons, who had had more than enough to drink, raised his glass of wine in salute to how much he loved his basset hound. It seemed to be a reasonable and kind-hearted toast, so I drank to his dog's health. He began to ramble on about how great his dog was and how well behaved, masculine and healthy. I concurred, saying that most people think that way of their pets, patiently waiting for him to get to his point.
He was a Chinese-American who had lived much of his life in Los Angeles. He had been talking about the LA riots and how he was there and what happened to his business. In his less-than-eloquent LA way, he told me: 'I want to pimp my dog because he is the best. Maybe I will make a few dollars out of it. He gets the girls and I get the money, a win-win situation in this bad economy. I just want to know if dogs get venereal diseases like people do.' An oddball and humorous question but a valid question nevertheless.
I told him: definitely yes. Just like humans, the range and severity of venereal diseases can be extreme, from simple things like genital herpes to horrible diseases like leishmaniasis, which is a protozoan disease that is endemic in many parts of the world but is very rare in Hong Kong. The real HIV-equivalent of the dog world is a bacterial disease called canine brucellosis. If the reproductive tract is infected, the male dog can become inflamed and sterile, and in females it can cause spontaneous abortion. In the responsible breeding world (possibly an oxymoron there) dogs are tested for brucellosis before mating to prevent its spread, and dogs are routinely put down overseas if a breeding dog tests positive.