https://youtu.be/E70rvwg3OLE

At the park near Duboce Triangle in San Francisco, 5 p.m. is canine happy hour. About 40 dogs run around, chasing balls and wrestling, as their owners coo and '90s hip-hop bumps out of a portable speaker. One Chihuahua mix named Honey lounges on a bench wearing a blue tutu and a string of pearls. Her owner, Diana McAllister, feeds her home-made treats from a blue Ziploc bag, then pops one into her own mouth. And after spending two years at home through the pandemic, it's clear that for a lot of these owners, their dogs are their children. "I always say, dogs are people, so I love him," says Yves Dudley, looking on as her 9-month-old collie-schnauzer mix plays in the grass. Across the country, 23 million families adopted a new pet in the first year of the pandemic. Others, working from home, started paying more attention to their existing pets' daily routines, noticing symptoms like vomiting or coughing. The resulting spike in pet health concerns has been straining a corner of the medical world that doesn't get as much attention as doctors and nurses: veterinarians. The overwork and short staffing of the pandemic has affected veterinarians as much as it has other doctors and nurses, and dealing with the constant moral dilemmas and emotional output is driving many to burn out. At the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals' veterinary hospital in San Francisco, so many vets and technicians have left, the clinic has had to cut back its hours, says veterinarian Kathy Gervais. Read more... https://wskg.org/npr_story_post/its-not-just-doctors-and-nurses-veterinarians-are-burning-out-too/