Why so judgmental...? My thoughts on the recent dog-vet saga.

In light of the recent straits times hack and the person's comment about Dr Esmee Koh... 've been thinking about the Tammy (puppy) saga.

While I'm an avid dog lover myself. I feel like things have been blown out of proportion. I know Esmee because she's my dog's attending vet and it's sad to see everyone condemn her for that one decision when she's attended to other animals with so much care and professionalism.

When my silly dog ate cacti and was thoroughly sick, he wasn't the most friendly/clean/cute dog but she didn't hold back with petting him and reassuring him.

I probably wasn't the most patient owner either. She could have given him his jab and whisked us out of the room.
Instead she took time to find out the variety of things he'd consumed, and upon much clarification, also took time to assure me, taking her own phone to google a particular species of poisonous cactus just to check that my dog hadn't eaten "the red one" which would likely need a different course of treatment.

Perhaps another vet may have also informed me that there was just one particularly dangerous cactus to dogs, but it's her going the extra mile to care for the dog that left an impression on me.

Perhaps she didn't make the best of decisions on that day. Or perhaps she did make the best possible decision at that given circumstance.

As vets/doctors, they are held to the expectation to save their patients. Do we go out of the way to thank them and what they've done for our loved ones? I think not. What it does seem like is that we've gone out of our way to critise this group of people more harshly when they've seemingly made their mistakes... or are we saying that they have no room to make errors...?

It's understandable that on one level, we would like to hold these helping professions to a high standard of care. We're also upset over the unfortunate loss of the puppy, this all makes sense.

But I don't see why it's necessary to pull in her family/friends and criticise them for being so much as related to her. It happened once with TPL. Is everyone else out there not guilty of having made a decision they have regretted or are probably regretting right now?

I do think it's high time we stop with the people bashing and move on - let them learn and move on too.

Let's all try and be a little less critical and a bit more nurturing shall we?
Afterall, we'd all like to have people forgive and forget when we make our poor decisions.

I'd like to end off with something I strongly believe in:

Just because you've made a bad decision, doesn't make you a bad person.
Some might argue that your actions define you. Sure. It just means that it's time for you to start making better ones (decisions & actions).