11/26/2024
For all those who would like to know about the situation with sweet Skippy;
About Skippy
This is Dr Jenny, the owner of Niceville Animal Clinic. I usually don’t comment on social media, as it is too often subject to innuendo, past grudges, fired employees and it tends to be a no win sort of situation. Many years ago I treated a dog picked up by a hawk and wounded with a gash in its side. The hawk would not let go of the chihuahua and carried it into a tree. The owner still had the dog on a leash and pulled both of them into her house. The hawk would not let go and the owner twirled her dog around like a shot putter and slammed him into the wall. The hawk then let go, the owner brought the dog into the clinic and he had a laceration on his side and a stiff neck from being bashed into the wall. I brought him into the clinic and asked what happened to the hawk. The owner said he was in her house, stuck behind a door with a sofa cushion on it. I told her hawks were federally protected and if it was harmed the wildlife people could give her a hefty fine. Just then the audubon folks came in with the hawk, it had a partially healed broken wing and was starving which accounted for his abnormal behavior. I treated both. As this was a very funny story, it made the front page of the local paper and soon went viral before there even was viral. The story changed with each news agency it went through, I soon was found to be a wildlife official and I was threatening the owner, then I became two people and was going to put the owner in jail, I then became the arresting party that was sentencing the owner to a very long prison term. I found this all very amusing to a point, the hawk people were happy chihuahuas were being threatened and the dog people thought all hawks deserved to die. This all took on a life of its own and went worldwide. People were buying me hawkcrest wine and we got threatening phone calls from people that demanded I should go to jail. Finally someone called from Australia and told me he was going to firebomb my clinic. Enough is enough,that was when I wrote an article in the paper explaining the true facts and the uproar subsided. I found all about fake news way before it became a thing.
I am now going to address two issues that seem to have taken hold in the niceville gossip tree so I want to give just the facts. In this world I wish that no one makes mistakes but if you own a business, have employees and deal with animals, health and the public mistakes are inevitable. My policy is to inform, accept responsibility, do all I can to correct the mistake and if I cant then find some way to make it less painful. I have 20,000 clients and have at least 75,000 patients and over the years probably treated over several hundred thousand animals. I see in the summer close to 50 to 100 animals daily, no one is left without care. With those numbers I have made enemies and have made some mistakes.
Skippy is an elderly cat that was ill and the owner was going on vacation. Skippy only liked the owner as she raised her from a tiny baby but she did not like anyone else. The owner was afraid the house sitter would not be able to give her medicine and she boarded her with us as my staff is experienced with giving meds. My tech came in to treat her, feed her and change her litter. She turned her back to pick up the medicine and Skippy bolted out of her cage and under the bank of cages which is on rollers with about a 4 inch clearance off the ground. It is a bank of cages about 12 feet long and 6 feet high and 3 feet deep. The tech tried to get Skippy but Skippy was unhappy about being there and became too aggressive to handle. The tech called the office manager who told her to leave the door to her cage open, shut the door to the room which is about 20 feet by 10 feet and Skippy would be trapped until we could get someone could come help her retrieve skippy. When the tech came back with help a ceiling tile was displaced, we have a dropped ceiling and no Skippy in the closed room. No one expects a cat to go through the ceiling. The techs searched diligently and since there was no place to hide in the room and there was a new opening in the ceiling the logical assumption was that she was now in our 16,000 sq foot attic with a million places to hide. My office manager told the techs to put food, water and a litter box in the attic and in the clinic. I was informed about this series of events the next day. I then told the staff to call the owners, inform them, put the rest of the clinic on lockdown, no open doors for anything, put up our clinic cat, put food and water and litter in multiple places and go up and look for her, We all went up, me, my son, my husband, all the techs we could not find her, a hiding cat is only found it they want to be found. No meowing, no hissing, for a few days it seemed some food and water was missing, the owner was still out of town, we called daily to keep her up with our efforts. We bought tuna, we bought multiple kinds of tasty food and when the owner said Skippy only liked dry food, we set multiple bowls around with 10 pieces of kibble in it and counted it every morning to see if any had gone missing in the night. We had a few gone, but it was inconclusive. The owner brought in a roofer who said there was no way out of the attic, then she hired an animal finder, he could not find her. He felt she had never been in the roof, but we know she had to have been because of the circumstances of her disappearance. I offered to pay for him but the owner declined. The came down to the clinic and searched, I came down at night and searched, Skippy could not be found. Eventually after a week or two with no sign, I felt she must have found some sort of way out the clinic, maybe a dryer duct, an attic fan or some other way that only a cat that wants out could find. No one mishandled Skippy, she wanted to be gone and she found a way. I offered to put up a 200 dollar reward but the owner declined. The owner has been gracious but is sad and part of sad is anger. I accept that and do allow myself to be the protective wall of my poor staff who are themselves traumatized by these events and the owner who is also rightly traumatized. I never lie which has been suggested. I have been accused many times of being too truthful and telling owners what they need to hear, not what they want to hear so I am used to that, but no lying ever allowed at the clinic, a fireable offense here. Nothing is hidden. I wish it all was perfect but life is not that way. I had a client whose cat left her during a move, she looked for the kitten for a month. 5 years later and 10 miles away that cat found her in a house she had never been to. Cats are amazing creatures and I hope that Skippy either finds her owner or someone finds Skippy and reunites her with home. It is out of my hands to do more, if the owner can think of anything I will make it happen but I cannot make time move backwards nor conjure Skippy out of thin air. I hope she is found and the owner will have peace.
