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Speaking for Spot: Be the Advocate Your Dog Needs to Live a Happy, Healthy, Longer Life
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| List Price: | $19.95 |
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Product Description
"Kay provides an insider's guide to navigating the potentially overwhelming, confusing, and expensive world of veterinary medicine . . . the consummate guide to how to be your best friend's medical advocate!" —Animal Radio
"Could save you thousands of dollars and give you the tools to prevent the heartache that comes with making uninformed or rushed decisions about your dog's health care." —Linda Tellington-Jones, animal behaviorist and author, Getting in TTouch with Your Dog; Getting in TTouch with Your Puppy; and Unleash Your Dog's Potential
"Dogs deserve to have good books written about them . . . and this is one." —Desmond Morris, author, The Naked Ape, Dogwatching, and Dogs: The Ultimate Dictionary of over 1,000 Breeds
"This is the book I wish I had when dogs first entered my life. . . . It's the other best friend you need when making routine veterinary decisions for your dog or potentially heart-breaking ones." —Amy Tan, author, The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God's Wife
"A must-have book for each and every one of you; in fact, order two—one for home and one to keep in your car or in your workplace." —Jan Rowley, editor, The Cavalier Wag, newsletter for the Bay Area Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club
"If a dog owner could have only one book for health information, this is it. This is an excellent book at a reasonable price. I highly recommend it." —Susan M. Cotter, DVM Diplomate American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine, in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association
Dr. Nancy Kay has one wish for today’s tail-wagging population—that attached by a leash to every dog is a motivated and effective human advocate.
She admits motivation is the easy part, as most people really want to provide their dogs with the best health care. But making good medical decisions for your dog can be difficult and challenging.
As a dog lover you are confronted with health-care decision-making on many levels: Which veterinarian is the right one for me and my dog? Which vaccinations does my dog need? Is it time to get a second opinion? Where do I get one? How much is this going to cost? Is there a more economical option? Is this medication necessary? Is my dog ready to say goodbye? Am I ready to let him go?
And then there are the myriad symptoms your pup might experience— the lumps and limps and sneezes and appetite changes that make you wonder:
Is that normal? Should I take my dog to the vet immediately? Should I wait and see if he’s better tomorrow?
When dealing with these questions, you may feel alone and ill-prepared, desperate for a knowledgeable source to gently explain what your options really are, and how to determine which best serves the needs of your canine and human families. Luckily, you’ve come to the right place!
In Speaking for Spot, Dr. Kay provides an insider’s guide to navigating the overwhelming, confusing, and expensive world of veterinary medicine with a warmth, candor, and humor cultivated over 20-plus years of working with canine patients and their human companions. She explains the vet’s point of view, and how to initiate and nurture a healthy relationship with a vet and her staff. She leads a guided tour through a modern veterinary land comprised of high-tech scanning devices, advanced surgery, physical rehabilitation, and more—the kinds of amazing medical procedures you expect to find in a human hospital, but may not have known were available for your four-legged friends.
Dr. Kay helps you come to grips with a cancer diagnosis, and explains the tough choices that are bound to follow. Plus, you’ll find an alphabetical listing of the most common symptoms experienced by dogs and the questions your vet is sure to ask when you report them—not to mention hundreds of prevalent diseases and related points you should be certain to clarify before leaving your vet’s office with a treatment plan in hand.
The result is everything you need to know in one fabulous, fully illustrated book. You will not find a more thorough, in-depth guide to ensuring high-quality treatment for your dog.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #64647 in Books
- Published on: 2008-10-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 384 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9781570764059
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
Editorial Reviews
Review
"An engaging, compelling, and truly indispensable book . . . the perfect guide that will make a tremendous difference for dogs and for the people who love them." —THE BARK magazine
"We finally have a book that makes sense of it all! With experience, warmth, wit, and candor, Dr. Nancy Kay provides an authentic, user-friendly guide for making all types of health care choices for your dog." —Marty Becker, DVM, resident veterinarian on Good Morning America, nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, and cofounder of petconnection.com
"In previewing Speaking for Spot I found myself wishing that Dr. Kay’s book had been available when I was in practice, and read by the clients who chose me to be their pet’s veterinarian." —John W. Albers, DVM, executive director, American Animal Hospital Association
"A guide for pet owners struggling to understand the world of veterinary care." —Dog Fancy
Featured on National Public Radio's highly acclaimed show, Fresh Air with Terry Gross. —www.freshair.npr.org
About the Author
DR. NANCY KAY wanted to become a veterinarian for just about as long as she can remember. Her veterinary degree is from Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine, and she completed her residency training in small animal internal medicine at the University of California—Davis Veterinary School.
