Meet Copper, a proud member of the Bertoldi family. That picture was taken in July of 2008 when my then fiancé (now wife of 2 weeks) and I first got him. Fast forward to last weekend. Copper is now almost a year old and we’re pretty attached. On Saturday, we noticed something strange on Copper’s chin. Being that it was the weekend and our vet was closed, we had two options – pay an emergency animal hospital a nice fee just to look at him plus whatever fee comes with prescriptions, or hold out until Monday and contact our vet. I didn’t think it was too serious of a situation, but if you’re a dog lover you can understand that he’s our guy and we wanted to make sure he was alright.
Thank the Lord, there was another option. I tweeted (with poor grammar as you’ll see – it was the weekend) “Are there any veterinarians on Twitter that I could send a picture of dog to for advice?” Here’s what happened.
I then asked Dr. Young if I could send him pictures of Copper in hopes that he could determine what was wrong with him and help us make a decision about taking Copper to the emergency animal hospital or waiting to see our vet. You can see those pictures here:
Introduction: http://img195.yfrog.com/i/afkr.jpg/
Problem: http://img40.yfrog.com/i/dexv.jpg/
Here’s what Dr. Young said.
From there, Dr. Young and I continued to talk and he told me how to treat Copper’s infection until we could get him to the vet.
Well, Copper’s appointment was today and @DrYoung was spot on – staph infection. So, from Fort Worth, Texas – 769 miles away from our Huntsville, Alabama home – @DrYoung was able to use an iPhone image sent through tweetie to diagnose Copper’s problem, save us a trip (and money) to the emergency animal hospital, and reassure us that it was nothing of major concern.
How cool is that? My wife would like to change vets and start sending Copper to @DrYoung, but unfortunately, he doesn’t make house calls for dogs 12 hours away.
Huge thanks to @Armano, @terilg, @DrYoung, and everyone else who helped us out. Aside from businesses and marketing, this is a small, but great example of the power of social media.
