2023-01-19
42 分钟Big investors are buying up local veterinary practices (and pretty much everything else). What does this mean for scruffy little Max* — and for the U.S. economy? (Part 1 of 2.) *The most popular dog name in the U.S. in 2022.
Rose Peters is a veterinarian whose specialty is animal neurology.
I saw alligators and tigers and anteaters and birds of all kinds.
What did you need to do with an alligator?
Have you ever performed brain surgery on an alligator?
I have not on an alligator.
I bet their brains are very small and hard to get to.
But the alligator that I had was, gosh, I think a twelve foot huge alligator that had some general weakness.
And so they were trying to decide if it had a nerve or a muscle disease.
I think we decided his nerves and muscles were okay.
He was just lazy, you think, or.
Just feeling unwell for some other reason.
I think more likely large reptiles, especially when they physically don't feel well, can look and feel very weak and blah and lethargic.
But he wasn't so weak and lethargic that they didn't still have them strapped from head to toe to a big table.
And everybody stayed about 10ft away, just in case.
Odds are that you don't have a pet alligator, but a pet dog or a cat or guinea pig.
Probably.
Even before the pandemic, pet ownership had been rising fast in the US and now sits at a record high.
70% of households have at least one pet.
Also at a record high is the share of household income we spend on pets.
In 2021, that added up to $123 billion.