Dr. Kay is a board certified specialist in the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine and published in several professional journals and textbooks. She lectures professionally to regional and national audiences, and one of her favorite lecture topics is communication between veterinarians and their clients. Since the release of her book, Speaking for Spot: Be the Advocate Your Dog Needs to Live a Happy, Healthy, Longer Life, Dr. Kay has lectured extensively and written numerous magazine articles on the topic of medical advocacy. She was a featured guest on the popular National Public Radio show, Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
Dr. Kay is a staff internist at VCA Animal Care Center, a 24 hour emergency/specialty care center in Rohnert Park, California. As a way of providing emotional support for people with sick four-legged family members, Dr. Kay founded and helps facilitate the VCA Animal Care Center Client Support Group. She also facilitates client communication rounds for VCA Animal Care Center employees.
Dr. Kay was selected by the American Animal Hospital Association to receive the 2009 Hill’s Animal Welfare and Humane Ethics Award. This award is given annually to a veterinarian or non-veterinarian who has advanced animal welfare through extraordinary service or by furthering humane principles, education, and understanding.
Dr. Kay’s personal life revolves around her husband (also a veterinarian), her three children (none of whom aspire to be veterinarians) and their menagerie of dogs, cats, birds, horses, and goats. When she’s not writing, she spends her spare moments in the garden or riding along the beach atop her favorite horse. Dr. Kay and her family reside in Sebastopol, California. www.speakingforspot.com
Customer Reviews
A lovely, informative, fun, and very well-written book
For "animal lovers," who want to provide our pets with the best care, our choices are daunting. The information available to us (the internet, yikes)! is vast, there is an array of general and specialty veterinarians and pet hospitals, and even university vet programs offer services. How do we sort through choices and decisions? With this book! It is filled with information and advice on how to provide the best care for the animals we love, They count on us!
To make the most informed choices given all the information (and, sadly, misinformation) out there, one thing is essential: Good communication with our pets' doctors. Just as in human medicine we have become more active participants in our health care, communicating with and learning from our physicians instead of just following "doctors orders," without asking questions, we can do the same for our animals. In fact, it's even MORE important because they can't do it for themselves!
The author of Speaking for Spot, Dr. Nancy Kay, has created a great resource for pet guardians. This book will save anyone time, money, and frustration. It will help readers get the best possible care for their furry loved ones. You will know how to find the right doctor, how to understand what's happening to your pet--be it routine exams/check-ups and vaccinations, an acute illness, or a chronic condition that needs on-going management. And you will come to better understand how care is delivered to your pet, how to make decisions, and how to make the most of your relationship with your veterinarian and their hospital or clinic. We're all vulnerable and often overwhelmed when our cherished pet is ill, hospitalized, facing a delicate operation, or going through diagnostic testing. What could be better than a book that helps us navigate that experience as effectively and compassionately as possible?
Don't put off reading this book, or wait until your pet is facing illness. The book is a great primer so that when something outside the routine occurs, you will be prepared. Develop a good working relationship with your veterinarian now; this book tells you how. (If you plan to adopt a pet in the future, this is also good book to "train" you as a new pet owner).
Read this book. Your pet will thank you, you will be the best guardian you can be, and your vet will thank you. If you follow the advice in the book, you will know that a healthy pet is best cared for by you and your veterinarian working together. From routine veterinary office visit which by themselves can easily be a stressful, anxious experience, to illnesses that test all your composure as a dedicated pet owner, your experience will be far less difficult if you read "Speaking for Spot."
By way of disclosure: I am not an objective observer about "Speaking for Spot," since I have been fortunate to know and work with Dr. Kay personally. In my association with the author, I have found she is "the real deal." The book only confirms what I have seen first-hand: She's smart and has a big heart. I'm so happy to see her philosophy of caring for animals and their guardians put to paper so others get the benefit of her wise counsel. The book is, pardon the pun, "spot on."
A great help with a recent medical problem
Speaking for Spot is one of the best gifts I've received this year and already I have put it to good use. My older dog was vomiting intermittently and losing weight and, despite many trips to our vet over several months, conservative treatments seemed to make little difference. After reading Speaking for Spot I realized that this was definitely a time to seek a second opinion and am happy I did. We now have an established diagnosis of gastric inflammatory disease and have begun a regimen with special diet and several prescription medications. The book was a tremendous help in preparing for the visit to the specialist, in knowing what questions to ask my vet and the specialist, in deciding what testing I did and did not want or need to do, and in knowing what questions to ask about the medications that were prescribed. It was a great feeling after our most recent appointment to come away knowing that it was a treatable problem and to feel like I had known enough to ask the right questions so that I really understood what was going on. The book has an information packed chapter on vaccinations and I plan to re-read that before our annual checkup in January. Thank you Dr. Nancy Kay.
valuable information
I am a long time pet owner and have recently been forced to make a difficult decision for my beloved dog. I wish I had had this book to help guide me through it. I now have a new puppy in my life and feel more confident now that I have such a valuable resource at my fingertips. I have used it several times already. The information is well organized and easy to read. Dr. Kay's style is personal and very down to earth. Every responsible dog owner will love this book!