The second event that has been discussed in this space happened several years ago. An owner came in with an arthritic dog, we tested his blood, it was ok and I suggested Meloxicam. I have two hip replacements and have been on meloxicam myself for 8 years, it is a very safe anti-inflammatory with no observable negative effects in my practice. For 10 years i have put thousands of dogs on it with zero side effects, it has a dosage range and a very high margin of safety. I suggested she put her dog on it and said she took it herself, could she give hers to her dog. I said, fine, it was a human drug anyway and I wrote in the pets record that the owner has the same medicine at home so no meds were dispensed. Sometime after that, It was months at least, I do not remember the time lapse, the owner came in furious claiming that I gave her medicine that caused a problem that the e-clinic treated for a cost of 7,000 dollars. We pulled up her record, no billing on her record for drugs and clearly recorded that she used her own. She then claimed that we gave her a new bottle at no charge and it was all my fault. Now, I only buy this drug in bottles of 500 tablets which is a 3 to 6 year amount. We sell it to clients of up to 60 tabs, but never in the history of anything would I have given her dog a 6 year supply for free. She kept asserting that she remembered me taking off the seal and then giving her the whole bottle for free. This is delusional. She demanded I pay her 7000 emergency fee. I declined. She stormed out, screaming she was going to sue me. Ok….no case at all with lots of documentation on our side, plus common sense. We then called the emergency clinic, they told me that whatever was wrong with her dog had nothing to do with her meds and it was also noted so in their records. I fired the owner and she is not allowed to bring her dog back. Some people hold grudges for a long time no matter how delusional they might be.
I deal with a lot of crazy people and in fact I have a lot of respect for them. I had a grandma paranoid schizophrenic client that told me naked k*k people were running through her house at 3 am and they were making drugs next door. I got on my bicycle and went down to her house to check it out. It all looked normal, but she felt her dog was passing out from the fumes coming from the house next door and she was reviving the dog by giving a cold water e***a with a garden hose. On the outside chance she lived next to a hidden m**h lab I called the police and asked if they knew her…..over 900 calls in one year and they had to go to each one. Well it was clear what was up…..but the poor dog. I concocted some tasty bacon flavor syrup and told her to give that to him instead of the e***a. Benji enjoyed the last years of his life and she thought she had a miracle drug. I admire that folks in this situation still have the presence of mind to bring their animals to me for help. I find it admirable and try to help them and their pets as best I can, but I don’t take kindly to false accusations. These are the truths, and truths don’t always match with owner perception, but I care and to be accused of not caring is hurtful to me and my sweet staff. We are all in this life together and in the past caregivers were accused of being witches 200 years ago and burned at the stake. Hopefully this practice is not revived anytime soon lol. Until that happens I will continue being the good doctor I am and being truthful and honest as possible…..but never claim to be perfect or mistake proof, as is life. I have a highly visible and interesting life, I am not big with social things, so being somewhat mysterious I am often the subject of crazy talk that others think I should know about, but I would rather not actually. My house burned down, I had a son that died, I was hit in the head while cycling by a truck going 70 miles per hour, ruptured brain aneurysm, own two houses in italy, flown with the golden knight parachute team, forced a bear off a rope bridge, etc…..just part of it. A moveable feast, but sometimes crushing but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
